Haven't told anyone this story before but here it goes...
A couple of years ago I bombed out in my course at university due to Suboxone addiction and realized I was going to fail, which means I would be kicked out of my advanced degree (you need to keep up a high average to stay in it) and put in the normal stream, so I was desperately trying to think of a way out. I had worked so hard to get into that course and there was no way I was just going to give it up without a fight.
After going through my options I realized a "psychiatric" defense was the only possibility of bluffing my way out of the predicament as intentional physical harm to get myself hospitalized would probably not end up well. I also knew that a simple "I'm depressed here's a doctor's certificate" would not work, proper hospitalization was the only workable opportunity. So I decided to get myself committed.
Problem is HOW do you get committed to a psych-ward when there's nothing actually wrong with you? I decided to take a large dose of DXM so it looked like I was out-of-it and go to the local doctor and claim I was hearing voices and was thinking of killing myself. He immediately forced me into an ambulance and I ended up at the local hospital's psych-ward (success!).
When you get there they decide what your state of mind is and whether you go to the acute/general/other ward, luckily I wasn't spastic enough to be sent to the acute ward (was subsequently told that it's really bleak and nothing to do there) so was put in the "general" ward. This is in Australia and we have quite good free public health care so the facilities were actually quite reasonable. You get your own room with a couple of chairs, cupboard, desk, etc. During the day you go to the gym, sun-bake in the garden, go to "relaxation classes" where they play trippy music and you there's all these bizarre lights, cooking classes, watch movies, read, etc.
Food was probably around a 7/10, quite decent. There was an English nurse there and she said she was shocked at how good we get it in Australia compared to over there. Because I was in the "general" ward there were no seriously crazy people, only "weird" people, everyone was really nice though, and about half I could see nothing notably wrong with. They also give you benzos at night if you "can't sleep", so would always just say I couldn't so they would dose me with valium.
Unfortunately my guise began to wear off when they realized there was nothing wrong with me and I in fact seemed cheerful, upbeat and fully coherent. So when asked about this I had to lie and tell the doctor I was still considering suicide, which I think by law they have to take seriously (I didn't want to just stay there a couple of days as that may not have been enough time to not get a fail from the university, so needed to make it count). The advantage of this though was that I was allowed "leave" so I could basically leave the hospital, do whatever I wanted during the day, and then come back and sleep there for the night. So I would just go shopping, to the beach, book-hunting, computer place, back home, etc and then just sleep the night.
Also after a couple of weeks I was sent to the "other" ward, which is the best you can get, it's for the people they "trust", and is very relaxed. It was VERY comfortable and modern. Didn't feel like a "psych-ward" at all, the rooms were really spacious and beautiful. The other patients were completely normal and indistinguishable from the nurses. Ie: there was a guy about my age who went to the same university and said he was staying there because he didn't wanna pay rent, lol. I could've happily stayed there for the rest of the year, but was only there for 2 days when they randomly told me I had to go home.
So that was that, and yes I completely got out of my academic woes on medical grounds, allowing me to stay in my course. It was an OK experience overall.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
