I was in isolation for one week. There I had limited talk therapy but lots of drugs. And lots of people who were genuinely crazy, much more so than myself. When I achieve the status of the open ward, as they locked the door behind me the chap who was harassing me tried to follow me out, which resulted in alarms going off and with him getting a very strong sedative to calm him down. I really do believe he would have assaulted me without being left behind and sedated.
On the open ward we were more responsible for ourselves. We had assigned tasks, like cleaning the kitchen and doing our own laundry. I got some talk therapy but not a great deal. Basically what it felt like was a holding cell for people who wanted a break from the "real world". I had a woman tell me in no uncertain terms that she was only there to get a break from her kids and her mother could handle them for a few weeks while she rested. She wasn't on medication and did not participate in group.
Gastric was visiting me every day. The soon to be Soul Sucker was there too. She was there when I was trying to commit myself. You see the Ex and she "decided" I need help because I would come home from work, take a bottle of vodka out of the freezer and lapse into unconsciousness. So one Friday they got me in the car and took me to Community Mental Health for an intake interview. I was initially told to come back in a few hours when I was more sober and could make the actual commitment. So about 3:00 a.m. I arrived at the psych unit and had a two hour intake evaluation. I didn't want to be there but I was pressured by the Ex and the Soul Sucker. And sure I managed to earn my commitment by knocking myself silly on any convenient wall. So there I was, alone, forsaken.
After I got out of the locked ward I made some relative progress and had one on one counseling. The staff still hated the inmates and the reverse was true. What I missed was being able to shave my legs and my furry eyebrows. Once, before I was released to go home, the Soul Sucker took me to her home to see how I could manage life on the outside. I immediately confiscated her shower, shaved and plucked. I felt like a new woman. The lithium was making me a little less manic. She took me back that night and after much wrangling I was released, not to my Ex, who couldn't bother to pick me up, but to the late Dianne. I got home and was greeted with a house that had not been cleaned in two weeks. I immediately went into manic mode and cleaned the house from top to bottom. A friend came over whilst I was cleaning and asked where I had been for two weeks and I related the whole ugly episode to her. She knew the Ex was sleeping around but was too sensitive to my state of mind to tell me. Basically everyone but me knew The Ex was sleeping around. But it would take another six years for me to finally wake up and move on. And that was only when I found The Ex had depleted a joint bank account to play around.
So that is the tale of my first commitment. There would be two more, once right before I moved out on the Ex and one almost as soon as I moved into my own place. But that is for another day. But unless things have remarkable changed since Saint Lawrence was absorbed by Sparrow Hospital I can't imagine a less helpful place to be committed to than that blemish on the ass of God.
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