See also: Porn Professor Hugo Schwyzer: “I've Had a Mental Breakdown”

Hugo Schwyzer, the social sciences academic at Pasadena City College best known as the “porn professor,” tried to commit suicide last night, he told the Weekly today.

He was visiting his mother in the Monterey area, where he grew up, when it happened about 10 p.m., he said. He was placed on a 72-hour psychiatric hold at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, the professor said:

“I took an entire bottle of Klonapin,” he said. That's a muscle relaxant and anti-anxiety drug.

Schwyzer said he's physically OK but reiterated how the social media fallout from a sexting relationship with a sometime porn star and multiple affairs with women made his marriage “over” and sunk him into a deep depression.

He wanted to make clear that none of these dalliances involved PCC students or employees.

The prof says Twitter and article comments roasting him as a woman hater and regurgitating a 15-year-old suicide attempt and attempted murder of a girlfriend have taken their toll.

Schwyzer is perhaps best known for his writings on women (“male feminist,” he's been called), though many feminists have issues with his personal track record and his academic fascination with pornography.

(He says porn, a major piece of our media landscape, needs to be studied more seriously in this country.)

The professor also made headlines for inviting some of adult video's top stars, including James Deen, to speak during his course on pornography.

That class has been canceled, the prof said this week, because of his personal issues. But he told us he hopes to bring it back someday.

“Mental illness is a bitch, it really is,” Schwyzer told us on the phone today.

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