by Naomi Judd
In desperation, Larry called Dr. Mona Lisa as a support system. He didn’t know what else to do and he needed the insight from a professional who cared about me. After he and Ashley tried endlessly to get me to sit up and eat and to get out of bed and walk around, they admitted that they were out of options. As Larry described it to me later, he feared I was near death. My breathing was shallow and my skin was pale. I was very ill. Without jumping from the bridge, using a gun, or even pills, I was most certainly willing myself to die. Nothing seemed to matter to me. I had no regrets. I wanted to sleep away and never face my emotional pain again.
Larry called 911.
Chapter 9
The Cuckoo’s Nest
I heard the ambulance siren screaming its way up our long driveway, but I was so disoriented I had no idea it was coming for me. Two medics followed Larry into our bedroom. They took my vital signs, tried to ask me questions, and radioed the results back to the emergency room doctor on call at our local hospital, Williamson Medical Center. I could hear them explaining that I was severely dehydrated and my blood pressure was only 80 over 50, but it still seemed like the foggy edge of a bad dream where you aren’t quite awake, but not asleep, either. The medics were directed to give me an IV bag of a dextrose and saline solution.
Once the fluids circulated through my body, I was better able to comprehend what was happening. I had no intention of taking an ambulance ride. I didn’t want the ER staff to see me in this pitiful condition, or have it be leaked to the tabloids. I had worked as a nurse at Williamson and I didn’t want to have to face the humiliation of the staff I knew seeing me in this state of mind.
I didn’t know what Larry had told paramedics on the way in, but when he left the room for a couple of minutes I told the paramedics a different story. I assured them that I had been suffering severe nausea and that I was dehydrated. I explained that I was a nurse and convinced them that I didn’t need the emergency room; I only needed a medication for nausea. I asked them to put Phenergan, a drug used for nausea and vomiting, into the IV. I convinced them that a bad flu had taken me out. After they checked in with the doctor, I got exactly what I wanted, a dose of Phenergan. I knew it would make me sleep. What the paramedics didn’t know was that I wanted to sleep forever.
I may have been able to fool paramedics but, in the meantime, Larry and Ashley had consulted with Dr. Mona Lisa by phone and had come to the conclusion that I could no longer be the caretaker of my own mental health. They began to confer together about a plan for my rescue. I was too lethargic to even care, which was the most blatant clue that I needed someone else to take charge.
The next day, Dr. Mona Lisa arranged with Larry and Ashley for me to go into Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital for evaluation. She was still extremely worried that the Nashville psychiatrist had me on so many overlapping prescriptions that some of my issues were being caused by a chemical overload from the medications and my liver’s ability to detox was maxed out.
There were often paparazzi near Vanderbilt University Medical Center just waiting to announce the next horrible downfall or emergency treatment of a celebrity. If they found out I was going to the psychiatric unit, it would be a free-for-all, especially because I was so mentally and physically exhausted that I’m sure I looked awful. For months I had never looked in a mirror if I could help it. It was a stranger staring back at me; someone I would have never become. But I was that stranger.
Ashley came up with a disguise for me to wear as a solution to avoid being caught by paparazzi in any unfortunate photos that I would always regret. The disguise was an ugly polyester plus-sized pantsuit, padded with pillow stuffing. I wore a curly dark brunette wig on my head, along with oversize dark sunglasses. The only thing I was missing was a trick-or-treat bag. I was unrecognizable.
For the first time in my adult life, I relinquished control. I had no idea what I was heading into, but I was absolutely terrified I was having a psychotic breakdown. Larry and Ashley carried me out to the car, where I lay down across the backseat so I wouldn’t be seen. When we got to Vanderbilt, Larry drove up to a back door with no one around it, pulled the car up close to the door, and lifted me into a wheelchair.
Dr. Mona Lisa had called ahead, using her pull as a fellow psychiatrist, and arranged an emergency meeting with the chief of staff in charge of the psychiatric unit. I was so completely out of it, from being in bed for so many days, that I was babbling and gesturing, trying to communicate that I didn’t want to be there. I was afraid and ashamed I was losing my mind.
The Vanderbilt psychiatrist saw how vulnerable I was and approached me with great kindness, treating me with respect and dignity. He got down on his knees, next to where I was seated, made eye contact, and promised he would listen to me no matter how tenuous my grip on reality was becoming. When he found out the number of different drugs I had been prescribed within the last year, he was appalled. He strongly suggested that I should go through a process of getting detoxed from the multiple antidepressants and benzodiazepines that were still in my system. I didn’t really know what that would entail, but I surely knew, at this point, that I had no choice. My instincts told me I could trust this kind psychiatrist and I knew I had to stay in the psych ward, or else I was going to die.
I’ve done outrageous things in my life and have had many scary experiences, but I had never experienced the disbelief of being admitted to a psychiatric ward.
I was directed to a tiny eight-by-ten-foot room at the end of the hallway. I didn’t expect what happened next, but I should have. The nurse assigned to my room took away everything that I came in with: my purse, my makeup bag, my costume, my regular clothing I was planning to go back home in, even the hairbrush and toothbrush I had brought. I was given a hospital gown to wear and a plastic cup for drinking water. I immediately begged Larry to take me back home. I told him that the dogs would be anxious about where I was. We had not been apart for more than a year, except for my time in Vancouver.
I hollered at Larry to find where they had taken my clothing and purse and bring it all back. He tried to calm my nerves by saying that it was the hospital protocol to take away all personal items, but that he would be there every day during visiting hours and would bring me anything I needed. I believed him. However, I still had no idea how I could remain in this hideous and impersonal room. The bed was only about eighteen inches off the floor. I knew the reason. It was a room set up for patients who were so out of it they might hurt themselves falling out of the bed. The window was coated with grime on the outside and it was hard to see anything through it. The walls had been painted the dreariest shade of mustard. There was no artwork, nothing that could be removed and used in a self-destructive way. Clearly, they didn’t want patients to get too comfortable and want to stay.
* * *
I was terrified at the thought of Larry and Ashley leaving me there, but visiting hours policy had to be followed. After they had left, promising to be back the next morning, I sat on the low bed, slumped over, my head in my hands, sobbing.
When the Judds’ career really skyrocketed and we would play to large sports arenas and auditoriums across the country, we would hire off-duty police officers at each venue as backstage security and to be on hand when we had our meet-and-greets, in case anyone became aggressive or pushy. We called these moonlighting officers our “cops du jour.”
I’ve always had the highest respect for police officers, especially considering all the different experiences they must go through. I chatted with one female officer in Minneapolis and asked her out of curiosity, “What’s your greatest fear?” She answered right away, “Being taken hostage.” Then I asked her what title she held in her police department. She told me that she was a hostage negotiator. She then turned the tables, asking me about my greatest fear. I didn’t even pause. “My greatest fear is not being able to take care of myself.”
In the Vanderbilt psychiatric unit it appeared that my greatest fear was now a stark reality. I was feeling weak a
nd at the mercy of the hospital staff. I was besieged by worry about being at the point of no return. What if the professionals here found me to be certifiably insane? Would they commit me for good? The doors on the insides of the psych ward were also locked. I couldn’t leave even if I wanted to go. I felt claustrophobic and emotionally out of control. I thought, this is what jail must feel like.
I was assigned two nurses who would be in charge of me that night. As each one came in to check on me throughout the evening, I tried to make small talk, striving to sound as normal as possible. I wanted them to know that I was a nurse, too, so that they would view me as “one of them” and not a woman who had gone completely over the edge. One of the nurses reassured me in a serious and calm tone, promising, “You’ll be okay. You’re just someone who is overdue for some professional help.”
I stared at the ceiling most of the night, listening to the sounds of the nurses conferring with each other in the hallway, the same way I used to do while working a shift as a professional nurse. I tried to remember the woman I used to be.
The next morning, the psychiatrist arrived early to meet with Larry and me to describe and get approval for the procedure used to get the overload of medications out of my system. He explained the serious method, calmly, as an everyday occurrence under his watch. I’m certain he never expected me to freak out the way I did.
The moment the doctor uttered the word phenobarbital, my anxiety spiked to the point where I began shaking uncontrollably. My teeth were chattering as I tried to cry out my objections. “I’m a nurse. I know what phenobarbital is!” Everyone tried to calm me down, but I remained terrified.
Phenobarbital is a highly dangerous drug that decreases brain activity and puts a person in a hypnotic state. Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Margaux Hemingway all died from overdoses of phenobarbital. It’s mostly used to bring relief to those with seizures and epilepsy. It depresses the nervous system, including breathing functions. Too much of it is deadly. In my case it would be used to help me withdraw from the multiple antidepressants and also the benzodiazepines I had long been prescribed. As it was explained to me, a fast withdrawal from certain medications like benzodiazepine can cause severe anxiety, agitation, an increased heart rate, and even seizures. Phenobarbital inhibits all activity in the brain, not just the unique set of receptors for anxiety or depression in a specific part of the brain. A specialist nurse sits at your bedside and takes your blood pressure every fifteen minutes, while very gradually the IV of pheno is started. It must be carefully administered because it can cause your blood pressure to spike to the point of death. I had to sign many legal documents and have them witnessed, which indicates how dangerous this detoxing protocol can be.
I was assured that this was the most effective way to flush the multiple medications from my system and that I would be under constant surveillance. I knew this procedure would take my total compliance. I had to be in bed for the next thirty-eight hours while the strong barbiturate pulled the old drugs from my system. My apprehension was off the charts, but something had to be done to lower the toxicity of all the other myriad drugs in my body.
Soon after they started the procedure the nurses had to stop the IV flow of phenobarbital several times because my blood pressure would spike. I could see what was going on and it absolutely demolished any sense of feeling that I was in safe hands. I had no choice but to remain perfectly still, in my small, hard, and uncomfortable bed, continually scanning the faces of the nurses to see if they were calm or concerned.
Larry would come in to see me and sit on the other side of the bed to hold my hand. I wanted him to pull the IV from my arm and insist that he was taking me home, but I couldn’t form the words to tell him. I felt as if I couldn’t move under my own volition. I could tell that Larry was feeling nervous about this procedure, even though he would try to keep smiling at me. I felt the sensation of drops of water on the back of my hand. As I halfway opened my eyes to see where the drops were coming from, I realized Larry was crying.
In a state of forced immobility from the phenobarbital, my conscious mind took a forced siesta, allowing for long-buried thoughts from my subconscious to break through. I thought of one of my neighbors, a young married woman, from my early school-age years.
One morning, as we were getting ready for school, the phone rang. Mom was cooking breakfast, answered the call, turned off the burner under the scrambled eggs, and then flew out of the front door and straight across the street to the neighbor’s house. My brothers and sister and I watched as a police car pulled up. Mother soon returned. She wouldn’t tell us what had happened but was clearly very upset. Before I left for school, more cars pulled up in front of the neighbor’s and then a Catholic priest hurried into the house.
As the weeks went by I would often see this young woman wandering around in her front yard, in the same wrinkled dress, talking to people who weren’t there. My siblings and I would duck behind the hedge and watch her strange behavior, our hands over our mouths to suppress our inappropriate laughter. Then, one day she vanished. I finally asked my mother where our neighbor went. Mother very directly answered, “She had to go to a mental hospital. We will see if they ever let her out.”
I nodded my head, as if I knew what she meant, but I was floored. I had no idea what a mental hospital could be, but it sounded like she probably didn’t want to go. And, it seemed to be a place where they hid away hopeless people. It made me so sad and upset I went up to my room and just sat on the bed for a while, staring at the wall.
I found out that the young woman had lost her firstborn child to SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome. At that time, I had no reference point for understanding psychological issues, though I was surrounded with severe mental illness on both sides of my family. When you’re a kid, you simply accept adults the way they are. Even though I could see that other families shared warmth and supported and encouraged one another, I didn’t have any of that in my life. I didn’t question what I was missing until I was an adult. I had never even heard the word depression until I moved to California at age nineteen. Once I understood what it meant, I wondered if Daddy might be a depressed person. I could never get him to laugh, even if I never saw him cry.
I never in a million years thought I would be depressed. Yet, here I was, involuntarily committed in a “mental hospital,” wondering if my fate could be the same as my long-ago neighbor. Would they ever let me out? Was agreeing to this treatment the worst mistake of my life?
When the thirty-six hours passed, I was finally freed of the IV and having to lie still. However, following this treatment I was still having massive withdrawal symptoms from Klonopin, which has a half-life of up to sixty hours, meaning that the drug is still at half of its potency sixty hours after the last dose.
I was agitated and shaky and wanted nothing more than to go home to our farm and be outside in nature. To keep me in a calm state I was prescribed Seroquel, which snowed me under like a corpse in an avalanche. It’s typically used as an antipsychotic drug but has also been given in a low dose to people with chronic insomnia to get them to a drowsy state. Oh, but it did so much more than keep me drowsy. It left me feeling paralyzed. I would have to crawl on my hands and knees into the bathroom. I had no sense of balance. Later I would read that one of the worst side effects is that it can paralyze the body and yet the brain remains alert.
I became completely immobilized by this powerful drug. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. I didn’t bathe or brush my teeth. I lay on the bed for twenty-three hours a day, for over a week. I was very worried that I would get bedsores from being so inactive. I felt like my muscles were becoming weak and atrophied. I tried to take the nurse’s hand and have her look at me as I mouthed the words “I’m in danger.” She would only smile and pat my shoulder as if everything were normal. At one point, an RN looked down at me and gushed, “I love your music,” which even then struck me as bizarrely inappropriate. I thought for a moment I might be hallucinating, but then
I remembered how at Daddy’s funeral a person asked me for an autograph. So, it happens.
I didn’t know what time of day or night it was and I could only sense that Larry was by my side for every single visiting hour. I couldn’t tell if it was the sun or the moon outside my dirty little window. He would bring me takeout food and help me sit up long enough to eat a few bites. I had truly lost hope that I would ever feel like a human being again. Dr. Mona Lisa flew to Nashville to check on my progress in person, and stayed on to be a support system for Larry and me.
After what seemed like years, yet was only nine days, I slowly began to be able to respond to the doctor. I was directed to go to group therapy at the end of the second week. It was a program called Activities of Daily Living. The first session, I attended in my nightgown. I still didn’t have the energy or motivation to even run a brush through my hair. No one seemed to notice anyway. The other participants were all so depressed that they spent the hour staring at their feet. I’m certain that I looked like I needed this group class, but it wasn’t a good environment for me. The therapist would monotonously take us through the steps of structured living: “Get up at the same time every morning, go outside, set appointments and keep them, force yourself into a schedule.” It all seemed very kindergarten-simple and stifling to me. I hoped that I wouldn’t ever be a person who could only stare at her feet.
The treatment staff of doctors and nurses could tell that I was on my way to functioning again when I was finally able to get up and take a shower and wash my hair. It felt like washing off layers of drug dependency that had latched on to my psyche like leeches, sucking from me all that used to be Naomi Judd. I didn’t want the label of mentally ill or depressed person. I longed to have this nightmare behind me now, even though I didn’t have a clue as to how I could really feel better. Well, I thought to myself, I will fake that I feel better; anything to get me out of this hospital situation. I begged Larry to take me home. But that wasn’t about to happen. The psychiatrist informed me as he was signing my release forms that the real work had only begun. He recommended that I go directly into an intensive treatment program. He had contacted a rehab facility in Scottsdale, Arizona, where they would help me continue to detox from Klonopin. In addition, it was now time to deal with the trauma of my past, which had been making itself known through my panic attacks. This would take some time.
