2:00pm July 9, 2013

My last experience with a mental institution. Which finally pushed me away from psychiatry for good, by subtly reminding me what was in store if I stuck around.

I had a really bad experience years ago, that I’ve only ever described in part. It was my last encounter with mental institutions, and my shortest. And it emphasized to me, above everything else, why I needed to seek help outside the psychiatric system. Parts of the experience were so humiliating that I’ve never spoken about them to anyone. So be warned this won’t be a pleasant post.

It all started when I was severely PTSD-triggered, and found that my supply of my herbal anxiety medication was gone, and would not be replenished for another day and a half. And I somehow had to get through that day and a half.

My PTSD was much more severe back then. And I had a lot of emotional vulnerabilities that I don’t have anymore. And a day and a half seemed like a year. And suddenly I was back into that mind set where I thought that things would never get better, would never end, and I might as well die. I didn’t actually want to die, but the suicidal impulse felt so strong I couldn’t figure out how to stop myself. Some people believe if you’re ambivalent then you’re not serious about suicide. But reality is that people who actually complete suicide, show signs of having been ambivalent to the last second. The survival instinct is a powerful thing even in the face of a strong urge for self annihilation.

So I called a suicide hotline. This was back when I had an elaborate setup that allowed me to use phones while typing.

So they realized I was serious, that I was simultaneously trying my hardest to resist the impulse, and planning out how to do it. They talked me into letting them call the police to drive me to the emergency room.

Everyone told me I was really brave and amazing and doing the right thing by taking care of myself. The suicide hotline people. The cops. The emergency room workers. Everyone told me I was doing the right thing. I let that lull me into a false sense of security.

They wanted a urine sample. I tried, but motor planning problems resulted in me pissing all over my arm, which wasn’t even holding the cup. I told them, and they didn’t believe me. They insisted on feeding me a bunch of soda and then catheterizing me. The catheter felt like punishment. They were pretty rough with it.

They explained to me that for insurance purposes, they would have to put me on a three day hold. But that I could get out the next day, since I had a medication coming that would stop the anxiety and flashbacks. They assured me over and over that it was only a formality, that nobody would really try and keep me for three days.

An ambulance came and took me to the local mental institution. They began interviewing me about why I was suicidal, why I was there. Up until then everyone said I’d just be staying overnight. Now they told me I’d be staying for three days and that there was no way out of that.

I explained about it only being for insurance purposes, that I had meds waiting the next day, etc. She didn’t believe me. She first treated me like an idiot for believing I’d stay only overnight, then acted like I was being dishonest. She said the hold wasn’t for insurance purposes, it was to protect me from myself. I felt like Alice in Wonderland.

She asked me about the origins of my PTSD. I explained it had many origins, but that the most important one was from mental institutions. She didn’t understand how you could get PTSD from a mental institution.

I elaborated that I was abused. She said I would be safe in this institution because they kept male patients separated from female patients. I said it wasn’t patients that abused me, it was staff. She grew very uncomfortable, laughed loudly, and said staff didn’t abuse people here so I had nothing to worry about.
I went to bed to the sounds of violence from the men’s ward.

Unlike my previous stays in mental institutions, I felt a stark contrast between outside and inside. Because as a child I had little freedom and was abused, so institutions were not a big contrast. As an adult I had lots of freedom and less abuse. And I found being locked up and bring unable to do anything about it, unbearable.

I looked out the window and couldn’t believe how close I was to freedom and how far at the same time. My wallet and house keys were in the nurses station. I strangely enough felt more trapped at that moment than I ever felt tied down in isolation rooms as a kid.

And the atmosphere was intensely violent. The violence swirled through the air so thickly I had trouble seeing through it to the other side of the room. I already knew from my involvement in the local ex patient movement that this place was violent and abusive, that they paid no attention to medication reactions, that if I gave them any reason to use Prolixin on me I’d die. And I’d come there to avoid dying.

So I sat in the dayroom all day long, rocking and praying that the violence would not enter inside me and cause me to do something I’d regret. I felt like I was being battered on all sides. Most psych wards are full of violence, but the contrast to my adult life left it unbearable to be around.

I watched the other patients. One of them was waging her own war against the violence. She was hallucinating and talking to people who weren’t there. And the violence went all through her like she had no skin, and she’d thrash around. Staff laughed at her and made cruel remarks. No abuse, my ass.

Another woman was going to court for a hearing about whether she could leave. She was putting all her effort into looking normal. I could still see her though, tense and anxious and fighting despair.

And another woman was becoming the focal point for the violence as expressed through staff. They were making her beg like a dog for clean socks and water. She was so passive she was doing it.

I’d called my staff person from the developmental disability system and told her they weren’t letting me leave. She said she’d be right over.

Hour after hour I sat rocking, trying to steel myself against the violence, only typing to repeatedly ask if my staff was there yet.

Finally she came in. She’d been in state mental institutions in the seventies. She took one look around and said, “omg, these places haven’t changed one bit”. I could see her taking in the violence, shrinking a bit. She’d had to fight to get in at all, outside visiting hours.

When I was a teenager, I knew a girl who had watched me in mental institutions and residential treatment facilities. And she had a lot of problems herself. She called me one day really excited. She said she’d persuaded her mom to put her in a group home. But it all seemed weird to me. She had glee and pride and excitement in her voice when she told me their visiting hours. I still remember the exact tone of her voice – today they’d call it squee – as she said “Did you hear that, I have visiting hours!” She said it like it made her important. I felt sick. To me visiting hours were the way people controlled my access to the outside world. Not something to squee over. I still don’t know what all that was about. I’d forgotten until today.

Soon staff told us we couldn’t be in the dayroom because patients were complaining it was unfair she was here outside visiting hours. We moved into a conference room, and waited all day long for the doctor to arrive. He arrived during the two minutes I took a pee break, and refused to wait for me. So we waited longer. It was a nervewracking wait. I felt like pounding on the walls and screaming, but kept controlling myself, trying to stop myself doing anything that would make them keep me longer. I knew if I stayed three days, I’d never resist it, and then possibly never come out.

Finally the doctor and a nurse arrived. I knew I had to go along with whatever they said yet emphasize why it was safe for me to leave now.

Fortunately they were uncomfortable keeping me because I had a developmental disability and thus, to them, was the DD system’s responsibility, not theirs.

But they made sure they humiliated me as much as possible before they let me go. They treated me like I’d just been making “dramatic” statements about suicide without really understanding the consequences of talking that way. As if any psych survivor could know otherwise. But because I was DD they treated me like I must have not meant it. Like I didn’t really understand. And they rubbed that in as much as they possibly could for the rest of the conversation. They also said my staff had to take full responsibility for me and everything that happened to me.

I just knew I was lucky, that they were doing the impossible and shortening a three day hold, that I must say and do nothing to stop them from letting me go. Which meant a lot of agreeing to things that I never thought, felt, or believed. Going along with everything they said. Making sure they had no reason to think me further danger to myself.

And then I was out. And in the car. And wondering at being outside after all of that. I’d gone in because everyone told me I was doing the right thing. Up until the doors closed and locked and I was trapped in the institution, everyone was saying how brave and wonderful I was for taking care of myself by agreeing to go in. Once I was in, they treated me like an idiot at best and a liar at worst. Nobody on the inside said I did the right thing. The last thing they did before I left was try to ensure that I would never mention suicidal thoughts again, or someone might think I meant it.

And I let them. I let them frame me as an idiot who didn’t know what I was saying. Because it got me out. And I needed to be out, to survive. And going in had been about survival, but once I was in I realized my best chances for survival, even if I was drastically suicidal, were outside the psych system entirely.

And that’s what I did. I had to overcome severe PTSD and severe depression without any help from the system. I had no further choice.