About That Time I Escaped From The Looney Bin, For Real

It was supposed to have been a routine case conference.

I’d been in the psychiatric unit for a week, dosed on Haldol and now just about able to string some sentences together. I could even move a little more freely instead of shuffling like a zombie, a side-effect of too-high a dose of the psychotic — which ironically made you look like a cartoon psychotic.

It was in the same room where I had been officially sectioned and separated from my parents and the usual array of white and blue uniforms attended but in a circle instead of the usual interview panel when I was admitted.

It was meant to be cozy, non-threatening.

Except it was not cozy and became increasingly threatening.

As they summarised my treatment in medical jargon, dosage rates and so forth without reference to me directly, I felt a deep sense of dislocation. I was ‘not here’ and this feeling persisted the more they referred to me in the third person. Hardly helpful since my whole psychotic episode was built on the premise that I was dead.

One of the issues they were trying to get to grips with was the fact that the MDMA-like substance was not really reducing. I was, in effect, a chemical battleground between their anti-psychotics and the dose I had ingested some weeks earlier. They did not know my body was not able to break it down in the normal fashion.

Eventually, one of the white uniforms broke the fourth wall and addressed me directly.

‘Gary, I’m Dr Martin,’ he intoned, as if he wanted applause. ‘I was the doctor that admitted you.’ He went on about my current state before adding:

‘I’m very interested in your case as in the 60s I worked at Porton Down so I am familiar with your symptoms.’

If this was meant to reassure me, it had the opposite effect. Even non-tinfoil hat wearers know that Porton Down was the MOD secret research facility where the British conducted LSD experiments on volunteer soldiers.

Dr Martin’s pronouncement simply cemented my fear that I was in a hostile place. Perhaps, I would be the next subject of his work. Not great if you’re having paranoid anxiety. After all, I was being held, albeit for my own good, against my will.

So I decided to escape.

Modern prison fiction always features an elaborate plot usually involving laundry vans or removable wall bricks. But it turns out escaping a psychiatric unit is a lot easier than I thought.

The next day after the case conference, I waited until they did the drug run — where the trolley came round with our meds — and I walked over to the area where the nurses made their tea and toast and picked up a white coat hung up behind the kettle.

I slipped it on, walked to the elevator and pressed G.

I didn’t really have a clue on what I was going to do. I didn’t have any money to get a bus back to Middleton and my parents but I knew I wasn’t going to be an experiment. I didn’t even have shoes, only the slippers I was admitted with.

The lift landed in reception and the doors opened with an optimistic ‘ker-ching’. It was now or never.

I walked past the front desk as calmly as I could and the security guy just looked at the white coat and then back to his newspaper — and for younger readers, these were items printed on dead wood containing facts — and that was it.

Free.

The car park at Darlington Memorial Hospital is pretty big. I just had to get across and past the art therapy block without being noticed and I would be in Darlington town.

Half-way across the car park, I realised I was surrounded by means of getting home — cars. I’ve never broken into a car, and I certainly didn’t know how to start one without keys even if I had but I began trying all the handles on nearby cars, furiously tugging at each one.

It wasn’t long before I was noticed.

Two cleaners leaving the art therapy block came over as I was trying to get into a Food Escort XR3i — I’d always liked the garishly fancy spoiler on the back.

‘You alright, pet?’ asked one.

‘Yes, I’m fine. I’m Dr Martin and I’ve lost my keys.’ I replied.

‘And your shoes as well, pet?’ asked the other, looking at my grey shiny slippers on my sockless feet.

The game was up and in the middle-distance the blue ribbed jumper of the security guy was ambling towards us.

‘Look, I just want to go home. Back to my mam and dad.’ I pleaded.

‘You will, luv. Just talk to this gadgee here and I’m sure it will sort itself out.’

The loss of my liberty was final. Only a few years later I would be in Armley Jail on the outskirts of Leeds, doing a story on prison violence. As the prison officer union rep led me through the first of the locking doors, I had to ask for a breather. I was overwhelmed with a flashback of the sickening loss of freedom.

He said it was normal the first time. Nothing to worry about.

He was wrong. Very wrong.

Next time: Why Ice Cream Is The Currency Of The Psych Ward