Homesick

I have had several very troubling experiences in the hospital that I think should be addressed, for the sake of any person who has been given a psychiatric diagnosis and/or been hospitalized. My first hospitalization was in a large city in the late 1980s, when I was attending an elite college on a generous scholarship after transferring from a community college. I had not been sleeping well, and for several weeks I was only sleeping about three or four hours a night. I was trying to write two theses, working thirty hours a week, and my boyfriend, whom I’d gone to school in the city to be near, had broken up with me because his sister had moved into his one-bedroom apartment after being evicted. She was drinking herself to death and succeeded five years later in her mid-thirties.

I felt like I was in a waking dream state from lack of sleep. The hospital was a traumatizing experience. I was put on Haldol and Cogentin that put me in a blackout that seemed to last for days. When I awoke I could barely move my hands, arms, and legs. It was as if I were wearing a suit of armor. The other patients around me were on Thorazine and Stelazine and they all had tremors and many were drooling. When I finally got out of there, after about two weeks, I had weaned myself off the medication, and I stayed away from any psychiatric medication for the next ten-plus years.

I finished my BA and worked for two major publishing firms. I went on to graduate film school where I made a successful short film that my peers and teachers liked a great deal. I helped someone turn a short story they’d written into a full length screenplay, produced a corporate video for a high tech start up, worked with new high tech gadgets, helped other people make their first films, and worked as a copy editor.

No doubt I struggled with some type of depression for many years. Perhaps due to early family trauma, I have had difficulty finding and maintaining healthy friendships and romantic relationships. Personally, I think that my parent’s divorce when I was four and my dad being there one day and gone the next (we were on one coast and he was on the other) had a major impact on my ability to create and maintain stability for myself. Plus, my family had always told me I was creative and brilliant, and I had to live up to that somehow. (My father had a genius I.Q. of 160 but he died just before I turned 18 of heart failure.) My parents remarried when I was 11, after he’d been away for six years. We were very poor and financial problems created a great deal of stress.

After losing an editing job of five years in 2004, my life began a downward spiral. My doctor prescribed Buspar to help me with anxiety but it did not help me to cope with the stressors of my dying mother and lack of employment. My sleep deteriorated again and, with it, my ability to think clearly and make good decisions. By summer of 2004, I found myself in a private hospital where I also had a bad experience. My psychiatrist there told me that I’d be on Depakote for the rest of my life. When I asked to sign the form to leave after three days, she told me if I did that she would have me committed. A resident doctor there who was sitting with me and another patient, indicated in my direction to the other patient, and said to her, “You could have ended up like her.”

I found that psychiatrists were far too willing to stop and start these powerful medications on a dime. During the nine days I was in the private hospital, I was on Seroquel, Depakote, Zyprexa, and then for the three-week day-program after hospitalization, Geodon. Who really knows the impact of stopping and starting these powerful medications in such a short time frame...