How It Began Our country does not have a good track record for treating the mentally ill. North America’s first public mental health hospital opened in 1773 in Williamsburg, VA. Named the Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds. The treatments given were nothing short of torture. One procedure involved submerging patients in […]
Category: psychiatric ward
Ten Days Lockdown: A New Beginning
Day seven of being in lockdown arrived and I was fully relaxed and ready to go home. Most of the friends I made had been released. Darryl was an exception. Darryl was from a family of Hollywood icons, but had been the black sheep of the family for most of his life due to his […]
Ten Days In Lockdown Part IV
It was my third day in lockdown in the psych ward and I was scheduled to leave. After breakfast, one of the doctors took me to a private room to talk. He told me that I was not ready to leave, and as he pushed a form and a pen towards me and said that […]
Ten Days In Lockdown Part III
After a long nap on the second night of being in lockdown in the psych ward, I needed to get up and move around. I became like the rest of the zombies there and wandered the hallways wearing my hospital gown and a blank face. I did meet a tall drag queen who was reading […]
Ten Days In Lockdown Part II
In yesterday’s article I shared a day in which I was suicidal and the process before being admitted in lockdown in the psychiatric ward. When I was admitted to the psych ward I was given the room closest to the exit doors, directly across from the nurse’s station. I presumed that was because I would […]
Ten Days in Lockdown
I had six months of sobriety and was frustrated. I was struggling. I was a disaster mentally, physically and spiritually. Old time alcoholics told me that what I was going through was normal. My life was a shambles and since I was sober, I was looking at the disaster I created through clear eyes for […]