rich girl rehab, part I

zoomed in: the memoir portion

When I was 20, I got sent to rich girl rehab.

I was in a psychiatric hospital following the kind of scenario that gets you sent to a psychiatric hospital. This was not nearly my first time in a psych hospital, this was my second hospitalization in three months, and this time, the cops had driven me to the hospital where I was, like always, involuntarily committed¹. I had been getting sent to the psych hospital intermittently since I was 13. So a week before my release date from the hospital, I was given an ultimatum by my parents: either we ship you across the country so you can get permanently fixed, or we’re going no contact. 

At this point I was on my second medical leave from music school at a fancy liberal arts college and was crashing with my parents. I had nailed down a part time job washing dishes at a diner a few weeks before getting hospitalized; I lost the job when I got hospitalized. Things were pretty dark. I was feeling trapped and isolated; even before hospitalization, I had just been sleeping all the time. I knew that getting kicked out of my parents’ house would mean couch surfing at first and then, when I wore out the welcome of the few people who were likely to take me in, eventually winding up on the street. That sounded like a better option than going to rich kid jail. I initially told my parents and my doctors that I chose the street. A kindly and level-headed hospital psychiatrist dissuaded me over the course of several days. Though she didn’t use exactly these words, she could see clearly what I couldn’t see at that time: if you have a psychiatric history like mine, once you’re on the street, it’s nearly impossible to get off. You choose the street, you die in a gutter or under a bridge. Residential psychiatric treatment would at least give me a chance to escape that fate. 

So I was discharged from the hospital on a perfect May evening and I got on a plane to Texas with my mother the next morning. I was in the stupor that new heavy duty drugs and the trauma of the psych ward puts you in. I weighed 108 pounds. My mom bought me some shorts because I didn’t have any and she treated me to a haircut. Then we rolled up to the rich girl rehab.