Table of Contents
When I came to, I was sitting at the corner of a grimy wooden table. At the other end two disheveled women slumped over the table staring at their hands and feet, shaking uncontrollably. Sitting in the shadows against the wall were eight or nine other women. One or two of them seemed young like me; the others were of an indeterminate age. None of them talked to each other; only a few attempted mumbling sounds. Several had slipped down in their chairs with legs spread, asleep.
The few windows near the ceiling had bars that blocked out most of the light. The only door was on the other side of the room, and it was locked. The door had a scratched plastic window about eight inches square. On a shelf hanging from the ceiling was an old TV set. It was not turned on, and it was placed so that none of the people in the room could reach it. Later I learned that it did not even work. There were no other furnishings in the room, and nothing to do there except to sit and soak in the gloom and the stench from old urine.
A feeling of cold horror grew inside me. I had awakened into a nightmare, deepened by a strange, soupy grogginess that made it difficult even to open my eyes or move my head. I felt an interior restlessness as if my internal organs were convulsing, although my external senses were paralyzed. My mouth was dry and foul tasting, and I would have had a hard time speaking even if I had wanted to. I knew where I was. This was a mental hospital, the bottomless pit where society's refuse was thrown. As I examined this place I realized that for the first time in my life--perhaps now for all my life--I was identified with the lowest of the low. This was the hell that sophisticated people said did not exist. Was this really me sitting here?
As if in slow motion, and with great effort, I opened my hand close to my face to study the lines on my palm. I was relieved at least to recognize my own hand, my own blunt-tipped fingers and the familiar map of lines on my palm. My hand, too, was trembling like those of the other women--I pressed it down palm up on the table to ease the shaking, and tried to read my destiny there, to understand why I was in this place. Although my feelings, like my body, seemed cloaked in an enforced apathy, I tried to muster a protest. What was being done to me? What had happened to the astonishing brilliance and spiritual power that had been so real such a short time ago? Surely I should be receiving tender and respectful help rather than this degradation. I had seen a vision of the world transformed. How could something so precious be relegated to a place of the damned? Why? Why?
I do not know how long I sat staring at my hand, trying to reconcile the horror of this place with the fragile memories of my recent experience. At first I mourned the loss of my vision, that its truth had become ignominy, its hope shattered to misery. Had I made some terrible mistake that I was brought to this? Could it be that my encounter with spiritual energy meant nothing--or worse than nothing, that it was an empty and evil dream, and I was nothing but a fool? As my confidence in my spiritual experience faded, so did any belief in my own life and values. Unconsciously I began to believe that I was horribly wrong to find meaning in my experience, and that because of this, I could never again dare to dream, or even to hope for any good in my life. In one fell swoop, my mind grieved for and renounced my college studies, my career as a writer, my present and future worthiness, and my hope for any future happiness. It was all gone. In the space of a few minutes, I steeled myself to tolerate the requirements of living in this place. I had to learn to live in hell.
I sat in the same place for a long time, weeping numbly, for I could not make my mouth move and I could not produce tears. I could not see properly, for I had neither my contact lens nor my glasses. The dryness of my mouth was almost palpable, like a stifled cry that cannot be swallowed. I found myself staring at the door until my eyes burned, waiting but hardly daring to hope that it would eventually be opened. Time passed and nothing happened. I had to go to the bathroom. Eventually I struggled to stand up--my legs and my arms hardly seemed to belong to me and responded faultily to my intents. I could not stand up straight and had to shuffle across the room grasping the edge of the table and the backs of chairs. Finally I reached the door and fumbled around its edge. There was no doorknob or handle of any kind. I ran my hand up and down the dark green-painted wood; it was covered with random nicks and deliberate scratches around the edge where the doorknob should have been and around the cloudy window. I stood on tiptoe to look out of the window, and squinting at the featureless hall that was on the other side, took a deep breath. Oh God please help me!
"Help!" I cried in a scratchy whisper. I tried again, "Help!" but all that came out was a croak. I could not try anymore, and sank exhausted into a chair by the door. There again I sat for a very long time. The room was getting darker and darker, so that I could not see much of anything, when at last a bare bulb in the center of the ceiling flooded the room with harsh light, and I heard the sound of keys in the lock. The door burst open and three women in white stepped inside. "Well, Sally," said the first woman, surprised to see me in the chair. "We've moved around today, haven't we?"
I could only stare at her. I did not know who she was, and I had no way of knowing that I had already been in this place for some time and had spent many days immobile and unaware at the long table. I had been brought directly here after the medics brutally removed me from my room at Sarah Lawrence, and the shock of that experience literally paralyzed me. Later the doctor would tell me that I had become totally catatonic and that he had feared that I would never come out of it.
But now I cowered before these three large women in white. The one who had spoken to me stood over me holding a trayful of miniature paper cups. Apparently unimpressed by my "miraculous" improvement, she handed me one of these little cups and took a cup of water from one of the other women. "Let's see if you can do this yourself today," she said briskly. In the cup was a pill that looked like an oversized brown M&M. "What is this?" I tried to ask, but again all that came out of my lips was a bleat. I greedily drank the entire delicious cup of water, and tried again. "What is this?"
"Take the pill, Sally," said the nurse impatiently. "You can drink water with your dinner." I did as I was told. The three women then moved around the room with no further comments. All of the other inmates received their pills, a few taking them with no assistance, others needing to be shaken awake, coaxed, or manually assisted. When they were finished the women left, locking the door behind them. I managed again to stand up to watch the retreating figures through the little window. I still had to go to the bathroom, but I now did not dare to call for help. I stood and waited. Inside the room the light bulb in the ceiling cast a dim but harsh light and equally harsh shadows, mercilessly laying bare the gray faces of the women there. They were, to me, the living dead, and although I knew that I was among them, I again protested. I did not belong here. This was wrong.
Not too much time passed before the nurses again appeared, and this time they opened the door wide. "Dinner is ready!" one of them announced, and they began leading us out of our ill-lit cell and down the hallway, which was in comparison brightly bathed in yellow light. One of the nurses had gripped my arm and my side with steely fingers, and she was half-dragging, half-pushing me down the hall. "Do you want to use the john?" she asked.
Gratefully I nodded (I was again too thirsty to speak). She thrust me into a small bathroom off the hall, leaving the door open, and roughly pulled my pants down before I could do it myself. I sat, and she remained standing over me by the open door. I looked up at her, chilled by her expression of disdain and impatience. I was at first unable to let go and feared that she would force me up before I could relieve myself. But at last I succeeded, and even managed to pull up my slacks before she could do it for me. We continued around the corner to what seemed to be a conventional kitchen with an old fashioned stove and several small tables in the center. The room was smaller than our cell, and the tables close together. The nurse deposited me at one of the tables and grabbed a plate full of food from the stove. It was an ample and appetizing meal, including a large chicken leg with thigh, a baked potato, and some vegetables. Grateful tears welled in my eyes, for I was hungry, and the food looked good. I was even able to enjoy this fleeting pleasure in some privacy, because the nurses were occupied in placing the other inmates at their seats.
Then I realized that I had no utensils for my meal, and I tried to get the attention of one of the nurses. I could not call to her, for they had not yet given me any water for my dry mouth. When she saw me, I gestured and managed to whisper "knife and fork, some water please." In response she tossed me a large, serving size spoon, which I regarded in disbelief. I weakly poked at my chicken and baked potato, but cutting them with the spoon was an impossibility, and my strange physical numbness and shakiness made it difficult even to hold the spoon firmly. As I tried to move my food around I also found that my eyesight was becoming blurred, and I felt a kind of terror at sitting still in this small room with all the other woman and with the three nurses hovering over us like guards.
"I can't eat like this," I complained.
"Everybody else does," was the reply. "Do you think you are something special?"
I bowed my head in shame and put down the serving spoon. Well, I had always eaten chicken with my hands anyway, so I picked up the leg and bit into it. Then I did the same with the baked potato, breaking the skin with my teeth. When I was about halfway through, the nurse finally slapped a glass of milk in front of my plate. I downed the milk in one gulp. That ended the meal; it was the best I could do.
The evening in this place was the same as the afternoon. After dinner we were all herded back into the cell to sit for another interminable period. Finally it was time for pills and bath and bed, to which the nurses dragged us as they had at dinner. Again I swallowed a fat brown pill. My bath consisted of a damp washcloth rubbed across my face. My bedroom was a small cell off the other end of the hall. The nurses had changed shifts, and my new nurse was a slight woman with dark hair.
Somehow she seemed to know me better than the other nurses had. "So you're feeling better today, eh Sally?" she asked me brusquely.
"I guess so," I answered cautiously, not recognizing her either.
"My name is Margaret," said the nurse. "I've been putting you to bed for the last two weeks. This is the first time you've talked to me. It looks like you are getting better now, eh? Maybe you'll be out of this place soon, eh? You be a good girl. Get out of this place soon. It is good that you are talking."
All the while she was speaking, she was roughly removing my clothes, replacing them with what I recognized as the pale blue silk pajamas from Bonwit's that my mother had given me for Christmas. But they were badly ripped in several places. "What happened to my pajamas?" I asked.
"You have been very difficult these last two weeks," was all that Margaret would say. She guided me to the bed in the tiny cell, and turned to go. "You be a good girl," she said. "Get out of this place, eh?" Then she closed the door--and locked it behind her.
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West Hill Hospital was an expensive private hospital in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. Dr. Pacella, my doctor, owned and operated West Hill as well as Regency Hospital, a smaller facility above his office on the fashionable East 61st Street in Manhattan.
Like many other mental institutions at that time, West Hill had a three-level residential program, each with bland names such as "West Cottage" or "Thompson," but each in effect representing levels of Dantean misery, various degrees of incarceration and forced treatment. At West Hill, for example, the place I was first taken could be called the hell unit. From the outside, hell appeared to be a small Victorian cottage nestled beside tastefully landscaped grounds. But inside that quaint cottage the patients were locked up all day long in the large cell, or group seclusion room, with its broken TV set and smell of urine. Patients never saw a doctor and were not allowed to communicate with friends or relatives. Many never left that cottage, or left only to be placed in nursing homes. Their only treatment was intentional neglect along with heavy psychiatric drugging. The brown M&M pills that I was given were 1200 mg. a day of Thorazine. The drugs had caused my physical sluggishness and trembling, as well as my drastic thirst, for in those days there were no pills to counter such side effects.
The second residential unit, where I next went, also looked like a respectable summer cottage. But this second unit was a kind of purgatory. Here at least hope was extended that I might eventually be transferred to the main building and someday released from the hospital. The doors of this building were locked, and the staff controlled patients with an iron hand--you did as you were told. Mail was censored and sometimes confiscated, but we were allowed weekly visits from our families. Here at least there was a kind of confused communication among patients and staff; in the day room people actually moved around, and there was a TV in working order. Again, patients were restricted to that room for most of the day; we were locked out of our bedrooms and physically dragged back to the TV area if we ventured into the hall.
The main building at the head of the path was a two-story mansion with spacious rooms and expensive furniture. This unit represented limbo, with a façade of dreamlike normalcy in which well behaved patients were free to walk around the lovely grounds, at least on days when they weren't incapacitated by shock treatments. On those mornings, most patients received a jolt of electricity, and reclined for the rest of the day on one of the chaise longues in the day room. Except for the undead appearance of the patients, this limbo had every appearance of leisurely gentility.
As soon as I was transferred to purgatory Mother appeared in full battle gear--wearing her flowing pink coat and carrying letters that she had written to me in hell that were only now returned to her unopened. I gave her a letter that I had managed to save before it could be confiscated. "I have been told that this is a 'sanitarium,'" I wrote. "It isn't. It is a snake pit worse than can ever be imaginedHere the time goes by very self-consciously. There is no privacy. It is a wonder that people who come here even remain alive (including me)." Mother took this letter home with her, and years later I found it carefully saved among her other papers.
As soon as she saw the actual conditions in purgatory, Mother began an unrelenting campaign to have me transferred to limbo. Her advocacy was fueled by righteous indignation at the censorship and interception of our mail. Once I was in the main building, Dr. Pacella wanted to start electroshock treatments immediately, but Mother kept fighting and refused to sign the release form needed to administer shock.
Unfortunately, the fighting spirit that I had mustered in my letter to Mother was soon squelched. Soon after I had been transferred to purgatory, I saw Dr. Pacella for the first time since my admission. Nobody saw him more than once a week, since he only visited the hospital on Saturdays and the rest of the time conducted hospital business from his plush East Side office. My first visit with him was almost as much of a shock as had been my experience in the hell unit. I was eager to discuss with him what had happened to me in my room at Sarah Lawrence, for I still remembered my spiritual insights and innocently believed that understanding what I had experienced was important to my recovery.
But Dr. Pacella refused to talk about it, and even refused to listen to what I had to say. "You were a very sick girl," he said over and over again. "I thought you were never going to come out of it." Immediately I visualized the other women in that group cell, most of whom, apparently, never would "come out of it."
Dr. Pacella went on to describe how catatonic I had been. He said that I was schizophrenic and that nothing that I had ever thought and nothing that happened to me had anything to do with what was now wrong in my brain. His message was that even my curiosity about what had happened to me was sick and dangerous. It was pointless for me to express any opinion whatsoever. What was there to say?
"Do you believe in God?" I asked Dr. Pacella, a practicing Roman Catholic.
"We don't need to get into that here," he replied. "That has nothing to do with what we are doing here."
What were we doing there? I would still like to know. I know that without any spiritual guidance whatsoever and without some acknowledgment of what I then saw as an enormous spiritual loss, I lapsed into an agony of despair worse than the existential hollowness that I had suffered at the college. I sat day after day among blank-faced men and women lined up in their chaise longues around the sides of the sunny glassed-in porch of limbo-land. All of us were deliberately reduced to abject dependence upon a system of sanity that required the maintenance of a strict control on any emotion or mental energy. Recovery was synonymous with the erasure of any individual beliefs or hopes except those standardized by society as represented by Dr. Pacella. I myself came to believe that if there was any meaning in the world, it was known only to Dr. Pacella and his nurses, and perhaps the rest of the world, but was forever lost to me. I had lost not just my education and my future, but even my soul.
Dr. Pacella would not talk with me about anything more profound than my eating and sleeping patterns, and our visits at West Hill never lasted more than ten minutes. Never once was I allowed to describe what had happened in my mind and heart or to express what it meant to me.
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I left West Hill in late June, after nearly five months. Mother picked me up and brought me back to her tiny one-bedroom apartment in the Village. As she prepared a tea tray for us, I sat bleakly in the living room, baffled at the strangeness of the outside world. I felt out of place, grotesquely out of place, something like Kafka's cockroach trying to become assimilated into polite society. Physically, I felt wretched. I could not even see properly; although I tilted my head in several different directions the room always seemed to shimmer and blur. An unfamiliar heaviness in my body made me feel that I could not even cope with the motions required to get up and go to the bathroom. Whatever was I going to do with myself? Sarah Lawrence refused to take me back; they were now demanding that I clear my belongings out of my old room with no further delay. I could not face going there, I was so ashamed. I could not bear the thought of encountering my old friends. I was now a cockroach, and my friends were studying for their bachelor's degree. What was I going to do with myself? I could not even read now, much less go back to school, even if they would take me. I could not sit and tremble like an insect all day in a cozy apartment. Although I felt like a cockroach, I could not even take refuge in the cracks in the walls.
I was at that time still under a heavy dose of Thorazine. Had I been told that the sluggishness and trembling, and the difficulty in reading, were side effects of the medication I was taking, I might not have panicked as I did. But these effects had never been explained to me, and what had been tolerable in the confinement of the hospital became unbearable in the real world. As far as I knew, these agonies were signs of my own weakness and continuing illness, and they made me hate myself.
When Mother appeared with the tea tray and cheerfully began her ritual of pouring and stirring, I just slumped in my chair and began to cry. I could not explain; I did not even bother to cover my contorted face. "I can't do it," was all I could say. "Take me back."
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The last six weeks of my first institutionalization were spent in Regency Hospital, a ward of single rooms that occupied the floor above Dr. Pacella's office on 61st Street. Patients were not encouraged to "fraternize" with each other, so although I spent a good amount of time padding up and down the ward in my robe and slippers, I seldom met or talked with any of the other patients. As I passed by their rooms, I glimpsed solitary figures lying on their beds watching TV or sitting wistfully by windows that opened to views of brick walls or street lights. The other patients seldom looked back at me.
My father, who had cheerfully paid the bills during my months of confinement, stepped up his stream of get-well cards to me. Because I was now allowed out of the unit for brief trips, my stepmother flew to New York and tried to cheer me up by taking me to Bloomingdale's. At about that time the Thorazine was also reduced, and my head began to clear. Instead of worrying about the fog in my head, I now felt more like myself. Still too vulnerable to venture into the outside world alone, I began to take a new interest in outside events through the TV set. I particularly enjoyed watching game shows such as Password and Concentration. In the days before screaming audiences, these shows actually provided a little mental exercise as well as entertainment. I was encouraged that my brain still functioned.
Shortly after I entered the Regency, Dr. Pacella persuaded Mother to sign a release for insulin shock treatments. I do not know how he accomplished this; certainly he neglected to tell her that the coma caused by insulin is even more dangerous than the convulsions produced by electricity.
I myself did not fully appreciate what was being done to me. On a treatment day, several nurses entered my room in the morning while I was watching my TV shows. They injected me with insulin, and within seconds I dropped into a deep coma. I did not awaken until late afternoon, when another gaggle of nurses surrounded me and poured orange juice down my throat. The nurses had to spend several minutes prodding me, even though I was trying as hard as I could to wake up. It was very confusing. After a treatment, I could not understand who all these people were, where I was, and what time of day it was. For the remainder of the afternoon and evening on I could only lie limply on my bed, starring at the TV and wondering in a dazed way what was going on.
After six weeks of insulin coma treatment, Dr. Pacella again deemed that I was ready to go out into the world. It is true that I was no longer wrapped up in despair and worry. I scarcely remembered who I was, and if reminded that I had been attending college or that I had had any friends, I regarded the information as something out of long-past history. As for any personal ambitions or spiritual needs, I did not think of these things at all. Mother had told me that she had arranged for us to share with her friend Gerry a summer cottage on a lake, and that she was inquiring about a secretarial school for me to attend in the fall. Fine. I was happy to have all the decisions made for me.
I was mildly pleased when my old suitemate Carol came to visit, bearing a small bouquet of chrysanthemums. I smiled at her blankly and let her do all the talking. She talked about her painting and some of our mutual friends. I did not even consider mentioning my crack-up, of finally reviewing my spiritual drama with someone who had witnessed it first hand. All of that was long ago. I did not care.