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These last stories are about me, and also some nurses, and also some people who helped me, and also some people who tried to stop me.

The experience with Chunky was the beginning of three months in two psych wards. I tried to escape from the first one twice and the second one once, with varying levels of success before failure.

The first time was the most confrontational. I asked my mama, who was visiting regularly, to bring me a pair of red plastic chopsticks from my backpack so that I could improve my dexterity while eating. She brought 'em in for me, and I waited for the weekly arts and crafts day (we were assigned crafts and did them to demonstrate that we could follow instructions) to sharpen the ends of these chunky chop sticks with a pencil sharpener.

Once I had these sharpened chop sticks... Wait, right, it's important for you to know that I had my clothes back at this point. It's gonna be easier to escape a psych ward if you have street clothes. If you behave well for a week or so they'll probably give them to you, at least where I'm from. Sorry. Right, once I had these sharpened chop sticks I waited by the entrance until the custodial staff opened the door to bring out the cleaning cart. I followed them out and got into the elevator. The nurses noticed immediately and came to block the elevator door from closing. My heart was pounding like your upstairs neighbors on wine night. I took out a sharp chopstick and made like I was going to stab the guy holding the door open in the hand. I also yelled something along the lines of "Don't fuck with me man! I'm crazy!" which is kind of funny in hind site. This actually worked, and the guy took his hand off the elevator door and I started to descend. I hopped off the elevator on a floor chosen at random and wandered through the hospital looking for an exit. Nobody said anything to me, I found some stairs, and got out of the hospital.

I went to a friend's place to borrow twenty bucks, intending to use that money to travel three thousand kilometers to the west coast, where I figured I could use whatever was left of the twenty dollars to buy a sail boat and leave this godforsaken country behind. Unfortunately, I agreed to stay for dinner, this friend's mum called my mama and she called the cops.

The last part of this attempt, perhaps the most dramatic, was when the cops came in to the house to bring me to their car and back to the hospital. I had a glass of wine in my hand and politely asked if I could finish my glass of wine. They said yes (the fools!) and I downed the wine and smashed the glass on the table, thinking I could get to the back door if the cops were afraid of me. The cops, quicker on the draw than I had anticipated, pulled out their tasers and yelled "TASER! TASER!". I really didn't want to get tased, because I'm pretty sure it sucks. I don't think anybody really disagrees with me on that one. I dropped the wine glass, they angrily hauled my ass to the car, and we rode back to the hospital.
So much for that attempt.

Lessons here: Civilians are afraid enough of getting stabbed to back off. Cops have weapons and bullet proof vests, and as such tend to escalate rather than back down.

I know I said one more story, but I hadn't anticipated how long each escape attempt story would be. I'm gonna take a leak, somebody roll me another dart.