Another Kind of Free: Suicide Prevention in
the Wake of Robin Williams’ Death
Summary
In
mid-September 2001, recent college graduate and writer, Nicole Skuba, found
herself strapped to a hospital bed after a deliberate overdose of Prozac. The
previous five years of therapy and antidepressants did nothing to ease the
bipolar disorder, clinical depression, or other diagnoses du jour.
Another Kind of
Free: Suicide Prevention in the Wake of Robin Williams’ Death is part
suicide prevention self-help guide, part darkly humorous memoir. After Nicole’s
release in five days from the mental ward, she was determined to come up with
her own route to happiness.
This memoir
shares the excessive drinking, casual sex, manic joy, counseling, yoga, and
goal-setting that ultimately led to healing and the beginning of a life worth
living. It also illustrates the power that mindfulness-based stress
reduction—even when done accidentally—can have in reducing depression and
finding balance.
After thirteen
years, Nicole is finally sharing her holistic methods of overcoming depression
and addiction long-term with the hope of preventing at least one person from
taking his or her life. This is especially important in the wake of Robin
Williams’ death. The charismatic actor gave us laughter, inspiration, and the
ability to embrace the absurd. With his suicide, he also left an unintended
legacy: permission to end anguish with the same permanent decision he made.
Another Kind of
Free: Suicide Prevention in the Wake of Robin Williams’ Death is a quick
read aiming to reduce the stigma attached to mental illness and to provide an
alternate, doable method of becoming “free” from mental illness. Sufferers and
their family members will find Nicole’s memoir to be an entertaining chronicle
of valuable, attainable information.
About the Author
Still amazed to be an adult, Nicole Skuba has managed to center her
life around raising her two small sons and being true to her family (including
husband and friends). She resides in Leesburg, Virginia where she co-owns a
marketing agency. Happiest near the water, Nicole spends her free hours
plotting her next escape, writing, and staring at the ceiling.
Under the pseudonym Nicole Pouchet, Nicole has written two romance
novels, both part of her Elemental Myths
paranormal romance series. Layla’s Gale,
A Paranormal Romance won second prize in the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel
Award contest.
Websites
Social Media
Twitter: @NPouchet
Facebook: www.Facebook.com/NicolePouchet
Excerpt
The room fuzzed
in and out, little black smudges blurring my vision. Smudges… schmudges… That
officer’s name really was Officer Schmick. What a weird name. He had a bit of a
limp, but he was nice as far as cops from my hometown went. His partner was a
bit on edge though.
Put down the
cat, ma’am,
his partner had warned. I hadn’t realized a cat was viewed as a weapon to some
people. Why had my mother called the cops anyway? That was a little extreme -
and dangerous as well. Just outside the most dangerous quadrant of Washington,
D.C., Prince Georges County cops were known for their excessive force. They
were worse since the terrorist attacks a week ago. But, in truth, the cops had
always been jumpy. Just a month or a year ago, they’d shot some confused
guy who had barricaded himself in his own bedroom. He wasn’t hurting anyone,
but his family was worried. So, the cops shot him. Kind of like shooting a cat
to get him out of a tree.
Cats. Right.
So, Officer Schmick’s partner had wanted me to put down the cat. I put Polka
down before I got myself killed. My mother was talking. Really, she seemed
unable to stop talking and talking and talking. Could she drive me? Should she
call my therapist? Did they need the empty pill bottle? Then they put me in the
front seat of the police car beside Officer Schmick and I ended up here.
“How many pills
did you swallow?”
Here. The
hospital room spun again. They didn’t have to handcuff me. Officer Schmick had
said suicide is against the law.
“Do they ever
prosecute people who commit suicide?” I asked the lady in scrubs leaning over
me. My words sounded slurred to me. No matter. I got the joke, so I laughed.
“You drank a
lot of wine, didn’t you? How many pills did you swallow?” The lady in scrubs
smiled. She was pretty. She reminded me of a friend from college, and not just
because she was a pretty, young, Indian doctor who laughed with me… Well, maybe
that was exactly why. I watched the lady in scrubs put little sticky white
discs on my chest and upper arms. Her skin was the same milk-chocolate color as
mine. But, I liked her long hair more. Why did I cut off my hair again?
People always
screw with their hair when they need a life change. It’s as if coloring or
getting rid of inches of your hair will somehow fix the facts that your career
is over, your kinda-boyfriend has moved halfway across the country to get away
from you, you are forced to live at your mom’s yet again, your best friends are
far away, you have no idea what to do with your life, and you have no health
insurance to pay for your Prozac.
“So, Nicole,
how many pills did you swallow?”
I stared at the
overhead lights in the hospital room trying to remember. I’d had a session with
my new therapist, Octavia, just a few hours ago. Getting help was one of
the conditions of living with my mother, as casual to her as do the dishes
would be to other parents. Since moving back into her apartment, my mother had
driven me twenty minutes each way for weekly visits with Octavia. The fact that
my mother didn’t trust me to come by myself was insulting; I never lied to her.
Besides, where would I go instead? Happy hour was the only other activity one
could do in a 100 minute time slot at five o’clock on Monday afternoons and, I
wasn’t so far gone that I’d skip therapy to booze it up. My mother’s childish
treatment was a big reason for me to get out of her apartment as soon as
possible.
I knew I needed
some help with my plummeting emotions. Normal people didn’t have time limits on
how long they would suffer through misery before offing themselves. I wanted to
be one of thos sunflower-gazing, happy people that didn’t need to drink to feel
good. Octavia was a nice enough therapist, no condescending tones or judgmental
looks over the rim of her glasses. The problem was that being suicidal took
away the convention of doctor-patient confidentiality. I was a danger to
myself, so my therapist could tell my mother anything she deemed pertinent to
keeping me alive. It was hard to share my secret idea of moving to South Korea
or my sex stories with a snitch.
As usual, this
afternoon, I had confided only the information that I’d already shared with my
mother. As I blabbered about my boyfriend, Malik, dumping me for the final
time, Octavia tried to steer the discussion to my feelings surrounding
terrorism. She wanted to know how I was adjusting.
It had been six
days since the September 11th terrorist attacks and the country’s stress levels
were only rising. The news was always showing the alert level as “orange” or
“red” or “paisley.” Like most people, I didn’t know what the hell was going on.
Instead of color blocks in the corner of the television screens, they should
have posted clear signs reading “Get Your Shit and Go!” or “Pack Up but Sit
Tight!” or “Good As It’s Gonna Get.” We’d all understand things a bit better.
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