Just reminiscing. I got diagnosed in 1980 at age 19. I moved into a group home and spent more than a year there. I was pretty insane; didn’t really act like it, and I didn’t have the usual delusions of being god, or aliens or the FBI or the CIA was watching me. Didn’t have the delusions of grandeur like I was special or going to save the world.
But I was crazy and had to fight every second I was there to keep what little sanity I had. I spent a lot of time alone but I also spent a lot of time with people. I also went out of the house a lot; so much that I took it for granted, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary about walking downtown and going into shops and I often took the bus to visit my parents. But it was hell anyways the entire time I was there. I got kicked out over a misunderstanding and moved back into my parents apartment when I was 20. It was a disaster, we fought all the time and I lasted two weeks before I was back in the psyche ward. It was a nice ward though; I was friendly with a few people and some cute 32 year old girl liked me and gave me her phone number. Unfortunately, I was put in restraints for the first time and it was the worst experience of my life.
From that ward, I went into a long term hospital and ended up staying 8 months. I got put on medication for the first time; I was on massive doses of a first generation drug because second generation drugs would not come out for several more years. I suffered the entire time I was there. Pretty much every day was the same, stand in line for a half hour to have breakfast and after breakfast my fellow patients would start screaming at each other and arguing and yelling and occasionally coming to blows. And it lasted until dinner at 5:00 pm and then it died down and nighttime could get pretty quiet and we would pace or shoot pool or just sit around. I kept to myself most of the time. It was hard because it was pretty crowded and I usually either paced all day or slept. Suffered immensely.
Then I got out! My parents had been looking for a place for me and they found a mental health agency that ran two group homes, a vocational program and supported housing. So I went directly from the hospital and moved in this home. I was fairly new to the mental health system so I didn’t know at the time how special this house was and how lucky I was to get into it.
First of all, I was the last person they took who paid with SSI, I paid $450 a month and everybody else was paying $2000 a month. And this was 1981! That was a fortune back then. The reason it was so expensive was because it was an older house but in like-new condition. Their whole premise was that mentally ill people needed structure to get better.
Sooo…We went to bed at a certain time every night, like 10:00 or 10;30 pm. We got up at 8:00 am and the first thing we did was do our assigned chore. Sweeping or mopping or vacuuming or straightening the living room or cleaning the bathroom etc. Everybody had one chore and one client was “house manager” for a month at a time. We took turns and whoever it was checked our chores and graded them and wrote down we did them. Then we took our showers and got dressed and ate breakfast and then we had to be out of the house by 9:00 am.
Everybody had to have a daytime activity; some people worked, some went to Stanford and the rest of us walked down the street to the vocational program where web stayed until 3:30 pm then went home. They unlocked the doors again at 4:00 pm. We had some free time until dinner at 5:30 pm and it was mandatory that everybody ate together. We had a long table in the dining room and we took turns cooking once a week. Then it was time for nighttime chores, again, they were checked and graded.
On Thursday we had a mandatory meeting at 7:00 pm that lasted an hour and a half and a mandatory meeting every Sunday at 7:00 pm that lasted two hours. The Thursday meeting we sometimes spent going on walks or going to the ice cream parlor. The Sunday meeting we not only had to check in, but it was a business meeting. We got assigned days to cook and submitted menus and got assigned new chores. The house manager took all the written recipes and made a shopping list and once each week we went shopping for food for the week.
I think everybody hated the two meetings. No one wanted to talk, especially me. They had to force me to talk. It’s where everybody talked about what they were going through and how they were feeling and no one liked that. A lot of clients had ongoing problems with each other and it could get pretty intense with crying and anger. So that was pretty much how I lived the entire year I was there. It was a nice house and fancy and we had to pick up after ourselves. You never left a jacket on a couch in the living room or left a personal item there or anywhere. We had to keep our rooms neat and clean. Oh yeah, every other Saturday we cleaned the entire house especially good and cleaned the outside yard. And once a month we had an outing which it was mandatory to go. So it was highly structured.
I didn’t think living there was a big deal at the time but now looking back, when I moved in I had only been diagnosed two years before and I came directly to the house from the hospital and lived in close quarters with 8 other people in a highly structured house. Looking back, I’m surprised I handled it so well. There I was, a 21 year old paranoid schizophrenic, naturally shy and forced to socialize with not only 7 other strangers but all the rotating staff that worked there. And I did pretty damn good, considering. I would have a hard time doing that now. It was an interesting experience for sure and I’ve never run into another house like it.
I’ve lived a fairly sheltered life. I’m not complaining, but I know there is more out there, for better or worse.