How David Bowie got me out of the psych ward

Fri, 06 May 2011 20:50:00 +0000

One afternoon, midway through a 12-day admission at a psychiatric center in the winter of 2005, I was listening to David Bowie's self-titled debut when a doctor came over and told me it was time for a meeting. My assignment that day was to write down the name of an album that always cheered me up, so that when I was feeling down, I'd know what to listen to before something bad happened. I couldn't think of anything at the time, so, in a "Sure, whatever, Doc" moment, I wrote: "David Bowie."

I was in the hospital because I was the worst type of cliché: a miserable college freshman who was borderline suicidal because his high school girlfriend had broken up with him. We went to different schools, which is the only reason why I didn't pull a "Say Anything" every night outside of her dorm to win her back.

After the breakup, things got so out of control that three months into school, instead of being out drinking and talking to women, I was holed up in my dorm room reading John Cale's autobiography. I was a wreck, and before long, I was overdosing on pills (well, Tylenol, a pretty lame choice in retrospect), cutting my wrists with the blades of a Gillette razor, and getting forced by a school counselor to admit myself to the local psychiatric center.

Salon.com > Josh Kurp

How David Bowie got me out of the psych ward