To say living on the ward is stressful is to put it weightlessly. My roommate is named Rodney, and he is about my father’s age, with severe sleep apnea. I learn he sleeps 20 hours a day. His locomotive snores keep me from any silence, in sleep or thought, and basically exile me from our room until the day he is discharged and asks me, “When I go out there, I should hide my money right? People will kill you for money, right?”

The technicians are angry babysitters who walk in on you every 15 minutes, during rounds (the one time you’re not allowed to bother them). The other patients span a wide spectrum of mental illnesses, from silent depressives to paranoid schizophrenics having full-blown hallucinations. It is blindingly bright always, and there is nothing to do for most of the day but stress over your outlandish situation, and somehow, someone is constantly screaming, day and night. A self-fulfilling paranoia sets in: Am I acting “crazy”? Does my time-killing pacing reflect my need to be here? Does this blanket I wrap around my shoulders for warmth paint me as unstable? When they give me my medication, what aren’t they telling me about it? I refused any sedatives or benzos for fear of being too clouded to properly communicate to my psych that I surely did not belong here, trapped and building a temple to anxiety.

All of this on top of: What does my family think? Who, if anyone, is wondering why I’m missing? How much work will I miss and how will this affect my career? Will I be treated differently once I’m released? (Yes.)

And: O blessed holy fuck, am I going to be okay? Am I really?

As the initial shock of my new environment waned, the first thing I noticed was that death is not an escape plan. The entire floor is suicide proof, with asphyxiation being the number one threat. Things I learned that, without proper safeguarding, you could hang yourself from: doorknobs, bed frames, chairs, sink pipes, toilet bowls, handicap railing, and showerheads. The towels are miniature (even though the fitted sheet would have done the job, better even). There is zero plastic on the ward, all trash-bags are paper, and if you need to write something down you can check out a Magic Marker.

The daily routine is this (with slight variation):

0730: Breakfast (Egglike Products and Various Mush)

1000: Community Meeting (Airing of Grievances)

1030: Activity (Drawing/Percussion Circle/Repeat)

1130: Lunch (Food and Arguments)

1200: Group Therapy (Rudimentary Tips for Living)

1300: Activity (Listening to an iPod)

1500: Group II (Substance Abuse, Arguing)

1630: Dinner (Learn to Love Salt)

(Long unstructured period of questioning your sanity)

2145: Medication/Snack (The Battle of Turkey and PB&J)

2200: “Sleep” (Nightmares, Wailing Rehearsal)

Due to dietary restrictions and a streamlined assault against allergies, no spices are used in the “food.” Every meal is either tasteless, or covered in salt. With some real food I could get some sleep in this place, I think.

Aside from meals and medication, the rest of the schedule is completely optional. They encourage attendance to expedite your exit, or so they tell you, but they never check the sign-in sheets. They just want you to distract yourself from this brightly lit acid trip. Just ask the patients who’ve been here for three months — none of it really matters. The psychs truly want to help but they’re spread snowflake thin—insane caseloads and long hours— while the techs go through the motions, burned-out and tired, seeing every iteration of you before, bodies passing through the halls like forgotten clouds.

So you kill time. Any way you can. They don’t tell you when you’re going to leave and they don’t tell you when your next meeting with the psychiatrist is (the magical wizard who holds your fate in his hands). I’d pace, blanket-clad, up and down the two long halls sometimes hours at a time. When I wasn’t doing the psychotic shuffle, I’d sit in the hall and pull out my beard hairs or attempt to read one of the few books left in the activity room. Even fiction, however, was difficult to tolerate in this stark reality. Garrison Keillor is kissing his cousin and eating apple pie while our Jamaican Nurse Ratchet is shouting “Calm down, retards!” Somehow the latter feels more American, Gary, so take your Main Street postcard-family and shove it up your wholesome asshole.