Experiences in the hospital/psychward

Inspired by “the nastiest person you met in the psychward”

For me there was really only one kid during my first stay who was anything approaching nasty. But thought I’d start this thread for any experiences at all really on the ward.

For me the more memorable experiences was the seagull guy, an 18 year old on the adolescent ward who was the only one allowed to go out for smoke breaks. He would walk up and down the hallways flapping his arms and crying like a seagull. There was the time I ended up on the ward only to wake up the next day to find that everyone I’d met or seen the night I was checked in were gone and there were completely different people there. There was the guy who’d checked in as a fugitive to kick his dope habit before facing his ten year prison sentence, he was my roommate and I had no idea who I was and I’m laying there in bed and he’s puking and shivering but we talked, seemed like a good guy to me.

I don’t know, there was the girl I checked out with when it was like just her and I were the only ones leaving our rooms but I was being really shy until she just walked into the tv room one night and sat down next to me and we talked. Did some art together, she asked me what to draw and I’m like “draw a heart” and she says “I hate hearts” and I’m like “Draw a heart” and she did. Her room was across from mine and we would sit in our doorways and roll a rubber bouncy ball back and forth until one of the nurses stormed up and took our ball and told us to cut it out. The doc on the ward actually told me that my mother was trying to have me committed and that he felt concerned for my safety and let me check out AMA with this girl I barely knew, just friends really, we rode a lot of buses, drank jugs of micro brew and stayed in cheap motel rooms until my means were cut off.

There are some memories I can’t reconcile with the accepted realities of my life, can’t place them in order, so I leave out, an entire stay on the ward in fact. I just don’t talk about that stuff even though it was probably the most interesting.

What about anyone else? Any experiences in hospital to recount?

Lol well it was in my permiscuious days and I gave a guy a hand job cause he was suicidal and I thought it’d cheer him up and make him like life again… But besides that don’t remember much.

O there was some guy writing words on the sidewalk during outside time so every word he wrote I wrote the opposite… Like yes no… fast slow…

Weird time for me…

I’m having an experience at the assisted living center where I live that I need to vent about. There is this older woman at our place who seems to take exception to my presence. I decided that since I am a tense person and can make people uncomfortable, I’ll try to stay 15-20 feet from her. That isn’t good enough. She isn’t satisfied with me being within 80 feet of her. I try to humor her, but she gets angry just over incidental proximity, like if I just walk past her that is unavoidable sometimes, and yet she still gets angry. They give us a glass of milk and a snack at the clubhouse in the morning. She sits right next to the tubs where we’re supposed to put our empty glasses, and she acts like I am imposing when I just put up my glass. She positions herself right next to the window where they give us snacks in the afternoon, and she acts angry when I walk up to the window, even though there are plenty of other places to sit. If we are forced to be in the same room together she expects me to go outside and wait out there. I probably humor her more than I should. If I wasn’t such a tense person and make people uncomfortable in person I would not give her nearly so much deference. I am deeply chagrined at this woman. Her sense of entitlement amazes me.

My second time in a hospital type situation for my mental health was after my second suicide attempt, I was in for a month.

There was a girl there who was crazy, and I don’t mean that as a descriptive term, I mean she was absolutely out of her mind. It’d be the middle of the night and you would hear shouting and screaming and shed be running up and down the halls completely naked. this always happened around the time her meds wore off, while on them she was fine.

There was also the Soso guy. he never said a word to anyone, and yet he could get his point across with a look or hand signal. He was pretty cool when he wasn’t trying to hand rape the nurses…again while on meds he was ok, but off he was insane.

As for the naked runner? in my mentally fatigued state I managed to get locked in a closet with her for six hours…I did NOT have sex with her, despite her repeated offers. She was good looking sure, but we had no access to birth control and the idea of getting her pregnant was horrifying…

I’ve been hospitalized about 11 or 12 times in about 7 different hospitals. Some of the hospitals were very clean, modern, and safe. Others were older and a little scary. I had very little contact with the women in the hospitals. I got a few phone numbers while inside but once I got out I didn’t follow through and then call them.

I remember being in a nice, clean, modern Kaiser hospital in 1981. We had group therapy once a day.There was one blonde nurse who co-ran the groups. She had the worst habit of picking her nose and eating it and she even did this in groups. I was in my “tell-it-like-it-is” phase at the time. So one day, 7 of us were sitting around a table talking and this blonde nurse started picking her nose. So I said loudly so everybody could hear, “Hey, people would like you better if you didn’t pick your nose and eat it”. I was just trying to be helpful.There was no reaction from anybody. Nobody said a word. They all pretended that I hadn’t said it. Years later I still laugh at myself for saying that.

When i was in hospital i thought i was a secret agent for the cia but i thought i couldnt tell anyone because it was a secret

I was in so much mental pain while hospitalized that I only want to forget it.