My Time at a Psych Ward
A few years ago I tried killing myself with sleeping pills. My friend found out and called 911. The ambulance ride to the hospital was really funny. I already swallowed the pills and all the EMT could do was take my vitals or whatnot. It was maybe a 10 or 15 minute ride, and the EMT finished his job in nearly 3 minutes, so we spent the rest of the ride just talking. I asked him, "How many of these types of calls do you get a year?" and he replied with "2". My instant reaction was, "Oh my gosh am I your first one of this year? Omg congratulations!"
I downed more than 60 pills and it took me over an hour to actually see a doctor. Surprisingly, I was able to still stand up straight, walk, and answer questions normally. I thought they'd need to pump my stomach but all they did was give me activated charcoal. That shit was lukewarm and nasty. It took nearly a whole day for me to get transferred to a psych ward (or mental hospital idk). The people took my phone so all I could do was talk to the security guard or sleep. That security guard was the most annoying motherfucker ever that wouldn't leave me alone, but I still pretended to talk and be nice since there's no good out of being a bitch in that current situation.
I was taken to the psych ward late at night. I was put on a 52/50 (or something like that I don't really remember). It basically meant that the psych ward could only keep me there for no more than 3 nights otherwise I'd have to go in front of a judge and try to convince them "I swear I'm not crazy and I'm not going to do it again so please let me out." Everyone there was pretty interesting. Some people are just depressed and others are really fucking insane and need medical attention.
At the psych ward, no one can have their phone, there's puzzles and coloring books out to keep us busy, and the TV channel was only set to one station (it was a news station). Needless to say, I didn't feel insane before going into the psych ward, but the longer I was there, the more I felt like I was losing my mind. 24 hours suddenly seemed so fucking long. There's only a handful of other patients you can actually keep a coherent conversation with and some of them never learned to fucking shut up.
Everyone seemed to leave after a day of being transferred but I was stuck there the full 3 days. When I asked about why I wasn't discharged yet, the doctor/psychiatrist told me they could only let me go after I call my parents. Wtf? Why didn't they fucking tell me earlier so I could fucking leave? I made a quick call to my parents and it went along the lines of "The doctor told me to call you. Can someone pick me up? I have to wait another hour? Oh well ok thanks." The doctor didn't believe that was my full conversation so he had to double check and call my parents to confirm the story for himself. Then I was actually let go.
Turns out the doctor at the psych ward wanted to keep me there longer. Because I didn't show any remorse or treated the situation like it was important, he didn't believe that I was in the right mind that I wouldn't try to kill myself again. Unlike everyone else, when they were explaining their situation to him, they were breaking down in tears or broke down in tears when calling their parents/friends/fucking whomever. My plan at the psych ward was to come off sane of mind by being nice and smiling to the doctors when they asked me questions, but I guess that came off more as creepy. In my defense, I thought that if I showed that I was depressed and sad, they'd try to keep me there longer. Anyways, I guess he didn't have enough evidence to make a case that I needed to stay longer to the judge, and with my parents' approval, he just let me go.
TLDR: I tried killing myself, met weird people at the psych ward, and had a bitch doctor that didn't want me to leave.