John Scully - Am I Sane Yet?: An Insiders Look at Mental Illness

It seemed like as good a night as any to kill myself.

I was alone in my Toronto apartment staring at the television. I was lost. I hated myself. I was terrified of my new job. My kids were grown up, and my wife, Toni, was three hundred kilometres away. Why not do it? Why the fuck not? I burst into tears and shuffled to the cabinet where I kept all my medications.

I had a choice of more than a dozen different drugs to do the job. And there was the Cuban rum and Coke. It was the only concoction that gave me any relief from the depression and anxiety. I got a glass, ice, lime, rum, and cola. I drank it, then another. Then three more.

From the meds I chose the sleepers. I grabbed a bottle of the small, deadly blue pills. How many would it take? Thirty? Forty?

I drunkenly phoned Toni and said goodbye. She pleaded with me not to do it. I hung up.

The pills one, two, oh, fuck it, just pour out a handful. My god! I am really going to do it. Oh, god. Im really going to do it. I emptied most of the bottle into my left hand and gulped down the pills. I chased them with more rum. I was careful not to leave a mess for whoever found me; I screwed on the bottle cap and even wiped down the kitchen counter. I started to feel my death cocktail kicking in and half-crawled to the bed. I lay down, and without thinking of my heinous actions, passed out.

I had committed suicide.

Toni frantically called my daughter, Emma, in Toronto, and she called 911. The cops and paramedics arrived quickly, Im told. But the landlords policy stipulated they werent allowed to break the door down. They had to find the superintendent to get the spare key.

When they finally got in, the commotion woke me up sort of. I foggily remember seeing all the members of my family, except Toni, waiting outside the apartment door. They followed the ambulance as it whined its way to Toronto General Hospital. When I arrived, the medics gave me the standard liquid charcoal mix to drink so I would vomit up the poison. But I didnt puke. The fog, however, began to lift a bit more.

Hey. Leila, did you see that? The guy didnt throw up!

Ive never seen that before.

The nurse who attended me was a snooty, judgmental, suicide- hating bitch.

Urinate in the bottle, she snapped.

Nurse, Im sorry but I cant pee.

You cant pee. How would you like me to shove a catheter up your penis?

I tried again, and this time streams of golden urine steamed and gurgled into the bottle. Ah, the odour of liquid suicide in the evening.

At seven oclock the following morning the hospital psychiatrist came to speak with me. He was professional and non-judgmental, but in the end had nothing to offer me except counselling. I had been going to counselling for twenty-five years; if it had worked, I wouldnt have been there.

For most of that day, I was incapable of thinking straight or staying awake. I must have taken one hell of a lot of sleepers. I was undoubtedly immune to most of them by that time. Thats why they didnt kill me.

John, after riots in Santiago and Vina del Mar, Chile, 1983.

Did I know they wouldnt? Was this a cry for help? No. It was way more than that. I had a flat, unemotional acceptance that I was going to kill myself. I had no self-arguments, no self-doubts. And I was pissed off that I hadnt been successful.

I have spent most of my working life as an international TV journalist. I started in television at the BBC. I was the youngest deputy newsroom boss anyone could remember. Oh, look at me! Then I crossed the Atlantic to work for the Canadian networks Global, CBC, and CTV. I covered stories in more than seventy countries and worked in war zones more than thirty times. Usually I worked as what is called a field producer in the industry, so you might not know my face. Over the years, I trained and upgraded the skills of hundreds of journalists, camera operators, and writers.

So, what the hell happened? Why cant I think? Straight, crooked, anything would be better than the stunned, immobilizing negativity that has grounded one of the universes great talents. What happened to the gift I had nurtured to an international status?

Ive asked myself a million times, why have I, your journalist hero, spent a total of nearly six months in seven mental facilities and twenty-five years in the offices of psychologists and psychiatrists, my brain in aspic, jelly-like, quivering, wobbling from one lack of sanity to another?

Often I stare at walls a hypnotic, unblinking stare that can grip me for as long as four hours, the suicidal boredom of a mind emptied of all emotion but sadness and despair my only ally a white wall that hides me in a cape of desperate vacuity.

I am finally starting to learn how I came to be this way. And I think Im getting better. The fact that Im writing this book is probably the strongest evidence that I now have some grip on reality. But, of course, I dont really know if I do or not. As I begin writing, I am cranked up on drugs. I take up to twenty-five different pills every day. Some are supposed to slow me down so I can sleep; others are for different mental and physical wreckage. Anti-depressants do not give me a high of any kind. They are merely meant to even out my mood so I hurt less and function more. And, of course, I take one Aspirin every day. Its for my heart. Thats a bit weird for a guy who tried to commit suicide, isnt it?