I have a record. I've been "hospitalized". I can't tell the whole story in one post, I'll try to put something chronological together eventually (with your help). But I was just laid off in 2002, my father was "surviving" throat cancer after having most of his mouth cut up/cut out and invited me to live with him. He was also drinking himself to death, and I was like the boy who cried wolf.
See Dad somehow thought no one could tell that he was drinking, even though after two years I learned a few things about how a man who can't swallow a teaspoon of water (because he no longer had a tongue after the surgeon cut most of it out) can drink 8 ounces of straight gin or vodka in about three minutes - by pouring it straight into his stomach through his feeding tube. (ask me to tell you how to achieve a blood alcohol content of about 0.50 and live to do it again)
Yes, I said 0.50 - that's over six times what will get you arrested for DUI. And it's more than what will kill most people.
And it was a routine to see my dad, all six feet, 200 pounds of him, collapsed on the kitchen floor in his underwear for two or three days at a time, twitching periodically like he was being tasered.
That will wear on your conscience. And so one night I drove to the local hospital and asked if I coudl get someone to come look at my dad and maybe get some help for him. The attending ER doctor said, "how are you doing? Do you have suicidal thoughts?".
I said, "Doc, I've had suicidal thoughts since I was 17. Since I (was then) 37, that's a twenty year unbroken record of handling it successfully to be standing here talking to you."
The little brown indian motherfucker in the white coat (call me a racist if you wish, but wait until you hear the rest of this story before you start the march on my house) wrote on his little form, "Patient has suicidal thoughts" and said, "I can hold you for a minimum of 72 hours".
I said, (angrily) "What you wrote down is not what I said."
He said, with an aloof and arrogant indifference that removed any pretence of "care" in the phrase "mental health care" "If you are not cooperative, It will be recorded as combative behavior and the 72 hour minimum can be extended to 30 days.
