The next day I was up at 7AM and the first of the nicotine
withdrawals kicked in. I knew they were in the post but they always come in the
first post, the post that hurts the most.
Since they confiscated my smokes and I
couldn’t bring myself to speak to the fellow detainees due to fear I was proper
fucked.
Waking up at hours 700 also poses another problem. Its hours
to bloody early darling! It also means I have to deal with everyone with no way
to pass the time – sleep was not an option because I didn’t want to be molested
or attacked before the hacks came to save me. No phone, laptop, PSP or Nintendo
to pass the time. All those little toys
that are part of our life support system are stripped away. I may have been at
a hospital but remember dear readers. It’s their job to detain you. DETAIN.
Imprisonment with “nurses”. Nurses is in quotes there because
they did not nurse or rehabilitate, they were paid baby sitters. They sat in
there little glass booth in the middle of the common area and made sure we didn’t
get up to mischief.
So there I was, 7AM, in a ward of 25 fellow loonies and I am
sitting in a corner crying, sweating and shaking. It was 30 degrees by the time
I woke up and it was getting hotter and to compound the issue further there was…
wait for it.. NO AIRCON!
How the hell can a hospital ward have no bloody air
conditioning or fans or anything to cool down the crazies. No fans, no water
fountains but a Coke machine that you had to pay for yourself!
Just think for a moment about the situation – You are locked
away from your family, you are in a room full of 25 “people” who are a danger
to them-selves or others, 30 degree temperature, no personal entertainment, no
free water (aside from the showers), no cordial or sports drinks or fizzy
unless you have some money from day release, you have the shakes and are on
edge from the nicotine withdrawals, you are TERRIFIED, no way to contact
friends and family without money and even if you did have some coinage you better
remember the number from your head because you don’t have your phone and therefore
no contacts or address book, you are experiencing fear like you have never
known and you are ALONE.
You have all above running thru your head and then you have
the reason why you are there in the first place – YOU’RE SUICIDALLY DEPRESSED!
Now I may not be a smart man – or a fit or attractive one –
BUT even I know that the least you can do to help someone relax if nothing else
would be to have a designated smoking corner outside, give us back our smokes,
and have some god damn water to drink.
When everyone is out in the common room a baby sitter in
white brings out Dixie cups of water and our pills. Since I am on a relatively
small dose of Zoloft my clear cup looks empty but there are some full cups
sitting next to mine. These Dixies are about the size of a Lego man high and
probably 1 and a half Lego men wide and some have a hell of a lot of pills in
them.
Within an hour or 2 the pills have been absorbed into the
blood
and brain which leaves some of the loonies drooling and staggering. These
are Anti-Psychotics, evil, evil drugs. Since leaving the hospital I have been
put on a very low dose of an Anti-Psychotic called Seroquel XR. In my research I
found that the standard dose for Paranoid Schizophrenia is about 2500mg. 2 and
a half GRAMS a day. Seroquel can also cause, I repeat CAUSE, an incurable Parkinson’s
like condition where the facial muscles move uncontrollably. Cessation of the
drug does not reverse the condition.
Just picture that for a moment, a Paranoid Schizophrenic who
can no longer control his facial muscles and is always looking surprised,
suggestive or flirty, all without his or her control. Wondering why people are staring….
I digress. Listening into some the conversations I discover
that the wards are not just for loonies and retards but court assigned junkies
and crack heads. That’s right Meth freaks detoxing hard. I am all for drug
treatment but a psych ward is not the place to put detoxing junkies.
I did not get names but there was one junkie who was
planning an escape, one who could not control his aggression, a poor woman who
had a scar across her neck from ear to ear. She didn’t say much, I think by
choice. I hope by choice….
Out of the 25 or so were about 7 courts ordered, a few like
me, a few junkies, a few agoraphobics a few with anxiety issues and one Religious
screamer who I ran into later in the day. The poor sod was named Dean and I will
never forget him. More on him later.
I sat as quiet and as still as possible, always trying to keep
my back to a wall and keep looking in as many directions I could to make sure I
wasn’t going to be fucked with. I went into full defence mode. Fists clenched,
eyes wide open, ready to fight. When you are that scared your body works on
auto-pilot. Fight or flight. Fuck’em first before you gets fucked.
(hmm Thats a big ol' chunk o' text isn't it? Oh well James Rolfe and Mike this time)
(Those fucking costumes rock!)
More to come
No comments:
Post a Comment