One North - based on a true story

"Motherfucker, I swear, man, if I don't get out of this place, I'm gonna go fuckin' crazy."
My mother pursed her lips at my words, obviously offended, and spelled the word "dog" on the Scrabble board.
"That's the whole reason you're here," she stated, correctly. I was crazy already. I mean, who else tries to overdose on anti-depressants and mood stabilizers? I'd been miserable all week, with no reason as to why, so as an impulsive resort to pain relief, I tried to end it. Forever.

***

"Your medication, darling!" Mel exclaimed in a sing-song voice, handing me the amphetamine drive that I desired. I gladly took my second dose, bumping up the intake of my high-spirited perscription to sixty milligrams. Tom Waits crooned a sweet jazz beat in the background as Mel and I sat on the asphalt road in the dark, the glow of headlights the only light we had. My breath danced in the beams, yet I felt so warm, so alive. The plastic straw in my mouth shredded the sides of my cheeks, and I could taste metal, spitting out a combination of saliva and blood every so often. At least I wouldn't grit my teeth. Our evening together ended, and speeding whilst speeding, I made it home from Carroll County to Catonsville in twelve minutes. That weekend, I didn't sleep for fifty-two hours, and as soon as I came down, my high spirits came down, too.

Nothing mattered any longer. I found that all I did was curl on a foam mat, unmoved, watching the skies change from pink, to purple, to black, closing my eyes with my body in fetal position and wanting to be that blackness: faded, gone, forgotten. It didn't make sense to me to continue what I'd started, desiring more than anything to be rubbed out, erased. Late Wednesday, I tried to fade from existence, and the next day, I was far away from home, further than I'd ever wanted to be.

***

"Wake up, Lindsay, it's time for Group!"
Rolling over at ten in the morning on Friday, my stomach grumbled and my eyes refused to remain open. The orderlies had taken away my makeup, and I had a mug like no other, a beast of fuckin' burden. Everything was blurry as I lumbered down the hall to the Day Room, noticing how little things had changed in my five-year absence. I plopped into a hard-backed chair and struggled to focus, acknowledging the faces that sat around me.

Everyone was forced to introduce themselves and form a reachable goal after a series of rules and regulations. I met them all: the homocidal maniac, the alcoholic, the cokehead, the woman with panic attacks, the depressed bunch, the pill-popper. And there I was with a facade so fine and dandy, wanting more than anything to go home, I walked into the room with a big, cheesy bullshit grin, hoping that if I fooled them into thinking I was cured, they'd let leave and go home on Saturday, Sunday - I didn't care. I just wanted to go home.

***

"This place is so boring." I groaned, downing another cup of cranberry juice and dumping the bottle into a trashcan to join its empty twin. Edgar and I roamed the hall with nothing to do, thinking, hoping, digging through our brains for something - anything. The Fast Trak exercise machine in the hall got annoying after a while, and being incarcerated with a bunch of loons and irritable addicts, it was a bad idea to piss someone off.

***

The facility had this puzzle of the United States that I constantly put together, never fully succeeding for reasons beyond my control.
"I can't find Hawaii or Alaska. And why the hell doesn't Illinois fit near Lake Michigan?"
Needless to say, this place was as empty as the boxes to half the games.

***

"Smoke break." Joe the orderly called. I walked out the door to join those who wanted to poison their lungs. It was the only time patients could go outside and see the world as much as they could through the wooden fence. Sure, second-hand smoke has caused deaths before, but just to be outside, I didn't care. I shivered in the darkness and stared at the smoky sky, the stars barely visible. We were inside a cage, fenced in from top to bottom with no real view of anything. Moving quickly past the slats in the fence, I could see a motion picture of the hospital parking lot. God, how I yearned to taste freedom.

***

Sunday came, and Edgar the homocidal maniac, Brian the depressed NYU graduate, Jimmy the angry play-by-ear pianist, and I had knocked back three bottles of cranberry juice. We'd glugged down so much of the stuff that they had to order more of it to be sent to One North, our own personal crazy house.

"This place is an insane asylum," Steve the cokehead said as the patients transitioned into lunch.
"That's what it's supposed to be," Kathy the pill popper reminded him.
"It drives you crazy 'cuz there's shit all to do."
Nodding in agreement, I continued to work on my discharge plan. I'd be damned if I had to spend another day incarcerated in that hell.

***

Reading in my room, and epiphany for my unknown depression hit me: the speed. I'd been reading David Sedaris's work the whole time I'd been in the hospital, and while humor had been frequent, I suddenly stumbled upon it. He spoke of his life as an attempted artist, how he experimented with countless drugs, and the effects of speed: the only drug I'd ever touched, the drug I'd taken only a week beforehand. Speed, he said, sends you into an unexplained, suicidal depression, causing you to pay tenfold for all the fun you thought you were having. It made complete sense. I'd been miserable with no reason as to why, and now it made sense. I had screwed myself over with speed, and it was a lesson not to touch it ever again.

***

"I'm ready to go home." I informed the doctor, fervor in my voice. He raised his eyebrows and tapped his pen against the desk: click, click, click, click.
"I am not sure that you are." He responded, folding his large, hairy hands.
"I've completed my discharge plan and I've even made a plan to manage my time better for the week at school." I handed him the half-crumpled papers, the handwriting terribly illegible, as usual. He must have thought I was in the junkie limbo with one look at my shaky hands. I watched as he reviewed my plans, nodding occasionally, so goddamn pretentious; but these smarmy psychiatrists think they're the shit just because they can look in a book, pretend to read, and say,
"Hmmm, yes, you're depressed," without any real thought.

Placing the papers on the desk, he picked up the telephone.
"I do not know that you are really better. Have you..have you had visitors this weekend?"
"Yes, my mother and stepfather visited me."
"And...would she say that you are doing better?"
"I would think so. She saw how I've improved over the weekend."
"Hmm...I will call her."
I gave him the number and he spoke to her for five minutes, which felt like the longest five minutes of my life. The pseudo-core junkie limbo got worse as he "hmmed" and "I seed" on the phone. Her story would confirm or deny my freedom.

"She says that you have been doing well." He stated. Well, no shit, I thought, but nodded, coolly, playing the sane card. "You will be discharged today, but when you see your outpatient psychiatrist, you must talk to him about the Adderall. I am thinking of putting you on it should you become as social and lively as you say you do. I must impress the seriousness of its use. You have been using it as a street drug, and your history of drug abuse, you must stop your drug habits. I will prepare the discharge paperwork."

I thought it was complete bullshit that he said I had a history of drug abuse. I'd used amphetamines twice in a two-year span. That's one hell of a history, all right! I practically danced down the hall, finally free from this hell. My mother arrived at two-thirty and I said my goodbyes, downing a final cup of cranberry juice with the boys. Kathy hugged me, her cheeks wet with tears, giving me words of hope and encouragement. I couldn't bring myself to forget these people I had learned to love over five days' time; I don't think I ever could.

***

I looked at the entrance of the hospital from the parking lot and watched the glass door turn, the people coming and going. My mother opened the car door as I stood there fascinated as an outsider looking in, knowing just how it felt to be trapped in that sterile cage. A part of me wished that I had stayed behind with this close-knit family I had just formed, but I knew far well that I had to move on and life my life, and I couldn't live life for the others.
"Are you ready to go?" My mother called from the inside of the car. Pausing a moment, I nodded, pulling my sunglasses from my head over my eyes.
"Yeah. I'm ready."