West Oaks Drug Dependency

Raoul Duke: Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic cop. A normal speeder will panic and immediately pull over to the side. This is wrong. It arouses contempt in the cop heart. Make the bastard chase you. He will follow. But he won't know what to make of your blinker signal that says you are about to turn right. This is to let him know you're pulling off for a proper place to talk. It will take him a moment to realize that he's about to make a 180 degree turn at speed, but you will be ready for it. Brace for the g's, and fast heel-toe work.

Dedicated to Eskified.

I don't know why but I have an urge to get out what it was like in the hospital so I am going to do my best to describe the day to day routine we all had there. All of us crazis in the adolescent unit.

So there are two units for adol., the other, I think it was section 4, held the more intense bad kids. So I suppose we were spose to be calm or something.

So the day in question. It started with me waking up to my father and my therapist, Desiree, standing over me telling me to get up. They were going to take me to the hospital. I slowly began to remember things from the night before. How I had taken a bottle of Xanax and was so fucked up. I remember crying as I gathered a few things in my purse not knowing what I would need. Well we first drove to West Oaks and I didn't speak the whole ride up, I felt so fucking betrayed by them.

When we got there and they told them my situation they said that I would have to go to the hospital first and have some tests done to make sure there wouldn't be anymore effects from the drugs. So I went there and the testing lasted all day. They did something called a rainbow test where they filled up different coloured cartidges from one syringe. By eight or nine at night my dad and sister went with me in the ambulance to west oaks which was kinda spooky in a way. The EMT's were these two really sweet ladies though who told me not to worry and tha parents can be crazi and whatnot, my mother was in jail at the time for shoplifting. So I went in and got my picture taken and sat in the waiting room until the little interview. Soon I was in the adolescent headquarters. It was one huge room lined with rooms on both sides, in one area was a t.v behind plastic and some seats, there was also a fold out table where most of the kids were sitting then, talking and joking. After I was told my room, and given the basic hygene supplies, I put my things up and went and decided to be un shy for once and as I approached the table I heard someone say "Crack head" So I began to inquire about crack and thus met Allie, Courtnay, Jack, Erin and I cannot remember the other two.

It was so odd waking up in a strange place alone because I did not have a roommate. They awoke me at 6:30 am for vitals and whatnot. Then I had to get a blood test with another girl who had come in earlier in the day, this was Amanda and we were good friends. We both freaked out because we were afraid of needles. So once this was done I would join the other girls on the couches watching t.v. Whatever we could watch without getting in trouble. Occasionally we could sneak Family Guy.

Breakfast was at 7:30, lunch 11:30, and I think dinner was at 7:30 pm or something. The food was really the only thing you could look forward to. Though sometimes there wouldn't be a thing I could stand to eat and those days sucked.

Every other day or so we would go outside. There was a large field surrounded by a sidewalk enclosed by connecting buildings of other units. We would all go to the kids playground and talk and jus be like kids. It was nice not worrying about reality and being able to talk with other people who had fucked up problems and who were being fed meds and being forced to converse.

I get teary eyed thinking about it. It seemed simple but so sad because all of us were there because someone had done something to us. Or we had done something to ourselves to stop pain. Ashley's step mother was a real bitch and in her diary, that she hid under a floorboard, she wrote about how she would kill her stepmother real scientific like. Her step mom went in her room with a metal detector and found it. Allie was anorexic and had "anger problems". Many people were there for suicidal letters. There was one boy who had come in later on, it's so sad and I miss him. Jamie. He was bi and had tried to kill himself by taking a crap load of Lunesta and brutally slicing his wrist with a disposable razor. He ended up being transferred because his mother was a bitch and his grandmother wouldn't let him move in with her. Now he is just moving from hospice to hospice.

It saddens me to think how people can just toss their children aside and not want to see them and want them to get better and want to do everything in your power to help them. Instead they jus exile you and hope to not hear from you. We are the poor children who are found to be nuisance and pests. We cry together hug each other, dress each other up speak and rant and write poems and hear our sorrows and we are the only ones who understand this dept of sadness that breaks us down till we are five years old sitting on the floor staring blankly into nothing.

We cut our wrists and bang our heads and blast the music and write so hard we want to forget it all and be loved know we are loved and cared for and not something so easily discarded. Something so easily hurt and tortured and un cared for.

Erin was raped by her step father. Her real father is in prison. She had fantasies of killing her molester.

Every weekday they held two hour long classes tha were spose to be educational. However all we learned about were mental problems. A few questions and sometimes we would watch a movie. It was pretty random.

I remember the first time I saw Forrest Gumo was there. It was a Friday or Saturday. We had cookies and milk boxes and we all camped infront of the t.v and watched and laughed and it was fun.

Of course there were the booty shots.

Thick liquid tha they shot into your ass if you fought or wouldn't calm down. I wish I could remember the name of the boy who came to the hospital often, seemed he was always dumped by his mum and dad. He would always get angry and get tackled or climb on his door or fight in general. He gotten the shot many times and had been put in solitary confinement many times aswell. But we were a fucked up family for the few days or weeks we were there. I miss them all and my thoughts always remember the, my fucked up friends.

So after I eventually got out of the hospital I was put into in patient. Which is a whole nother story all together. :)