I spent all of Saturday night in the ER with one of my sons. He had waken me in the middle of the night to tell me he had taken around 20 hydroxyzine tablets. He said he was taking one for anxiety and the others were in front of him and it was almost like watching a movie to see himself taking them all. It turns out that hydroxyzine is one of the safest anxiety medications in use. Other than monitoring for possible side effects, they did not have to do anything. But they did question him about intent; if it was a suicide attempt they would do an involuntary commitment to an IP facility. He maintained that it was only anxiety and he did not consciously decide to take the pills. They chose not to hold him and let us go home in the morning.

3 months ago, I had almost the same scenario with his brother who took a large amount of OTC pills that had acetaminophen in them and they did have to take some measures to detox to prevent organ damage. He said he did have suicide in mind when he took them but panicked and changed his mind and woke me up and I took him to the ER. Because he admitted it started as a suicide attempt, he was involuntarily committed and spent a few days IP.

So my concern is that the more recent event may also have been a suicide attempt and a change of heart but he knew that admitting that would land him IP. We are watching him closely as if that were the case. But I wonder if his story makes sense. Has anyone ever experienced an anxiety attack that led to you unconsciously doing something like that?