“I’m getting out of here. They’re trying to poison me. You shouldn’t take medication either. They want to kill us all. Jesus is the only one who can save us. There are natural ways to heal,” she whispered.

Ms. Brown was a tall, slender woman of Haitian descent. Her piercing eyes were usually covered by a brown shoulder length wig, but on this night her serious expression lay in plain sight like a lone cactus in a desert from beneath her stocking cap. It was one of the rare moments when she decided to speak to me as opposed to herself. She was a paranoid schizophrenic, and my roommate in a psychiatric unit at Bellevue Hospital in NYC.

Groggy and overly medicated, I had agreed to check myself into one of the most dangerous psychiatric facilities in the country earlier that morning. I thought I was being admitted into the hospital from the ER to rest. Now I was in the system, stripped of my cell phone and personal items, with my every move monitored.

Ambitious but naive, I had moved to Jersey City about 6 months earlier with no real financial backing. Just a marketing internship and a retail job in Times Square. The first cold winds of 2012 smacked me in the face and brought me back down to reality. I panicked. I cancelled my scheduled job interview for that morning and took the Path train home. I downed the last two of my Celexa pills down my throat, thinking it would pull me out of my feelings of failure, or at least clear my head enough to find motivation to stay in the greater NYC area. My only rationale for these actions was a desire to avoid an onset of chilly weather gloom at all costs.

Instead, the pills had the opposite effect. I felt even more depressed. I went back to the city and took the journey from midtown to 1st Ave. The September afternoon felt more like a November night in Maryland where I had moved from. The plan was to take a rest, have my prescription renewed, and keep it moving.

Now I was listening to Bible sermons before bed courtesy of Ms. Brown Baptist Church. I lay in my bed waiting for the next “head check”. I had the routine down from memory. Breakfast, medication, groups, lunch, medication, more groups, more medication, dinner, more medication, bedtime. Irony at it’s best. I worked as a CNA in a state mental facility just four years prior.

After asking the universe how I ended up on the other side of the spectrum for the hundredth time, I thanked karma. I was so glad for every time I ordered carry out for my former patients, let them have extra snacks from the vending machine, or stay outside longer for fresh air break. I truly believe my past kindness kept me protected during my own hospitalization.

The food was disgusting. The therapy groups seemed to be designed for elementary school age children. No wonder my former patients rarely wanted to participate in them. Alot of the patients were going to great lengths to avoid taking their prescriptions, and it made me wonder why I was so quick to take my antidepressants without question. Did I even really have seasonal affective disorder? Celexa had only made me feel worse.

“They want you to take it so they can really make you crazy so you can stay here forever,” Ms. Brown would say.

After eight long days I was free. I cried as I said goodbye to my new acquaintances. Back in 2008, I would’ve felt like an institution was the best answer for their lives. I left knowing a life of hall pacing and pill popping isn’t fit for anyone. I ended up moving back to Baltimore and researched alternative treatments for my so called condition. Now in 2014, I got through my first winter without any meds for the first time since I was 19, and have never felt more clear minded. Pill free for one year and five months now.

Ms. Brown from what I understand is also free. She managed to escape during “medication time” after lunch on my last day at Bellevue. Jesus had finally come to save her like she helped to save me.

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Laik
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