Kansas University senior Thor Nystrom, of Baxter, Minn., has gone from being sucked into the mental health system and attempting suicide to working his way back to health and graduating from KU since prescription drugs started wreaking havoc on his life in 2003. He will walk down the hill Sunday after earning a degree in journalism and plans to work as an intern for MLB.com.

Thor Nystrom looked the Lawrence police officer in the eye on Oct. 10, 2003, nodded toward his gun and made the simplest of requests.

“Shoot me in the head. No one has to know.”

It was those 10 words – none longer than five letters – that started Nystrom’s year-long descent into multiple prescription drugs, suicide attempts and a four-month stint in the Minnesota mental health system.

“From that second forward, it was a steep decline,” Nystrom said.

But they’re also the 10 words that launched Nystrom to his current position: peering down Kansas University’s Campanile Hill, waiting to graduate.

Chain reaction

The problems started with an innocuous step. Shortly before Nystrom left his home in Baxter, Minn., to come to KU, his psychiatrist placed him on the anti-depressant Paxil because of possible side effects from the Adderall he’d taken for a number of years to treat attention-deficit disorder.

Mix that with the substantial amount of alcohol many college freshmen consume, and Nystrom was taking a toxic cocktail that was causing his brain to process things differently from ever before.

As soon as the police officer heard the comment, he took him to Stormont-Vail Hospital in Topeka. A doctor there diagnosed Nystrom with schizophrenia and placed him on a powerful anti-psychotic drug, Geodon.

“My mind was not right after I got back from that clinic in Topeka,” he said.

Three disorders and countless prescriptions later, Nystrom finally emerged on the other side.

But not before being committed by the state of Minnesota to mental hospitals for four months.

“It really blew my mind that someone made the decision I needed to be locked up,” Nystrom said. “They didn’t talk to me like a real person. They didn’t treat me like a real person.”

Nystrom was committed because of one of his suicide attempts. On the night of his sister’s high school graduation, Nystrom went out to his Jeep in the garage – after taking 10 times the recommended dose of sleeping pills – and stuffed rags in the exhaust pipe. He taped the rags in place, turned the ignition and shut all the doors. And waited to die.

“That was a high point, if you can believe it,” Nystrom said. “Up until that time, from October until May, I’d just go along with what the doctors said. When I attempted suicide, I felt like I was taking control.”

The tape came loose and the rag fell out. His sister, Quinn, came home early that morning from graduations and found her brother in the garage.

Therapy begins

She may have saved his life. He began intensive outpatient therapy. Three weeks later, he was committed.

“That first night he was in the hospital, it was the first good night’s sleep we’d had in nine months,” said his mother, Rachel Nystrom. “After the suicide attempts, I was just glad someone was watching him.”

It was in the hospital where Thor believes someone made the decision that changed his life. His diagnosis was changed from one requiring medication to one requiring therapy. The old Thor began to return.

Patrick Freeman, a childhood friend, was one of the few nonfamily members who visited Thor regularly.

“It was pretty unbelievable,” he said recently from his home in Denver. “It was shocking; he was always such an outgoing boisterous kid.”

In November 2004, Nystrom was discharged. His parents allowed him to return to Kansas in time to start classes at Johnson County Community College in 2005.

“He committed to us he would follow up with the clinic in Lawrence and take the medication,” his mom said. “That was an absolute promise. We sent him off with a lot of trepidation and a lot of prayers.”

It was back in Kansas where he made the decision he credits with keeping his life on track. He quit taking all prescription, mood-altering drugs.

Needless to say, Rachel Nystrom was shocked. But her son was clever with how he told her of his decision.

“He was already on the other side of it” when he told me, she said. “If he’d told me, ‘Tomorrow I’m going off my medication,’ by the time he’d finished his sentence I would have been in the car heading south.”

But now, three years later, the story has a happy ending. After spending three semesters at Johnson County, Nystrom transferred back to KU.

On Sunday, Nystrom will walk down the hill with the School of Journalism and off to an internship with MLB.com covering the Minnesota Twins, his favorite team since childhood.

“This is how the story was to go,” Rachel Nystrom said. “He’s a bright guy with a talent for writing. He’s committed to it. The fact that’s he graduating from KU with a degree is so much sweeter now because of what he’s been through.”