I don't really remember much actually. All I do retain are bits and pieces of what happened the way I perceived it while it happened. So basically things were just outright confusing and scary from the get go.
I woke up in a unfamiliar room, with no clue how I got there, feeling all drugged up and paranoid. Where the fuck was I? How did I get here? Where is here? What's going on? Plus all the other residue paranoid thoughts that I already had running in the background of my mind before the hospitalization, I was a total train wreak that was all but just one station away from screaming bloody murder.
There's a door. I got up. Opened it, stuck my head out and took a peek. There's a hallway. I gingerly stepped out, taking in my environment. There's a paper pasted on the door directly in front of my room. It has "AWOL risk" on it. I turned left and walked down the hallway. There's a payphone on my right. Then comes a room with people and tables and chairs in it. I stand at the doorway, unsure what to do. This is where I stop remembering things in linear fashion. I remember being very frighten and moments from freaking out but willing myself to keep calm. Someone asked if I was "my name" and I nodded. Food appeared. I asked for a pencil. The nurses were old and wrinkled and kinda mean. They upset me. I took the food back to the room. There were other doors similar to mine which means there were other rooms. And from what I now can see from my admission documents, I then got myself busy scribbling all sorts of names, words, things down on those papers. A nurse came into the room, scolded me for bringing food in and took it away. I didn't touch it yet and I was hungry. I remembered her for that.
Time passed. Bits and pieces again. The room had a funeral feel to it. The bed was not a fancy hospital bed. It sinks when you lie on it and under the sheets the actual mattress was rubbery and felt melty. Above the bed was a big white box. (which was just a light box) Somehow my brain then decided that I was sent here to die. The white box melts whoever lies on the bed into the coffin-like solid but with drawers wooden frame. I had to sleep (sedatives). But I had to stay awake because I didn't want to die. Then I couldn't take it and slept on the desk. Mind you, I just had a lumbar puncture which means someone stuck a HUGE needle into my spine to collect liquid so my back was beyond sore. That means sleeping on a desk half my length was not going to be comfortable, I would be in more pain, more sleep deprived and remain just as paranoid.
They moved me out of the substance abuse unit to the ICU after just a few days probably after all my tests came back normal but I didn't really come out of the psychosis till like three quarters of my stay. Probably because I spent the early parts of it not understanding what was really going on and secretly thinking I can outsmart outplay outlast my captors by pretending to be getting better.
Time passed. Bits and pieces. Friends came and went, fellow crazy people made me even more confused or added on to my delusions, family flew into town, some staff made things worse, some staff made things clearer and I had another psychotic breakdown and two intramuscular injections of anti-psychotics. When you have to be dragged to seclusion, held down and injected, it's not a good thing but at least now I have a name to it.
Psych Ward 101, thy name is Bipolar I most recent episode manic with psychotic features.