My cousin was institutionalized today.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

For about a year now, he’s been addicted to - get this - cough syrup. Fucking Robitussin.

Apparently it contains a chemical that’s a mild hallucinogenic, and that’s what he’s addicted to. According to my uncle, he had at least 20 empty bottles of the shit in his room when they found this out about a month ago.

Since then, he’s tried to work things out, but apparently he was still drinking the cough syrup. And now he’s developed schizophrenia - they think the chemical in the cough syrup may have had something to do with it. He had paranoid delusions of people in the place he worked gossiping about him in the halls.

So he’s now in an institution. He’s sitting in a small room with no shoelaces in his shoes and no dental floss, in a building with a door that locks from the outside.

I can’t believe this happened. We knew about the cough syrup, but we thought it was the alcohol content and that’s what he was addicted to. We should have figured that he was old enough to buy real booze, and it wasn’t the alcohol he was addicted to.

This is my cousin - Mr. Marching Band, Student Government, Law Student Guy.

Originally he thought the Robitussin made him “write better.” My grandma got an e-mail from him while he must have been drinking it, because it’s full of all these old, old English phrases that no one uses anymore. We’re talking fireplaces and manservants here. Phrases like “the calendar has been perused in its entirety” and “I am seeking gainful employment.” This is an e-mail to Grandma, remember.

We passed it around and all had a good laugh at it, figuring he was just a goof who hadn’t taken very many English classes. I even forwarded it to my high school English teacher, thinking she could use it as an example of inappropriate diction for the class next year.

And… I don’t know what to say. None of us had any idea.

Fuck. :frowning:

2

that really sucks.

sorry.

:hugs:

3

Sorry to hear that…I know it must suck, but institutions arent as bad as they used to be. Dont get me wrong, its still not the most fun place in the world, but patients dont sit in a padded room all day drooling on themselves

About 10 years ago, I worked as a psych tech for a couple of private hospitals. They were pretty descent for the most part. Sure the patients couldnt leave, but they had pool tables, a big screen TV, a swimming pool etc. If I had a problem, I wouldnt have been too distraught to have been staying there. My sister worked at a couple of differant hospitals, and they were all pretty much the same. Just be glad your cousin is getting help before its too late. I’ve seen plenty that didn’t.

If you have any questions about what goes on in one of those places, feel free to ask…I can give you the inside info.

Best of luck.

4

I’m sorry, but yes they do.

In the not-unusually-backwards State of New York, we are at this very moment organizing to support a bill that will restrict (not eliminate, merely restrict) the circumstances under which psych inmates can be involuntarily electroshocked, so that involuntary electroshock is limited to people who have been legally deemed to be incompetent and therefore unable to consent/ deny consent.

Easy to say, but have you given it a whirl? Are you speaking from experience? Experience on, shall we say, OUR side of the diagnostic criterion?

Daowajan, your cousin may indeed benefit from a place in which to “dry out” from the Robitussin, and might even find that psych meds and other psychiatric treaments are to his liking and/or benefit. But if he doesn’t, and it appears that they intend on keeping him on an involuntary basis and/or forcing him to take psych meds as a diagnosed schizophrenic (that’s my diagnosis, btw), the presence of someone in his life that supports his right to make his own decisions (if not today, then at some point) could be crucially important.

5

It definitely depends on where you go. Not trying to be overly negative, but bdgr, I’ve seen a couple places that aren’t anywhere near as nice as you describe. I guess it’s probably different when it’s voluntary.
Sorry for what you’re going through, Daowajan. I hope he turns out alright. Hopefully you’re getting to him early enough. Don’t feel like it’s your fault, or any of your family’s. My advice is to focus on what you can do to help him, and each other, to deal with this, starting now.

Wish I could do more than express my sympathy.

6

No argument here on the ECT. I have had occasion to take care of ECT victims(voluntary), and I think the practice should be outlawed outright.

[quote[
Easy to say, but have you given it a whirl? Are you speaking from experience? Experience on, shall we say, OUR side of the diagnostic criterion?
[/quote]

Look, I’m not saying its a picnic. But When you are trying to detox, the best thing in the world for most people is to have a locked, controlled enviroment, with plenty of people who know what you are going through and how to help. You stand a much better chance of getting through it than you do on the outside. I know plenty of addicts that had to do it on thier own and they wish they had been in a hospital. Many people who have schizophrenia do a lot better if they can be in a controlled enviroment until they can get thier meds leveled out. Thats differant from being thrown into a padded room, and then forgoten.

While I wouldnt want to vacation there, if I were to the point where I was hurting myself, and could not take care of myself, then I would hope my family would have the sense to check me into a hospital.

Generally, they are not going to keep someone against his will, and force him into treatment against his will unless there is a real need. Not that thier arent some bad places out there, but most of them really do have the patients best interest at heart. Someone who is dealing with mental illness and or drug addiction is not usually in the best position to make these choices for themselves. Its the nature of the disease.

7

That is deffinately true. I worked at a couple of differant hospitals, THe last one was the nicest, although none were really a pit. But these were also private hospitals, county and state are not as nice(or so I am told). I worked with most of the time with teens, who were usually not there by choice(but many of them didnt want to go after they were discharged), and some with adults, who were almost all there by choice, and could leave at will unless they were a danger to themselves or others. I only remember one adult having to be restrained, and that was because she said she was going home to kill herself.

Patients were about a half and half mix of psych/addiction, although many of the addicts also wound up having other issues.

8

Daowajan, I’m truly sorry that you and your family are going through this. IMHO, it appears that what your cousin needs now is lots of support, and being in an environment that understands what he is going through will help.

Best of luck to all of you.

9

bdgr

Agreed. And Daowajan’s cuz may be in a good place. In fact, places that are not good places to remain in can be good places for the short run.

::climbs down, at least provisionally, from soapbox::

10

hugs

I’m sorry. Bad news about a loved one is always hard to deal with.

IANAPsychologist, but…

I wouldn’t blame the Robitussin.

Having trouble using language and saying or writing a lot of strange things is very typical- almost diagnostic- of schitzophrenia. I am sure that his strange emails were a product of schitzophrenia, not Robitussin. Schitzophrenia typcially emerges in early adulthood, so it isn’t surprising that your cousin is just now showing symptoms. I’d even venture a guess that he turned to Robitussin in an attempt to make his writing clearer, not stranger. This illness is not something he brought upon himself.

My only advice is to read everything you can on the subject. The more you know, the more able you will be to become an emotional support and an advocate for him if it comes to that. And the more you will be able to understand what is happening and reconsile it with yourself. Writing on schitzophrenia are often unclear and contradictory, so seek out a range of material.

Good luck…

11

whitelightning:

Not necessarily. The times that I was an inpatient, I started out on a voluntary basis. In fact, on neither occasion did they officially convert me to involuntary, although I was threated with it and was also prevented from leaving.

My experiences as a voluntary patient terrified me to the core of my being. (I still, to this day, can’t believe I was stupid enough to believe the promises that “this is totally different from THAT HELL HOLE, it won’t be like that here” that led me to sign myself in at the urging of others for the second dose of this experience!).

From my associations with veterans of the public bins, they get it worse if they are kept; the private bins are more inclined to keep you because they are more geared towards milking available insurance monies.

The bottom line is, at some point over 100 years ago there was the notion that “mental illness” would respond to scientific-method investigations much as other illnesses were doing, and this would be a great triumph. And there were a pair of early triumphs in mental health: one major dementia was discovered to be a side-effect of late phase syphilis infections, and another was understood as epilepsy as we know it today. But the remaining categories…remained, awaiting similar bio-mechanical understandings. For social, political, and economic reasons there has been a reluctance to reassess some or all of the remaining categories and say outright that “Gee, the ones that we still don’t understand very well are pretty much human responses to certain experiences”, and so the myth continues that “schizophrenia” and “clinical depression” and “bipolar disorder” are officially understood by scientists to be strictly the manifestations of “chemical imbalances” that interfere with neurotransmitter behavior, e.g., “Oh, it’s dopamine receptor hypersensitivity” or “Aha, we now understand that it has to do with serotonin uptake chemistry”, etc etc etc.

They don’t know. Most of them (shrinks and nurses and other personnel in psych wards) come in intending well, but their tools are clumsy, their budgets suck, and the sytem mainly wants them to keep disruptive people out of sight. The idealistic ones cry and have sleepless nights and drop out to do other things for a living, leaving behind a detritus of employees at all levels who kind of like being in charge of powerless people who are very vulnerable and volatile.

AND…to a major extent the social role of the institution and the institutional experience itself is to provide an example to the rest of you: ** Don’t fuck up, don’t let this happen to you, this is hell**. Because it would be inconvenient to society if you did, see?

::AHunter3 realizes he said he was climbing down from soapbox::

:o

::climbing down again::

12

even sven, you’re right - and now that I think about it, it could be entirely possible that drinking all that Robitussin was a byproduct of his schizophrenia setting in. Maybe he’d convinced himself that he needed to drink it in order to write more clearly.

Much thanks to everyone posting in this thread. And I don’t really know what kind of hospital he’s in. It’s either in Iowa City or his home county in Minnesota, but I don’t know if that helps. My uncle doesn’t think too highly of the place he’s in - he describes gates that slam shut behind you as you walk through the halls.

13

You do bring up an interesting point. ** AHunter3 ** ,

There is a really high turnover rate. Its a very stressfull ocupation. You deal with a lot of human misery, and often see more failure than success. Also, in-patient hospitalization is just a first step, you are supposed to stabilize the patient, and then they finish up in outpatient treatment. So, you rarley get to see anyone get significantly better. They do get better, you just dont get to see it. There were a couple of times, dealing with abused kids, I had to leave the unit after everything settled, to regain my composure. I had one patient that haunts me, a 12 year who’s stepfather had raped, and tortured him horribly. He would totally get out of control, and start hurting himself, and tearing up everything around him. He had to be restrained often(always a last resort), and wouldnt calm down until we got a female staff person in the room to talk to him, and got all the male staff out of the room. HE would howl like an animal. His abuser is out of prison, and he will be institutionalized for the rest of life.
Also, it pays very little, and its unstable work. One week you may work 80 hours, next week 10, as the census goes up and down. Most techs are are psych students who need the experiance more than they need the money. My sister was one of these, and is now shrink and a victims assistance coordinator for a police dept.

It is also dangerous work. Especially Adolecscent. I still have problems with my knees from doing restraints on out of control gang bangers(who wind up in the hospital instead of jail if they have insurance). Getting assaulted on an adolescent ward went with the job. I was willing to take this in stride for chance to make a differance.

Really, I would probably still be working at this job if I could have made a living at it. Nobody I worked with is still doing it AFAIK.

14

That is a bit spooky, but be assured that the locked gate thing is normal. When you have people there who are comitted to hurting themselves, or others, you have to be able to contain them. It was creepy for me, at first, and I could open the doors. I can only imagine the effect on visitors. I did work in a place that didnt have locked doors, and it was much worse. We had people who were totally out of it, just wander out the door and down the street. I was always afraid someone would get hurt, and they did(not on my shift). It was ok for some of the people there, but we had some closed head injury patients that were violent and delusional.

15

sigh, sorry about your cousin. The chemical from the cough syrup is DXM (dextromethorphan), incase anyone was wondering. Its sad when people develop mental dependencies on drugs, but I would not blame the drug. For one, the dxm isnt physically addictive. Your cousin must have developed a psychological addiction. Thats especially dangerous with dxm because its known to have serious side effects. :frowning: And people often purchase the wrong cough syrup and get their dxm plus a little bonus (tylonel or other bad drugs) which will seriously mess you up. Im not a profesional but I would guess that somthing(s) going on in his/her life pushed him/her over the edge into drug addiction and schcizophrenia. Goodluck

16

Oh god…I’m sorry.

:frowning:

I have to add-I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Right now, it’s in a bad stage-this is the 2nd day in a row I’m home from work because of severe panic attacks-I had one at work on Monday, had to leave early, and then one this morning, and yesterday.
Now, after reading this thread, I’m going to be scared that I’ll go schizophrenic, (if only because sometimes I have trouble expressing myself, and my um, phrasing, doesn’t sound quite right.)

I don’t mean to trivialize what happens, but schizophrenia is one thing that scares me.

:frowning:

17

I’ve used Robitussin-DM on occasion, and while I found it very effective as a cough suppressant I also found it quite disorienting. It also produced marked euphoria, which I admit I enjoyed. But having noticed those effects, I would NOT drive or perform any similarly risky activity while under its influence.

With that in mind, it comes as no surprise that some people do become addicted to it. IANA doctor, but I believe that any pleasure inducing activity can become habit forming, whether or not any kind of drug is involved.

18

Apparently he was only there for an overnight or a couple of days. I get all my information third-hand from my mom, so dates and times are kind of shady.

They brought him home today. He’s on an anti-psychotic, an anti-depressant, and some drug that’ll make him violently ill if he drinks alcohol, cough syrup, or smokes weed.

I don’t know what’s going to happen yet. We’re all kind of holding our breath.

19

If you feel at all like doing so, reach out to him as friend and cousin. He may be short on people he can confide to regarding how he feels about things.

(Mention suicidal = back in bin; mention don’t like drugs = regarded as treatment-resistant, hostility, maybe back in bin; feel like talking about experience in bin, other people want to change subject, feel awkward; feeling optimistic about life possibilities now, = people think it’s a reassurance attempt, not really listening; etc)

You might also advise him to seek out a mutual-support group composed of people with similar experiences. Many people say the best “therapy” consists of mutual support.

20

Not a good idea…If he is suicidal, he needs to be encouraged to talk about it, even if it means going back. Having myself had the joy of coming home and finding my best friend with his brains all over my kitchen floor, I know from experiance that you dont screw around with suicide. Had he been able to get help with his depression(no insurance), he might still be with us today. He would have gotten over what was bringing him down at the moment, sadley he didnt give himself the chance. What a waste.