Dr. Mona Lisa Schulz and I had been talking by phone at least once a week since my return from Scottsdale. She could tell by my voice and reaction to her questions that I was slipping lower and lower. I didn’t tell her that I had self-prescribed Klonopin from my hidden stash and even had asked my general practitioner doctor to write a prescription for more, which he gave me without asking questions. I didn’t tell her but it’s hard to hide something from such a gifted medical intuitive, so Dr. Mona Lisa already knew. It’s uncanny being around her, since she knows things about you before you can tell her.
She convened a family meeting with Larry and Ashley once again.
The truth came spilling out that I was taking Klonopin again. I was very forthright that I refused to go through the risky phenobarbital detox protocol at Vanderbilt a second time.
Dr. Mona Lisa already had an alternate idea. She felt strongly that I needed treatment specifically for my panic disorder, because that was what had pushed me back toward Klonopin. Her suggestion was inpatient therapy at a rehabilitation facility in Malibu, California. This would have three benefits: get me through Klonopin withdrawal, teach me coping skills to deal with panic attacks, and be in sunny California during the winter. Everyone was in agreement that this was a good idea, except for me. The thought of being in another situation where I would be under observation twenty-four hours a day, treated like a child, and have my days and nights structured and monitored made me want to kick and scream like a toddler being forced to an early bedtime. I did not want to go.
Larry wouldn’t be able to stay with me, but he vowed to find a nearby hotel to live in and promised to be with me for every available visiting hour. I still dreaded having to go, but I was more concerned that Larry would give up on me if I didn’t go. He couldn’t keep up his currently imposed arrangement of never leaving me alone. He was trapped in the house with me and I was feeling completely mistrusted. I knew he had every reason to not trust what I would do next, because I doubted my own ability to reason in reality.
Singer Stevie Nicks has been very public about how difficult it is to detox from benzodiazepines like Klonopin. After Stevie went through rehabilitation for an addiction to cocaine in the late 1980s, she was prescribed Klonopin. She went on it and didn’t get off for eight years.
When I met Stevie more than a decade ago, she described the feeling of her addiction to me, but at that time I could only sympathize, because I didn’t have an addiction issue. She told me that her creativity vanished on Klonopin. She felt calm but completely dead inside. She said she became a “whatever” person who didn’t care about anything anymore.
Remembering this conversation with Stevie Nicks made me shudder in anticipation of what I could become. I’ve never been known as a woman without passion or drive. Having a cause or a purpose has always mattered greatly to me. I took Stevie’s warning words as a harbinger of my future if I continued taking Klonopin.
Yet her description of the detox process scared me equally. I hoped that it wouldn’t be as severe as Stevie described: “My hair turned gray. My skin molted. I couldn’t sleep; I was in so much pain. Legs aching, muscle cramps… The rock star in me wanted to get in a limousine and go to Cedars-Sinai and say, ‘Give me some Demerol because I am in pain.’ And the other side of me said, ‘You will fight out this forty-seven days.’ I felt like somebody opened up a door and pushed me into hell.”
The rehab treatment facility in Malibu, Promises, is in a lovely, expansive resort-type of building with large sun-filled windows, set far back into the hillside from the main road. There is nothing that looks threatening or institutional about this place. Still, I was feeling like I was rushing headlong into “hell.”
When Larry drove me up the long private road to the treatment facility, his face reflected both somber resignation and relief that the end of my problems might be in sight. I could feel my heart thumping against my rib cage and my hands were tingling and turning numb. It was difficult to take a deep breath in. I realized that being able to take a Klonopin when I thought I needed one would no longer be an option. This terrified me since I had become very dependent on it, once again, in the last four months. I knew as I was admitted for this inpatient treatment that everything would be taken away. In preparation, I thought I was being crafty and hid a couple of Klonopin in the strap of my bra. I wanted to have them available, just in case it got really bad. It didn’t work. Promises is pretty used to desperate clients trying to come prepared. They go through everything you bring with you, including the clothing on your body. I found the search invasive and humiliating. I wondered what would it take to convince Larry to take me back home.
* * *
Everything visual about Promises would make you think you were there on vacation, from the beautiful landscaping to the spa and swimming pool; a massage therapist and acupuncturist were there almost daily. However, you aren’t there for fun or good memories. From the first day it becomes very clear that your schedule is not your own. In many aspects it’s like being locked up in a high-end jail. Almost every waking hour is scheduled and even during your free time you are still under observation. This would be my life for at least the next month. I begged Larry to not leave me there. He gently reminded me that nothing else had worked thus far.
The curriculum at PCS in Scottsdale had many hours of individual therapy with the adage, “If you can’t name it, you can’t solve it.” In Malibu, it was the complete opposite. Twice daily patients would all meet in one large room for therapy called “Process Group.” Often these ninety-minute sessions had outside speakers, professionals who would lecture about specific topics like skills to prevent a relapse into alcohol or drug use. The group sessions seemed endless, since most of the information the speaker was giving was not new to me. I am well-read on many psychological techniques so I would get extremely bored as the speakers droned on. Plus, I actually speak on these topics myself. My fuse was pretty short, especially as I was detoxing from Klonopin. I was restless and resented having to be there at all and I let everyone know it, too. I had no filter left between my thoughts and my speech.
One afternoon a dull-as-dirt psychologist who was robotically talking about the eight stages of psychosocial development, from Erik Erikson’s model, noticed I was jiggling my foot with impatience, which he must have thought was rude. With a snippy tone, he asked me if I knew the names of the eight stages.
Of course I do, I replied. I took a deep breath, like I do when I have to sing a particularly long phrase. “Trust versus Mistrust. Stage One. Stage Two is Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt.” I rattled them off before he cut me off with, “Well, if you know so much, why are you here?”
I could tell that he was purposely trying to shame me in front of the group. I wasn’t having it.
“I’m here because I have a disease of my brain,” I snapped and then added, “but I can see exactly what your problem is, you fat-ass moron.” The other patients started to laugh. The frustrated therapist was now angry and declared that he was going to report my behavior.
I stood up and yelled, “Go ahead. You have borderline personality disorder with impotence problems!” His hands were balled into fists at his sides and I thought momentarily that he might come after me. The only response I felt was: Finally! Some excitement!
The room fell silent. Everyone looked at me as though Toto had pulled the curtain open revealing that the Wizard of Oz was a dumpy psychologist going through the motions of doing his job. Were we really afraid of him “reporting” us? Did we have to endure speakers who wanted to be there less than we did? One of the other patients raised his hand and said, “We’d like Naomi to lead the group from now on. We like her better, plus she knows more.”
The others clapped and whistled in agreement. I didn’t intend to rouse the rebels, but it reminded me that I have a strong mind of my own, a mind that would hopefully heal and return me to the woman I once was.
To pass the time, I found myself observing the personalities of my fellow patients at Promises, the eleven other people in my group. We became a tribe. The Mamaw Judd side of my personality asserted itself as I questioned each person about his or her life and spent time dispensing comfort or courage. It was helpful to both of us.
One twenty-something woman was admitted for her second stay after a relapse on drugs. I could tell she felt strangely at home and protected in this setting. I discovered that her parents were wealthy globe-trotters who were happy to pay for her treatment instead of participating in her therapy. Promises became like family to her. I thought she probably would not make it past her addiction if there weren’t more acceptance and love for this girl in the real world.
Another patient was the son of a well-known politician and had gotten into the habit of drinking red wine and taking Klonopin to relax. He never expected to lose control over his ability to get by without it, but finally he had to admit he was powerless to change his habit. Larry and I would spend our visitations with him. There was too much potential for scandal or tabloid leaks if his parents visited and people saw him with his famous family.
One of the most famous singers in the world was there, as well as a woman who looked like a June Cleaver–style housewife. You would never pick her out in a crowd for having a heroin problem. The insidious nature of addiction floods across every social, racial, educational, and economic line. More than 20 million people in the United States have an addiction problem; that’s one in ten Americans. People who are depressed are more likely to have an addiction problem.
A week after I arrived, a young man from New York City checked in. He was slender, well dressed, and wore black horn-rimmed glasses. He was given a room directly across from mine. He seemed paranoid and high-strung and after I gave him a hug of welcome on the first day, he began to shadow me everywhere I went for the next week. He would save me a seat at every group session and would come into my room uninvited.
I tried to keep my distance from him since I had a strong intuitive feeling that there was much more to his story than depression or anxiety.
Every resident was allowed two and a half hours of free time on Saturday nights to leave the premises. It was the only time I felt a semblance of being myself again. Larry would pick me up and we’d drive into Santa Monica. I’d sit close to him and we’d sing along with the radio. We would always go to the famous restaurant, the Ivy at the Shore. I’ve been dozens of times and could call the waiters by name. Being near the ocean was restorative and eating dinner in a restaurant full of happy locals or vacationers reminded me that the real world was still happening outside my own personal turmoil. I wanted to be done with rehabilitation, and would plead for Larry to drive me back to Tennessee. Every time he visited me at Promises or dropped me off after our Saturday date, he would have tears in his eyes. If I wasn’t motivated to get better for myself, I certainly wanted to recover for the love of my life.
There was a curfew on Saturday nights, and as soon as you returned you had to give a urine sample and blow into a Breathalyzer as proof that you had not cheated. I felt like a criminal. On the second Saturday, the young man from New York returned on time but got into trouble when he offered a sum of money and begged one of the other clients to take his urine test for him because he was drunk. The “testing” room was very close to my bedroom and I could overhear every word of his escalating argument that he was being treated unfairly.
There were no internal locks on any of the rooms and I was feeling unsafe and on edge and expressed my concern to the staff. I noticed right away that they couldn’t reassure me that everything was fine. In fact, they seemed harried and distracted. Suddenly, out of nowhere, police cars came ripping up the driveway with sirens wailing and lights flashing.
I hollered to everyone, who were startled by the appearance of law enforcement, “I bet I know who they’re here to get. Come on! We need to get to the front windows.”
Minutes later we saw the police quickly escort the belligerent young man from New York City out of the building in handcuffs and shove him in the back of a squad car.
Of course, it was a mystery I couldn’t leave unsolved. One of the techs informed me that the young man had bludgeoned his psychiatrist to death in New York with a hammer the previous month and had flown to Los Angeles hoping to hide in the rehab facility. He was on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list. And this violent murderer had been in the room directly across from mine! I had hugged him and put up with his weirdness. This made me look around the room at the rest of the clients and wonder what their secrets were.
Almost every night, as I got ready for bed, I would feel increasing fear about having another panic attack. Nighttime was when it seemed almost impossible to quiet my frantic mind. To each worry I had I would attach the worst-case scenario of an outcome. My mind would replay the threat over and over. If I managed to fall asleep, I would often awaken with a feeling of dread from some past toxic memory that was once again creeping to the surface. If there was no specific memory, the thought of “Will I suffer from this for the rest of my life?” was enough to provoke a full-on panic attack. I longed to be home, where I could pace the hallways until morning.
* * *
Promises was the first place to give me the practical skills to deal with my panic attacks. I met with a therapist who specialized in panic disorder. She told me that the most important thing to remember is that the panic attack will pass. It was important to feel the fear and then remind myself that I would not die. No one has died from a panic attack, though it feels like you might. One in three people who go to the emergency room thinking they are having a heart attack are actually having a panic attack.
The therapist even taught me about the neuroscience of a panic attack. The limbic system of the body is overactive, causing the amygdala to go into “fight or flight” mode. The amygdala was one of the first parts of the primitive human brain to develop and had great importance when man had to outrun a charging animal out to kill. It’s located deep in the brain’s temporal lobes. Even though we rarely have to outrun a ravenous bear coming out of hibernation, the amygdala has a default operation that can kick in for things that are not life threatening, such as a verbal argument or an emotional memory of a difficult time. I was taught that the best way to get through a panic attack was to convince my hypersensitive limbic mind that it was fine. One method was to force myself into the current moment by noticing my surroundings.
When I could feel a panic attack mounting inside me, I was encouraged to practice a deep breathing technique and channel my mind into focusing on something completely mundane that kept me busy in the present moment, such as counting the slats in the window blinds, and then counting the tiles in the floor at my feet. I could notice the colors in the art on the wall. Guess how many inches the chair was from the bed. I was to focus on any material thing that would keep my mind in the here and now. If I woke up with a panic attack, I was to remain in bed until it passed; I was advised that this would train my mind to believe I was safe.
At Promises, they try to replace your dependency on a strong drug, like Klonopin, with safe and effective nonaddictive medications that help the withdrawal process to be less painful. Still, the replacement drugs have far less potency and it was very noticeable for someone like me, who had been taking three or four Klonopin to make it through a night. I had become hooked on it over the past four months and the withdrawal symptoms were severe. My anxiety increased, my leg and arm muscles felt constantly clenched in spasms, and I had an omnipresent headache and nightly insomnia. If I was lucky enough to fall asleep, the nightmares would soon have me awake and jumping out of bed, my heart racing.
The sleeping medication given to me was mild and would only help me to feel a bit more relaxed, but not at all sleepy. After three sleepless nights in a row, I felt desperate to have a night of rest. I discussed this with the RNs who oversaw the medications, but they were unwilling to up the dosage. The next day, out of sheer desperation, I devised my own plan.
I had made friends with a nighttime staff person, a young, impressionable man with a great sense of humor who could be easily embarrassed. I had chosen him for my scheme. He would dispense medications from his small desk each night, as I sat next to him. He would lay my medications out on the desk as a way to count them and then put them into a container. I wore a bathrobe into the medication room to pick up my nightly distribution and tucked my hands in the pockets. On my left hand, I rolled up a piece of Scotch tape across my palm. I waited until he had laid out a number of medications and then surprised him with this question: “So exactly how big is your penis?”
His eyes opened wide in surprise and then he tipped his head back to laugh. In that split second, I placed my hand, palm down, on the desk and the tape picked up five pills in one quick motion. When he was done laughing, he wiped his eyes and tried to continue counting pills. I could see that he had been thrown off in the process of dispensing. He would have to start over.
That night I was able to take two sleeping pills, instead of the one prescribed. I was finally able to sleep for six hours in a row. It was heaven. The pull of finding relief through taking another pill is so strong with addiction that you set aside any moral conflict, thinking that you’re not hurting anyone else. My scheme worked perfectly—until one of the nurses entered my room unexpectedly and caught me counting the pills I had scored the night before.
“Oh my goodness,” the nurse gasped. “What do you have here?” She moved me aside and swept the pills into her hand and took them away. Then she searched the rest of my room for hidden pills. Later that day, she put out a bulletin to the other staff members that I wasn’t to be trusted. It hurt my feelings, even though my actions deserved the alert notice. I had earlier bonded with this nurse over our similar experiences working in emergency rooms. Now the bond was broken and my nights of good sleep would be over, too.
She looked at me the next day and asked, “Do you want to get better or not? We’re here for you. But it’s your choice.”
At that time it didn’t feel like my choice. When you’re depressed you feel debilitated. Your judgment is off because your mind is in distress, which short-circuits your ability to reason. I would have surges of motivation to get better for Larry and my girls, but soon the hopeful feelings would be blotted out with a black cloud of despair. I looked at everything that was happening through a negative filter because my ability to see the bigger picture was warped. I wasn’t certain how I would live to see the next week.
At the end of my third week at Promises, I was irritable and feeling caged in. The therapists were already suggesting that I stay for additional time, as they were concerned I would find a way to go back on Klonopin to deal with my chronic anxiety. It seemed like all my energy was going into trying to control myself, instead of recovering and going home.
One night, as I lay in bed, I could feel my heart starting to pound in a frighteningly fast rhythm. I tried sitting on the edge of my bed and counting the tiles across the edge of the floor, but soon my eyesight blurred and I felt dizzy. One of the nurses tried to calm me down and talk me through it, but I was convinced I would never be able to catch my breath, as I couldn’t seem to inhale deeply at all. The nurse conferred with other staff members and decided to call Larry at his hotel. They advised him to take me to the emergency room at UCLA Medical Center, since an hour had passed and my symptoms had not subsided.
Larry and another staff member supported me between them as I stumbled toward the car. My breathing slowed somewhat as we drove along the coast into Santa Monica, but my heart was still pounding. Once in the emergency room, I began to cry from fear and humiliation. The female doctor was very sympathetic and assured me I wasn’t the first person to come into the ER in a full-fledged panic attack. She also informed that I was the third patient to come to the hospital that evening fearing they were having a heart attack when they were actually experiencing panic. She ordered a strong shot of Ativan, which is also a benzodiazepine like Klonopin, only not as long lasting. It was enough to take the edge off the panic and I could finally feel like I could cope. Ironically, before I left, the doctor wrote me a prescription for my anxiety and had it filled at the hospital pharmacy. When I got in the car with Larry, I opened the small white bag to see what I had been given. It was a packet of Klonopin. Larry shook his head and gently took the bag from my hand and tucked it into his pocket.
I was in a sleepless, dazed state all the next day, through the group therapies and my individual therapy. I didn’t want to be around people at all and craved the privacy of my own home and the safety of my cozy kitchen couch. My happier life as a wife, mother, and a performer seemed like a faraway dream, one I had never lived. I couldn’t concentrate on the smallest task. When Larry came to visit in the late afternoon, I sat motionless in a lawn chair in the sun as he did his best to cheer me up. His faith in my ability to recover was the one thread to which I desperately clung, though I feared seeing that committed faith missing from his eyes one day. There is more than a modicum of comfort in knowing that someone keeps praying for you, even when your own faith has collapsed under the weight of months and months of depressive darkness and emotional pain.
That night, expecting to be able to fall asleep from sheer exhaustion, I had what I would call the “grand mal” of panic attacks. It hit me like being electrocuted. I broke out in a drenching sweat from my scalp to my toes. My heart raced at such a high speed I was certain it would create an aneurysm. I wasn’t able to form words and when I tried to stand up to walk, my knees wouldn’t let me. My muscles twitched and jerked. I couldn’t catch my breath and began to hyperventilate. This time the staff didn’t try to calm me down; they summoned 911 paramedics immediately.
We raced down the driveway of Promises with lights and siren blaring. The paramedic who had transferred me to the gurney recognized me. I felt so ashamed and out of control. In the back of the ambulance, the EMT looked down at me with pity in his eyes and to assure me whispered, “Don’t worry. We’re going to take good care of you. You’re going to be okay.”
The emergency room doctor went through the necessary protocol while I lay on the narrow bed with my teeth still chattering and my heart racing. When Larry arrived, I held on to his shirtsleeve and told him I was sure I was going crazy and that I didn’t think I could take it anymore. The doctor must have overheard what I said, because he convened with his staff and came back with the decision that Larry shouldn’t drive me back to Malibu. They must have interpreted my thoughts as a suicidal threat. The doctor administered a shot of Ativan, the same as the night before, but this time added a dose of Seroquel. I have no memory of the next ten hours. I wish I had no memory of the next ten days in the UCLA psych ward.