Rock Bottom Revisited – A Personal Story

Earl K. Long Hospital, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Jan. 1997.

Many people who’ve been through mental health issues, addiction, and so on, refer to “rock bottom”, that one place in time when things got so bad, they couldn’t get any worse. For me, that was Jan 1997. My marriage had just ended, and I quit therapy and medication. I quit my job. I walked away from everything, got in my car, and simply drove, and drove. Out West, down South, in the Great Plains, and wherever else I felt like wandering. Until, finally, I ran out of money, and my car gave out, in a little town outside of Baton Rouge, LA, named Livingston.

I walked/hitchhiked back to Baton Rouge and lived on the streets. I have only vague recollections of those few days, not because I was having mental issues, but because I had contracted a very serious virus and was running something in the neighborhood of 103-104 degrees. Eventually, I collapsed and was found by a decent human being out for his morning jog, who called an ambulance.

That ambulance took me to Earl K. Long Hospital. The nine days I spent there represent my rock bottom. The doctor who thought I was dying from AIDS because my white blood cell count was so low, being too weak to bathe myself, soiling the bed, and having a psych intern sit with me every single day to figure out whether I was suicidal that day. (A young woman who probably did more than she will ever know to help me start climbing back from rock bottom, by the way.) It was humiliation, plain and simple.

Flash forward 20 years and a couple of months. I now live and work in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, of all places.

So, the other evening, I was out with a few coworkers, and discovered that one of them had grown up in town, and between her and her sister, also in attendance, knew everything about the city. (OK, maybe not really, but enough). I took this opportunity to ask where the hospital was, because I had been unable to find any reference since I’d arrived in town. I told them some, not all, of the story, and they helped me figure out what area in the city it was in, and what had happened to it in the 20 years that had passed.

Naturally, after I told them the story of my first visit to Baton Rouge, they immediately wanted to know what I was thinking about moving there after that experience!

It wasn’t the first time I’d been asked that. I imagine it won’t be the last. I’ve had the same conversation with myself, to be honest. Why would I want to move to a place that represents rock bottom?

Frankly, there are a lot of reasons to move to Baton Rouge. I’ve written about them before: the opportunity to be close to family, to get off the road and back to a somewhat normal life again, and to get my very Southern wife home again. Those have all played into this decision.

More importantly, though, look at the photo above. That is what is left of Earl K. Long Hospital. A “closed” sign behind a barbed-wire fence on an empty lot overgrown with weeds. The building was demolished a few years ago. None of the people who treated me and helped me take the first few steps out of rock bottom are there. They’ve all gone off to different places. Nothing about that place is the same as it was 20 years ago. And very little about me is the same as it was 20 years ago. This is not 1997. I am not the person I was then, dealing with major depressive and dissociative episodes, unable to function on my own. That is not the 2017 version of me.

This version is better equipped to deal with whatever life brings my way. That’s not to say this move has been easy. Moving across the country and starting a new job is stressful. It can be overwhelming at times, and I have struggled with that. I’ve even had a panic attack once during this adjustment, so far. But, I’m not a threat to myself like in 1997. Things have changed. Twenty years have a funny way of making that happen.

So yeah, there are reminders of a time I wish had never happened here in my new hometown. There are also a million new things that will be mine to explore and enjoy in the coming years. Amid those reminders, though, is the reality of how much has changed since then.

Earl K. Long might not be standing anymore, but I am. Things are different this time.