If I were to admit to anger it would be over a week I spent in the Nut House.
My shrink doesn’t like me to use synonyms for the psych ward, but the internal annoyance I hold for that experience requires me to refer to that place in a derogatory and unflattering manner. Actually I have a whole list of disparaging euphemisms for that sad sack prison: Crisis stabilization unit is far too dignified for that place. Psych Ward is not politically correct, not when you consider how ugly and divisive politics is. So here is my growing list of offensive slang for THAT PLACE:
• The nut house,
• the booby hatch,
• bughouse,
• the funny farm,
• the laughing academy,
• the enchanted kingdom,
• the madhouse,
• the nut factory,
• the rubber room,
• the snake pit,
• the coo-coo’s nest,
• the moron motel,
• Club Crazy,
• imbecile boot camp,
• the Crazy House,
• the Happy Hotel,
• the Cracker Factory,
• Pee-Wee’s Fun House,
• the Calm Down Cottage,
• Brittany Spear’s Space,
• the Spook House,
• the romper room,
• loser’s palace, and
• the disorient express.
All you need to start an insane asylum is an empty room and the right type of people”
After my week at Goofyville (I need to add that one) I have this list of grievances:
I was pressured to “sign myself in.” How was that done? I was told that if I didn’t go voluntarily that the police would come and Baker Act me. I was lead to believe that if you were Baker Acted committed, that fact became part of your record and would show up on employment background checks.
I thought these places were reserved for people who were a threat to themselves or others. I had stopped taking my meds. I was depressed, hated my life, and I felt like, if I died that would be a relief, but I was not overtly trying to hurt myself. I was not doing something to kill myself; I was just stopping my meds. We have no problem when a cancer patient, in agony, decides to stop medical treatments that would prolong their life. They were not killing themselves, they were just letting nature take it’s course. In my mind that is what I was doing.
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape
finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
Marcus Aurelius
Because they fear you might harm yourself, they do a search that includes spreading your butt cheeks so they can see if you have a box knife tucked into your rectum. Humiliation is not a great addition to depression.
I had sweat pants with a tie in the waist band, so I had to wear a hospital gown until my wife could go to the store and buy me some sweat pants with no string. I go in to this room full of alcoholics, bipolar depressants, despondent depressants, and one schizophrenic wearing two hospital gowns, one put on backwards to cover up my back side and the other the regular way to cover my front side. I looked all puffy and my bare legs advertized the fact that I haven’t worn shorts in full sunlight in about 8 years.
"Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage."
Ray Bradbury
There was a big room with one tiny TV mounted high so no one could grab it and use it as a weapon. The whackos voted on what they wanted to watch and that witch show called charmed was the favorite. They must have had some special Nut House Cable because that TV showed one Charmed episode after another. To this day, flipping by, if I click past a Charmed show I get this visceral sorrow, an instantaneous pity party and I get to relieve that week in 30 seconds or less and I’m left with an ache like someone had just played a game of flinch and punched me hard in my bad shoulder.
"We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the univese."
Johann von Goethe
They had crayons and children’s color pages to occupy the bored and no one was more bored than me. I wanted a pen to draw with, or at least a pencil. They did have those tiny miniature golf pencils, but they wouldn’t sharpen one so I could have a sharp line.
I was finally released after 7 days, ordered to stay home from work an additional week. When I finally got back on the job I was called in and told I had to go home and I could not come back to work without a letter from my psychiatrist saying I was ok to work. My shrink didn’t want me to do the job I was doing and refused to give me the letter. So now, not only was a humiliated, and imprisoned I also lost my job. I wasn’t fired. I was encouraged to resign for medical reasons. (I had a medical condition called whacky brain disease.)
If I was mad, who was I mad at? My shrink, my wife, my self and God.
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