A Tale from the Psych Ward During the Obama Era

On January 5, 2009, I had my first episode of psychosis. It happened 8 months after my boss had murdered my best friend. I had drank a handle of vodka in 5 minutes, tried to kill myself, then blacked out. When I came back to, I found myself in the hospital. I was hospitalized for two days, then they decided to push me into my first psych ward. When I had arrived there, they automatically labeled me, schizophrenic. I went ballistic after what they told me I was. Probably reinforced the diagnosis in their minds. 18 years old, and now diagnosed with schizophrenia, yippee.

I had a saying in this time where I would say “Oh baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby…” (It was in a whole different rhythm than the Justin Bieber song that released the next year). Either way the visit lasted 5 days and I was back out and “free”, but medicated. I took the medicine for a couple of months after treatment, but ultimately stopped taking it due to the side effects.

October 27, 2010 had come, and I was recently broken up with after a 3 year relationship. I was living in my mom’s apartment. The lease was ending on the 31st of October. She had already moved on with her life with a new guy in her life. I was stuck with no options of being able to stay in the apartment financially. Heck I was having a hard time even feeding myself those last days in the apartment. I think I lived off of a frozen bag of Chicken Nuggets for a week.

I was up the whole night before and was finally about to fall asleep. It was 10 AM. I closed my eyes, then my phone rang. It was my mother. I answered and she said, “Make sure you have all of your stuff packed and ready for the movers to take.”

I said, “Alright, I cannot believe life is coming to this!”

She said, “It’ll be alright, I love you!”

I replied, “I don’t think you do…” and hung up.

Finally went and laid back down on the couch to fall asleep. After my brain finally started to drift into slumber, I hear knocks on my front door. I wake up and walk to the door. I open it, to my surprise, there are 3 law enforcement officers with 3 paramedics behind them.

I was like, “Can I help you?”

this hillbilly bigger lady cop (Juanita) replied, “yeah your mother called us to do a welfare check on you.”

I scoffed and said, “Okay, come in.”

They came in and sniffed around. Looking for drugs or anything wrong with the house. I explained that I was about to move and I’m doing just fine.

Juanita saw that our fish aquarium was low on water. She asked, “I see your fish tank is low on water. Could you fill it up?”

I just said, “Ummm, I’m moving, their about to be in a different home, and the filter is still filtering the water.”

She said, “There’s a bucket right there” and pointed at a bucket that was catching AC condensation, and I may have peed a little in the bucket too.

I explained, “I don’t think that is a safe bucket to use for the fish water. It’s catching AC condensation.”

She then replied, “Well Justin, you failed my test. You didn’t listen and obey me. You’re either coming with us to the police station, or with the medics to the hospital!”

I replied in defense, “I don’t want to go to jail, and I don’t want to have to pay an ambulance bill!”

She said, “It doesn’t matter, your dad and step mom are on their way!”

Like why and how my working class parents were already en-route and off work, baffles me to this day even.

So all and all, I ended up back in another hospital, which then transported me to another hospital’s psych ward unit. This is were things get kind of crazy.

Upon my arrival, I am told to sign all this paper work, the whole staff was wearing scrubs, with weird symbols and logos on them. The guy doing the paper work made this weird DJ turn table gesture at me. I signed 2 of the 3 papers and the last paper was for release of information to 3rd party sources. After reading some of it, it scared me to sign that one due to having my information compromised, and ultimately maybe landing in prison due to weed in my system. I refused to sign that last form and that was my first and biggest mistake. My 301 voluntarily admitted, now turned to a 302 involuntarily admitted.

If you guys didn’t know, I was a myspace hip-hop artist and was becoming very successful online. I was 2nd in PA hip-hop charts in ‘06–’07. I even was hearing some of my lyrics being used in hip hop songs leading up to Obama’s presidency from mainstream rappers.

So when I went out unto the psych ward population floor, I noticed a white board. It had everyone’s first name and last initial with check marks for medicine and stuff. Every single one first name, last initial, all except for the first name listed. Jomar was the first name listed, with zero last initial present. It threw me off honestly but I was like ok….

Come to find out, I am put in the same room with Jomar, and a weird guy that was bed ridden named Larry. Jomar was deep black with a cool afro. I was chill with him and everything. I noticed something weird about Jomar though. He had yarn stitched through his skin in a zig zag pattern on his right hand between his index finger bone and thumb bone.

Now I know about Nike sweatshop workers and how they are basically abused like crazy and forced to work like crazy. I automatically assumed he was a Nike sweat shop worker that got to be present in the psych ward and make calls to the staff.

It started becoming more and more real as I spent more and more time there. He was getting sodas from the nurses, he was getting foot baths from the staff, he had white younger women that he would just pull his pants down and they’d like go goo-goo over him flashing her. It was literally insane!!!

The staff like I said were acting like we were on some space craft and like they were pilots of the mother ship. The logos that were embroidered on their scrubs just was insane. I was literally told by staff “We’re doing something different this time around.” to me.

The first night, I walked up to the nurse bubble and was just frustrated. I wanted to show the staff that I wasn’t someone they could mess with. So I looked at one of the male nurses and lifted up my shirt to show him my abs so they wouldn’t mess with me. He literally said, “If he shows me his stomach he must be gay!”

At that exact moment, him, and an older lady nurse rushed out on to the floor, and pinned me against a wall. they threw a pill in my mouth, and forced water into my mouth. Then they choked me to make me swallow the pill.

I eventually grew super groggy and fell asleep. When I woke up I had a cotton ball taped where Jomar’s yarn stitches were located. I was unaware of being given a shot while I was out. I did take the cotton ball off and saw there was a puncture mark in my hand.

I witnessed Jomar watching white people walk by him, and he would use his eyes like a rope and circle his head behind them (as if he was putting a rope around their neck) then he looked really fast up to the ceiling. It was insane. There was two other black people in the unit and they were allowed to have technology. everyone else was not allowed to have technology but those three could… Obamacare in full fledged force.

One night we were about to fall asleep and Jomar was singing a Jeezy verse from Usher’s song “In this Club” he got to this part:

“Have you ever made love
To a thug in the club
With his sights on?
87 Jeans
And a fresh pair of Nikes on”

When he got to that last line, I sang it with him. He automatically stopped, chuckled at me and said, “Now you’re getting it!”

So all-in-all this visit was literally insane, there was so much more that happened but these are the most traumatic things I have ever had to experience. I had one more psych ward visit in 2011 right before Obama’s re-election too. I may write more about that visit also in the future.

Thanks for reading and make sure to follow this new guy! This is literally Non-Fictional, these events truly happened to me.