*****
O man...I could write you a book!
Yeah...I mean...I know its different/better Out West, in New England, in Europe, but in FL the "
Baker Act"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Mental_Health_Act, I feel, is subject to extreme misuse and is used, in my experience, as a sometimes punitive measure to replace actual arrests or as a means to deal with homelessness (in which case it is misused by the homeless as well...bc it gaurantees several days of meals and showers).
I know some people are helped by medication/hospitalizations, but for me I feel it has been used as a tool of manipulation and control. It has been lorded over my head as a threat by family/authorities/etc. Also while in facilities I have been detained for needless periods of time and have had to go to "mental health court" to have myself released, because I firmly believe I was being held in violation of my rights and freedoms. For example, it is a right to refuse medication while in a facility, I have exercised this right because many meds have an adverse effect on my system, and have had doctors actually threaten and coerce me with the prospect of state hospitalization if I make efforts towards self determination in my own treatment. I've had a doctor tell me that state hospitals are almost impossible to get into, then after a week of staunchly refusing excess meds he told me that I would end up in one if I didn't comply. I told him I knew I had a kidney infection and the drugs are rough on kidneys and liver and I had been asking a nurse to test me for days and she refused. He, flustered, ordered a test that moment and demanded I leave his office.
I seriously fantasized about shanking his ass...I felt hopeless, and they wouldn't let me go...I figured prison might be preferable. I had even compared the place to jail before a staff member and she remarked: " this ain't jail, this is hell!" (pronouncing it southern style like "hail"). I watched staff almost take joy in restraining and injecting folks. I watched how patients would be roused from a med induced dead sleep to sign important documents determining their care- often too bewildered to even wake. In my court documents the doctors wrote nonsense about me, that I was delusional, psychotic, grandiose etc- but I wasn't, I mean I was in fight or flight mode for sure and in need of showers/meals/rest, but if I was psychotic/out of touch how was it that I was aware and took notes of the exact times, to the minute, according to staff wrist watches when I was held down, injected? The place was run by lawyers and business people as far as I could see...psychiatry is industry and to me an outcropping of the prison industrial complex.
I was held in that a facility for 15 days, I went to court twice in order to be released, during that time I was forcibly injected daily for 5 days- because the sadistic nurse and idiotic staff had it in for me, I begged them to stop every time, I begged them to rotate the injection site- they refused each time and I developed a wound/bleeding in the site, I filed a complaint with the DCF while interred there, I did everything in my meager power to try to stop them...Once I even held a bible and begged them to stop, lol....The reason I was hospitalized was bc the guy I was living with in the woods and I had a fight, we were both threatening to hurt the other, then he called the police and told them I was "suicidal" when I wasn't. Once the police make a "mental health" assessment the process is done. I would have rather been arrested- I even told the cops I had violated probation, they didn't care- off to the hospital.
In FL it is used as a punitive measure to be sure.... When I first got arrested last year, I said the wrong thing to the wrong nurse about suicide- it was a simple y/n question, but I was exhausted and existential and I rambled on w/o realizing, I don't even know what I had said...Next thing I knew two lady officers were aggressively dragging me into a dungeon of a med ward and stripped off my clothes. I asked them why and they said I was "suicidal!" I was shocked...they gave me a bulky horse blanket "turtle shell" as they say and stuck me in a cell surrounded by dudes banging on plexiglass, screaming, jacking off etc...and the lights stayed on 24 hours so rest was impossible...I hadn't been suicidal until that happened! Shiiiit....
I did naked yoga to protest...it was all I had
The next day I was moved into a smaller cell with two other females in turtle suits and another nurse came and said since I seemed well behaved now I would be allowed to have my "clothes" back and could proceed to general population....yippeee....
Anyways, according to the Baker Act one is only supposed to be held for 72 hours, but the docs usually force people to stay longer to become "stable" (those drugs take 3 weeks to take full effect, so really keeping someone 6, 9, 12 days etc boils down to more $$$ depending on one's insurance) then one is told that they will need to be medicated for the duration of their lifetime, which is not always the case, and some of the drugs cost $600-$1200 a month...tack on a hospital bill up to $20-30k... They also have all sorts of regular docs check you out too so everyone gets their cut, basically. Then, in my case, I had a platoon of relatives and psych staff folks constantly minding me that I stay medicated- though I plead that the meds were killing my soul, leaving me drooling for half a day...I wasn't myself, but at that time I felt so limited, hopeless and rundown...and I was in Orlando, a place I HATE... that I couldn't escape until months later...It just became such a mindfuck, it was no kind of life for me. I tried to overdose on my pills, but failed.
Once I was inside watching a TV ad for a lawsuit against the very drug I was being made to take lol.
But yeah, in most of the facilities I had been in all we did was eat, watch tv, eat more, take meds for days on end maybe play cards...miserable...a waste of existence, rarely was there "group therapy" or talk therapy depending on the facility. And we would get to go "outside" a couple of times a day if lucky...but if you play along you wont stay too long, my problem is that I argue with docs endlessly, "perverts with degrees," I call them. I once told a doc that I really didn't think they had a clue about what they were dealing with in psychiatry and they agreed.
There are alternatives...in some places...I believe we need alternatives...I am now vehemently anti-psychiatry and see it as an outcropping of nazism...
There are groups like Mind Freedom International etc which are determined to fight human rights abuses in psychiatry...but FL is just so behind...they just want us locked down and doped up and quiet bazically.
Whoa...I wrote alot...guess I needed to vent!!! Thanx!
