The Mental Illness Drunk Tank

These days, due to a strict regimen of mood stabilizers, antidepressants, and anti-anxiety pills, panic attacks are rare and mild. But this summer, I had one that ripped and roared through me with wild intensity. My breath was caught somewhere in my tightening chest, only exhaled in sobs as I said, over and over, “I need to go to the hospital.”

In my pajama pants, t-shirt, and college sweatshirt, I went. I sat in the plastic-backed chair that reminded me of elementary school computer labs, and when the intake nurse asked me what brought me in that night, I stroked my recently self-sliced hand and said, “I don’t want to live anymore.”

I was quickly moved from the general waiting room to the psychiatric emergency center, where a drunk girl on a gurney tried to negotiate with the cops who accompanied her, and a woman who was soft around the edges received a shot of some sedative. I fidgeted in my chair, looking from nurse to laughing nurse, wondering where I would be taken, what then would be done.

For several minutes, I sat in stasis as the staff joked with one another, seemingly unaware of those with thousand-yard stares, those desperately struggling to come across as fine, and those, like me, who kept searching for someone to help or to explain. We were collectively parked in convenient places, our personal possessions stashed in plastic bags, and left with whatever emergency demons had brought us there in the first place, doing battle under watch, but alone.

Eventually someone came for me with double-sided no-slip hospital socks, and ushered me into an elevator. She explained that, in this new wing, someone would take my vitals, and a nurse would come speak to me, then a doctor. From the information taken by these three, an evaluation would be formed, and someone would decide the best course of action for me — something I was incapable of doing for myself.

At that point, I hadn’t the slightest idea what should be done with my body or mind. I had carved into the top of my hand earlier that day, first with a knife, then with my keys. I had shaken and sobbed and wished for nonexistence. I wanted nothing more than to not be in charge, to have someone of sound mind cradle my broken one and make it better.

Instead, I was shunted into the mental illness drunk tank.

The waiting room and hallway of the ward were lined with couches upon which some slept, some watched Law and Order, and some spoke, to themselves or to others not present. One man repeated the phrase “I’m going to do it. I’m going to kill myself and be with my mother,” until sedated by a member of the staff in yoga pants and a hooded sweatshirt who looked younger than me. Another man wandered the halls and tried to read, too manic to have slept that night or the one before. A third lay with his head on his lover’s lap as she murmured to him to take the pain away.

The company we kept was each other, and the silence; the staff sequestered themselves away in their office, promising nurses and medications, but rarely or slowly following through.

I chose a couch for myself and stared with unfocused eyes at the drop ceiling, attempting to lose myself in the patterns up there, to find numbness while I waited for deliverance from the pain. Around 1 AM, after watching doctors and nurses leave in pairs and groups, but never seeing anyone new come in, I realized that I was expected to “sober up.” No one new would come until the morning, and any unfeeling calmness that had filled my body whooshed out in a panicked exhalation.

I immediately asked to leave, knowing there would be comforts in my apartment that were denied me here: a bed large enough to thrash around on, my brown fuzzy blanket that my cat loved to knead, the scalding baptism by shower. However, when I demanded my freedom, the request was denied due to a hospital policy regarding liability. When I started to Google my rights as a mental health patient in the state of New York, I was told that I couldn’t use my phone in the wing (as a sign of rebelliousness, I refused to put it away, and instead composed a barrage of tweets about my treatment, or the lack thereof).

I did not sleep until 4 AM, when my Klonopin and Trazodone were finally delivered. Until then, I paced the halls, ate a mediocre egg salad sandwich, and imagined making a break for either the door or the elevator. Perhaps I’d be strapped to a gurney and sedated, but then I wouldn’t have to be conscious, and waiting.

A nurse didn’t come for me until 5 AM. His evaluation, an extended series of questions and answers, could have been couriered from my therapist. Three hours later, a doctor arrived to present me with a referral for a partial inpatient program at the hospital, which I never attended.

Some twelve hours after I walked into the emergency room, the hospital spat me out to sleep and to ponder the system.

I was the first to be seen by anyone, probably because I put up a fight, because I was reasonably well dressed, and was white. There were others in far greater need, others who deserved more immediate attention, who were left to wait because they could not or would not advocate for themselves. They weren’t of a certain class, or race, or mental state, and so they were made to wait — we were all made to wait.

When I entered the hospital emergency room that night, I expected the urgency that the phrase “I don’t want to live anymore” deserves. I expected expedient treatment from a doctor. I expected talk, medications, and recommendations, not youthful administrative staff eating Doritos and popping out every so often to take my blood pressure. I expected a mental health system built on compassion and respect for the time and minds of the mentally ill.

I received none of these things. None of us did.

If I find myself in a similar state again, I won’t even consider the emergency room — not if I’ve hurt myself, not if I want to become dead somehow, not if I find myself incapacitated by anxiety. I would rather combat them in my own home than in a space so utterly devoid of proper care.

But I hope for a day when those afflicted with mental illness have a refuge from their chemical demons regardless of the hour. I hope it is outfitted with more than couches to wait, sleep, or rock to and fro on. I hope there are more than outdated magazines to read. I hope there are full-fledged doctors there to tend to those who can’t sleep, who can’t escape the voices in their heads, who can’t imagine living another minute, let alone another day.

I hope for a day when those of us who need help can expect to receive it.