The Lodge

This is Chestnut Lodge Hospital (Rockville, MD), a psychiatric institution where I was locked up from 1993-5.

I spent much of my time there restrained to a chair against my will and in the quiet room. I escaped several times, which made the staff all the more eager to modify my behavior.

The Lodge burned to the ground in 2009.

Video: Patient Abuse at a Psychiatriatic Hospital

This is the video about how I was abused at a psychiatric hospital, Chestnut Lodge in Rockville MD. My original video was banned in some countries, so here is the soundless version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbavPA7pkaQ

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AWOL

One evening I decided it was time for me to leave Chestnut Lodge Hospital...  I had already escaped from several other mental facilities and was becoming adept at finding cracks in the security.

I had been there for over three months and the "anger provocation" therapy from Dr. H. was wearing on me.  I was becoming increasingly depressed (much more so than I had ever been), and I
credit this to the iatrogenic effects of an abusive staff and unit psychiatrist, not to mention the frequent suicides.  

So, inspired by Escape from Alcatraz, I fashioned a "dummy" (stuffed clothing plus a teddy bear head with headphones on it), and placed it in my bed in a sleeping position beneath the hospital pale-orange bedcovers.  
Then dressed in black so I would not be seen outside.  My running shoes were white and had reflectors, so I took a Sharpie and colored them black.  

In my fanny pack (also colored black with the Sharpie) I had my credit card which I had secreted past the staff's "contraband" check by hiding it in the heel of my shoe during the initial admission process.

To attempt AWOL (a.k.a "elopement") was risky, as I was on Level-2 20-minute checks.  

My room was on the first floor, so defenstration would be relatively easy if only I could get the window open. This I did by prying up the metal with a pair of scissors (also contraband because it was a "sharp" which presumably I could use to "harm myself or others"...) 

So I succeeded in opening the window about 6 inches - just enough to squeeze through my semi-anorexic body.  I slithered out, and once my feet reached the ground I sprinted across the campus and toward the highway.

Upon reaching the highway, I flagged down a cab and headed toward BWI airport, whereupon I purchased a ticket for my plane ride home to Cleveland.  

Stay tuned for a quote from my chart on the "elopement."

Side Effect: Death

I suffered a cardiac arrest at age 26 after my doctor gave me 800 mg. Mellaril (Thioridizine). It is still on the market, and now cautions on the box that one of its side effects is "sudden death." 

MELLARIL® (THIORIDAZINE HCl) HAS BEEN SHOWN TO PROLONG THE QTc INTERVAL IN A DOSE RELATED MANNER, AND DRUGS WITH THIS POTENTIAL, INCLUDING MELLARIL (thioridazine hcl) , HAVE BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH TORSADE DE POINTES-TYPE ARRHYTHMIAS AND SUDDEN DEATH.  (http://www.rxlist.com/mellaril-drug.htm).

Two kitchen workers performed CPR on me after I had been clinically dead for over 5 minutes. (The cardiac arrest happened at an unaccredited hospital where no trained medical staff were working the night shift.)

After recovering, I asked the prescribing doctor (Ringo Rider, MD) why this had happened.  

His response was to hand me a gift:  His PDR (Physicians Desk Reference of medications). 

"I'm not very smart," he confessed.  

A Hallucination

En route to the Jewel Osco Pharmacy,  which I frequented for refills on my cocktail of psychotropic medications, I collided with an Indian. Not an ordinary Indian, but a Blue Indian: His face was painted indigo, he wore a bright blue three-piece suit, plaid with a plume-like pattern, and wispy robin's egg blue feathers sprouted from his head where hair should have been.

"Sorry," I muttered, scuttling toward the pharamacy window. “What a whimsical, if somewhat premature and un-PC, Halloween costume”, I thought to myself. (After all, there was only one week til Halloween). As I approached the pharmacy window, scanning the store I saw yet more people milling about dressed in blue indigenous garb. Even the pharmacist wore a pseudo-Native American costume I handed her my scripts, she handed me my bag of meds, (Seroquel, Abilify, Lamotrigine, Prozac, Provigial and Klonopin) and I continued on my way.

But a gaping fissure in my reality emerged: As I walked down the cereal aisle Sugar Smacks in hand, a people in street clothes passing before me started morphing into Blue Indian before my eyes. Some carried axes. The aisle closed in around me and I lost my peripheral vision.

At that point, I thought it safest to leave the store. Walking briskly down the aisle, carefully avoiding the Blue Indians and trying not to look too alarmed, I headed home, popped a few antipsychotics, and went directly to bed. The blackness enveloped me as the cacaphony of voices in my head drew me into a dead sleep.

The Lodge

This is Chestnut Lodge Hospital (Rockville, MD), a psychiatric institution where I was held in 1993-5. I spent most of my time there restrained to a chair against my will. I escaped several times, which made the staff all the more eager to modify my behavior. The Lodge burned to the ground in 2009.

Me

This is my psychotic travelogue with excerpts from my upcoming book Bizarre Girl (working title).  It chronicles my experience with mental illness and the abuses I faced as a patient in various long-term mental institutions.