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Alright folks. Now that the piss-sack is a bit less bloated, where was I?

Right, attempt two. I'll see if I can't keep this one shorter, as it's the one I'm least proud of.

So, this time, I decided to be patient. A patient patient, if you will. I hung around on my best behaviour, playing count down crazy eights with Chunky, doing arts and crafts once a week, vandalizing the bathrooms with some pastels somebody brought me, and generally being an upstanding citizen in the little regime of the Civic Hospital.

If you behave long enough, you start to get priviliges. First you get to wear your own clothes, then you get to leave the ward to go outside and smoke cigarettes, then you get to go out for a whole day once a week. I waited until I could go out once a week, borrowed sixty dollars from a friend, and found a rideshare going west. The big mistake here, to be ignored and made again later, was going west deeper into the province in pursuit of some golden sunset on the ocean surrounded by women, weed, and good weather. If I had gone east I could have been out of the province in less than a day, and (I learned later) outside of the jurisdiction of the province's health care.

I got in the ride share, tried not to be too weird, and told the guy driving that I was going north to be the cook at a fishing camp. An hour into the ride, my parents, who at this point had noticed my conspicuous absence, called the guy, having checked local rideshares and found one that matched my foolishly articulated desires.

The guy driving stops the car at a truck stop, and my dad and brother come and get me. They bring me back to the psych ward, and I'm back to a hospital gown and tobacco withdrawal.

Second lesson here, also to be repeated later; one's will is possibly the most important part of escaping from a psych ward. I could have told the guy to let me out of the car and hid in the woods, then hitched a ride after the heat had died down. If you feel like the jig's up and give up, you're definitely caught. If I had kept resisting, I probably could have had a longer run on this one.

"Holy shit, does this guy ever stop talking?"
Shut the fuck up Dakota, the guy asked for stories. We're out of rolling tobacco, eh? Alright, well, I'm almost done anyway.