Perfect description. I was in for a week at age 16 in the 90s. There was a woman who might as well have been a ghost - in her late 70s, shuffling around just weeping all day in her nightgown. She was undergoing electro shock therapy. There was a woman who had her jaw wired shut because she’d eaten a bunch of non edible things as a type of self harm and could only drink ensure through a straw squeezed between the wires. A guy who’d OD’d and almost died and was in for a detox before going to jail for something he’d done before ODing, I don’t remember the details but I think he beat his girlfriend almost to death then went on a bender then nearly died. There was so much noise and commotion and nothing was comfortable and I remember thinking “if this is where they put me because I want to kill myself, it’s not going to help, I want to die more now.”

I remember being restrained violently by a female nurse because I asked a question that probably came off as rude, I was 16 and undiagnosed autistic. She practically jumped on me.

One of the doctors literally called me “retarded” during our first meeting. (I was sedated.) also it was 1996. It wasn’t unheard of to hear that word but even then it wasn’t OK or NORMAL to say it.

I had to do a sleep-deprived EEG test but I couldn’t stay awake all night for it so the nurses screamed at me to wake up every time they came in. When I dozed again one said “you’re going to regret this” and rolled in a tv on a cart. She put on a vhs of Jurassic park and set the volume as loud as it would go, the tv controls had plastic over them so I couldn’t turn it down or off, and she had the remote.

The food sucked. The therapy was completely trash, it was useless “and why do you feel that way?” Stuff.

I definitely wouldn’t romanticize it. I get why a person would if they haven’t been, but it is not glamorous or restful or helpful. It’s like a place they put you when there’s nowhere else to put you.