I spent around 6 months in an assortment of mental health inpatient lockdown, residential, and partial hospitalization programs. I wanted to throw some little tidbits of That Life™ down in easily digestible paragraphs because I'm all about efficiency.
At the residential program on the east coast (EC) I lived in a little house on a hill, surrounded by larger buildings. I shared it with 12 other patients. It had sweeping views of the surrounding countryside for miles. Every morning I would wake up before everyone else, say hi to the overnight tech, start the coffee, and then sit outside at a picnic table to watch the rising sun. I practiced mindfulness there. I would focus on the sensation of the cool chair underneath me. The hot sips of sweet coffee. The euphoric first cigarette of the day. That ritual sustained me more than anything else.
I hated the EC curriculum. It was heavily 12-step based. I was angry all the time, and the staff handled me with kid gloves. I self-harmed constantly with various items I found. I felt guilty about putting them through stress, but at the same time every emotion was too big to quietly contain.
I absolutely loved my first partial hospitalization program close to home (CTH). It was entirely focused on Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). It was also women/femme-identifying people only - at that point I could not handle being around men. The more group sessions and lessons we had, the more I realized that I wasn't alone. All I was going through was shared by at least one other person in that cohort. It was incredibly healing and validating. I was in the safest environment I ever experienced.
Many of us at CTH were dealing with with eating disorders. We were required to have lunch and two snacks a day, all under direct observation. We weren't allowed to leave the classroom until 30 minutes after our meal. They weighed us weekly and never told us the numbers. I definitely needed their constant nudging to make sure I kept weight. Before I entered the program my diet consisted largely of stimulants. I didn't deserve food.
There were so many fascinating people! I could write a story for each one. I probably will at some point.
The residential on the west coast (WC) was laid out more expansively. Rooms and small buildings were scattered around several larger meeting spaces. It was almost like what I imagine living in a dorm would be like. Between obligations the patients would drift around, work on computers, or - the activity I poured most time into - smoke at one of the pits.
For some reason my psychosis was more intrusive at WC. I hallucinated almost daily. I heard music and low murmuring voices. I saw people everywhere. Not real people, mind you. There would be a man walking down the steps, but after a blink he was gone. Another standing and watching from near the edge of the sidewalk, poof. The most vivid was when I noticed a friend sitting on top of a picnic table. She was smoking. I walked towards her; she abruptly vanished when I was 15 feet away. Whenever I laid in bed at night I would become disoriented and have to remember where I was. One time I returned from a group walk and couldn't recognize the campus.
I had a crush on my therapist in WC. I understand it's pretty common. I would laugh with a rehab buddy about how we were projecting daddy issues onto the only consistent male contacts we had there. Her therapist ended up "accidentally" seeing her boob when he had to knock on her door because she slept through an appointment. The most mine got was some cleavage and sultry glances.
In EC they had me take a sexual dependence inventory. It was over 700 questions. I scored in the dependent range (per the inventory, "most individuals who are dependent score above 6 - you scored 10"). I'd wrecked my life for sex before and I probably would've again if I lost the secure tether of my relationship. During follow-up counseling the intern shuffled uncomfortably in the background while my therapist asked more about my sadomasochism scoring.
If you end up in a residential facility, bring cartons of cigarettes. You'll make a ton of money or at the very least be showered with adoration by all the patients (and some of the staff). So many non-smokers picked up cigarettes because 1.) there was nothing else to do, 2.) replacing an addiction with another addiction is easier, and 3.) pretty much everyone socialized around the smoking areas.
At EC a group of girls from another house stopped at the smoking area to say hi. We immediately all began comparing the tattoos we got to cover self-harm scars.
I somehow gained a sibling at EC. A guy who I'm pretty sure had schizophrenia decided to start calling me sister. So whenever we walked within earshot of each other he would yell "hey sis!" and I would wave with a "hey bro!"
The journal I wrote in became more and more disturbing the further in treatment I was. Several pages are ripped, covered in blood, or scribbled out in pen. There's handwriting in there that was different from mine. Those paragraphs were usually very angry and described memories or ideas I can only get a flicker of.
I had to face that I can't remember most of my childhood or earlier adult life. I thought that was normal. We attempted EMDR several times. On one, I caught fleeting shadows, dark, pain, and crying. Then what almost quite literally felt like a wall slammed up again. I haven't done any EMDR after that.
In both partial hospitalizations I went to - CTH and OCTH (other close to home) - it was pretty common for people to get overwhelmed in group. We all took turns crying in another room or pacing endlessly. I learned that the common social practice of telling people that they shouldn't cry just informs them that they're being a nuisance and should bury their emotions. Crying isn't inherently bad.
The clinical team in EC diagnosed me with BPD. A Psychiatrist, Psychologist, and therapist assessed me for weeks, spoke with people close to me, and assigned me to take the MCMI-IV. The MCMI-IV is an inventory to evaluate personality and psychopathologic traits. Just like the sexual dependency inventory, it has a fuck-ton of questions.
Trying to coordinate disability while being in crisis kind of sucks.
Near the end of my stay at EC I got the bait-and-switch. I was initially informed that I would return home. Instead, I was to be sent to the WC residential. I didn't take that well. I ended up with 1:1 observation, an evaluation at the local ED, then an escort to the airport. I told the escort that since I paid for her ramen in the airport she wasn't allowed to chase me if I ran off.
I felt like a pretender and fake in every facility I was in. I was an imposter. I made things up for a more tragic life story. I said the right buzzwords to manipulate the professionals into diagnosing me with cPTSD and BPD. I still feel this way.
In WC one of the staff members was writing a presentation about novel synthetic drugs. It was kind of fun to give her the run-down on things like 2cb and hexen and stuff.
The night I arrived at WC a different staff member guided me to the building. He told me that he saw GHB on my list of drugs, then shared his own experience with it. He looked thoughtful when I explained why ketamine was better. I hope I didn't make him relapse.
I figure I'll keep posting random follow-ups to this. It's nice to be able to brain-dump stuff.
Slide clunk - the nitrous canister rings slightly after you drop it into the cracker. You register the sound and the sensation of your hands operating entirely off muscle memory while your your mind is still in a fractal, snared in one of the millions of layers between thoughts. Sounds reverberate and echo. Your Self begins to coalesce again, a waiting little flame that reignites as oxygen returns. The dissociation from nitrous is the dissociation your mind already uses to protect itself, but taken at a different angle. At its peak you self-reference endlessly. It’s impossible to experience reality when there’s no vector of time to give you perspective. An idea you held at the moment of it cresting circles in on itself to the nth degree.
Your brain is still nicely fucked up, your senses float to you; pre-synaptic serotonin flooding is continuing apace. The ecstasy you took over an hour ago is growing into its name. You’re floating on a cloud. The world is worries and details and shame. You’re above that now, suspended for as long as the drug deigns to hold you there. It’ll all be okay, it whispers kindly, you got this. You can’t help but anthropomorphize it into a being that cares deeply for you, one that loves you unconditionally and helps you feel the same. The thousands of blades that make up daily existence shrink and dull. She’s a protector, a shield-bearer between you and the arrows of life. She’s eternally patient. You can call on her any time, any day, and she’ll never be overwhelmed by your needs.
This. This is a moment that you wish would stretch for eternity. Existence within a cocoon weaved of a hot bath, a mother’s love, an orgasm, friends’ laughter, a cup of cocoa, a smile from your loved one, clean sheets, your favorite snack, a beam of sunlight. This is the fae’s glamour.
The cracker is cold between your fingers. You press the lever again and drink deeply.
Although I feel much more stable in general, I’m realizing that I can’t really trust that. I had no insight as to how bad I was. Last night my bf mentioned that there’s still definitely moments where he’s concerned - I continue to be very hyper-reactive to situations. In the past weeks I’ve been literally yelling at strangers, I tried to run outside my home to get in the face and maybe start a fistfight with a street preacher (he luckily was gone by the time I was dressed), intermittently went to sleep while holding my machete, and responded with almost instant anger to a lot of things. Even just the sound of male voices talking raises my hackles.
CW: Rape/CSA, homicidal ideation
It’s off-putting to be on the inside of this and really (still) unable to comprehend how things look from the outside. I’m so far out of touch with myself that it’s hard for me to know where I am unless I’m just purely happy. The only reason I believe that I am more stable is because of what people close to me tell me. I’ve tracked down where my rapist lives, what his phone number and e-mail addresses are, what his hobbies are, what he looks like nowadays, and strategized where I’d position myself outside his house to ensure a killing shot with a rifle. I think the only reason my therapist hasn’t reported me was because I emphasize that it’s passive and I’m also in another state.
This all got kicked off by being fucked while high, which somehow triggered a cascade of reframing a previous hookup (while drugged) as a rape and then eruption of past CSA that I didn’t realize I had - the event itself is still a complete blank but I recall things before/after it, and I found out it takes a lot of work for me to be able to retrieve memories up through high school and there are still huge patches missing though those likely aren’t related. My partner pointed out that as long as we’ve known each other they noticed I completely forget anything that distresses me.
Journaling today I wrote about the ‘little girl’. This isn’t the first time I’ve written that, but I was curious and flipped through everything I’ve put to paper over the past 1-2 months. There’s a consistent pattern where I’d switch between using “I”, “you”, or “she/her”, sometimes in the same paragraph or sentence. Sometimes the writing was bigger, messier with the latter two perspectives. Every time “I” was used it was clinical, more detached, and in reference to current or recent events/emotions. When the 2nd or 3rd person pronouns were more raw and always were associated with childhood memories... it seems like the childhood memories were only brought up in those perspectives.
Ever since recognizing the actual trauma as probably legitimate I felt like an internal war finally stopped, but at the risk of sounding factitious I’ve also had the sensation of twin minds after that. It’s almost like that girl took up residence in my head and although we view many things the same way, there are still things we can’t convey to each other (like me realizing that sleeping next to my bf is safe but every time I’m in the liminal space between sleeping and waking my body’s filled with fear and panic).
Is this me making stuff up? Am I literally going crazy? Is having a separate being in your mind after starting traumatic memory reintegration normal??
What’s odd, and I never realized is possible, is how normal things are during all this. Even in the midst of the worst I’d still drink my coffee and study languages. My days had structure. I was still seeing the world overall as I usually do. I got asked what I thought crisis meant, and realized that I’ve never defined it for myself. I thought that I’d know if I was in it or headed towards it. I don’t and that’s scary.
HOO LADS. So over the past 1-2 weeks I’ve been in full-on crisis - super close friends and partners told me that I looked literally crazy around the eyes and they were concerned I was on the edge of doing something dramatic.
Got new diagnoses of mild-moderate substance use disorder (previously severe) and PTSD. Started on different medications and am lining up admission to a partial hospitalization program. I’ve felt pretty stable over the past several days, but I still was cutting up until a few days ago. My therapist told me that if I actually presented to the program at my lowest they would’ve just sent me full inpatient. It’s been a rollercoaster.
It’s a bad sign when your BF - who underwent rehab for drug use - is pointing out that your behavior and things you’re saying mirrors him right before he went in. I already met the DSM-5 criteria for multi-substance use disorder around 1-2 years ago. Stimulants in particular are my jam. Days without cocaine, amphetamines, MDMA, or MDA can be painful. I’ve become manic and/or psychotic on these and others. It’s an interesting perspective shift to experience how insidiously the use creeps in, and to realize first-hand that it can happen to any one of us. At the moment I have enough insight to allow others to restrict my drug use since I can’t control myself. I’m on (legal) medications which have greatly reduced my use.
The silver lining to this is I have a significantly deeper fount of knowledge about drugs (most of the genres at least), user culture, danger signs, adverse effects/treatments, and ways to approach evaluation during acute intoxication. The population of drug users is far more wide-spread than I was taught in school. The demographic is heterogeneous. Users range from occasional dabblers to those who can’t break free. The DOC (drug of choice) of that person on the street may be the same as your dentist. When I worked in an ED it was so easy to generalize drug users as a ‘them’; someone in the stretcher, not someone who was entering orders or taking vitals right next to you. Not your best friend who seems so content with life. Not yourself.
I’m not sure why I’m writing all this. Maybe to get it off my chest. Maybe to share what it’s like.
I miss standing in the high prairies, feeling the breeze on my face and hearing the tall grass around me rustling. I miss the ever-present mountains that all of us used as a marker for where west was. I miss the bright sun, and thunderstorms, and the thin air that was so pure compared to lowlands. I miss standing on a peak and seeing clouds below me. I miss the sound of cicadas.
i think it is good to warn people in advance about the circumstances that will cause you to bite them and i think that having given that warning it is good to follow through when the time comes
Not to get all serious-post on here, but these last several months have been super rough. Cried every day for about a month straight. Teetered closer to suicide than I ever have before. Stopped being able to sleep without panicking. Traumas resurfaced. Did some things that were high risk, even by my standards.
But there has been good in it too. I got a ridiculously sweet boyfriend. My polycule is learning how to integrate. I started bupropion and trazodone. The sun is out and I’ve been cooking and baking again.
I am not meant for this world. I belong in a thick magical forest, filled with woodland elves, fairy rings, old oaks, werewolves howling at the moon, faeries dancing under waterfalls, and unicorns hidden away- only seen by nymphs. I want to live in a cottage surrounded by falling petals. I want fauns to play their flutes from willow trees. I want to hear the sound of dragons roaring through the sky. I want to make a garden for myself, and make a welcome sign to all the woodland creatures to my cottage of love and magic. I just want to live in a fairy tale and leave this world forever.
Everyone battles their own inner demons, and as much as I want them to be happy, the battle is theirs to conquer. Any moment I can manage to get a genuine smile or laugh out of them, you bet I will indulge in that moment 😈
tumblr friendships are hard to maintain like im sorry i know i havent talked to you in 5 months but you’re still super rad and i still consider us friends im just dumb
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