First and foremost, after my parents checked me in, I remember sitting in the room they assigned to me and I was sitting on the bed and I remember thinking, “I crossed the line. I’ve sunk low and my life will never be the same again”.
This was in 1980. It was a short-term psych ward in a nice new Kaiser facility. It was in an unincorporated area about 60 miles north of San Francisco, it was about a hundred miles from my home. I never knew any mentally ill or people with schizophrenia before so when the guy I shared the room with started talking loudly to himself about God and Satan and hell I was surprised. I wasn’t scared but I thought, “Hmmm, that’s different”. But actually one of my best memories in any hospital was getting my first kiss from this older girl who was about 23 or 24 I was 19 years old. It was so great. Later that night it almost went further but staff caught us and reprimanded us and kept separate. I got her phone number but after I got released I didn’t call her for about 6 months and by the time I called I just got a recording that said the number had been disconnected.
But it wasn’t all bad inside. We could snack on crackers and orange juice anytime we wanted. The meals were all good. They took us out to a nearby park for an outing and we played kickball. I was in good shape as a teen and one of the counselors took me out jogging with him through the nearby hills. I remember feeling special that he picked me to run with him. I didn’t mention yet that I first tasted suffering in this ward. I don’t know what happened. One day I’m living with my parents and working and driving to go jogging in the hills, and then somehow a week later I’m in a psyche ward going insane. It all was weird and bewildering to me. But, yeah, I was in there for a week and a half but it seemed like a month.
Nice writing, Nick.
Yeah, I remember my several hospitalizations . . .
J.
I was convinced that the hospital was reading my mind. I thought the voices I was hearing were doctors testing my sanity. I was essentially playing head games with myself.
A soda machine, all of the nutter butters you could eat, boredom and then more boredom and then more boredom and then more boredom.
A woman broke her cd and tried to kill herself, she had a very large gash from wrist to elbow, she was really going for, that ■■■■ must of hurt so bad. They confiscated all musical equipment after that.
A dude was brought in and had a wrestling match with may four or five staff members, it took that many to take him down and inject him.
I was o.d.'d by forcible injection.
You could order anything you wanted.
A guy so destroyed by disease and medications that he couldn’t walk stumbled in the soda room one night and fell down, his skull was busted wide open and blood began to poor out, a large puddle collected and he lay on the ground seizing. I ran in to tell them and they took him to the hospital, i guess i saved his life, hmmmm, i’ve never thought of it that way.
More boredom, and then more boredom.
People tearing down the curtains at one point.
I also escaped through the elevator system, it was locked so i had to gain their trust first. Guy came out not thinking anything of it and i slipped in unnoticed. I made my way out and started walking, they pulled up behind me a few moments later. Ha ha! I’ve always been proud of that actually, with my cunning and ninja like skills i escaped. It wasn’t hard at all and anyone could have done it.
I had visits after a few days, i could leave under supervision of my family. So some guy that used to call himself my father took me to his place awhile, he had a dead deer strung up and he was gutting it with a knife. Not something i really wanted to see after my month long psychosis that almost killed me.
And then you guessed it! More boredom, and after that it was boring, and then it was boring, and then it was boring and then and then and then and then it was boring boring boring boring boring boring boring.
@77nick77 I also met a girl in my first hospitalization. She really liked me and I liked her. That was until the voices in my head were telling me that she was a tranny. So I lost interest in her and never asked her for her number. Poor me. I realized about a year or so later that she all woman. Ugh!
A guy smuggled weed in to. We got high and went to a group meeting, i had never been in a stranger place i don’t think. Mental hospital group meetings are very wierd if you are high i tell you.
And a woman snuck in some xanax to and passed them out to some of us, that was nice actually, it helped quite a bit.
Being on the admission ward to start off with. Thinking my teeth were dropping out. Being told I was going to make doll’s houses in a therapy unit after a week. I panicked at that as my manual skills are poor and was pulled from the path of a hospital bus. Got no understanding just told I was an awkward and troublesome teenager. My idealistic view of psychiatry melted away and decades of mistrust started… I took an overdose and put on large medium stay ward ,from there after cutting my wrists I was put on the closed ward. On the closed ward there was a woman who kept stripping, a man who told stories that started off clean but built into ultra obscene rants, a young man with severe learning difficulties that rocked violently in a chair while making loud animal like noises.
I was on high doses of largactil then mellaril and only once given a side effect pill . Felt like a zombie but was highly restless- bad case of akathisia.
After3 months my parents got me out of there and attending a local day centre. I had ballooned up.
It was not a good time. For years after triggers like the smell of soup would send me back there and cause me to feel intensely sad and despairing.
Mostly I withdrew to the point of 3 months involuntary. But was mostly for observation so was rather stable (well sort of) Took me about 24hrs till the reality sunk in that I was in the nut house. Did floor me a bit.
My first hospitalization I spent a year in a private psychiatric hospital. I was twenty-eight. It seemed like everyone was just going through the motions. No one was involved in therapy. We went through the routine almost like a job. I was on a mild anti-psychotic called Trilafon. It limited the amount I could jog to about two miles, which I didn’t like because I used to run five miles a day. They had these classes that we went to that didn’t have much to do with therapy. We spent two hours a day in group. That year didn’t help me much. I’m thinking about trying dialectical behavioral therapy. Maybe that will help me.
My first hospitalisation was in January 2003 when I was nearly 19. I wasn’t yet diagnosed sz yet - that was with my second hospitalisation in March 2003. With my first I was diagnosed Bipolar/Schizoaffective. Both my first and second were in private psychiatric clinics, which were very posh, especially the first one. I remember the various floors around a central inner courtyard with a fountain, the wall mural, the excellent food and some patients whom I was friendly with and we sat in the garden and talked. There was beading sessions where I made a few necklaces and there was this guy who was friendly with me - he gave me his colourful plastic bracelets. I remember I could only stay 9 days because my father’s medical aid funds ran out and when I had to go home I was still sick and cried in the back of the car. Two months later I was in hospital again - the other psychiatric clinic where they diagnosed me sz.
When I was admitted I was in sort of a Zombie state. I couldn’t arrange my thoughts and I had zero insight. I remember that I walked very slow. I mingled with no one. What I remember very well was one rnorning when I visited my psychiatrist. …I was very ■■■■■■-up… she slowly bent over the table and looked me in the eyes and said…I can see that you are somewhere there inside of your head. That thought kept me going until I was okay to be released.
First stop for me was detox. In pain, cold, craving, going through withdrawal and angry.
Then assessment and interview… then I was sort of in a numb daze when I finally got admitted.
It felt like my efforts to make myself clear were being ignored. I sort of felt like a ghost. People talked about me as if I wasn’t standing right there in front of them. It seemed like everyone was telling me I was wrong… or telling me NO.
It was very painful and lonely. I was so angry. That was also when I had my first taste of ECT and it really freaked me out and made me worse.
One swoop and the voices were gone. My entire head was quiet. I was sure they took my brain. That made me really upset. My perception of reality was way off base.
I couldn’t keep my mind on anything for more then a few minutes. I cried a lot.
Towards the end is when I noticed it was clean, quiet… near the water. The food was Ok. There was lots of group activities and group therapy… which I would zone out after a while.
All the days sort of ran together.
I was 18 and my world fell apart it broke me
I remember one of the first things they did was try to hypnotize me. (They wanted to get to the bottom of why I was suicidal). I remember lying down on a couch and being told to relax and count backwards. I remember thinking that I wasn’t going to let them be successful in their endeavor. The next thing I knew, the hypnotist told me she was done. I couldn’t believe it. I immediately asked her if she had hypnotized me. She said, “no”. I don’t believe her to this day. And it has been over 20 years.
it was kind of weird for me and very frightening. i can distinctly recall the gp sendong me to the psychiatrists office. i have no idea what was said but i do remember being given the option to go in voluntarily or be sectioned. so i went in. the first few days were a haze of tears and fear but i sort of got used to it after a few months of tears. i was even given the acuphase injection to give me a break from my mind and e.c.t. to try and lift my depression. you know it kind if makes me wonder what exactly i was crying so much about…was it the forced delusion or the trauma of the abuse? not sure but it lasted a solid 3 months until the e.c.t. it was only then that my mood started to lift. i spent a further 2/3 months in there i wasn’t happy but i was happier and still highly confused but that’s not surprising considering what i’d been through…all in all, a bad stay but made some nice friends none of whom i would recognise now.
I remember it being terrifying and horrible. I was forced into it against my own will. I was so mad and didn’t think there was anything wrong with me. So i rebelled and fought.
I remember going upstate to this private psych hospital. It had a really nice scenic campus, we could take a mile walk everyday. I had cut myself pretty badly and the pdoc thought I was DID, didn’t find out it was SZA until 2 years later. Didn’t sleep much. Almost all the other patients were there for ECT (or addictions), and were like zombie’s before but after the ECT slowly came back to life, made me a believer in ECT. Went to my first AA meeting and denied I had a problem. Went to a lot of groups for DBT and learned a lot of great coping skills (I never cut again, although it took awhile to stop self-medicating). I remember being very anxious about the bill as I didn’t have insurance that covered mental health and was paying out of pocket. So I left too early, after a week and was back the next month for another week when I was feeling SU/SI. If anyone in NYS wants a recommendation for a hospital this is the place to go. Great food, campus, dr’s, social workers.
My first time was in a big whole city serving mental hospital. It had lots of history and did lots of research. I didnt want to go in and was escorted by the police. The assessment doctor said I could either volunteer to go on the ward or I would be sectioned. So I had no choice really.
The first time was the worst. I was put in there for sitting on the roof, and my mom started screaming and crying, “Please don’t jump! Please!” I hadn’t even thought about it until she said that. Then I climbed back in through the window and I was told I was being taken to the hospital. I was actually starting to feel better then. I think. Then I was put in an Adult ward that was basically a hallway and a cafeteria if you could call it that. Everything was white. I refused to speak to my parents which really broke their hearts, I could see the look in their eyes. I was punishing myself for being put there, and then punishing them for putting me in there. I forget a lot of what I knew before that, at fifteen, but we watched a comedy show, everyone else there was like old and it was weird. I was transferred to an adolescent unit when some sketchy men entered the ward and they were afraid for my safety. In the adolescent ward it was worse, even though my dad had to fight with the insurance to get it covered. I wish he had lost. This place sucked. I was verbally abused non-stop, injected with Thorazine and over-medicated which was why I refused them in the first place, none of their pills worked because all they did was overdose me on pills, then isolate me for various stupid reasons, like looking bad.
My LAST hospitalization was the best. I was put into Sheppard Pratt in Baltimore. They had a personal bathroom with a nice shower, a big dorm-sized room. I was put on watch because no one told me the rules, but I didn’t mind. I was treated like a freak but who cares. I had a shaved head. I was put there twice in the same period of time because I was forced to take Geodon which made me sick after I refused to take medication. Then I was put on Abilify again the second time, and they changed my doctor lol. The first bitch is why I got so sick. She ignored everything I said and told me I was talking in circles, and brought up how I was assaulted. Ridiculed me. Accused me of flipping out when I actually stood up and announced that I was well enough to leave and then tried to walk right out the locked doors.