Forty-two Days on a Finnish Psychiatric Ward

I went insane on my 34th birthday in November 2012. I was living and working in Brussels, Belgium, at the time. It wasn’t until eight days later that my father managed to bring me back to Finland. (Before that a lot had already happened, nothing violent though.)

This excerpt is from the end of my 135-page-long story “Yesmad Journey” (originally published in Finnish on Mad in Finland). It starts after I had escaped from my father’s custody and spent a night at a “magic villa.” Some time after leaving said villa, I am finally “caught” and taken to a mental hospital.

Eleventh Day

A police car drives behind me from the left and stops in front of me. One police officer jumps out of the car and asks: “Hi fellow, what are you doing here with so few clothes?” I answer: “I do have this magic cape,” referring to my bed cover. I feel calm and let them put me in the back of the police car. While waiting for an ambulance, the police officers check at least twice how I am doing. I look and admire the various and different colour lights on the police car’s dashboard.

Then I am lying on a stretcher inside an ambulance. I have no idea what is going on, but there is a nice woman who talks to me softly. She is both gentle and calm, so I trust her. We start to drive towards a hospital. A blanket is put on me. I feel warm and good.

They take me out of the ambulance by the big doors of some building. Inside the building, they move me from the stretcher to a bed. I have no idea where I am or why.

After a while, I get up from the bed. I start to follow the lines on the floor, they have different colours and they are very interesting. One nurse catches me quite quickly and escorts me back to my bed. Soon after this, a young nurse comes to visit me. She does something and leaves. I notice a little piece of plastic on top of my bed blanket. [I was given a shot of… something?]

Some time later, I get a harmless delusion. According to it, all the people here think that I am a lumberjack. After all, I am wearing rubber boots, long johns and a flannel shirt.

In the end, I get totally bored with everything and just start staring at the ceiling. The patterns on the ceiling are really interesting — and they move around.

Finally, one doctor arrives. However, I am no longer interested in anything and I am not reacting to anything either, I just keep staring at the ceiling. The doctor even shines a light in my eyes and asks me something, but I don’t care. I am totally sick and tired of everything.

Then I am on a bed in a small room with some people. I feel so very tired, I just want to sleep. People ask me some questions. I cannot say what I was being asked — or what my answers were, if there were any. In that state, I would have confessed and signed a statement stating that I am actually a cheese sandwich who has just moved here from the Moon, if only I had been allowed to get some sleep after that.

Now I am in some corridor, sitting in a wheelchair. Then we arrive at some big door. I do not remember going inside the ward.

Being Committed to a Ward

Just over ten days after going crazy, I finally ended up in a psychiatric ward in Finland. I was a patient there for forty-two days.

Of my first days at the ward, I only remember a few random events. I had been brought to the ward early on a Friday evening, so it wasn’t until the following Monday that I got to see my ward’s doctor for the first time. I do not remember anything about it. I have no idea what kind of questions she asked me, what I answered — if I answered — or how I looked/behaved. All I know is that after entering the ward, I was very suspicious — and sometimes even paranoid — towards all people for days, and I spoke hardly anything to anyone.

At some point during the first few days, I also took care of some paperwork with a nice but busy-looking social worker. I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I would have signed any kind of paper/document/statement put in front of me.

I did not recognise my father until his third visit — I remember nothing about his first two visits. During the first few days I walked around the ward, a lot.

The Turning Point

At no point had I realised that I had gone mad. I had been at the ward for about a week now, and it had been about three weeks since I went crazy. My mind was still in a very confused state, and I felt uneasy. I was standing by the window in my room, one of my flatmates was in the room too. I told him that I would like to get out of here. He asked me a very simple question: “Where would you go?” That is when my mind showed some signs of life. I looked out the window and saw — and especially understood — that there was already a lot of snow, what would I do there? If I just left, it would end very badly for me.

Even though I still did not understand my situation very well, this was some sort of a turning point. I cannot say whether I made any sort of conscious decision or not, but after this I did not think about leaving the ward anymore. I also stopped walking compulsively around the ward.

I had been in the ward exactly ten days when I asked, and got permission, to go out for a walk. I had not been outside since I came to the ward, except for smoking cigarettes in our inner courtyard. So I went for a walk alone, and even though it felt pretty scary to go outside, I still wanted to do it. I only walked for a while and stayed close to the hospital building’s lights all the time, but from now on I went out for a walk once or twice every day.

About Being a Patient

I can not say for sure at what point I finally realised that I was a patient in a mental hospital. Generally speaking, the ward’s atmosphere felt quite peaceful. Not once did I hear any people arguing about anything or anyone even raising their voice, and I never felt threatened by any other patient. Of course, sometimes people could behave — to put it mildly — in quite a peculiar manner. On the other hand, those patients who were still in too bad a shape might stay in their rooms for much of the day, sleeping or making a puzzle or something.

Right from the start, I kept to myself a lot, and I had only one woman and two men as my patient friends during the whole time. For many patients, the support and company of other patients seemed to be really important.

Getting used to the ward’s routines wasn’t hard, at least not for me. I was always in good time to go to the big canteen and to get my evening medication. After taking the evening medication, I usually went immediately to bed (as did most of the other patients too). I slept soundly for about 10 to 11 hours every night. Sometimes I also took an afternoon nap.

A fellow patient once said to me, in private, that some of the patients in our ward were “lifestyle nutcases.” According to him, just as soon as those people were feeling “a bit worse than usual,” they would voluntarily come to the ward — once again. Here they could rest, eat well, and do nothing. Admittedly, some of the patients at our ward — especially some who had been there longer than me — did not seem to have anything wrong with them. But then again, how can anyone ever know what is going on in someone else’s head?

A lot of people did seem to submit to their fate. I was one of the very few who even went outside for a walk. I did not know anything about other patients’ amount and quality of problems, medication, life history, et cetera, but still, most patients seemed to get “institutionalised” right away.

I received accidental random therapy for a second time also. I happened to see a new patient being brought to the ward. She was in really bad shape, and two nurses had to almost drag her forward. Despite the nurses’ orders, the person refused to or could not even open her eyes. When I saw this, it occurred to me to ask my patient friend: “Was I as messed up as her when I got here?” He answered: “Yes.” Next, I asked him how I had behaved during my first few days, to which he replied: “You were quite timid.” It was only after this brief exchange of words that I began to understand that I had, indeed, been in quite bad shape — and mad.

One day, my other roommate counted that he had to take seventeen pills every day. However, not all of those were psychotropics/sedatives: There was also, for example, blood pressure medicine in the mix. Anyway, he was in a pretty zombie-like state (and he was somewhat aware of it).

Almost all the nurses at our ward were really nice and professional. One time I was called to the doctor’s room. She informed me that my cholesterol levels had risen a bit, and ordered me to take some other drug to reverse this one side effect of the psychotropic medication I was given. Since I was already a bit sane, I asked: “Well, how about the possible side effects of this other medication?” The doctor’s answer was: “You have to take the medication.” Then I was stupid enough to ask about my psychotropic medication and its effects on me. To that, the doctor replied — as if repeating a mantra — “It will compose your condition, it will compose your condition.” I was left with a feeling that my doctor was mad at me, for some strange reason. From then on, I kept my mouth shut and did not ask any more questions.

I had a holiday three times — I visited my father. Nothing much happened during these three holidays. I watched some TV, read books, went for walks and slept a lot; that was pretty much it. In retrospect, I had been quite a zombie; I do not even remember my holidays clearly — even though they lasted a total of six days.

After my third holiday, I kept a low profile and hoped to get out of the whole facility as soon as possible. I did not want to talk to my doctor about anything unless I absolutely had to. Plus, I thought that I had “qualified” for an involuntary hospitalisation. (I only found out much later that I had been officially “Delivered to voluntary hospital ward care.”)

A few days before I got out, one nurse wanted to talk to me about drugs (drug screening had shown positive for cannabis and benzodiazepines). I told him honestly that I had smoked cannabis when I was living in Brussels. (The last time had been one day — 24 hours before going crazy.) I also told him that a few months earlier — in January 2012 to be precise — I had tried LSD twice and a small amount of mushrooms once. The nurse took some notes on a paper. He did not ask me anything about benzodiazepines — which I have never taken. At the time, I did not even know that I had been given benzodiazepines at some point(s).

After a total of six weeks, at the beginning of January 2013, I got out of the psychiatric ward. Generally speaking, I had received good care: a safe and peaceful place to recover, good food, and a lot of rest. Had I felt like it, I could have talked to the nice nurses, so all in all, it wasn’t a bad place to be.

My own activity — as well as the two accidental random therapy sessions I received — played an important role in my recovery. When it comes to psychotropic medication, all I can say is that in the early stages of my visit, some medication may have been helpful to me.

On the doctor’s orders, I had to see a substance abuse therapist about five times. She was a nice and well-meaning person, but at no point did she ask me anything about the time I spent in Brussels (3½ months). In short, nothing was said about my life history, my situation in life at the time, or the events leading up to my head doing a cartwheel, but the cause for me losing my marbles was crystal clear: Cannabis.

I also found it very strange that the substance abuse therapist did not ask or say anything about mushrooms or LSD, even though in the final medical report my diagnosis was “Psychotic disorder caused by the use of hallucinogens.”

I had already halved the amount of the psychotropic medication I took every day. A few days after seeing the substance abuse therapist for the last time, I could and did stop taking the drug altogether. Admittedly, for the next two days I did feel quite weird/off-balanced, but then it passed. Since then, I have not taken or felt any need to take any psychotropic medication.

Back to the Beginning

In mid-March 2013, I moved back to Jyväskylä where I had lived before moving to Brussels. For the first few days, I pretty much just stayed at home: The sense of failure and shame was quite enormous. I also felt a lot of guilt about the magic villa incident. After a few days of being down in the dumps, I started going on long walks again. I also started giving therapy to myself.

In addition to thinking about things, I sometimes talked to a couple of my friends. It did help to tell someone what had happened, but it was also a bit frustrating at the same time, because my friends had not had a similar experience. When I once tried to share something with one acquaintance of mine, the situation very soon began to feel as if I was trying to explain the purpose of a spiral staircase to a fish.

About the Writing Process

In autumn 2013, I had already recovered from my madness — but I still thought about the time and events of my madness every single day.

One evening, while being quite drunk, I started to write about some of the events that had taken place during my madness. The next day, I read everything I had written. Then I made a timeline on a big piece of paper, and wrote keywords on it about the things that had happened during each day. I understood that I would have to go through the whole thing carefully, and that writing about it would be the best way to do it — for me. Writing about my madness did not feel distressing or negative in any way.

Closing Words

Before I went crazy, I had not given madness much thought. I presumed that it simply could not happen to me. Well, it did. I would think that sleeping poorly — and less and less — every night for about three months was a big factor. I was also stressing about some personal stuff, was in a constant hurry at work, and I did not have enough “peace and quiet.” But in the end, I do not know why I went crazy — and no one else does either.

I have no clear recollections of what I answered to all of the nurses’ and doctors’ questions while being insane. Answering questions has depended on many different factors. In short: Who has asked what and in what kind of manner, in what kind of a place and in what sort of a situation, has produced — depending on my current form of madness and the amount of delusions — some sort of an answer, or not.

In the first statement by my doctor, my illness is still “F29 Unspecified Psychotic Disorder.” In the final medical report after my release — and the drug interview — my insanity is diagnosed as “F16.56 Psychotic disorder caused by the use of hallucinogens, hybrid form.” It sure would be interesting to hear the reasons for that diagnosis. What if I had not told about my mushroom and LSD experiments — which had taken place some ten months earlier? F12.5, F12.7 or some other box?

All in all, going crazy is easily one of the hardest and worst experiences of my life, and the recovery from it was no picnic either. But as crazy as it may sound, going mad is also one of the best things that has ever happened to me: I would not trade it for anything. I have always been curious and wondered a lot about life, so in that sense, going insane suited me well. I would not recommend it to anyone, though.