Well… have you?
What do you think? 
I haven’t, but the guy I’m in love with has been. Does that count?
Only if you count public schools… Otherwise;
[Peter Lorre voice]
“It’s driving me sane!”
[/Peter Lorre voice]
</usual cheerful humor><heart-attack seriousness>Yes. Three days. August 1996. Severe depression that culminated in an incident with a utility knife and the soft skin on the undersides of my forearms.
Yes, Prozac really does make it better sometimes.</heart-attack seriousness><usual cheerful humor>
No sir. But about a year ago I was absolutely sure my future would consist of such.
Yep. Three times. Must’ve had a pretty fucked up childhood.
Mostly all I did was sleep, 'cause they keep you pretty heavily sedated. They also had mandatory lame arts and crafts-type activities, as well as 3-times-a-day group sessions, which could get pretty funny when the paranoids started complaining about their neighbors using telepathy to read their minds. Here’s a sample conversation I had with someone who was lying around in the rec room:
Me (walks into room)
Crazy guy: Did you just call me a motherfucker?
Me: Uh, no.
CG: NASA casino tortoises! Egg spoon!
Me: OK, you take care now.
It wasn’t all such madcap hilarity, but it was a nice vacation from stress. My feeling is they’re just places to put you when your condition looks severe where they can regulate your medication and keep an eye on you. Most of the people in there were too screwed up to function. So it was like a way station for people who were completely insane until they could make the transition to being insane yet functional (or presentable to society, whatever). They don’t really work on treating your problem until you’re an outpatient. Basically a big babysitting service.
Yes, nine times, during my heavily troubled teen years (I had my mid-life crisis at an early age). Conversly, my current problems seem soooo novel and frivolous.
no, but I’m thinking of goin’ to a shrink… just to let out some steam…
maybe he;'ll let me hit him… maybe?
I’ll let you hit my shrink!
While living in the dorms at college, my roommate was “taken away”. The Doors movie was opening that weekend and some friends and I had planned see it in true ‘Jim’ fasion. We had each purchased bottles of Jack for the movie and several case of beer for the pre-movie party. My roommate had always been sullen and I hadnt talked to him much in the prevous weeks. He loved the Doors and when I told him about our plans he asked if I would get him a bottle of Jim Beam.
At the time I didnt know he had a severe alchol problem and was in counselling for depression and suicidal tendencies. (great roomate for me I was a raging alcholic) I bought him the bottle and took of with my friends. He had apparantly stayed in the room and drank half of his fifth before the movie started. I had never seen him drink before and he was getting pretty wild in the movie, singing along with the songs and yelling. After the movie he got into an argument with one of the people he was with and he took off running down the street.
I woke up the next day and he wasnt in the room. I went to my classes and when I came back all of his stuff was gone from the room. I later talked to one of the girls that was partying with us that night. She said that my roommate had walked into her literature class the next morning, still loaded, and started asking the professor philosophical questions and smoking cigarettes in the back of the class. It wasnt his class. His parents had been called and they took him to the local institution of medication and tranquil rest.
I cant help but believe that I played a major roll in this situation by providing him the alcohol. I feel terrible about it today, but I had no way of knowing…
Not yet, but at times, I think I’ve come very very close.
Oh, we’re not talking about marriage, right?
Well, it’s an institution!
heee 
and of course I should mention I’ve been institutionalized.
Does my rents seriously considering to commit me count?
One of my pdocs worked in the loony bin - so I had to go there sometimes… but I never checked into that hotel…
well… not yet 
dodgy
I have a feeling I would have been, had I gone to high school near home. As it was, I went to school roughly 500 miles from home, and they couldn’t really take me out to commit me because . . . well, they weren’t around me. They didn’t know everything that went on. And I didn’t want to be committed. I wanted to be dead. I didn’t see things as getting better until I started on Zoloft that summer.
I had ways of (temporarily) getting away from the urge to kill myself. Some nights I would stay up and write nice, long, painfully truthful notes about why all the fuckheads at my school were a bunch of pricks and I’d thank a few who hadn’t been total assholes. (BTW, that wasn’t how I got away from the urge to kill myself)
But I feel better now.
I’ve been in and out like 8-9 times, once for a month and a half, not fun. I had a good childhood and a terrible childhood at times. On the good news though, I’ve been “clean” for over 4 years now. I’ve tried so many meds with truly strange reactions that I’m really afraid of what’s next. I hope that someday I can find some meds that really work for me. I can be rather ugly on Prozac but it’s works wonders on some.
Jim P.
AKA NUTS! :o
Peace!
Yes. I eventually escaped.
http://members.aol.com/AHunter3/
Three and a half fucking years starting in my freshman year of high school. A place called the Psychiatric Institute of Montgomery County. I forget what the official diagnosis was but it pretty much boiled down to ‘pain in the ass kid’.
I was an in patient for two stints, one of 5 months and one of 3. The rest of the time I was a day patient going home at night and living behind the wire-impregnated glass the rest of the day.
As to what they did for me? Tough to say. Certainly the therapeutic sessions didn’t seem much good. Creative therapy (arts and crafts), group therapy, individual therapy, fantasy therapy (no kidding, it was the rage at the time) and others never seemed to do me much good.
What they did provide (and something I needed) was structure. They gave me a routine and a schedule by which I had to live. With that support I was able to reason my way through my problems on my own.
Things I took from it:
-
They don’t like D&D. No ‘satan worshipping’ accusations but they weren’t wild about inmates having a strong fantasy life.
-
Psychiatrists largely have their head up their collective asses when they reach out to apply broad definitions to individual problems.
-
Drugs may work for some people but I saw far too many kids dosed just to make them more obedient. Mom wouldn’t go for that, thank God. I had to find my own way through the world.
-
I will, to the end of my days, automatically hate people (and I ain’t pussyfooting around. I mean a hate so black it could end in murder) who believe they know what’s ‘best’ for someone else and that they have the responsibility to impose their will upon that someone.
How’s that? Enough?
My roommate was. He was falsely accused of schizophrenia by his own not-especially-stable parents. We and his psychiatrist got him sprung.