Communique #3: When I realize I'm still in the inferno

As we're on our way to the nuthouse, I should provide some additional context. These days I get horribly sick when I drink, so continuing to be an alcoholic is no longer feasible. I've been told over and over by everyone that if I just quit drinking my problems will go away. So I figure that now is the time when I really have to take my demons head on before it's too late. This isn't really me thinking logically, I'm just completely out of options and this is my hail Mary. I'm going to go there and fully cooperate no matter how much it makes my skin crawl.

Actual footage of my journey there.

Arrive at the nuthouse. Get asked the same questions yet again: what happened, what are your symptoms, etc. that literally dozens of people have asked me in the last week, many of them several times. And of course they took away anything like a phone that I could use to record wtf happens in there. At first they're relatively reasonable though. The supervisor says I'm allowed to keep my current grippy socks instead of replacing them with identical grippy socks like the rules say. I was even allowed to skip the piss test on the grounds that I've been in a carefully-controlled hospital for a week. So far these people seem remarkably reasonable and willing to bend the rules for really obvious common sense.

But right about now is where I see the first warning signs in hindsight. I was sent here for mental health services but the doctor "suggests" I should go to the detox unit because maybe I'll somehow go into alcohol withdrawal again. That makes no sense to me, but I know better than to refuse a "suggestion", and besides I assume this guy must know his job better than me. In hindsight, I can't help but wonder if that was more lucrative.

As drunk, my poetic justice is high anxiety.

At least in this detox ward they give me a tablet so I can finally get back in touch with you, my beloved dramanaut family. I kick back and wait for the bottom b-word nurse to come and explain to me what their program is. It's pretty late though so she doesn't make it that night.

Now is when I run into a really huge red flag that would have made Lenin proud. The peon nurse is giving out my sleeping meds. Knowing how these people operate, I make sure to ask exactly what I'm being given. Sure enough, she's up to something. She's trying to slip something funny in there. It's to help me sleep, but it's not diphenhydramine (Benadryl, ZZZQuil) And it's supposed to calm me but it's not... Well there's a dozen things that could do that. If she wanted something that does both, hydroxyzine (Vistaril) would work.

Instead she's trying to give me a drug only rarely used in real life but popular in mental wards for keeping patients slow and docile. I refuse it and explain why. That's probably the moment they decided I had to go. The only thing worse than a patient who knows what you're prescribing is one who knows why.

They sure don't like it when the patients get uppity.

Of course I'll never know since doctors who prescribe drugs at hospitals invariably do so from some office in a distant far-off wing of the building. Do we even know if he really exists? The nurse could just go play Candy Crush for a half hour and make it up themselves for all we know. The only thing you can be sure of is that you'll never be able to confront him about any controversial prescription because he's really busy until he's off duty.

At this point my instincts correctly told me to go defensive and assume the whole facility was going to go aggro on me, but I was determined to see this through to the end.

!schizos Next episode: Confrontation with Nurse Bottom B-word.