I decided at the time that suicide wasn’t the answer. I was being selfish – I had to think about my son and how he would feel if killed myself. Mind you this is only one of the episodes in my life.
I arrived at Rehab around 10:30pm, and I looked terrible. I’m sure I didn’t smell very good since for a week all I did was smoke and drink with no showers. Yuck! Since I had tried suicide they put me in suicide ward in a very small dark room. The rehab people would come in and take my blood pressure, which was sky high, and take a lot of blood. They gave me this pill that was to help me detox. And detox it did. Here I was in this small dark room literally going crazy. I couldn’t believe I was there, not me! I sweated, and I had chills, I sweated and sweated. My hair was drenching wet as well as my clothes. I ached all over especially my arms and legs all the way up to the next morning. I didn’t sleep you see – I was afraid to go to sleep – afraid I might die or one of the loony’s in the ward would kill me.
The next day they let me take a shower and put a gown on since I didn’t have any change of clothes. They probably burned my clothes. I saw the doctor (psycho doctor) and he told me I had to take lithium until I was completely detoxed. I told him I needed pain pills for the pain. He said, “No more drugs. You have to wait this one out.” I was starting to hallucinate and felt like everyone was looking at me and pointing fingers. Look at her she is a sicky! My imagination was going crazy see and hearing things that wasn’t even there. Don’t let anyone tell you that detox is easy. I had over a week of wine in my system, along with the hundreds of packs of cigarettes I smoke. I don’t even remember eating.
Finally, after a couple of days they put me in this other ward where the Alcoholics were. I told them I don’t need to be there, I needed to be in the depression ward and be treated that way. But, they said no I needed to be there. I wasn’t an alcoholic, I was just depressed and drank and drank to make it go away. I felt if you treated the depression then the drinking desire would go away. That didn’t work so there I sat going to classes and therapy to learn how to cope with myself and learn more about myself on why I would drink.
There were a lot of people there, I couldn’t believe it. We were watched so closely – some of the people were very nice but there were some that weren’t. There was one that kept riding me – telling me all the time about things I was doing wrong. I still couldn’t believe I was there. I had this one guy stalking me – I told the nurses so they put him in his room.
I got a roommate and she wasn’t bad – I thought we had become friends. Tell you latter.
There was a guy, Elliott, who had manic depression (bipolar) and he was in bad shape. It was way manic. I became his friends, along with another young guy, Peter. It was like my children. He was a heroin addict and was really in bad shape. All we did most of the time is seat in the lounge talking and watching TV, and we would have AA meetings and therapy. The most exciting place was out in the courtyard where we would go and chain smoke. I told the doctor that I wanted to quite smoking and he said only one thing at a time. I couldn’t believe he said that! Some were wearing patches. I guess he felt it wasn’t time for me.
There was so much drama in rehab. One person even hung himself in the depression ward. That was really sad. I’ve always been the type of person that helps the other person. I have a lot of compassion for people that are in pain. They called me the “caregiver.” Nurse Hatchet kept telling me to stay way from the guys, because they were men. HA! I told her they like to talk to me and felt comfortable around me. She said,” Stop it right now! You need to take care of yourself right now and stay away from the boys!” I couldn’t, so I kept getting in trouble. I had a big mouth and I was really outspoken. I guess each day that I got better the more angrier I got and wanted to help others. So I kept getting in trouble.
Next, the therapies, family and more trouble..
