Hospitalized at 16

I had never even met with a counselor before, much less a psychiatrist.  So naturally it never even occurred to me that my parents would do something like hospitalize me.  Yes, my behavior was out of control, but I was 16 and my hormones were going wild and I was terribly depressed and confused and of course, unmedicated.  I was acting out and engaging in reckless behavior, skipping school, smoking cigarettes, cutting my arms, and I was shaving parts of my head. I had been dressing all in black and staying in my room alone, listening to depressing music. I never wanted to go out or do anything. I barely ate or slept. I sat in the dark and wrote poems about death.  These days, I'd just be called goth or emo, but back then it wasn't an acceptable lifestyle. Naturally my parents assumed I was on drugs.  The truth was I'd never even smoked pot before! But they decided to send me out of town to a fancy hospital where young people were treated for behavioral problems and substance abuse.

They had to lie to me to get me there.  They said we were taking a weekend trip, which didn't seem unusual since my family traveled a lot, but I was pissed that they were making me go with them.  I climbed in the backseat of the car and sulked for the hour's drive to the hospital.  Of course, I didn't realize we were going to a hospital until we were there.  Before I knew what was happening, some people dressed in white grabbed my arms and started pulling me towards the door, all the while telling me to relax and not fight them.  RELAX?  When strangers are assaulting me? When I'm being forcefully taken inside what looks to me like a prison, it's difficult to relax and stay calm.  I started screaming curse words at the nurses, my parents (who disappeared as soon as they'd taken my suitcase out of the trunk; they didn't even say goodbye) and anyone within earshot.  I was furious with my parents, for lying to me, for deceiving me, for leaving me in such a place.  At first I didn't know where I was or what was happening so I thought maybe they'd shipped me off to a half-way house. I was both angry and scared.  I remember a desk and some papers I had to sign....they wanted me to read a bunch of crap and then sign if I agreed to it but I didn't bother to read it-I didn't give a shit what those papers said.  I just wanted to be alone.  Just leave me the fuck alone, I thought, or maybe I screamed, I can't remember now.

I do remember this part quite well--the strip search.  The nearly-unbearable humiliation of the strip search.  Full body cavity search, performed by a very large football-playerish woman, and just to be clear I had to stand there completely naked and let her touch me. Everywhere.  Even inside of me. God-I swear I just felt a chill run up my back.  I haven't thought about these events in many, many years.  Apparently, they still get to me though.  She was checking for drugs I suppose, or razor blades or anything else I might use to hurt myself with. The funny thing, if you can call it that, was that I'd recently been sick with mono, and so I had these bruises on my inner arms where the doctors had drawn blood.  Well, to the people at the hospital, these were "tracks" and this made me look like a heroin addict. They started asking about all the drugs I used.  I tried to tell them that I'd never used any drugs at all, but they told me that "Denial is the first sign of addiction" and so I had to get drug tested at random times throughout the course of my stay.  I don't think I ever actually convinced them I was drug-free, despite my clean urine tests. Interestingly enough, not only was I the only person there who did NOT have a drug or alcohol problem, but I learned more about drugs and how to use them and how to hide them than I ever could have learned on my own.

I was placed on Suicide Watch, which meant another nurse came into my room and unpacked my suitcase and removed any and every little thing that I might possibly find a way to self-harm with.  She took my belts, my shoelaces, my ink pens, my jewelry, my razor (of course), my toothpaste, my mouthwash, and any other liquid I had in my suitcase.  I didn't see the point in all of that, but I was powerless to stop it.  The whole while she was searching my things, I was being watched.  I found out the next day that being watched was going to be my norm for months.  I wasn't allowed to take a shower without a nurse in the bathroom with me, watching. I was not allowed to shave my legs.  I was given toothpaste to brush my teeth with, but was not allowed to have it in my bathroom. (Did you know that you can die from eating toothpaste?) I was watched every moment of every day.  I had to have a witness go with me whenever I went to pee. Talk about embarrassing!  I was lower than low already, and the humiliation of all of this just compounded my feelings of hopelessness and despair.

One day I was caught staring out of a window, and because they took this as a sign I might be planning to jump out of it, I was punished and sent to isolation.  This was a tiny room with no windows and only a mattress.  If I had to use the bathroom, I had to call for the nurse, who escorted me to the bathroom, watched me do my business, then took me back to my little cave.  I'm not sure how many days they kept me in isolation; I have no sense of time anyway, plus without windows I couldn't tell if it was day or night.  After I was allowed to go back to my room, I found I now had a roommate.  She was mean.  I did not like her, so I chose not to speak to her. She'd threaten me at times or curse at me, but I just stayed silent. I really didn't talk to anyone much the whole time I was hospitalized. I had no interest in making friends. I had nothing in common with these people-they were all junkies or sex addicts or criminals in my mind. I was different.  I was just depressed.

Every morning we were awakened at the crack of dawn and sent to a large sitting room, where we had "morning meditation".  The counselors gave us pep talks and read "inspirational" materials to us. We were given our schedule for the day and released to go dress for breakfast.  I wasn't actually allowed to go down to the cafeteria with the rest of the group, as I was on suicide watch.  I ate alone at a table in the corner of the sitting room, supervised by an orderly, and given only a plastic spoon to eat with.  I guess they thought I might hurt myself with a plastic fork.  Anyway, this whole eating in silence thing lasted for about a month and a half.  After that, I had earned the privilege to go to the lunchroom with the rest of the group, but I was still only allowed plastic utensils.  The nurses circled our table, making sure we were actually eating, and we were not allowed to leave unless we'd consumed what they considered to be an acceptable amount of food. This was hard to do, as the food was terrible and I'm so finicky anyway.  But I loved mealtimes, as it was one of the only times I got to leave the ward and see evidence of the outside world.  There were windows in the cafeteria, so I would gaze at the trees and watch the birds and dream of running away.

After breakfast, we went to "school". I sat in a classroom with kids of all ages and was given assignments, which to me were quite simple and so I used most of my classroom time to draw or write depressing poetry.  Class time was the only time I was allowed to use a pencil, and I would sketch and write letters to my friends back home (not sure if those letters ever actually got mailed).  After school was over, we had gym.  Now when I'd been at my high-school, I'd gotten out of taking gym by being the teacher's aide in the art department.  I hated exercising. But since it was so friggin' boring in this place, I began to work out in the weight room (supervised of course) and by the time I got to leave the hospital I had lost weight and toned up a good bit.

After gym, we were allowed to shower (again, I was watched) and then got to rest for half an hour, and then we went to group therapy.  This was when all the patients sat in a circle and we went around the room and talked about what was wrong with us.  Everyone had all these exciting tales of drug use and promiscuous sex and shoplifting, but I was innocent.  I had no stories to tell. I was a drug-free virgin.  I remember my shock upon meeting this one little girl who was 11 years old and who slept with men in their 30's; she guessed that she'd had sex with over 25 men.  I just couldn't believe it.  I always listened to everyone's stories with great interest, because my stories were so boring.  I mean, I looked like a delinquent, but I didn't actually do anything wrong. It seems there may have been a suicide attempt at one point in my teens, but I don't really remember that; I just have a scar on my left wrist to show where I'd cut myself. This was the reason I was kept on suicide watch throughout my stay.

What I longed to do was go outside though.  We were never allowed outside of the hospital.  I didn't feel the sun on my face for over 3 months.  And I don't even like the sun, but I was really just wanting to get away from the cold, clinical, all-white rooms which were all I saw every day.  The highlight of the day was when we got smoke break.  I guess this ages me, but back then there were no laws preventing teens from smoking.  So every day at the same time, all the smokers (which was pretty much everyone on that floor) got to congregate in the recreation room and smoke cigarettes.  The lighter was mounted to the wall, one of those things which got hot but didn't actually have a flame, and it had bars over it so that none of us could burn ourselves.  There was just enough space between these bars to fit a cigarette into, and that was how we lit our cigarettes. Naturally we were closely watched during smoke break. We were all allowed one pack of cigarettes per week; if you ran out, too bad. 

Now there were very strict rules at this hospital, and one of the rules was that we were not allowed to share things with the other patients.  One day, a boy had no cigarettes, and I felt bad for him, as he'd been brought in a few days before, all bloody from having punched through a window while high on cocaine. So I gave him a cigarette.  Just one.  And that's all it took.  He and I were both punished for a week, in isolation, in 2 separate locations of course.  After my second stint in isolation, I followed the rules. Now every other day I was visited by a psychiatrist, who determined that I was Bipolar (except at that time it was called Manic-Depressive) and I was placed on Lithium and some anti-depressants. I hated that doctor, and I'll be specific as to why.  She actually had the nerve to tell me one day that I would NOT be depressed if I only dressed in colorful clothes!  She said I felt bad because of how I looked. I was livid, and argued with her about this matter until the day I was released.  I never gave in to her wishes.  I continued to wear my all-black wardrobe.  She did NOT like that at all.

One day, she told me that I was going to be allowed a parental visit.  I had mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I loved and missed them, but on the other hand I was still very angry with them for sticking me in such a hell-hole.  I recall the day quite vividly, as it was the first time I was allowed to go outside the building in 3 months. I loved the feel of the sun on my skin and the cool breeze...I got to go out to lunch with my folks, and of course they had a million questions, to which I gave the answers I thought they'd want to hear.  I lied and said I wasn't so depressed anymore.  I told them I wanted to come home.  But it'd be another month before that would happen. When I got back to the hospital, I was strip-searched again.  Also, the gift of chocolates my mother had given me was confiscated, because apparently there is a drug in chocolate and I wasn't allowed any stimulants of any kind. No coffee, no soda. Another thing they did was take away the stamps my father gave me with which to mail them letters. The nurse told me that in the past patients had used postage stamps to smuggle in LSD, so they were forbidden.

Although I was only there for about 4 months, it felt like years. Afterwards, when I told my parents how I'd been treated-the strip searches, the supervised bathroom visits, the isolation room-they felt terribly guilty about having made me go through such an ordeal. In an attempt to make up for it, they bought me a new car.  I don't think they ever understood just how horrible the whole experience had been for me, though, because after my discharge I was still made to visit that same psychiatrist for about a year or so.  She was a bitch. I resented the fact that she drove a different luxury sports car every time I saw her; I decided she only went into psychiatry for the money.  One day, my parents were told to come with me for a family session. At some point the doctor told my parents that they had, in fact, played a role in my becoming so depressed and out of control.  My parents were furious at this accusation, and my father cursed at the doctor and pulled me out of there and I never saw her again. I was taken off the medication (my father decided she'd just been drugging me to bill the insurance company) and I wouldn't have another doctor for a few years.  In that time period, I got much, much worse, but I hid this from my parents, for fear I'd be sent back to a hospital.

This was not the only time I've ever been hospitalized, this was just the first time.  To this day, I am absolutely terrified of psychiatric hospitals because of the horrible experiences I had while I was in this place.  I tried talking to my current psychiatrist about my nightmares of this hospital stay just the other day, and she told me that things like that simply do not happen in psych hospitals these days.  She thinks my memories are delusions or false memories or something.  But I know better.  I had nightmares for years after this little hospital stint.  I've been sent back to hospitals several times since then, but I've never had to stay as long as I did this first visit.  And to this day, I get a chill up my spine when I drive past such a hospital.  They scare the living shit out of me. Because of this fact, I have been lying to my psychiatrists for years about my true thoughts and actions; I'm scared that if I tell the truth, I'll be locked up again. I don't think I could handle that. In therapy this week, my shrink talked about how she believed in hospitalization for patients with severe symptoms. This haunts me. I don't know if I'll ever be able to open up to her again, I'm too afraid.

How I Became a Walking Drugstore

Since the diagnosis which I've had for years has practically been scratched off my chart, so to speak, I figured this was a good time to review what disorders we DO have, or at least the ones we've been branded with,  be them true or false.  Now my mind is still reeling over the statement Dr. H made yesterday ("I don't think you have schizophrenia") and I can't help but wonder if maybe some-or all (?!) of the doctors from my past have been wrong.

The first time K ever saw a psychiatrist was when her parents had her committed, at the age of 16,  to a psych hospital, for what they deemed my being inappropriate and out of control.  Bizarre behavior led my parents to believe that I was on hard drugs (which was ridiculous; I'd never even smoked pot) when in fact I was just suffering through major depression with suicidal tendencies.  I think I tried to kill myself for the first time somewhere around this time, but that memory just won't come back to me no matter how hard I try to remember.  So, I tried to kill myself plus my parents thought I was strung out on heroin, hence I ended up being committed to a hospital.  First psychiatrist of my life, Diagnosis: Manic/ Depressive (a couple of  years later called Bipolar II).  This woman put me on Lithium and suicide watch, then proceeded to tell me that I wouldn't be so depressed if I'd just wear more colorful clothing. The audacity!  I was hospitalized for 3 months, during which time I was given a handful of different medications and yet I continued to dress all in black, and I kept writing gloomy and dark poetry.  I think they released me after they decided that I was no longer suicidal, or else they were just sick of me.  I continued to see that same psychiatrist (she had a different sports car for every day of the week, and I can't stand people who are obsessed with money and possessions) until the day came when we had a family session, and my parents were told by this shrink that they, in part, helped contribute to my mental problems.  My father was furious, and my mother was angry and in shock. They were good parents, they really were.  They grabbed my arm and pulled me out of that office and I never saw that doctor again.  (although I realize now that my parents probably did have something to do with my problems, even though they always had good intentions)

The next doctor proclaimed I had Major Depressive Disorder and put me on a handful of antidepressants. I can't remember how long that lasted.  When I graduated from high school, I moved to a new city and was without a doctor for a while.  Bad idea.  Two intentional overdoses followed Freshman year at college.  After the second overdose, I decided it best for me to seek help with my mental "issues", and so I went to the local hospital and inquired about mental health services for low-income persons (I was just a student after all).  I don't remember that, but I somehow know that it happened.

K found a psychologist who worked on a sliding-scale fee and who was near her apartment and she began to see this man every week.  Sometimes he would make us take tests, all sorts of tests, sometimes written tests with questions, other times it was puzzles for K to solve, and one time he simply asked us to fold a piece of paper.  Believe it or not, this was one of the more difficult tasks for us, for it had to be PERFECT and it took me a long time to fold the paper; these tests led to our new (additional) diagnosis of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and some new medication.  K's OCD is easy to spot, although she's not your stereotypical hand-washer or compulsive cleaner. (Actually, one of the K's is a cleaner who's afraid of dirt)  K is an organizer, a list-maker...with a compulsion to turn the toilet paper around so that it rolls over the top rather than being pulled out from underneath.  Silly things like that.  K saw this psychologist for about a year, until the day came when he told her that she needed medication and he was going to have to hook her up with a psychiatrist, but all of that would have cost money, money which K simply did not have.  So we left that place and went unsupervised and unmedicated ("all natural") for what seemed like a long time...but we can't be sure how long.

K had gotten married at the age of 19, and pretended to be "normal" and went "all natural" and thus didn't take any medication or see any therapist during the year that her marriage lasted.  After the messy divorce, K became very manic-her worst episode ever up to that point-and went a bit crazy and started partying and dating lots of guys and going shopping and doing a lot of risky, stupid things such as dabbling in drugs and driving really fast.  This lasted for a couple of years, and K thought she was happy and having fun, like a regular college student...and then she crashed at the age of 23.  She fell into a deep, dark pit of despair, the likes of which she'd never known and from which it seemed she'd never crawl out of.  Somehow, someone helped us find a new doctor.  I can't remember much after that, I know there were more pills and more labels (Borderline Personality Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Bulimia, Panic Disorder) and this pattern of going from doctor to doctor and getting pill after pill went on until K abruptly disappeared and turned up on the other side of the country.

K didn't go there alone-she was much too insecure and frightened by being out in public.  She had a friend with her, who knew she had a history of depression but who had no idea the extent of K's illness.  They lived in this big, new city for a couple of months before K had a freakout and her friend had to take her to the hospital. (K got lost coming home from work; she totally forgot where she lived and had to call her roommate to come get her) They poked and prodded and questioned K all night.  When it was finally over (a couple of days later? I don't recall), K had a pocketful of prescriptions and the name of both a psychiatrist AND a neurologist.  The neurologist took pictures of our brain, and determined that K was having little mini seizures in her head, and I believe these seizures are what destroyed much of K's memory.

The psychiatrist made us fill out a mountain of paperwork and assessment tests and then there were hours of interviews and therapy sessions, and in the end, he gave K (who was 27 by this time) her new, improved diagnosis: Schizophrenia.  That word scared the living daylights out of K, and she went into a state of bewildered shock.  She turned up hours later at a girlfriend's apartment; apparently K had walked miles from the hospital to the girl's place (this was K's best friend, whom she trusted with info about her mental illness) and K burst into tears when she got there and had a meltdown and proclaimed that she didn't want to be schizophrenic, that it was too serious a condition, that it frightened her.  It took her a very long time (years) to come to terms with that particular mental health label.  How twisted it is that I've now been told I don't have this, after it took so long for me to accept that I did have it.  (sigh)

And so that diagnosis stuck, and after that wherever K went and whenever K would change doctors, she'd fill out all the required forms and papers and she always had to list her mental problems and so she wrote down what the doctors had always told her, and for the most part, each new doctor simply looked at her chart, took it as fact, and prescribed more medication: anti-psychotics and mood stabilizers and anxiety meds.  This is how she lived her life throughout her young adulthood.  See a therapist, take medication, get better, quit taking the meds, have a meltdown, repeat.  In the spring of 2002, K had just found a new therapist.  This therapist she found listed in a local new-age magazine, and K, being quite superstitious,  took that as a "sign".  This therapist, Patty,  was the best one K ever had.  K liked her from the start, and they connected and K trusted her and she truly seemed to care about K's mental health and quality of life.  She worked in tandem with a psychiatrist who prescribed even more medication for K. This situation remained constant for 7 years.  During those years, K would get to a really good, stable place and then she'd quit taking her meds and have a meltdown and have to start over with the pills and she went from one extreme to the other-either drowning in a sea of despair or elated to the point of skipping down the sidewalk.  Patty was there to help K deal with her obsessive thoughts, or depression, or fears...she sometimes gave K homework assignments designed to provide insight into the mind of K and her subconscious.  One of these assignments was to draw a picture of what K believed herself to look like.  I believe this was a self-image/self-esteem test.  At the next session, K showed up with at least half a dozen different pictures.  Now I didn't realize this until just recently, but about 2 years after K first started seeing Patty, the term Dissociative Identity Disorder came out of her mouth.  K wrote about it in her diary, but then forgot about it.  Perhaps it was just more than she could handle, so she removed herself from the reality of this diagnosis and went on with her life and blocked out anything that had to do with that disorder.  Therapy during those years is difficult for us to remember, but I have little snippets of memories, like a few seconds of film; one of these mini-memories is Patty asking us what our name was.  We didn't know the answer to the question...we were K, weren't we?  In another partial memory, Patty is telling us that different people have come to therapy in our body.  All of this was news to K, or at least I think it was...damn this memory loss!  We were just starting to make strides in this therapy, these sessions which focused on who K was and what had happened to her as a child (she clearly had all the classic symptoms of sexual abuse). I believe Patty might have suggested K had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, I remember someone said it.

Just when K seemed to be making progress, just when things were beginning to come out, just when K was starting to open up and be completely honest with Patty....well that's when the unthinkable happened.  K got dumped.  She drove to her therapy session that day, just as she did every week or every other week if she was doing well, just as she'd done for 7 years.  When she got there, she was eager to talk to Patty, she had a lot to say, but Patty sat her down and got all serious and told K that she had missed an appointment the week before. At this particular mental health facility, they had a rule: you can only miss 3 appointments. After that, you are automatically dropped for being a non-compliant patient.  Well, K remembered that one day she had been trying to call them to change her appointment but no one would answer the phone.  We called repeatedly throughout the morning and afternoon.  It was Memorial Day, so K determined that they must've been closed for the holiday.  This is why K missed that last appointment.  She really did try to call and reschedule, honestly she did.  But she was being dumped, and this HURT, terribly, K takes everything so personally, and so it hurt her feelings that Patty didn't want to see her anymore.  From somewhere deep inside us, this angry K suddenly appeared and acted like a total bitch and said horrible, insulting, rude things to Patty.  I watched from outside my body, and couldn't believe what was happening.  It just didn't seem real, it couldn't be true.  K stormed out of Patty's office, got into her car, and hauled ass out of the parking lot.  She started bawling almost immediately, and did so for the entire hour's drive back to her home.

K's world was turned upside down.  Since her psychiatrist worked together with her therapist, K certainly didn't want to see that psychiatrist anymore.  She called and cancelled her next appointment.  For the first time in seven years, K was without a doctor or a therapist.  She had some medication, but would soon run out.  She started frantically trying to find a new doctor.  But it is harder than you'd imagine to find a psychiatrist who accepts Medicare and Medicaid.  We were losing hope, then we called Dr. H's office, and the lady on the phone was so nice and helpful and we explained to her that we really needed to see the doctor, that we'd run out of medications and we were having some withdrawal symptoms as well as feeling unstable.  They got me in quickly, and even though my medical records had not been faxed from the other doctor's office as had been requested, the doctor met with me and we talked for over an hour.  I left feeling hopeful.

Our last psychiatrist, who'd worked alongside Patty, well, we hated her.  She was an evil bitch who didn't seem to give a rat's ass about me and how I was doing, she just wrote out my prescriptions; when I came in crying, she'd increase my dosage.  I never felt anything but distaste for that woman.  This new doctor, Dr. H, well she had shown me more compassion in one session than that other shrink had shown me in years.  I had medication refills now, and I was eager to start therapy sessions with Dr. H.  That was 2 years ago.  It took Patty two years to label me DID, and it took two years for Dr. H to find out about my dissociative disorder.  That brings us to the present day.  We have had 2 sessions in which we discussed dissociative states.  She's ready to get to work it seems; she asked me to bring the diaries which are the evidence of our illness.  I'm terrified, yet excited at the thought of beginning the healing process, of accepting what and who we are, and of learning to love K as she is, in spite of her faults.