THE DOG HUNTERS (completed)

14 - THE SKID ROW VACATION

After Dr. Nurse dramatically ended his life (on purpose? by accident? or was he in the crazy zone where both were simultaneously true?) I wigged out and hopped off the bus. My thinking was people would somehow blame me as I was the last person talking to him. I ran into the night, immediately tripped over a pothole, and almost got run over by a big rig myself, which the authorities interpreted as copycat death by car, and promptly placed me on a 5150.

In case you've lived a charmed life, the term 5150 is more than just the name of a Van Halen album from the eighties, it's also the code for an involuntary seventy-two hour psych hold. If you're a threat to yourself or others, or just so obnoxious you can't deal, the cops pop on over, handcuff you, and whisk you off to a psychiatric hospital.

On Skid Row a 5150 is called called The Vacation. If you manage to get it, you get three days in mostly clean bed, usually with intense drugs you can't get otherwise, legally or not, and generally good, hot food. If you hit the jackpot and end up in a newer hospital you'll even get young nurses with tight asses and radiant smiles, like nuns who are also porn stars, who'll flirt with you and hook up an extra jello if you don't shit yourself or cause problems in the TV room. 

You're probably wondering why this hadn't been my go to plan instead of trying to kill myself. You're probably wondering why I didn't try to get myself 5150'd all the time. The answer is many people try for the vacation all the time, and it pisses off the powers that be. If the powers that be catch you deliberately trying to get yourself locked up, they start fucking with you, both as payback and as way to try to curb general enthusiasm for this strategy. You get put on this shit list and sent to other, less desirable places. I was never sure exactly what these places were, and I never wanted to find out.

As it turned out, I was deemed bona fide, which I guess I was, even though the almost getting run - that second time, was a total accident. And I got lucky and ended up at this really nice hospital, this new place over in Under Hill – not a bad part of Ace City, and compared to Skid Row, a cushy suburb if you didn't count the angry working-class Latinos, and the meth problem, and the youth gangs. Par for course, the nurses were pretty, the psych techs were mellow, and the psychiatrist didn't even appear conflicted about the Xanax she prescribed me (I had puked my guts out before the cops picked me up, which got most of the alcohol out of my system and with everything that went down with Dr.Nurse no thought to give me a drug screen. Had they done this, and if I'd been dumb enough to admit my drinking, I would have been dosed up only on Seroquel).

If there's alcohol in your system Xanax is usually fatal, or so they say. I was knocked out for a solid twenty-four hours, and after that, along with the Zyprexa they put me on, I became extremely slow, and pleasantly fractured.

Awakenings, or what feel like awakenings, or epiphanies, or realizations, usually occur for me in this state. I discovered I wasn't actually suicidal,I'd just gone bonkers on drink, which was something I'd anticipated happening sooner than later.

I tried to appreciate the turn of events. In the morning I took my meds, then checked in with group, then had a short break where most people complained about not being able to have cigarettes and coffee(not that this was a problem for me, but I did sympathize for everyone else inflicted), then sharing group, where you passed around a Native American sharing stick (colored feathers on what looked to me like a calcified turd), and talked about your feelings, then there was diagnosis group, where you learned the different kinds of crazy and how wonderful meds were, then lunch – usually delicious – then afternoon group, which if you haven't guessed it already was exactly the same as the other groups, then another break, I guess to take a shit, or catch up on your reading if your med levels allowed you to still see straight, then dinner, then meds, then if you were someone who had been deemed a good talker, you got to chill out and watch reality shows on TV until lights out at seven PM.

I can talk, especially if I get watch some TV later. I call it cardboard talk, the sort of talk you hear at AA meetings, people just saying the same old shit, slightly repackaged. Keeping to the party line about owning your feelings and shit like that. I'm an A student if I have to do the groups, even though I'd rather be left alone. Even with the meds drilling into my brain and filling my head up with smog, and making me drool like a placid chimp, I could still work the great babble.

 I'm not going to lie either, I liked the attention from the rest of the nutters, I liked the kudos from the facilitators. And, it seemed like this one lady, this other resident, couldn't take her eyes off me. She had these buggy eyes like Susan Sarandon. She was hot and raw, and those big blue eyes were always focused on me like lasers and after a day of it her focus on me was so intense I started to get uncomfortable.