Out of the Shadows

The Mental Ward

Needless to say, when I got home, I was a pretty mixed-up cookie. I tried to get back into the swing of things but nothing “fit.” I couldn’t cope. I found myself longing to die, and I took a bunch of aspirin, trying to bring it about. Fortunately, it was not enough to cause any harm. It was just another cry for help.

Because I had been exposed to family members going into mental hospitals, it wasn’t a foreign concept to me. I told my parents I wanted just that, so they admitted me to the mental ward of a local teaching hospital. It was quite a trip. I was locked up completely and found myself in the midst of some very sick people. And, of course, I got involved with one of the male patients on the ward.

One of the things that surfaced there was my hatred toward my father. All the years I had spent trying to replace what I felt was the lost love of my father erupted into irrational hatred and anger. I lashed out at him and refused to see him when I was in the hospital. I also told him I hated him. Looking back, I know now that I caused him immense pain. Even as I write this, it hurts.

It was decided that I would benefit from being in a mental hospital, not just in a ward at a teaching hospital. So I was transferred to a private hospital several hundred miles away. What a place! It had separate wards, floors—whatever you want to call them.

vThe highest ward was called the open ward. It wasn’t terribly different from the regular floor of a hospital, except the rooms were similar to those in a hotel. In this part of the hospital you might get a room to yourself, but more often you’d have a roommate and share a private bath. The patients had many moments of freedom to roam the grounds. They were still locked up, but they could get out on their own at certain times. The grounds were absolutely beautiful. There was even a greenhouse and some therapy there. They also had occupational therapy, such as ceramics and other art.

Then there was the semi-open ward. It was basically the same, but there was no unsupervised grounds-roaming. And there were wards that were far from open or anything vaguely resembling a motel. These were the locked and semi-locked wards where the “real crazies” were kept.

Oh yes, I failed to mention that this hospital had a two-lane bowling alley in the basement, and I must say it was indeed fun.

When I arrived at this place, I was placed in the semi-open ward. Being consistent, I sought out a male companion. Of course, there were no opportunities for romantic interludes that went very far, since contact between the sexes was limited to dining and group settings.

Then I was at it again. One guy smuggled in some drugs, and we split them. Me being the incredibly naive person that I was, I told my roommate, who reported me to the higher-ups. This brought about a quick change in my status on the semi-open ward.

I bet you were wondering how I knew all this stuff about the other wards. It was from personal experience. I soon discovered what other kinds of accommodations existed in other parts of the hospital. I could even say the bowels of the hospital. The memory is very vivid in my mind. A male nurse escorted me into the very bowels of that hell pit. We traversed down, down, down, unlocking jail-like doors as we went. I was placed in the most closed ward in the whole hospital. And I’d thought I was among sick people before. Whoa!

Each patient was given a private room—or should I say cell. You had a bed, and your door was heavy steel with a ten-by-twelve-inch window. The lights were never completely out but dimmed, even throughout the night. Carpeting did not exist in this region of the hospital. All shared a large bathroom, and there was an open nurses’ station—a glassed-in sort of cage—in the center of the ward. To this day, I don’t remember ever using that bathroom, but I must have. I guess I don’t want to think about that bathroom, since it was rumored that if someone really messed up, she was submerged in a tub full of ice with only her head poking out of the hole. Yes, I blanked it out.

This ward was a trip, and I don’t mean a good one. Some of the women were completely out of touch with reality. I remember one woman standing at the window and having conversations with someone that only she was cognizant of. Then there was the girl of eighteen or nineteen who was physically and mentally disabled by drugs; her brain was fried from too many acid (LSD) trips. Some patients on this ward received shock treatments, which seemed to eradicate their memories. Patients came back from shock treatments and were asked to write down everything they could remember. Many of the women could barely fill a single page. This was real and truly scary. Oh God, I thought, I hope they don’t do this to me.

The only other thing nearly as scary was that ice-filled bathtub thing. I never saw it happen, but the idea sure did make me tremble on the inside. It could have been just a rumor to keep people in line, but I don’t think so, in light of all the other horrific things that happened.

My stay had changed drastically. I was hoping for help and look what I have now, I thought. It was a whole new world, not anything like I could have imagined. On top of all that, I was still only a child pushing fourteen, I wasn’t even sure how old I was at that point, since everything tended to scrunch together.

The hospital had two kinds of doctors: psychiatrists and psychologists. The one pretty much adhered to drug therapy and the other was counseling-oriented. At that time, I was assigned to a psychiatrist who decided to enroll me in drug therapy. I was given strong doses of Thorazine and Stellazine. The words Thorazine and Stellazine will forever stick in mind as I reflect on my body’s initial reaction to those drugs. Talking about being doped up! They were doozies.

The doctor was soon to hear about my feelings regarding this treatment. I was so angry I wrote him a letter. I can vividly remember not being able to write legibly; the letters grew as I wrote. Did he even receive that letter? I don’t know. That drug treatment did nothing to alleviate the emotions pent up within my breast. To the contrary, the anger grew like a fire.

At times we were allowed outside under strict supervision. We would form a small circle and toss the medicine ball—a leather ball of around ten pounds, or maybe more. I had no problem tossing that ball, which surprised some of the male staff who caught it. No, I didn’t knock anybody down, but I sure tried.

I stayed on that ward for a while, knowing that when I performed properly, I would again be allowed to go to an open ward. There was some intermingling between our ward and the other semi-locked ward. Sometimes we were allowed contact with the men’s ward in a recreational setting, where we’d play Ping-Pong, billiards, etc. Oh the joy! What a trip! There was an assortment of men, women, girls, and boys in this hospital, but the sexes were separated. Any intermingling was closely monitored.

I’m going on a slight sidetrack here to mention shock treatments, which I believe are illegal now, but who knows. You may know someone who experienced them, but you can never visualize the reality of it until you view it firsthand. These people came back in a blacked-out fog. This was therapy? Give me a break.

Well, I did learn to perform pretty darn well. I played the game to get out of that hellhole, and it worked. I was brought back up to the semi-open ward. Was I cured or any better? No way. I had just learned how to bury my anger and burn with rage deep within.