longer.blue

So I was in a psychiatric hospital for ten days in March 2025. My wife told me she wanted a divorce. We had been growing apart for a while and I was developing severe psychiatric ailments so I wasn't as tuned into the situation as I should have been. I want to open this story by stating that my soon to be ex-wife and I still love each other. This isn't a story of animosity or anything: life just keeps happening and people grow apart. What really instigated it was after us talking about divorce and the future was her going to stay at her brother's place for a week to pet sit and also get some needed space. That left me alone with my thoughts. So Sunday I'm by myself drinking heavily and I decide to throw NyQuil and Benadryl into the mix. To this day I'm not sure if I'd call it a focused suicide attempt: I wasn't thinking about dying or anything. I just wanted to feel less if that makes sense. I wanted to numb myself. Luckily I still had enough sense to realize I had made a grave error and called 988 which I cannot stress enough is a life saver. The operator was so kind, patient, and gracious even though the emergency response took about an hour (I was alert and oriented so an ambo isn't necessarily gonna consider me high priority.) The first responders to show up were sheriffs which bothered me a bit: I was pretty clear I needed medical care but upon reflection I understand with mental crises LEO has to show up. Medics don't know if I'm agitated and showing violent behavior. In any case, the sheriffs were pretty cool if a little stupid: they were confused why I needed an ambulance because I kept saying it wasn't a suicide attempt even though I did something suicidal. Eventually, the sheriffs decided to put me under an emergency detention order which is similar to a Baker Act: authorities are concerned I'm a danger to myself or others. They're nice about it and ride with me in the ambo. I remember the older deputy telling the younger one he'll write the paperwork since it'd be his first EDO but it's good because I'm cool and not being violent. I get to the hospital and the emergency mental health nurse talks to me. After our talk she tells me I'm going to be committed and it's a question of voluntary or involuntary. If I go voluntary I'm more likely to get out faster but if I fight that'll come into play. I agree to go voluntary but ask her to not tell my wife and the nurse goes "Hell no, I'm not doing that to her: you're not thinking straight. She needs to know." It came across as harsh at the time but she was right: I remember later my wife saying when the hospital called she thought I was dead and that's horrifying to recall. I was at the hospital for maybe a few hours before I got transferred to the psych hospital. I was first put in what's called the PICU or psychotic intensive care unit. My understanding is in cases like mine where there's some kind of suicide attempt they put you there until you can get properly assessed: your privileges are heavily restricted. Later I'd actually come to miss PICU because while you couldn't do a lot they gave you way more smoke breaks than in a high-functioning unit. No one in PICU appeared outwardly psychotic just a lot of hard addiction cases. I first got evaluated by a nurse who seemed like a really great guy. However, he told me he "used to be gay" but used psychology and religion to get past it. Man, I felt so bad for him after that: I hate that people are afraid and ashamed of who they are. He did give me some great opening advice to participate and take advantage of the help that was offered and to also set goals and when they were achieved to set better goals. Initially for me this was with exercise: I started doing push-ups, sit-ups, and jumping jacks while I was committed. That first conversation I had with my wife that day via phone was tough. I was still trying to obfuscate what was going on mostly out of embarrassment but I couldn't flat out lie to her: I was committed to a psychiatric hospital. I told her I'd check in with her but to be honest I hated doing it. I was just overwhelmed with shame. I also talked to my work supervisor who was an angel during this time: she told me to do what I need to do and don't worry about work. To this day she is still the only person at my job who knew the full story: she told her bosses what they needed to know but never completely aired my business and I'm eternally grateful for that. Eventually after a day I'm transferred out of PICU into what is considered a high-functioning ward. It's a bit of a misnomer; while PICU has criminals with pending charges that have psychiatric issues, the ward I was in also had similar patients including a transient young man who was being held there for evaluation due to a laundry list of sex crimes with minors (we'll come back to him later). I was bunked with a patient who had extreme depression; he was the only person in the ward that was getting ECT (electroconvulsive therapy). It was kind of a blessing: he was quiet and I was quiet and we got along OK. For the first few days I had to learn the routine. Meals, smoke breaks, group therapy. Each weekday I would also talk to a psychiatrist who managed medication and evaluated how I was doing. The first few days were rough for a lot of reasons: I had to figure how to take short-term disability leave under the FMLA and then further figure out how to get compensated under my work policies for it. I also had to explain to the hospital that as I am the primary household member who pays bills I needed access to my phone for a few minutes a day to manage our finances. You are not allowed phones typically in a psychiatric hospital, but I was persuasive enough that they gave me about 10 minutes a day. The hospital staff were generally pretty chill. I never bad problems with anyone and on the few occasions I had a full on breakdown they were extremely comforting and helpful. The group therapy counselor was also good; however, I didn't like the worksheets. It felt like homework and kind of an impersonal way to approach someone. There were always at least one but usually two students in group therapy I assume to get hours to go towards their counseling degree or certification, but they were generally also cool. I quickly made some friends on the ward. I'm gregarious by nature: I like talking to people and I like making friends. The two closest friends I had on the ward was a white working class guy in his thirties with a wife and a few kids who I'll call Adam, and a black lady in her early 20s who was a homeless sex worker that I'll call Betty. I'm not gonna get into their problems even though I'm aware of them, and I only mention their backgrounds to demonstrate the range of people who were in the hospital. Later in my stay we'd widen our group with a Latina bank manager. I myself am a highly paid white collar worker in the insurance industry. Everyone has problems. Early on most of the ward was pretty chill. There were occasional problems: patients getting violent with themselves or acting out in common spaces. We had TVs and generally the room voted on what they wanted and it was a mix of either music channels or movies. Sometimes the room would vote on a movie and it would disturb or upset a patient who had a particular problem with the content. The staff would immediately cut it off: it wasn't worth the trouble. Other than the TVs and therapy there wasn't much to do. We had a pretty early lights out with final medications being given out at 8PM. A game my impromptu crew and I began to play is starting a game of Monopoly immediately after taking our nightly meds and seeing how far we could get before becoming so zooted we couldn't finish. It was silly; we knew we couldn't actually finish the game on our meds but the game wasn't about playing Monopoly but a kind of endurance test to see how long we could maintain a kind of sharpness needed to play Monopoly and the first person to crash out lost. Meds Monopoly led me to a flash of inspiration. I read an article maybe ten or fifteen years prior that had always stuck with me about how tabletop RPGs are played in prison given the limitations. I realized I could run a game making a sort of bootleg/improv system using six-sided dice from Monopoly. I pitched it to my group expecting a muted interaction but instead got enthusiasm. Even the staff and counselors were intrigued by this, but that always surprised me. Role-playing has a lot of influence from psychological treatment (please read "The 50-Minute Hour" which is on the Internet Archive. This book was written in the 1950s and features a story about a nuclear physicist who developed a rich fantasy that he was actually a starship captain. The psychologist decides to join him in the fantasy and winds up enjoying this collaborative roleplay. Eventually the physicist admits he knows it's not real and that he's just lonely.) I myself had experience with roleplay as a part of psychological treatment. My first psychologist as a teen kept various role-playing games for use with patients. I just thought given the lack of stimuli a role-playing game would be a lot of fun. Here's the thing. I'm what's called a "forever DM" in TTRPG parlance. It means I am always running games and I'm rarely a player. Part of this role sorta makes me respond to enthusiasm from players and my crew was so enthusiastic. They did character art which in 30 years of this hobby I hadn't seen before. It was so impressive and cool. We improvised a very simple system and did a dungeon crawl through a temple that had been taken over by goblins. The whole point of my writing about this experience is to discuss this experience because it means a lot to me. I was getting help in the psychiatric hospital but this experience was the one time I felt normal. It was so thrilling that people who knew nothing about TTRPGs joined in and enjoyed themselves.