I was hospitalized about 8 or 9 times in the eighties. I was in one hospital for 8 months but most of my other hospitalization were just a week or less. Aside from spending two days in a psyche ward last year, I had stayed out of the hospital for 26 years.
Of course I remember them all but I usually think of them in bits and pieces I never really dwell on them. I write about them on here but in a detached objective way. The hospitalizations were 26 years ago but it seems more like a hundred years ago.
But lately I’ve been feeling peaceful when I think about being in them. Now I’m facing reality more when I think about them. I guess I just compartmentalize and blocked out the “visits” in my mind for 26 years but now I am just kind of musing about those places like I have never done before.
Those were such horrid experiences but I feel it is good for me to dwell on them now. I went through such incredible suffering in those places (as we all have). But now I am objectively looking at my experiences there and how they effected my life at the time.
Now I am thinking more in depth about those whole experiences and I am thinking more in depth about the other people I was in with. I am calmly thinking about this stuff.
A wise man once said that 90% of our lives are just in our heads. I think that is especially true for me. I spent a year in a group home at the beginning of my psychosis. I was 20 years old. At the time I thought there was a million things going on while I was there and like so much was happening throughout the year I spent there but locking back it was all in my head. I remember driving past that horrid place ten years after I left it.
The first thought that came to mind is: what the hell was the fuss all about? I feel like a million things were going on when I lived there but as I drove past all I saw was an old two-story house in a good neighborhood. It’s just weird.
I’ve been very lucky to avoid hospital the two times psychiatrists put it on the table as treatment options for me.
Both times I made deals and was found suitable for at home monitoring with mental health teams.
I don’t think I would survive mental health wards in the public system. I don’t have private health insurance but I have seriously considered purchasing it because I feel I may need hospitalisation if I go through another psychotic episode since they are getting worse each time I have one.
Though I never was in a hospital or group home, I can relate to this aspect of recollecting psychotic episodes a lot. Indeed, so incredibly many events seemed to fit in a day. In some twisted way I am a bit in awe when I consider it was all of my mind’s making, you know, real-time conversations with voices that lasted for hours and hours and seemed to make sense. Perhaps they didn’t make sense at all to an outsider - it’s hard to know the extent of delusion/illusion. Yet even if that’s the case, to make such things up willfully would take such time…
But on remembering psychoses, I feel like my episodes are fading away pretty rapidly. Maybe it is for the better, maybe things will be coming back if I would really dig into it. I remember in more general terms, the way it was, but not too many specific experiences, like strings of conversation I would have with my voices. A psychiatist asked me to write about my first episode the other day, but I don’t think I recall enough details to do that. They say recollecting is always a matter of reconstruction really, instead of going to the archive and selecting the relevant file.
When I do think about such past experiences, and have a clear moment in mind, it is weird. Perhaps similar to recollecting a dream. When I remember such experiences, there is a sense of me not remembering something real. While that is ofcourse true, it does surprise me for I did experience this stuff as real at the time. Them seeming to fade more rapidly than real intense moments - that makes me think of how dreams are typically quickly beyond the grasp of recollection.
Worth doing therapy after getting out of hospital even if just to deal with the crap you saw and went through in there. Plays with your head if you don’t.
What scares me is a couple of jail experiences I’ve had. I’m scared I’ll get put in jail and the things I have to do to survive might make me stay in jail forever.