Do you have the means to commit suicide?

Y'know when you're a kid and somebody makes that ol' joke about how they're going to get you committed to an insane asylum? Or was that only me that got hit with that one?

It's not as far fetched as you might imagine.

Two years ago Andre Blais, 43, of Pointe aux Trembles, got really really drunk. Twenty four beers drunk. And he sniffed a line or two. When he returned home he got lonely so he called up Tel-Aide. A recording said that the service was not available and it offered another number for those emergency cases inclined to suicide. Blais, the drunken welfare recipient, didn't entirely grasp that he was now dialing the Suicide-Action line. The attendant asked him a couple of questions, such as : "do you have the means to commit suicide?" His incoherent utterances weren't satisfactory, so the attendant told him, "we're sending an ambulance to your home within five minutes." Blais was incredulous. "What? No, I'm okay, I'm not suicidal."   Soon the ambulance people came with cops and brought him to the Santa Cabrini hospital in St. Leonard where he was forced to lie on a cot in the hallway for 15 straight hours.
  He decided that was enough, he unplugged his IV and hauled tail back home.
   When he arrived home it was a major fiasco. He soon found 15 cop cars outside his home and the cops were banging on his door. They marched into his home as if he were a dangerous terrorist. They found him terrified, cowering in the closet and took him away again, this time to a hard core insane asylum, the Louis Hypolite Lafontaine Hospital.
   This time he was quickly evaluated and released. Blais later fileda complaint to the police ethics committee but it was refused.
   When I told this story to a friend who reports for La Presse, he told me that he heard a similar story from a dancer at Cleopatra's. Her boyfriend called the suicide patrol on her needlessly and she was hauled away, forced to pay $150 in ambulance fees for her troubles.
   Since 1994 the ambulance staff have the power of discretion over whether you're suicidal or not. They decide by looking at you upon arrival. Suicide Action hauls off about three callers a day based on their calls. They say that they have a bulletin board covered with thank you notes, so mostly people are happy with what they do.