(part 119) THE DICHOTOMY OF THINKING

From 1972 Rolling Stone article/ unused pictures

Emotional and behavioral problems had already become an issue because of my drug and alcohol abuse. To then have suffered a second drug overdose, resulting in another coma, was like throwing gasoline on an open fire.

My ability to respond to the world around me was tending toward overly emotional reactions to everyday situations. Without warning I could become belligerent and was now prone to violent outbursts for little or no reason.

Because L.A. County General Hospital served so many people, they moved you through their system a lot faster. In other words, you didn't linger in intensive care the way I had in UCLA, because they always needed the room for another patient. The difference between waking up in UCLA and USC was night and day. In UCLA you felt the difference by the amount of attention given you; in USC you just felt abandoned.

As soon as I physically could, I was out on the street, probably signing myself out AMA again. I had not been prepared for the bizarre religious preaching from an over zealous staff member I encountered. Her beliefs about my sins, and willingness to impose them on me, outweighed my need for medical attention.

Because these two suicidal incidents happened in such close proximity to one another, I was basically a walking open wound psychologically speaking. Emotionally explosive and highly combative, anger, for me, became the last outpost of self-protection in a psyche that felt unwanted, unnecessary, and broken. My opinion was, quite simply, that it was me against the world.

At that point, the only place I'd felt safe had been Edgemont Hospital, where I was taken following the first incident on the Continental Hotel. I convinced my mother, who'd returned to L.A. by then, to put me there so I could have time to gather my senses and figure out what to do.

Edgemont, being a private hospital, had to be paid for, so she ended up with that burden. I stayed there for 2 or 3 months and it may have saved my life.

During the time at Edgemont, different publications, such as Record World Magazine, ran stories about my battles with the industry and sanity. On one hand I was self-destructive, on the other, I was being talked and written about. This dichotomy led me to a deep split within the framework of my own thinking.

I was destroying myself for sure, but as a result, I was center stage to some degree. For someone who believed there was no such thing as bad publicity, it became darkly apparent that the attention I was getting was feeding my sick ego and spurring me on to successive fiascos of self-annihilation. I spent a lot of time thinking about new and more dramatic ways to keep myself in the public eye.

While in Edgemont, one of the female staff members kept needling me about a pen and ink drawing I had done. I had done many. She seemed overly obsessed with her version of the meaning of my drawing, and would not relinquish her theory no matter what I said.

This continued for over an hour and resulted in an angry response from me. I punched a basketball size hole in a wire mesh security window at the nurses cage door, and blood splattered the area from a gash in my right forearm. I remember staring at the nurse, as she stood in shocked silence with her mouth hanging open. I said, "You happy now?"

I had silenced her badgering and that was all I really cared about. As a result, the hospital called an emergency staff meeting to review the incident and it's cause, at which I was required to be present.

Dr. Wayne, the head of the hospital, told me I could not act out in such a manner or I would be thrown out of the hospital. I said in response, "So I'm in the nut house for being crazy and you're going to throw me out of the hospital because I acted crazy?"

Dr. Wayne replied saying, "I'm not throwing you out of the hospital, but if you do anything like this again, you will be asked to leave." "OK," I said, "I got it. It won't happen again, I promise." I was serious. I didn't want to get thrown out. It was the only place on earth where I felt safe.

(part 118) COMA # TWO: L.A. GENERAL

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L.A. County Hospital

I have no real memory of what I was doing back then, but know at some point I went to stay with Carol Paulus for awhile, something I continued to do periodically for years, for a couple of reasons.

I had nowhere else to go, and Carol was better than most at dealing with me in the state I was in. Again, I have almost no recollection of what I was doing after getting out of the hospital, which probably means I was extremely loaded.

The constant intake of both drugs and alcohol into my already weakened system was sure to have made a bad situation worse. My mother had gone back to San Jose and I assume she was getting information from Carol as to my whereabouts and condition.

Nothing had improved in my life and that's the one thing I am sure of. Each destructive episode lent itself, in part, to the cause of the next debacle, which I seemed incapable of preventing or avoiding.

By the end of the summer of 1972, I believe, I found myself once again in the Park Sunset motel/hotel, across the street from the Continental Hyatt House on Sunset Blvd., where I'd started my suicidal journey sometime earlier.

It was now months after I'd overdosed at Gavin Murrell's house and I again found myself isolated and alone. Fueled by nonstop drinking and lack of sleep, I continued to obsess over my past and current negative belief that life for me was no more than a series of failures.

I had thirteen 3-grain tuinol capsules that I'd stolen from Carol's apartment. These are powerful barbiturates used for sleeping, and are extremely lethal when taken in sufficient quantities and mixed with alcohol. I swallowed all of them along with a fifth of scotch. I was found unconscious in my bathroom at the Park Sunset, after falling into a coma.

Once again, it was Carol Paulus who found me, and who called the paramedics. I was taken by ambulance to USC Medical Center in downtown Los Angeles, rather than UCLA in Westwood.

L.A. General, as it was known, was where everybody went who couldn't afford a choice. It was a huge place and packed to the rafters with indigent and poor. In this second attempt on my own life, I was just another person carted into the bowels of L.A. General like so many others that day.

Although it's an incredibly gloomy place, it was still a damn good hospital if you overdose and are in a coma. This time there were no round tables and men in robes, no little gray man, or anything else. This time there was only blackness.

I came back to consciousness in a huge open ward with beds shoved into every possible open space available. It was stark and poorly lit. It seemed to stretch on forever, with bed after bed containing ill and distressed human beings.

Every kind of person imaginable was represented in that ward. As for me, I was just another one of the poor unfortunates who'd found my way there via my own actions and piss-poor choices.

I knew then that I was not doing too well with this suicide business, but I was winning the battle of how to slowly, or perhaps quickly, destroy myself piece by piece. As I lay there, trying to focus my vision, I felt utterly alone and completely worthless.

About that time a black nurse approached me after noticing I was conscious. She had a nice face, and smiled at me, asking how I felt? I couldn't really respond very well to her question, because I was so groggy from the beating I'd taken with a second overdose.

I stared up at her through blurry eyes and tried to speak but have no certain memory of what I said to her, possibly something about killing myself. All of a sudden, this seemingly pleasant lady's entire personality changed, and she began preaching in Bible verses to me.

She was now emphatically saying I had sinned against God Himself, because I had tried to kill myself, and that I had to repent then and there, in front of her, or my soul would be punished for all eternity in hell. "Fuck my soul," I yelled at her, "and fuck God too."

I was suddenly far more alert than I'd been and angrily reacting to her religious views. I freaked out and screamed at her to get the fuck away from me.

As had happened at UCLA, the area quickly filled with hospital orderlies who tried to determine what was wrong. Since I was yelling when they arrived, "Get this crazy bitch outta here," they decided I was the problem and tied me to the bed with 4 cloth restraints, and left me there freaking out.

Completely demoralized and exhausted by the event, I finally cried myself to sleep still tied to the bed.

(part 117) CIGARETTE AND THE PSYCH WARD

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UCLA psychiatric

I was placed in the psychiatric ward at UCLA following the cigarette episode. After being shot-up with a ton of valium, I was not much trouble to anyone for awhile. You would have thought that the shot they gave me was far more likely to do harm than a single cigarette, but that's what they did, and neither one of those things killed me.

After being put into the psych ward, the battle of the cigarette raged on. I told the doctor that none of this would have happened if they'd just let me have a cigarette, which was true. On the other hand, he had the hospital rules, regulations, and medical opinions to contend with.

The hospital continued to stand its ground on the issue of the cigarette, while I maintained the whole thing was dumb and could have been avoided. My position, I felt, was somewhat bolstered by the fact that the cigarette hadn't had any adverse effect on me, but the drama resulting from not letting me smoke had gotten me locked up and shot full of drugs.

As the sedative effects of the shot began to wear off over the next few hours, I decided that being locked up in the nut-ward was not acceptable to me. In light of why it had happened, I asked to speak to the doctor. I told him I didn't think I deserved to be there any longer, and asked him to let me out, which he refused to do.

I went on to tell him that the hospital's position was the cause of me being there, and that the cigarette hadn't hurt me, so why were they continuing to hold me in the nut ward when it was obvious that they'd been wrong?

"you made too big a deal about it," I said, but the doctor would not admit to any mistakes on the part of the hospital, which continued to frustrate me.

I felt at the time like I was in jail for wanting a cigarette, but the hospital felt like I needed to stay in the psych ward for observation. The doctor went on to say, "After this particular episode, and your behavior, the staff doesn't feel comfortable with you being in the hospital unless you are here in the psychiatric facility."

"Then discharge me," I said, staring at him. The doctor looked at me and replied, "I don't think I can do that, Mr. Jameson. You need to be in the hospital, and where you are currently is the best place for you." "Well I don't wanna be here anymore," I answered back, "So let me out."

The doctor watched me carefully at this point to see how agitated I was going to become. Knowing this, I did not allow myself to escalate my demand too far, for fear of having someone run up and give me another shot. I was emphatic, but not overly aggressive. I repeated myself saying, "I want to leave this hospital."

The doctor finally responded by saying, "If you're dead set on leaving, Mr. Jameson, then it will be against medical advice, because the hospital's position is that you need attention which we are prepared to offer you."

"Well I don't want any more attention from this place," I said, "I wanna leave." Looking very frustrated the doctor said, "You'll have to sign and AMA before I can legally release you."

"What's an AMA?" I asked. "It's a form that says you are leaving the hospital against the medical advice of the staff. You'll have to sign it before I can allow you to leave, because of the hospital's liability should anything happen to you." "OK," I said, "I'll sign it."

With that, I was given my clothes and escorted out of the psychiatric facility and wished good luck. I have no recollection at all as to where I went or what I did after signing myself out of UCLA.

I would imagine that I went to the closest place I could find and got a drink. My mother had probably gone to a motel to get some sleep, and was unaware of any of this. By the time she got back to the UCLA I was gone. I can only now imagine how she must have felt.

(part 116) THE CIGARETTE

The symptoms of brain damage appeared immediately in my behavior while in the hospital. The day after I came out of the coma, I asked for a cigarette, which I was told I couldn't have because it might kill me in the condition I was in.

This observation by staff was ridiculous to me because I had just attempted taking my own life. I laughed sarcastically at whoever it was who told me that, saying, "I don't care if it kills me, I was trying to kill myself anyway."

The battle of wills had begun in earnest and I was determined to smoke. My poor mother was caught in the middle of this fight and tried to reason with me unsuccessfully. "I want a Goddamn cigarette and I don't care what it does to me."

With that, I began ripping out the intravenous needles and tubes from my arms and lunged out of bed and into the hallway, as the sound of beepers and buzzers filled the air.

The area quickly filled up with doctors and staff, who attempted to corral and calm me. My single focus at that moment was a cigarette, and no amount of coaxing could dissuade me from my mission.

As I became more and more agitated, I took off down the hallway wearing only a hospital gown. I marched through the corridor, with my ass hanging out, yelling, "I want a Goddamn cigarette."

Finally, security showed up, and I was now being approached by uniformed guards who were still some distance away. They began gesturing with their hands for me to calm down, and attempted to flank me with several staff members.

As they moved in on me, I grabbed a glass I.V. bottle off a rolling stand and threw it down the hall at them. The glass shattered through the hallway and the group stopped in disbelief, looking at the glass and then back at me.

I turned away, and headed down another hall, ending up in what appeared to be an auditorium. There were long and heavy drapes hanging at the sides of the windows, so I grabbed one and yanked it down to the floor. From it, I removed a very large curtain hook, used for hanging the drapes on rods.

It looked somewhat like a big fish hook, and I held the sharp end to my wrist yelling, "Stop, Goddamn it, or I'm gonna shove this fucker in my wrist and rip out my veins." They all stopped! "All I want is a Goddamn cigarette, man. I just want a cigarette," I said.

I stood there with the curtain hook dug into my wrist and dared them to come at me again. They all milled about in a tight little crowd, when somebody finally moved forward with a lit cigarette. "OK, Bobby, here's a cigarette, now try and calm down."

I motioned the person forward with the cigarette and took it from their hand. I dropped the hook on the floor, after taking a couple of long drags, and sat down on a folding chair in front of the auditorium stage.

I sat there quietly taking in the smoke, as a staff member approached me with a syringe full of sedative, plunging it into my arm. I offered no resistance at that point and muttered, "All I wanted was a cigarette."

* * *

There are at least two primary ways of observing my actions, which I have just conveyed to you here. (1) I was an ungrateful, obnoxious asshole, which is true, and (2), I was damaged at that point, in such a way, as to not have the capacity to self regulate my behavior.

Inappropriate emotional outbursts of anger, coupled with pronounced swearing and changes in personality are hallmark symptoms of brain cell damage caused by Anoxia and Hypoxia, which simply stated, is what occurs when the brain is deprived of oxygen for too long.

In my case, that had taken place prior to this event. Some brain cells start dying within 5 minutes in an anoxic or hypoxic environment. I was in such an environment for as much as two hours before reaching UCLA.

(part 115) CAROL, COMA, AND BRAIN DAMAGE

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Carol Paulus and me

I'd been in a coma for some 38 hours when I came to, and found it nearly impossible to speak. My ability to think was impaired, and the massive anxiety I felt was indescribable. I saw my mother's face looking down at me and heard her voice say how incredibly relieved she was.

The specific reason for her genuine relief, other than the obvious, I found out later, was because she'd been told by the doctors that I probably wouldn't come out of the coma, and if I did I would be severely brain damaged as a result of the lack of oxygen.

Then the hospital room came alive with various doctors and nurses all scrambling around my bed, turning off alarms and buzzers, and reading data from various monitoring devices I was attached to. It seemed no one expected me to wake up, let alone be able to say anything coherent, after coming out of a coma.

What I remember clearly is how pissed off I was that I was still alive. I was crying and kept repeating, "Why am I still alive? I don't want to be here." The anger I felt when I first came out of the coma has never left or dissipated to the present day. To put it simply, I woke up pissed off and just stayed that way.

This is not all that mysterious if you calculate that the brain begins to be damaged after 5 to 15 minutes without oxygen. I'd been without oxygen to the brain for ten times that long, so the fact that I could do anything was of some considerable interest to the staff at UCLA.

After the room cleared, I tried with great difficulty to talk to my mother. As my blurred vision began to clear slightly, I looked at the walls of my room and they appeared to be moving. It wasn't the kind of movement you'd see from dizziness, or an hallucination, it was distinctly different than that.

More like a million little wheels turning all at the same time, like it was alive. I tried my best to convey this phenomenon to my mother, but putting the words together was extremely tedious. She was trying hard to get what I was saying, but it was difficult for her, because the trauma she had gone through was so overwhelming.

At one point, another patient was moved into the room next to mine, and there was a considerable commotion out in the hall. We couldn't see anything, but my mother wondered what the disturbance had been about. I tried to tell her an unconscious girl had been put in the next room.

My mother looked at me, and appeared confused. "How do you know that?" she asked, "I can see it, I said, and again she looked confused saying, "Well how could you see that, there's a wall there?" I can see through it," I said, "I can see her. It's a blond girl"

My mother looked at me like I was nuts. "Really, I can see her. Go look and see if that's what it is," I pleaded. My mother somewhat reluctantly went out of the room to find out what had happened and to see for herself what she could. When she came back, she had somewhat of an amazed look on her face.

"That's exactly what it was," she said, "A blond girl, who's in a coma like you were. They put her in the room next to this one." "I told you I could see it," I groaned, "I told you that's what it was."

* * *

I had been found at the house on St. Ives Drive by a woman named Carol Paulus a couple of hours after I'd taken the overdose. I'd known Carol since 1966, and had lived with her at different times since then. She'd been aware of my mood and knew, too, that I had talked about and acted upon suicidal thoughts and feelings in the past.

For years she had watched me go up and down in my life depending on what was going right or wrong. On the particular day that I committed suicide, she had, for whatever reason tried to contact me without success. Acting on a feeling, she later said, she went to Gavin's house to see if I was OK. Coincidently she had found the door to the house unlocked and had gone inside where she discovered me unconscious.

After calling the paramedics, she rode in the back of the ambulance with me en route to the hospital. Along the way the driver turned off the siren and lights and slowed to the speed of traffic. Alarmed, Carol asked him what he was doing and he responded, "He's arrested." Not knowing for sure what that meant Carol asked him, "What does that mean?" He answered, "He's arrested, he's dead."

This is Carol Paulus's version of what happened next. "I felt a power come over me that said, he's not dead," which she reacted to by yelling orders at the driver and assistant, who both followed without question. "You turn on the siren and lights and go to UCLA." She then turned to the assistant and said, "And you, punch him in the chest or whatever you do and keep doing it until we get to the hospital," which he did without question.

When they arrived at UCLA emergency I was found to have the most minimal brain wave possible, and still measure, and was admitted imediately.

(part 114) THE ROUND TABLE AND THE LITTLE GRAY MAN

I found myself seated at a round table. There were numerous other people seated there as well. They were dressed in white robes, and all of them had long hair and beards. They were all men, there were no women.

I could see nothing beyond the area of the table. I was asked questions about my intentions, and what I had been trying to do by killing myself.

I was told I had to make a choice whether to acquire money and fame, or be of some real use to the world. I was not dead, because there was no such thing as death. I had to choose one or the other. My choice was to be of some real use to the world.

Instantly I was shifted from where I had been into the presence of what I have learned to refer to as "the little gray man." He was about 3 feet tall and did not speak, but communicated with me directly, as in mental telepathy. His skin was gray, his hair was gray, and his clothes were gray and tattered looking. He looked kind of like E.T., except this was ten years before that movie was made.

His attitude toward me was almost matter of fact. He seemed a bit irritated that he had to be there dealing with me because I had committed suicide. His position clearly was there was no such thing as death, so my actions in killing myself were absurd, because I couldn't die anyway.

According to him I would just be in some sort of holding pattern until I was willing to confront whatever it was I killed myself over. He then telepathically asked for my response, which was, if that were the case I was ready to go back and deal with the problems I'd committed suicide over.

Immediately we were transferred into what I will describe as a tunnel-like place. It was well lit, but there were no lights. The walls looked exactly like beige stucco, and were curved into the ceiling. It was not a small place, nor was it extremely large, and it ran as far as I could see in either direction.

The floor was like translucent marble and light emanated up through it in a steady pleasant glow. Not bright light, just enough to see clearly by. As I surveyed the surroundings we started moving forward and going deeper into the tunnel. We were not walking or riding on anything, and the floor was not moving like a conveyor belt, we were just in motion.

We started quite slowly but picked up speed as we continued moving forward through the tunnel. I noticed other tunnels on either side branching off in other directions.

I watched the other tunnels go by for a bit, and looked to "the little gray man" for some sort of explanation as to their existence or importance to our voyage. What he did, knowing I was asking a question of him, was to overtly and emphatically turn his head one way and then the other indicating, "No," as his response.

As we continued on, I began seeing incredibly colored glass balls that just seemed to hang in the air unsupported by anything. They were the most brilliant colors I had ever seen. Not bright, but brilliant. An emerald green, ruby red, sapphire blue, and yellow that were otherwise inexplicable. These globes were mostly the size of a basket ball and appeared periodically as we kept moving.

We were now traveling at an unbelievable rate of speed through the tunnel. I felt calm and assured. There was no sense of fear or anything negative. I was completely comfortable and relaxed.

The speed continued to increase, and I could not make out anything, except "the little gray man" standing beside me. I looked forward again just in time to see us penetrate what seemed like a wall or veil.

* * *

I sat bolt upright in bed at UCLA's intensive care unit. All kinds of beepers and buzzers went off, and I had no idea where I was. I could barely see, but managed to make out the misty figure of what turned out to be my mother, whose face had a look of shock cut into it.

I started crying and blurted out from a place of deep sadness, "I'm an eagle, and they want me to be a sparrow; eagles can't be sparrows." I was crying because I was still alive.

The pain of coming back into consciousness on the planet I had left was the most excruciating pain I had ever felt in my life. It was like hitting a brick wall at two hundred miles an hour. I cried myself back into life, my God-awful life.