Surviving Hell

Forewarning this involves serious topics including suicide and mental illness, and should only be viewed by adults with a strong willpower.

On Tuesday, May 19th I began a journey through a living hell no person should experience. Some would call it a suicide attempt, some would call it a cry for help, but I know the truth that I endured a hell that very few people will ever experience.

The funny thing about normalcy is just how normal we think we are. The days prior to my death I went to work, hung out with friends and family, and lived my life normally. The Monday before my death began I spent time talking to people on Reddit, told my regular customers I would see them soon, and even went out for a nice dinner with a great bartender.

Everyone was really nice and would ask how I was doing and in my mind I was great because I knew that in a few hours it would all be over. The funny thing about life is just how in denial we are about stress and how petty shit like rent can break the camel’s back.

I mention people and how nice they are because talking really does help. At one point on Monday night I was ready to seek help but then I got to CVS and bought multiple bottles of Bayer’s extra strength aspirin without so much as a glance or a worried look from the self checkout machines. CVS says they care but do they? No human interaction, no delay at the cash register, no last chance for survival.

The greatest irony of suicide is that it is incredibly easy to kill yourself but it is also incredibly easy to succeed at living. I did my research, I was methodical about picking a method that wouldn’t leave me as a vegetable but that would be hopefully as pain free as possible. I never imagined that my research would be wrong and that the dosage I took wouldn’t cause me to go into a coma. Instead of drifting into the night as painlessly as possible I broke out into a fever and passed in and out of consciousness.

I took the pills at 12:01 to avoid ruining a friends birthday and so that I could say I lived to see another day. I then spent 12 hours having the worst burning sensation of my life crawling around on the floor of my apartment. I even opened my fucking apartment door in the hopes that I might be found. It’s not that I wanted to live at that point but the pain was the worst I had ever experienced at the time. No one came for me and I thus wriggled like a worm under a magnifying glass for hours.

Then the puke started, a mixture of vile Bayer’s extra strength aspirin, Powerade (used to wash it down), and last night’s steak dinner. Keep in mind at this point I was still fully prepared to die and I would soldier on regardless of the pain. The problem is I don’t do puke and this was the worst kind imaginable, I can even taste it every time I think about that night. I crawled across the room, found my cell phone, turned it on, and dialed 911. The hardest thing I did in my previous life was to call for help and admit to myself that I succeeded in living. The mind is so fucked up because throughout the call I still wanted to finish my mission.

I kept telling myself that at least my parents wouldn’t know I was in the hospital living or dying because I wouldn’t call them! If only I knew that they had begged my apartment complex (owned by a large company) to do a welfare check. The sick part is that their policy is to not do welfare checks, I would have died if I had not called the cops myself. Once I got to the hospital (the ambulance ride was frankly boring) they gave me two huge cups of liquid charcoal, which I slurped down with the gusto of a fat kid and a milkshake. I even asked for seconds just to fuck with my attractive nurse and because I had a captive audience. Alas she got her revenge as the black oozing liquid charcoal coated with the aspirin killing my kidney and then decided to come right back up. Asshole liquid charcoal made me look like a zombie spewing vile all over myself. At least the worst was over, right?!

Oh how wrong I was, because not a minute after spewing death out of my mouth my mom AND my dad came in. What the fuck is what went through my head, I didn’t even last an hour in the hospital to process my thoughts and figure out how to deal with the fallout. The fascinating truth is that there really are no good answers to the flood of questions that follows a hugely emotional ordeal. Sure I know exactly what I did and why I did what I did, but when your mom asks you if you accidentally overdosed on over 150 pills it’s really difficult to tell the person who raised you that it wasn’t an accident.

Thinking that the worst was over was a mistake, It was merely the beginning of the fight for both my body and my soul in a hospital that exudes indifference. I was casually taken to the ICU where they promptly gave me bag after bag of potassium to flush the aspirin out of my system. I would pass in and out of consciousness while my family would cry and hold my hand. My never before broken veins would spill blood over and over to nurses and staff that needed to get tests done to determine whether I was really going to die or if I was going to live.

The pain of the pills, the blood drawing and the IV’s being inserted, the liquid charcoal, and the pain of seeing my parents not understand what happened all pale in comparison to what happened next. They inserted a goddamn catheter into my dick. I am sorry, but having a man treat your most precious body part with the casualness of a toddler jamming a toy into the wrong part of a thinking game is the most painful thing I have ever experienced. The pain was short and severe but I thought well at least it’s over, it’s like ripping off a band-aid. Oh how wrong I was about this and so many other things.

Peeing occasionally is fun, you get the ecstasy of writing in a urinal and it is a bit euphoric, the problem with a catheter is that it is a constant sensation of pain and euphoria when they are pumping bag after bag of potassium into you. Eventually though both the pain and the feeling of release stopped coming and I legitimately thought the worst was over.

Then they announced that I could have the catheter removed! I was overjoyed because it meant my kidneys are still functioning and because I could finally sleep! If only it were that simple, removing a catheter isn’t like ripping off a band-aid, it’s more like numbing someone, torturing them, and then removing the anesthesia. Removing that catheter caused a flood of pain that had me begging them to put it back in. Holy fuck, holy fuck, kill me and just make the pain stop.

Eventually the pain stopped sometime Wednesday, a full 24 hours of drips, blood tests, and fighting for my life had taken so much of the fight out of me. I finally got some real food after one meal of a liquid diet. In typical fatty fashion I went for the fried foods, chips, potato dishes, and desserts. My mom for the first time ever didn’t demand I eat healthy crap designed for rabbits! Woo hoo, my body survived, my parents are supportive, and now I can go home!

Man how the mind fucks with you to tell you that the worst is over and that things will only get better. I was visited by people in suits, lab coats, and scrubs and told I had to “voluntarily” or involuntarily go to Unit 7300, a floor of Suburban Hospital (a Johns Hopkins subsidiary) which I truly believe is hell on earth. They lied to me about a 72 hour hold (more on that later) and lied to me that it has the best care possible. Obviously I willingly involuntarily signed up for the “voluntary” admittance. I wasn’t loopy and I know just how much the system can fuck with a man that doesn’t play hand to hand combat with a lion.

Unit 7300 is something I truly believe no man nor woman should ever suffer through. It is a Unit comprised of shared bedrooms, a common area, offices, bathrooms that look like they were designed for prisoners, and more. The staff is a mixed bag of “counselors” and nurses. Supposedly there is a mythical administrator and I heard there were even therapists, doctors, and social workers! I use these terms lightly because frankly besides a bunch of patients who helped each other cope the only real constant is the pharmaceutical industry. Being relatively lucid of mind I made it my mission to get better and to be there for anyone that needed someone to listen, because no one is getting any fucking help in Unit 7300.

I was still so naive about the system and thought maybe the first night was a fluke. We drew pictures, ate food that probably came out of a prison kitchen, watched a constant stream of Law and Order, and got to know each other. Surely the next 72 hours before discharge or involuntary relocation would be filled with one on ones, productive groups, and figuring out coping skills for when I got back into the real world. I mean they had daily groups scheduled and doctors every day between ambiguous hours that had no structure!

In my 96 hours of being there, I learned so many things about life, about coping, about just how sick and fucked up the world is (and I was already a fucking cynic). What I didn’t do was learn any of this shit from the so called professionals. I attended eight group sessions, FOUR of which were designed purely to provide examples of which drugs to take and how fucked up you will be on the “cocktails”. The other four were jokes with stuff like drawing, exercises that left people trying to cope by themselves afterwards, and worse causing mental breakdowns which lead to the patient getting cocktailed immediately.

My new BFF is an amazing female with her own story to tell ( I am intentionally omitting just how fucked up people’s lives were) but I will say that I truly believed I was meant to end up there at the exact same time as her. We endured hell together and I am not sure if either of us would have survived alone. She started crying and wanted someone to talk to and the hospital NURSES gave her a goddamn cocktail to knock her out immediately! This unit is incredibly uncaring with the professionals being more interested in prescribing meds than listening. There was rarely if ever any hospital employees to talk to, there were NO patient advocates at any point in time, and patients could easily make what can only be described as prison shanks if they were feeling suicidal. No room checks, lights go on at crazy hours to draw blood/check pressure, and the activity room was a joke.

The activity room consisted of Puzzles that miss pieces, wobbly tables, chessboard with missing pieces, worn and outdated books, very little in the way of card games and so many other issues that could be solved with a few bucks. The real sting in the wound is how much they probably charge the insurance/patients for psychiatric “help” and for providing activities. I guess John Hopkins has to pay the CEO some how, yet I have a feeling he would never “voluntarily” spend 96 hours in his own unit to learn the hell that he created.

Earlier I mentioned a 72 hour hold and then I switch it to a 96 hour hold because that is how fucked up Unit 7300 is, they can’t even follow simple state laws! To be clear the 96 hours is rounding up, I was forced against my will and without any assessments or involuntary holds placed to stay for almost 24 hours past the legal limit. They were required to release me, release me against medical advice, or involuntarily hold me WITHIN 72 hours. I am not one to normally split hairs but almost 24 hours later and after indifferent counselors, nurses, social workers, doctors, and administrators gave me the cold shoulder I was going to lose my shit!

There is so much more to this story than I told her and this could be twice as long if I talked about the people I met, the kinships formed, the skills we learned on our own and just how fucked up the system is for some people. The one thing I learned that was constant is that there is a complete lack of caring on the part of corporations. I am a startup entrepreneur and it drives me nuts that these companies just don’t care about anything except profit.

I have found a clarity of purpose in life in a week of living through hell and I will continue to get stronger, get better,and I will help to advocate for those that can’t speak for themselves. Suicide isn’t the answer because there are people you can talk to, whether it’s other suicidal individuals, suicide survivors, family or therapists and professionals. It is not worth it to end it over financial stress, all the debt in the world doesn’t matter at all.

The only thing that matters is each other, spend time with a random stranger, make a friend on the street, be there for a young or old person that needs support and can’t find it because everyone is so callous and uncaring. We say we live by these tenants but do we really? We have our circles of friends and family but outside of them the world is full of depression, strangers, and a system that just doesn’t give a fuck about you or me.

I am not suicidal (no thanks to Unit 7300), I am glad I am alive, I am all the things I couldn’t believe from reading about suicide survivors. To my friends and family and to complete strangers know that I deeply love all of you regardless of your situation or past and know that there is hope. I may be in a crushing mountain of debt going forward but I died and was reborn at the end of my week of hell and I am looking forward to the future.

To Bayer’s: Please stop selling huge bottles of pills, yes your competitors do it and yes helps you make more money, but there is so much more to life than executive bonuses and higher profit margins.

To CVS: Please stop saying you care when your main profits come from supporting the pharmaceutical industry turning people into zombies and when you mainly have self checkout lines with no caring employees as a last line of defense.

To apartment complexes everywhere: Change your policy, do welfare checks, and show a little concern after the fact instead of asking me when I am going to move out while I am still in the hospital. I am omitting the name of where I lived as the property manager was appropriately horrified by her staff’s response.

To John Hopkins: Please be the better hospital system you can be, get a patient advocate somewhere on premises, force your doctors to give us copies of what they promise orally and to actually follow the laws. I was lied to by your doctors and Professionals multiple times and couldn’t get any answers. Care about your patients and don’t discharge people that clearly aren’t ready to go ( I saw this a ton of times). One hour of one on one help or even someone to just fucking listen would do wonders for Unit 7300.

To other corporations: Believe it or not there is more to life than a profit and loss statement. Stop making the world a miserable place in the name of the almighty profit.

I don’t blame the corporations for my decisions, I made my bed and I will lie in it. I do believe we as a society can do more to listen, to care for each other, and to not freak out when we say just how bad life really can be. Without talking about the truth there is no hope for peace, for a future where people can live a relatively normal life, and where humans can actually coexist without being in the pocket of big pharma.

To the rest of the people I survived hell with, survive and hope for a better future because there will be brighter days ahead and be proud that you survived one of the worst places on earth.

I’m Blake Grandon and I started my journey wanting to die but until you go through hell you have no idea how bad it is.

Tell me your story below and if you are dealing with depression or suicidal thoughts call Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1–800–273–8255 because you sure as hell don’t want to end up at a place like Unit 7300.