AtoZ Challenge again, trying to catch up

B is for Bedlam.

First up, the origin of the word: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlem_Royal_Hospital

Second up, my version of it: http://www.generale-de-sante.fr/clinique-rech-montpellier

To be fair, there's not necessarily much that's truly Bedlam-esque, but if you look closely around this locked floor I'm on (which is admittedly less dramatic than the even-more-locked floor above me), you do catch a glimpse of what the real Bedlam may have been like. Most of the personnel are fine, some are truly horrible and utterly ill-suited to a job in a psychiatric hospital. Many of the patients are only mildly disturbed (and disturbing), but a few are completely off their heads, drooling, babbling, moaning, whilst others seem OK but then lose it completely, screaming, shouting, throwing furniture... I stay in my room with my nice, quiet, discreet room-mate and do my best to ignore it all. But it's not easy.

I've now spent 15 of the last 20 months here; it feels like home and that alone is enough to scare me witless. I take (well, mostly I don't actually, but I'm supposed to take) an anti-depressant, a neuroleptic, four anxiolytics and a sleeping pill, I've had electroshocks, I've had my scissors confiscated because of the damage I did to myself with them.

I am psychiatric patient. That is what I am, what I've become, what I will, no doubt, remain, in one way or another.