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All Things Must Pass

Charles Hayes

    Every hour from morning until night the loud raspy sound of the buzzer would reverberate through the ward. That meant it was time to line up in front of the heavy locked door for a cigarette break. The ward I was on was located on the third floor of a brick building that stood among many similar buildings spread out over hundreds of acres. Reinforced screens were on all the windows, making sure that there was no way in nor out except through the door where the cigarette line began to form. Immediately on the other side of the door and off the hall was the smoke room.
    It was the buzzer that woke me that first morning at the state hospital. I could remembered how I got there—no one could forget that—but I couldn’t remember exactly what had happened when I arrived. All I could recall was that it had been very dark and that I had been taken into the ground floor of a building that had no lights except for a couple of pale yellow ones that lit the room where I entered. There had been some white coats with a needle who apparently had given me a shot while the cops removed the leg chains. Now there were all these people lined up in the hall outside my room. Besides the one I was in, there were six other beds in the room, all vacant and made up. I was the only one still there.

    The entry into the room was without a door so I could see quite clearly the people in the hall. They were all male, a mixture of young and old, big and small. Some were dressed in hospital gowns and others in plain street clothes, holding their cigarettes and ready for fire, since patients were forbidden to have matches or lighters.
    One of the aides, a young woman, entered my room and asked me if I smoked. She told me that if I did, now was the time to line up for the break. Having no cigarettes and too worried to care I replied that I was out of smokes and guessed that I was going to quit. She offered me a couple of hers and when I refused she insisted, so I took the cigarettes and any thoughts of quitting were quickly forgotten. Not dissimilar from the Marine Corps, smoking was encouraged as a means to exert further control over the patients. Shortly after I took the cigarettes and got in line, the door was unlocked and we were allowed out and into the smoking room to smoke as many cigarettes as we wished in the next ten or fifteen minutes. It was one of the big deals of the ward. Another big deal was meal time, when the same procedure was followed except instead of going in the smoke room we would be shuttled down in the key operated elevator and then herded as a group out of the building and over to another building that housed the cafeteria. After we had eaten, the process would be reversed.
    The food was not bad. Better than the marines and what I was able to cook up at home. That first day I was allowed to make a phone call back to Fox Run, get a hold of Jeff, and ask him to feed the dogs until I could get back. We had stacked some cases of beer over the fence at my shack and I told Jeff to take it in return for his help. After that was agreed to the major worry about my dogs was partially lifted. I had no idea what was coming next or how long I would be there and no information was provided by the staff. I quickly found out that taking stock of what I could observe was the best way to learn things around there.

    The process of getting through the withdrawal and shock of the first few days was structured so that the pills came regularly. That was also done in long lines where one filed up to a split door with a dispensing shelf on the bottom half and the top half fully open. The medication had to be taken at the door and the staff checked to see that it was and not hidden somewhere to stockpile for a later suicide.
    I learned that the guys in hospital gowns were the ones that found it hard to get out of bed after being medicated. A guy a little younger than me was next to me in line. The same height with an athletic build and long wavy brown hair over clear intelligent eyes, except for the blue gown, he could have been almost any young college student. From a small town not far away, there in the Kanawha Valley, he was friendly in a mild sort of way. I found him much easier to talk to than many of the so-called normal people that I had met in my life. He told me that he had been there two years and really didn’t like it. The medicine was hard for him to tolerate and made him feel like he wasn’t all there. All he wanted was to go home, but so far there hadn’t been a hint that that was going to happened. Clearly depressed about it all, he still managed to smile some. When we got to the medicine counter I saw that he was given a large dose of liquid Haldol, a major anti-psychotic drug. I just got the normal detox stuff which was just a sedative of one kind or another. That was all the aide giving the medicine would tell me. I still hadn’t seen a doctor or a therapist so I only had the fact that I didn’t get knocked out to go by.
    About an hour and a half later I saw the same guy that I had been next to in line coming toward me down the hall with a gait that looked a little strange, sort of stiff and mechanical. I figured that the guy was just showing recognition with a little skit like some people do when they see someone they know. But as we passed and I was about to greet him the guy’s eyes told a different story. They were vacant and saw nothing. Where they had been clear and intelligent before they were now cloudy and fixed. I just stood there and watched him pass by looking like something out of Frankenstein. It was not the same young man that I had spoken with a short while before. That man was gone and in his place was this medical model that no one would know. A few days later coming back from the cafeteria, which was right before meds, the same young man made a run for it and made it over an embankment into the woods before anyone could stop him. A few days later he was back after being apprehended by the sheriff in his home town. I would look in the door of his room sometimes and always he was sleeping. How he ate was a puzzle to me and the whole thing smacked of injustice. I began to keep a journal.

    The other occupants of my room were drinkers also and about the same age as me. Seems that all the drinkers were housed in that one room while the other psychiatric patients were housed in other rooms throughout the ward. The treatment program for the drinkers was a 28 day process and always full so when one class would finish another would start. That’s when the people in my room could expect to move to new housing. When I finally saw a treatment team I found out that it consisted of three people, a doctor, a psychologist, and a social worker. They tried unsuccessfully to diagnosis me, so the doctor put me on three different kinds of pills. I figured that they were shot gunning me with multiple meds to cover a broad range of disorders. I was not happy about it and could see that the process was thoroughly lacking in anything that could get me moved along and out of there. The pills caused me to nap often and it was during one of those naps that I had one of my nightmares. The dream was about being back on the bunker lines in the Nam and under attack by the VC. I was terrified, alone and out of ammunition as a single VC casually walked toward me with his AK-47 at the ready. I wanted to scream for help but no sound would come out of my mouth. The VC just kept coming forward with that determined look that said I was dead. The more I tried to scream the worse it got. There was nothing I could do about it but still I continued to furiously struggle with the attempt to make some sound. The VC walked up to the edge of the bunker, looked down at me with a face that showed very little, and aimed his AK at my head. Knowing that I was going to die the scream finally burst loose in a long wail. As I jerked awake and sat up on the bed I saw the young male aide, who had shaken me awake, jumping back in startled horror. He had wanted to tell me that it was time for meds. His eyes were as big as saucers and he was screaming also. All this happened in just a flash before we both realized what had happened. We just looked at each other. I felt embarrassed and didn’t know what to do so I just laughed and then the young aide laughed. I had scared the shit out of him and apologized. He told me that it was ok, that he would get over it. Then I went to get his meds.

    The next time my treatment team saw me they told me that they didn’t think my problem was about alcohol, that I was being classified as a psychiatric case. I figured that if I didn’t have to go through a month long treatment program maybe I could get out of there sooner. This possibility gave me hope.
    I tried to stay in shape by doing exercises on the floor in the mornings. Always up before the lights came on I would do my little routine, shower, and get the coffee urn going. I had inherited it from one of my roommates who had gone into alcohol treatment. Most of the patients had a constant craving for caffeine and I could get coffee from the commissary and brew it up then sell it for a dime a cup, making about three bucks a day.

    I was adjusting quickly to the loony bin and faithfully keeping my journal. One of the staff saw me writing in it and suspiciously inquired about what I was doing. I just said that I was writing down the things that happened there. The aide, an older woman, just let it go but I could tell that she didn’t like it. It seemed that she was about to stop me but then thought better of it. I had no doubt that the place was a real cuckoo’s nest, better than any Hollywood could ever invent, and to get a script of it was just too much to pass up.

    The only therapy that I was exposed to was an arts and crafts class where I painted with watercolors. The others did similar things and for a couple of hours they got their creative fix. I took it in good stride but I could not help feeling the nature of the whole thing, the ultimate in custodial care. There were also lots of escapes, recaptures, and fights with the throwing of chairs and the whole nine yards but most people were so incapacitated that they could only do minimal damage, except for the drinkers. They didn’t get the tough meds like most of the others and they could be very tricky and foxy when it came to little scams here and there to make life more interesting. These events would usually involve an escape to one of the bars in the city just beyond the fences. One of the guys that was in my room got away one day and then simply returned in the middle of the night, drunk and raising hell. They put him in a padded room and he literally raised hell and pounded the door all night long. The guy was not very big and I was amazed at his stamina and strength in his pursuit of communicating to the world how fucked up he thought it was. It reminded me of myself.
    This little guy was good with women too. A dance was held once in one of the buildings with a big dance floor where the women and men were allowed to mix. The same guy that had raised hell all night took the woman that I had unsuccessfully tried to warm up and had her talking and laughing in one dance. Or maybe it was because I was just too rigid and this guy was more lighthearted. Being with the women was a very big deal but it was closely monitored and progressed to nothing more than an old fashioned social when it came to any romance.
    I met a nice looking woman in arts therapy who knew the daughter of one of the people on Fox Run. They had gone to high school together. The woman seemed happy and well adjusted. She was friendly and sociable and comfortable in her own skin which was a rarity there at the state hospital. Surprisingly, she had been there 15 years and it was her home. I figured that it took all kinds but that kind of home was not for me. Ironically it was the spunky little alcoholic who was good at escapes and with women that showed me the way out. I had never talked to the guy. In fact I kept pretty much to myself and talked very little to anybody but I didn’t miss a whole lot. I suspected that the commitment procedure that had put me there mandated that if I disagreed with my incarceration I was entitled to file a petition that requested a court hearing within 72 hours in order to air my grievance. I had learned that while working at a hospital in another place. But I had also learned that I was supposed to be able to defend myself in the initial commitment. I hadn’t been allowed to say even one word. I had been cuffed and chained.

    I began to feel that my rights had been violated as it always seemed to go when dealing with the American legal system—you get what you pay for and I had no money. But neither did the little guy who knew how to play the system. When he got bored with pretending that he was waiting for a treatment opening and wanted to get out of there he filed one of those petitions. I waited and watched to see how they were going to try him but it never happened. Three days later he was freed. I had been there almost two weeks and I wanted out too. So I immediately went to the office and filed the same petition that essentially said that you must let me go or prove you have the right to keep me here. The staff took my application like it was just another kind of treatment modality that was expected to come along at the proper time. Two days later I was called in by my treatment team. This time I did not see the doctor and there were no more pill prescriptions. That was good because I had lately been hiding them under my tongue until I could get out of line and remove them. The psychologist was also a Vietnam Veteran. On one previous occasion we had talked some about it. He had been in the army with the tanks down South. He told me that I would be released the next day and could go if I wanted to, but if I stayed they would help me get veteran’s compensation. He acted like it was a done deal. I wondered why they could do it when I sure as hell couldn’t. But at that point I didn’t care, I just wanted out of there.
    Next I saw the social worker who gave me enough money for the bus ticket and a referral to the same local mental health center where I had been before. Next morning I was out of there and on the greyhound to the southern part of the state. Then I called a guy that I knew to take me over the mountains to Fox Run.

    It was during the hot part of the summer and the yard was grown up when I got home. When I arrived my dogs came out from under the house where it was cool and greeted me. They seemed fine. Since I had passed the word for the river people to come up there and take whatever they could find, the garden was bare. When I entered the shack I saw that the skillet on the stove was full of maggots from leftover hamburger and that there were dirty dishes scattered about. Pretty dirty all over as usual, but what I noticed most was that it was so quiet. There were no screams nor fights. No crazy people in your face wanting to know why you were doing whatever you were doing. A shack and a little piece of earth nestled in the hot summer Appalachian place known as Fox Run. Without a doubt there would be snakes where the grass was thick. It was a pretty poor place but lovely compared to where I had been. I was home and ready for another run.

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