One Flew Into the Coo-Coo's Nest

I had the distinct privilege of spending my 40th birthday in a mental ward -- to be more specific a "crisis intervention" center. The Sunday before my wife and I spoke in great detail. For the first time, both she and I came to a true realization of the magnitude of my problems. Suicidal thoughts, or simple thoughts of fleeing, were regular for me. For months I suffered from paralyzing inaction at work and allowed almost every client and matter to stymie. The real prospect of financial ruin, bankruptcy and perhaps even disbarment loomed before me. While my wife had guessed at some of this, the sheer magnitude of it all surprised her. For sometime our relationship had been rocky, even before this revelation. The remaining flex turned brittle and broke. Faced with the magnitude of my problems and likely the end of a thirteen year marriage, I broke as well.

Monday afternoon found me in the facility (at my wife's urging, I might add -- she is not a completely heartless person). Life in the facility is difficult to describe. You find yourself returned to childhood and beyond. Your belt , your watch, your keys, even your money are taken away from you to keep you from presenting a threat to yourself or others. Your clothes are washed for you by an attendant, not as a point of customer service, but again to keep you from harming yourself or others with the washing machine or dryer.

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner are all at set times -- much earlier than you are used to (dinner was at about 4:20). Not only was the food the typical bland institutional fare but there was only one choice of food with scanty servings -- I lost about 10 pounds while in the facility. However, because the dining room was on a different wing of the unit, the walk to and from each meal constituted the only real excitement for the day. For the remainder of the day I was free to watch television, to read one of a couple dozen dog-eared and decades old books from genres that were wholly unappealing to me, or to sleep. As the adjustment to my medications made me very drowsy, sleeping during the day became a very viable option. There were also board and card games led by the assistants, but I could never bring myself to get involved in these. My only responsibility was to metabolize the medications I had been given. Otherwise, I was free to do nothing -- and as little presented itself to do, doing nothing became amazingly easy.

My fellow denizens were a mixed lot. Several were drug addicts sent to dry out by the various local townships before continuing with their judicial process. I carefully avoided any mention of my profession to avoid the incessant requests for free legal advice that necessarily follow. Others were individuals such as myself, professionals and working individuals who needed to have a 'time out' and a readjustment of medications including a self-employed plumber, a business man, and a carpenter. I tended to spend time with these folks. Then there were the truly ill -- those being held until a court order requiring them to submit to long term treatment at the state's mental health facility could be obtained.

The truly ill presented the most uncomfortable aspect of the stay for me. Not because I ever felt endangered by them, but because part of my work as an attorney had been to work the very docket that they would appear on. The town where I reside has the largest mental health facility in the state, and attorneys in this town on a fairly regular basis are called upon to represent the severely mentally ill as they went through the process. Now I found myself on the other side of that system. Thankfully, as I came into the facility voluntarily it did not become necessary for me to appear as an inmate of the asylum before the judge that I had argued many cases before, represented by an attorney who knew me.

As for the conduct of the truly ill, it was mostly benign. One lady kept trying to pull down her pants and would regularly walk around the unit doing the 'tomahawk chop'. One older gentleman seemed fairly lucid until he began to tell you about the scar between his shoulder blades where his ancient ancestors cut off his wings. Another younger gentleman walked around the ward, regularly stating in a loud voice the first three or four "steps" of the twelve step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. The drug addicts would often sit in corners, trading information on the best and most undetectable means of cooking meth or passing drug screens. Me and my cohorts generally spent the day watching daytime television and/or watching one of the five DVDs available to us (I saw entire showings and scenes of "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Gone in 60 Seconds" more times than any human being should be subjected to over the course of one week).

The treatment I received itself was, in fact, pretty good. An RN there was the first person ever to ask if in addition to suicidal thoughts if I had ever developed a plan -- to which I honestly had to answer "yes". Why had I not acted on it? Well the ultimate conclusion that I came to mirrored that of Hamlet in the famous "To be, or not to be" soliloquy -- "And thus does conscious make cowards of us all." Weeks before I had even begun memorizing it as a mantra to keep myself from "tak[ing] up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing them end[ing] them."

During my stay my condition was stabilized and my medications were adjusted. In addition I received a much needed "time out" from the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' as good ol' Willie put it. I felt ready by Friday of my stay to return home. First I would need to pass the shrink test.

Forever I have used humor, especially self-deprecating humor, in everyday conversation. It is part of my nature. So, when the shrink asked about what I thought of my stay I told him that, having turned 40 in a mental ward, that I'd been cheated out of my rightful mid-life crisis -- I should be chasing blondes with big boobs and driving gaudy sports cars. The shrink, of course, felt that I might be getting a little bit manic and ordered that I stay the weekend for further observation. (Note: I really did say that to the shrink and he really did make me stay an extra 2.5 days as a result. Shrinks have NO sense of humor.)

I do not think that it will be necessary for me to ever return to such a facility, but it holds less fear for me now than it did before. I would just be sure to bring several books with me that I would like to read.

Oh, and I wouldn't crack any jokes around the shrink, either.