Aurora Behavioral Healthcare

I was sent to Aurora Behavioral Healthcare for 72 hours mandatory hold. I never knew that it would become so much painful to spend even a minute there.

When I reached there, I was asked to submit all my belongings to the person with the closet keys. She took everything that I was carrying from my mobile phones to keys. I know that every rehab has the same rule.

But, what made me frustrated was when I saw her tossing my stuff with other people’s stuff in the same closet without any inventory management. When I asked her how she remembers everyone’s stuff, she said she knows her work and I should better care about my problems.

That was the first time I felt as if it would be my biggest mistake of life to join a place that is filled with rude people.

Later, I realized that this place was much more than what I expected. It was not less than a hell. A building that looked like a horror story hotel building was enough to scare me. On top of that, the staffs played the role of the aliens from another world.

They seemed so indifferent to their roles and took every responsibility for granted. There was not a single instance when I was able to get a straight answer starting from the inventory discussion.

While I was still struggling to fit and was fighting with eczema, the lady taking care of the inventory did the worst mistake. My sister brought some prescribed medicine for my eczema and she misplaced it. She not even apologized for the act and made me feel as if I was the one responsible for not carrying it myself.

I also lost few of my belonging that I handed her while I left the facility. I never found them in the closet. They said that they would pay for those which never happened. I was dying there because of the mismanagement and the insufficiency of the staffs to take care of the things that mattered most to me.

My stay there was for 5 days in total. For first three days, I was in PICU and then they released me to the room adjacent to the PICU. I was there for the remaining two days and it felt like a lifetime. I felt stuck and there was nowhere to escape.

You can literally call that PICU the madhouse. I got to the PICU at 3 Am in the morning and only after 10 minutes of my arrival, I was hit by an unknown person. It was very common for the staffs as there are fights every now and then.

I heard a lot of crazy stuffs there. There were rumours that a guy hid a spoon in his ass. I saw a girl striping in the common room. There was a guy who never showered. It all made my head heavy.

It is the perfect place to make people insane and then treat them for more money. I do not believe that the place was in real. There was no place to go and only place that was allowed was the smoke patio. I do not smoke and it made me sicker. It was getting difficult to pass every other day. Once, I was not able to sleep and heard nurses gossiping about another girl.

In the meeting, a guy was talking about being president and I still had to hear all those nonsense for making home early. This was the direction given by doctor Flanagan. When I got to the adjacent room that was named ICU2, it felt a bit better. Later, I realized that the room for people who were addicted and again that was of no importance to me.

Doctor Flanagan prescribed me10 mg of Prozac and then suddenly doubled the dose 20 mg within a day. As I did not get time to adjust to the high dose, I acquired headache and had to stay in my room during group therapy time.

Martia who is my social worker told me they were disappointed for my absence but it wasn’t me, it was my medicine. The day I got out was comforting.

I wish I had never been there. Such a horrible experience.