[Edited to correct typo:  Thank you Tim!]

Continued from here:
http://vaslittlecrow.livejournal.com/412453.html

Have any of you ever watched "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"?  I have not only watched it, I lived it.  After spending the 1995 winter holidays at FFTC, I realized that committing myself had been one of the worst mistakes I ever made in my life.  Still, that place provided me a strange from of solace that I could not get in the outside world.  Let me explain:

I was able to continue my college education through correspondence courses at a very slow pace, while I was in and out of that institution.  There was no way in hell I was going to lose my free scholarship ride, over a case of what I viewed as a case of temporary insanity.   Every day was chaos at home.  Sometimes my then-husband was a total sweetheart, compassionate and helpful.   Other times not-so.  As my mental health fell apart ZNLArts (Zitro No Loca Arts) went down the tubes.  ZNLArts was an publishing firm I started at age 15 which its peak boasted a regionally syndicated comic strip and an entertainment monthly with a circulation of 15,000.  My marriage was not faring much better either.  One more than one occasion, I would run like hell for several miles and hide in the home of the first friend who would let me into their home to avoid my first husband's wrath.  When I could not run, I had two choices -- take the punishment or fight. 

I usually just took it, but during one of my visits from the loony bin, while on meds, I fought back with a knife, again.  I locked myself in the bedroom knowing I wasn't going to win.  I called the YWCA (I think,) begging for shelter, while I carved a butterfly onto my belly with a ballpoint pen.  Stupidly, I told the truth about what was happening.  I was absolutely terrified that I would kill my then-spouse and I needed a safe place to stay.  The woman politely informed me that they would not take violent people into the shelter.  The old husband managed to get into the room by the time I finished the call.  He saw the butterfly I carved onto my belly, freaked out, and beat the crap out of me as I was on the line with 911.  I couldn't speak to the operator about the situation.  I've always stuttered horribly when I am nervous or scared, so I couldn't spit out my thoughts.  He hung up the phone and beat the shit out of me, in an effort to "get me back to my senses."  The cops showed up at the door a few minutes after he subdued me.  When they asked him what was happening, he simply told them, "She just got out of FFTC and I think that she needs to have her meds adjusted."  Predictably, I was throw back into the loony bin.  He was very good at making the situation look innocuous to those who were not in the know.  My neighbors and most of our friends didn't even realize what was going on.  "So-called" friends, just thought I was overreacting or that I was nuts.  To be fair, I probably was, but my home life really was chaos and I dreaded it.  My three-month vacation was a welcomed change.

FFTC was a shithole, don't get me wrong.  It was miserable place that only served to remind me that I was a nut.  Most of the patients were frighteningly normal, and I couldn't begin to understand why they were there.  We were thrown in together with gang members who were feigning illness to avoid jail time, severely ill people, sexual predators and a wonderful (seriously) identity thief/anarchist/pirate with a drinking problem who helped me more than any of the staff working there.  I almost got raped twice there.  That moved me to organize women patients who were sexually molested by a predatory patient, in order to complain .  The guy was allowed to stay in our floor, because they managed to dope him into submission, but that was no comfort.  The violent predator/meth fiend gangster was sent to the top floor.  This mental health facility had about four awesome staff members (including a financial aid worker, who seemed to be the only person who realized I was more abused than crazy.)  The rest of the staff, wasn't overtly abusive, but it consisted of overworked people who didn't give a rat's shit about the patients and dealt with them by feeding them a steady diet of TV, meds, dubious "group therapy" and inane crafts.  Thankfully, the food was better than the shit I had home, I could do my college studies in peace and I didn't have to deal with "my other half."  My discovery that meds could actually alter my thinking and elevate my mood was the icing on the cake.

I fainted a lot from hypoglycemia, so rather than testing my blood sugar, they deemed me narcoleptic.  To deal with my "sleep disorder", they fed my gateway to homemade meth: Ritalin and  Benzedrine, a.k.a. delicious speed.  I was especially fond of Depakote.  It was like getting drunk without the hangover, so I did what I could to get as high a dose as possible.  The tranquilizers/anti-psychotic (which are usually entirely inappropriate for autistics) made me hallucinate about me drowning,  They also made Dmitri "real" and other unpleasant monsters into a 3D hallucinations with sound, taste and smell, so I didn't like them much.  I often pulled the hide the pill under the tongue and spit it out trick, but far too often, I got caught.  They also gave me tremors, and Mellaril along with the speed, in specific fucked with my eyesight, gave me dyslexia (which I still have,) and made me the dizzy. Tylenol made my liver hurt (I found out a few years later than combining Tylenol & Depakote can destroy the liver.)  It also made my tranquilizer hallucinations worse, so I refused to take it. 

I begged for Aleve to deal with a particularly bad spell that involved me gaining 20 lbs in a single week, me lactating profusely, and having a horribly painful and long-lasting menstrual cycle that contained large amounts of tissue, when the heating pads one of the nice staff members gave me failed to mitigate the pain. It was written in my chart, that my reaction to the pain and my rage over not being given adequate pain relief, was due to a "temper tantrum."   Having heard my screams of frustration and seeing me overturning my bed to prevent a staff member with the personality and looks of Edna from feeding me those dreaded tranqs, my anarchist friend smuggled in some Aleve as I was trying to flee.  The moment I popped the pills into my mouth, my panic attack ended.  I still had to take the tranqs, but at least I was on the path to pain relief.

I will never forget my friend's words, "If you need any painkillers, or anything, just ask and I'll get it for you."  That single sentence was my introduction to the world of illicit drugs.  It's kind of weird to think that it started with smuggled Aleve, but everybody needs a gateway drug.