The preceding mouthful of a title is another version of my autobiography. I am writing this document to edify a general audience and to reassure fellow mentally ill individuals that they are certainly not alone. I am only giving away shortened chapters. Somehow I hope to monetize my memories and experience.
Chapter 1 – Early 1973 to February 1976
I was originally diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic at a private hospital located on 1999 Cliff Valley Way, Atlanta, North-East, Georgia. The primarily humanistic with some behavioral modification mental hospital/drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility was named Peachtree-Parkwood Hospital. One floor was dedicated to drug and alcohol rehabilitation and the rest of the real-estate catering to psychiatric disorders.
My first and only psychiatrist at the hospital was a forensic and administrative medical doctor named Dr. Dave Mcallister Davis, MD, who coincidentally, was the administrator of the hospital. I distinctly recall my family’s initial meeting with Dr. Davis. As I remember my dad drove me to my preliminary appointment since I was not driving at that time especially not in the atrocious gridlock Atlanta traffic. My mother was probably at her LaGrange School system teaching job. I graduated high school in the June of 1971 and had a nepotism related job at my dad’s textile plant at which he was superintendent. I was initially employed as a stock clerk and later other positions within the cotton mill mostly in the weaving department and cloth inspection section.
My dad were essentially two hicks from the sticks as we entered Dr. Davis somewhat vast and cavernous office. He had several bookshelves of famous treatises and case histories by several big named psychoanalysts including Dr. Sigmund Freud, MD. I was certainly in awe of the all the psychiatric and psychoanalytic knowledge contained in tome after tome on the artfully arranged bookshelves.
My primary problems were of psychiatric woes masked by hallucinogenic and other drug usage. I had a voracious penchant for the whole gamut or spectrum of illicit drugs and illegally obtained pharmaceutical drugs. I particularly liked cannabis sativa, hashish and hash oil. I believe in a later visit in 1973 I blew my involvement with opium laden hashish out of all proportion and earned a spot on a drug information radio show conducted in Dr. Davis conference room. Dr. Davis would board me out as a “dog and pony” show to the local criminal justice students and practitioners at Clayton Junior College long before it became the loftier Clayton State University.
I really liked this private hospital due to the abundance of good looking and intelligent female staff who were willing to talk to me as I long as I was aware of the stringent ethical boundaries and roles the staff and I were forced to play. I recall having some reasonably sane conversations with many of the personnel both male and female. We had a fair number of games we could play such as board games and volleyball. We had a large volleyball net on the back outside porch of the I seem to recall the second floor of the facility. We also could engage in arts and crafts such as the clay pottery wheel. I think we had both a manual pottery wheel and a motorized wheel. I learned the rudiments of “throwing pots” and ceramics since we also had a kiln.
I bounced in and out of Peachtree-Parkwood Hospital from 1973 until around the summer of 1975. My visits to the somewhat prestigious and expensive private facility were beginning to weigh heavily on my dad’s pocketbook and West-Point Pepperell company’s insurance policy. My dad in conjunction with Dr. Davis hatched a bold plan to show me how the rest of my life would consist of bouncing in and out of state-operated asylums for the mentally ill. I first visited the flagship of the state snake-pits at Milledgeville, GA, Central State Hospital, an alarmingly 1930s looking building. The sleeping arrangements were in an open dormitory with individual cots and roaming nurses/security personnel with flashlights during the long hot summer nights of 1975. The only entertainment that the inmates possessed was rocking in Kennedy rockers on the narrow back porch of the old Georgia red clay brick building. Fortunately, my stay at this locale was about ten overly long days.
My next stop was the relatively new West Central Georgia Regional Hospital in Columbus, Georgia. I seem to recall I was placed in the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Building of the hospital. It was an exceedingly dangerous place in which to be confined. You had to literally watch your back all the time. Now the hospital is a full forensic asylum and a much more chaotic and perhaps murderous locale. Why are we converting all our inpatient mental health facilities into prisons? I was not in the hospital overly long. We had to march single file from our dormitory to the cafeteria.
Finally, my 1975 to 1976 mental health/drug treatment facility excursion ended with me being placed in Renewal House in midtown Atlanta, Georgia. I seem to remember that drug treatment facility was on Sixth Street halfway in between Peachtree Street and Piedmont Avenue. Renewal House was primarily a behavioral modifying military boot-camp approach to drug abuse treatment. Professor Joan B. Read, Chair of the Psychology Department at Georgia State University was the clinical director of the treatment center. I had some interesting conversations with Dr. Read. She stated that I used my vocabulary as an offensive weapon to keep other people at arm’s length. The house had what were called staff members to expedite the work and keep the residents on their appropriate behavior. During a heat wave we had to act like chain-gang prisoners clearing a very overgrown lot. I left Renewal House in February 1976 and I still had a penchant for drugs.
Numerical Explorations 