One Flew Into the Coo-Coo's Nest

I had the distinct privilege of spending my 40th birthday in a mental ward -- to be more specific a "crisis intervention" center. The Sunday before my wife and I spoke in great detail. For the first time, both she and I came to a true realization of the magnitude of my problems. Suicidal thoughts, or simple thoughts of fleeing, were regular for me. For months I suffered from paralyzing inaction at work and allowed almost every client and matter to stymie. The real prospect of financial ruin, bankruptcy and perhaps even disbarment loomed before me. While my wife had guessed at some of this, the sheer magnitude of it all surprised her. For sometime our relationship had been rocky, even before this revelation. The remaining flex turned brittle and broke. Faced with the magnitude of my problems and likely the end of a thirteen year marriage, I broke as well.

Monday afternoon found me in the facility (at my wife's urging, I might add -- she is not a completely heartless person). Life in the facility is difficult to describe. You find yourself returned to childhood and beyond. Your belt , your watch, your keys, even your money are taken away from you to keep you from presenting a threat to yourself or others. Your clothes are washed for you by an attendant, not as a point of customer service, but again to keep you from harming yourself or others with the washing machine or dryer.

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner are all at set times -- much earlier than you are used to (dinner was at about 4:20). Not only was the food the typical bland institutional fare but there was only one choice of food with scanty servings -- I lost about 10 pounds while in the facility. However, because the dining room was on a different wing of the unit, the walk to and from each meal constituted the only real excitement for the day. For the remainder of the day I was free to watch television, to read one of a couple dozen dog-eared and decades old books from genres that were wholly unappealing to me, or to sleep. As the adjustment to my medications made me very drowsy, sleeping during the day became a very viable option. There were also board and card games led by the assistants, but I could never bring myself to get involved in these. My only responsibility was to metabolize the medications I had been given. Otherwise, I was free to do nothing -- and as little presented itself to do, doing nothing became amazingly easy.

My fellow denizens were a mixed lot. Several were drug addicts sent to dry out by the various local townships before continuing with their judicial process. I carefully avoided any mention of my profession to avoid the incessant requests for free legal advice that necessarily follow. Others were individuals such as myself, professionals and working individuals who needed to have a 'time out' and a readjustment of medications including a self-employed plumber, a business man, and a carpenter. I tended to spend time with these folks. Then there were the truly ill -- those being held until a court order requiring them to submit to long term treatment at the state's mental health facility could be obtained.

The truly ill presented the most uncomfortable aspect of the stay for me. Not because I ever felt endangered by them, but because part of my work as an attorney had been to work the very docket that they would appear on. The town where I reside has the largest mental health facility in the state, and attorneys in this town on a fairly regular basis are called upon to represent the severely mentally ill as they went through the process. Now I found myself on the other side of that system. Thankfully, as I came into the facility voluntarily it did not become necessary for me to appear as an inmate of the asylum before the judge that I had argued many cases before, represented by an attorney who knew me.

As for the conduct of the truly ill, it was mostly benign. One lady kept trying to pull down her pants and would regularly walk around the unit doing the 'tomahawk chop'. One older gentleman seemed fairly lucid until he began to tell you about the scar between his shoulder blades where his ancient ancestors cut off his wings. Another younger gentleman walked around the ward, regularly stating in a loud voice the first three or four "steps" of the twelve step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. The drug addicts would often sit in corners, trading information on the best and most undetectable means of cooking meth or passing drug screens. Me and my cohorts generally spent the day watching daytime television and/or watching one of the five DVDs available to us (I saw entire showings and scenes of "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Gone in 60 Seconds" more times than any human being should be subjected to over the course of one week).

The treatment I received itself was, in fact, pretty good. An RN there was the first person ever to ask if in addition to suicidal thoughts if I had ever developed a plan -- to which I honestly had to answer "yes". Why had I not acted on it? Well the ultimate conclusion that I came to mirrored that of Hamlet in the famous "To be, or not to be" soliloquy -- "And thus does conscious make cowards of us all." Weeks before I had even begun memorizing it as a mantra to keep myself from "tak[ing] up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing them end[ing] them."

During my stay my condition was stabilized and my medications were adjusted. In addition I received a much needed "time out" from the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' as good ol' Willie put it. I felt ready by Friday of my stay to return home. First I would need to pass the shrink test.

Forever I have used humor, especially self-deprecating humor, in everyday conversation. It is part of my nature. So, when the shrink asked about what I thought of my stay I told him that, having turned 40 in a mental ward, that I'd been cheated out of my rightful mid-life crisis -- I should be chasing blondes with big boobs and driving gaudy sports cars. The shrink, of course, felt that I might be getting a little bit manic and ordered that I stay the weekend for further observation. (Note: I really did say that to the shrink and he really did make me stay an extra 2.5 days as a result. Shrinks have NO sense of humor.)

I do not think that it will be necessary for me to ever return to such a facility, but it holds less fear for me now than it did before. I would just be sure to bring several books with me that I would like to read.

Oh, and I wouldn't crack any jokes around the shrink, either.

Law: The Toxic Profession (or, You people drive me crazy -- no, really.)

Let's begin the account of my journey into mental melt-down with a discussion of my former profession -- the law. When it became apparent recently that the practice of law was fundamentally ill-suited to my mental health I stepped back to realize that it is ill-suited to the mental health of any normal human being.

As a cathartic measure I sat down not too long ago and wrote an outline of the reasons why practicing law is toxic to those unfortunate souls who bought the hype and leapt eyes-closed into law school. It turned out to be rather lengthy.

I will not bore you with all of the details, but here are a few nuggets that will help you to see what I mean. In 2006 the state Bar Association to which I belong averaged one suicide of an attorney per month. The vast majority of attorneys (over 70% if I recall correctly) would chose a different profession given the chance to start over again.

The billable hour is an evil and demanding slave master that requires you to justify your existence in 6 or 15 minute intervals all day, every day. There is an inherent conflict of financial interest between yourself and your client -- the client wants as much of your talents and skills as possible while demanding that you do it in as little time as possible and you want the inverse. Often the client who needs the most help or attention is the one least capable of paying for it, so the poor and middle class get poor representation regardless of whether their case warrants it (or the attorney can work for free, literally taking food out of the mouth of his family). The rich get gold-plated excessive representation regardless of the severity of their problem. Under the billable hour, if the 'wheels aren't rolling, you aren't making any money', meaning that you are docked time/pay for every trip to the bathroom, printer jam, hour spent learning a new program or day spent in mandatory professional education.

No one is ever happy to speak to their lawyer. Clients only call in times of stress and emotional turmoil. Often they often call repeatedly, demanding that you undo years of poor choices on their part in a few days or weeks time. Clients almost never see the other side of the argument and demand resolution 100% in line with what they believe to be 'fair'. Any result less than a 'fair' result means that you did a poor job and sold them down the river. Every client is not this way, but enough are to make up for the rest in spades.

And, finally, the cherry on top is that you are the butt of all jokes. Lawyers are the modern jews/paddys/wops/polaks/negros who can be impugned publically and in 'jest' without recourse. Everyone knows that by definition you are a greedy, lying, self-serving bastard.

There is more, but I think this gives one a flavor of it all. I lived in this hell for ten years. Finally, I lost it. My genetic pre-dispositions kicked in with fury, stoked into white-hot flames by my profession. So I say to all of the other attorneys I dealt with, the law professors, the judges, and most of all to every needy demanding client who called incessantly demanding immediate relief from your poor choices, YOU people drove me crazy -- no, really.