I once tried to kill myself by chugging a bottle of hand sanitizer. Back then, I wasn’t super good at planning things out. If I had been, I probably wouldn’t be around right now. The whole thing was pretty impulsive. I was sitting at my desk, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I needed to get out. So I popped off the top of the 8 OZ bottle, and started drinking.
See, the thing Purell doesn’t want you to know is that while that gel might kill 99.99% of germs, it tastes like shit. And I have a tendency to hold things in my mouth before swallowing them. At first, I was holding it down pretty well; I can handle my alcohol with the best of them. All of a sudden, though, I started feeling pretty sick. It was like I was going to start puking out everything from my feet, up. But as soon as my stomach started bubbling, my chest locked up. It wasn't going to let anything else out or in. I started stumbling around, and then everything got blurry. Then black. The last thing I remember was my mom shouting from down stairs “Jeffy, quit stumbling around up there. Are you okay?”
When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed, my parents in tears, being hugged by my Aunt Karen.Her husband, Rick, sat sheepishly in the back chair. When they realized I had come to, they all breathed a sigh of relief, which was followed by a flurry of angry comments.
“Jeffy! What the hell were you thinking? You could’ve gotten yourself killed! Don’t you know that stuff is poisonous? If you’re feeling sick, just get a glass of orange juice.”
“You had your mother worried to death. You teens and your dumb ideas. You’re lucky to be alive!” Aunt Karen said.
“Son, if you want a beer, just ask for one. I’d rather that than you start boozing it up on Purell.” My Dad said, in what is still today the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard said in a serious tone.
I was thoroughly confused. Did they honestly believe I thought drinking hand sanitizer wasn’t dangerous, but in fact good for me? I suppose there isn’t much to say to people after a failed suicide attempt, but when the people around you don’t even realize it was suicide, words are even harder to come by.
“Look at you.” Mom said. “This little experiment has made you as pale as a
church mouse.” (Mom tended to mix up phrases.)
“We should get him some food.” Karen said to my Mom.
“That’s a good idea. How about Chinese? Jeffy, is Chinese okay?”
I hated Chinese. Beyond that, I was pretty sure you couldn’t bring food to ICU patients. But I wasn’t in much of a position to argue. In their eyes, I was the kid who drank hand sanitizer to cure a cold. I nodded my head in agreement.
My Aunt and Mom left the room. My Dad was never much for one-on-one in awkward situations. He excused himself to smoke. That left Rick and I.
Uncle Rick never spoke much with me, but I didn’t take that personally. Karen did most of the talking, and he didn’t converse with anybody in the family.
There were a few seconds-that-felt-like-minutes of silence before he broke it.
“You, uh, really had us there for a second, kid.” He said, looking in any direction other than my bed.
“Yeah, sorry about that.” I said, laughing, trying to break the tension.
“You gotta be more careful. If anything ever happened to you, you parents would be crushed. We all would be.”
“You’re right, it was a dumb mistake. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
He paused, and looked at me for the first time, a stern look manifesting itself on his face. I had never seen anything like it come from Uncle Rick before.
“I know exactly what you were thinking.” He said, his tone matching his demeanor. “You were trying to end it.”
“Wh-what?” I said, not expecting this sort of detective work from Rick.
“The others, your mom, your Dad, Aunt Karen, they’re all in total denial. They want to believe that you’ve just made a dumb mistake, and that they don’t have to worry about anything. But we both know that’s not the case. You wanted to kill yourself.”
I was paralyzed. In all the years I’ve known Rick, he had never seemed like the type of guy to be so confident in an accusation like this, let alone correct.
“I’ve been in your position before. In fact, I did the same god damn thing. Hand sanitizer doesn’t work unless you’ve got a lot and you aren’t near anybody. But if you’re drinking hand sanitizer to off yourself, you’ve gotta be pretty desperate and pretty impulsive. Am I right so far?”
I nodded my head, mouth open in shock.
“ I know this is tough for you right now. The next couple weeks are going to be the most disillusioning time of your life. But it pays off, because you get to meet your Aunt Karen. And people start being nicer to you, and all of a sudden, you have purpose. So don’t quit. Because we like you, and other people do too. Okay?”
“Okay.” I said.
Karen and Mom walked into the room, with bags of Chinese food underneath each arm, unaware that the man who said three words at his own birthday party had probably just saved my life.
“Okay, who’s hungry?” My Mom asked.
As the words left her mouth, a nurse walked in.
“Excuse me, you can’t have food in here.” She said. “This is the ICU.”
