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It’s amazing how, before Twitter came along, it was rare for anyone I knew to check up on me, wonder aloud about me, or ask other people about me because they hadn’t heard from me in so long.  Yet I go five days without tweeting and everyone thinks something horrible has happened to me.  What gives?

So here’s what really happened.

The reason I didn’t tweet for five days is because I didn’t have access to a computer or my phone.  The reason I didn’t have access to my laptop or to a phone is that both were banned from my possession.  The reason that both were banned from my possession was that I had been involuntarily committed to the Adult Behavioral Health ward at Presbyterian Main. The reason that I had been involuntarily committed is that I had tried to kill myself.

Okay, that’s not exactly true.  What I really tried to do is to take a very long nap. I had been asked by GW and her boyfriend to leave my house so that they could spend the afternoon with my kids. I was not to come back until around 9, when the kids would already have been put to bed.  I’ve tweeted before about the joys of a Xanax nap, and decided to take one. Until 8:45. At which time I would wake up, drive home, and go back to sleep in my house with my kids.  Recommended dosage of Alprazolam (Xanax) for me is 0.5 mg as needed for anxiety.  I took 1.5 mg.  Couldn’t fall asleep.

See, I was very upset about a tweet that I had posted the previous morning and been convinced to remove around lunchtime the same day.  Loopy on benzodiazepene, I decided to begin texting to apologize to the person I thought the tweet (now removed and unreadable, by the way) would/could/had hurt the most.  After texting her a series of increasingly disturbing things (including a series of apologies and goodbyes) I told her that I was going to sleep and turning off my phone.

Fifteen minutes later, the EMTs showed up at my apartment.

Here’s where things got super-interesting.  See, I told the EMTs that I was just taking a nap, that my friend had overreacted, that I wasn’t trying to harm, hurt or kill myself.  They, convinced, left.  Then I turned on my phone, read the texts that were there and the ones that had come in since I turned off my phone, and decided to drive myself to the Presby Matthews ER.  Just before I left, I popped another milligram of Xanax.

I have no idea why I did that. It seemed obvious at the time, though; not like a really, really good idea, but more like a step in completing an action: 1) Put on your shoes. 2) Pop two more Xanax. 3) Feed the cat. 4) Lock the apartment door. 5) Start the car.

This was a gigantic mistake. I hate that I did it, and more than that I hate not understanding why I did it.  I am not a drug abuser, and those who’ve known me since I started using Xanax know that I use it even less frequently than my prescribing PA recommends.  I’d rather be anxious and miserable than pop a pill.  So to take 2.5 mg at once — and, to be frank, 3.5 within a twelve-hour frame — was incredibly out of character for me. I still can’t believe that I overdosed. It makes no sense to me. None whatsoever.

I made it to the hospital before the final two pills finally kicked in and destroyed any hope I had of being coherent.  When they put me on the phone with Access from Presby Main — the doctor who would ultimately decide whether or not I was to be committed — I was still heavily under the influence.  That interview sealed it.  I didn’t know it at the time — hell, I didn’t know ANYTHING at the time — but I had just signed a contract that would take me away from my home, my work, my friends and my kids for five days.

After I got off the phone, things got really fun.  I started experiencing severe pain all up and down my left arm, and complained about it.  Within five minutes, I began feeling a sharp pain in the left side of my chest.  Somehow, I was able both to ask the doctor if I was having a heart attack and to beg other ER techs not to do an EKG on me.  I was both afraid of dying and unwilling to pay for an EKG.  I am a cheap, cowardly Jew. Hilarious.

The EKG and heart monitor revealed that my heart rate had slowed from a healthy pace of 75 – 85 beats per minute to 44.  In other words, my heart was working at half-speed.  Not a cardiac arrest, but definitely a cardiac event.

Clearly, they stabilized me and put me to sleep.  I spent the next 48 hours in an emergency room bed, watching TV, missing my kids and wondering where the two people who had sworn to be by my side no matter what hadn’t come to visit me, and most of all kicking the shit out of myself for having made the stupidest move any man has ever made.  After 48 hours (shorter than what they predicted), a bed opened up in the ABH ward at Presby Main, and I got to spend the next three days on a psych ward.  I’ll blog about that shit later, because although it was a painful and frightening experience that should have been unnecessary, from the outside looking in most of it was pretty fucking hilarious. Sure made me laugh to beat the band.

Hi guys. I’m back. Sorry I left, and I’m even more sorry for the reason why.  I’m going to use the rest of this life that’s been regifted back to me trying to make it up.