Saturday, February 12, 2005

Mental Hospitals……..

Been there, done that. I wasn’t fun either but it does help to get you stable again. Where I live we have what is called BIT (Brief intensive treatment.) You get to live and sleep within a community of mentally ill people. You are allowed no contact with the outside world. It is very much akin to jail in several ways. The only good aspect was the food as it is excellent there. I have a not so ethical acquaintance who feigns mental illness just so he can get a few weeks off from work and get three, great, square meals a day. He is also an idiot but that is another story for another time.

One of the hardest aspects of BIT was the harsh regimentation of the program. Almost every waking hour is scheduled with activities and therapy. At the same time many of us were so drugged that we could barely stay awake. I was on Haldol and Zyprexa at the time. Zyprexa acts like a super, strong sedative on me. I can literally sleep for days on end. You just don’t know the misery of having eye lids so heavy that you can barely keep them open. If you dozed off a counselor would poke or prod you back awake and make you participate in the group. I often thought many of them got a sadistic pleasure from doing this. I would long for bedtime when I could crawl under the covers and go sound to sleep.

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