In January 2011 at the ripe age of 18, I was admitted into an inpatient facility for an eating disorder. I was there for about 2 months and so many aspects of my life there can be looked upon as utopian.
Remuda Ranch was located in Bowling Green, VA, about an hour away from any type of civilization. We had horses for equine therapy, art therapy, a full medical staff on site and a chapel for non-denominational worship.
For starters, everything was planned out. We had our day's activities lined up for us, full of therapy groups of varying degrees.
When I arrived I had hours of intake processes to go through. I had a complete physical evaluation, my luggage was gone through and all the bad things were taken away.
Each patient was placed on a certain grade: red, yellow or green. Red patients had the most restrictions (being driven in a golf cart from building to building, getting the toilet flushed for you by a nurse, no choice in meals). Yellow and green patients had more physical abilities (walking between buildings, going on trail rides with the horses we were assigned).
In a lot of fictional utopias, controlling mentalities is a factor. Well, Remuda had that too. Each morning, noon and night the patients would line up to receive our meds in handy paper cups. If we were having an unpleasant emotion, all we had to do was turn to the trusty psychiatrist for a new pill.
Like in Plato's Republic, our access to books, music and movies was limited. We did not have any cable TV to see what was going on in the world. All magazines were banned. Any books we wanted to read had to be approved by our therapist. All the movies we watched were rater PG or G. Each CD was purchased from the religious section. It all became so monotonous and mindless. It was scary being so out of touch with things when I was released after just two months.
It is very interesting how in a place where we were supposed to be healing mentally and physically, I seemed to lose myself. I did not have to think about anything, just look at my weekly schedule to see what I would be doing that day.
Looking back, everything about Remuda screams "UTOPIA!!!!!!!" yet to the patients it was anything but. I felt like I had Big Brother looking over my every move. There were so many rules about what we couldn't do and I felt like there was nothing that we could do. While I was there, I was counting down the days until I could go home. I know that I was benefitting from the ranch in the long run, but while I was there, getting home was the only thing on my mind.
Thanks for your post, Erin. It is super interesting. I have been thinking about Utopia as something that could never exist in real life but I think you've just proved that theory completely incorrect. Your post has given me a lot to think about.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, thank you for sharing. It's very refreshing to hear a perspective from someone who has firsthand experience of a situation similar to the ones that we've been reading about. I find it interesting to read about your dislike of the various rules and restrictions. I can imagine, especially at age eighteen, that you did not want someone restraining your daily life and dictating what your days would look like. However, I am curious to know then, when we read about utopias that offer little social/artistic/intellectual advancements are you immediately turned off? I know that early in the class some of the big questions were "what is enough" and "what is happiness?" Do you think that you could ever live in a pastoral type of utopia where the primary goal is to simply meet your basic needs?
ReplyDeleteThat's unfortunate you had to go through that, I hope it helped for the better. I can't imagine what it would be like to have every minute of every day scheduled by somebody else. It would take the creative spark out of life, but I can't even imagine what that would be like without experiencing it myself. It's a wonder that the therapy helped in the long run.
ReplyDeleteA very thought-provoking post, Erin! There are all kinds of intentional communities out there, with all kinds of reasons behind them. Thank you for sharing your experience with us.
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