After ten days, i was discharged from the hospital over the objections of my doctor, brought to the middlesex county jail for men, and kept in solitary confinement from February 1974 until May 1974.

She asked me why I had the bands (admission bands) and I told her I was in hospital for depression, bipolar and anxiety. She started judging me and suggested that I was too young to be struggling with such problems. It shook me but I just shrugged it off

When I was in the hospital, I was very suicidal in a kind of blind way, I was starving to death and just 'cause I didn't want to turn out like my family showed me, you know, that's all I ever saw of people, was my own family. I wasn't allowed to associate with anyone. Oh, God. So I didn't want to live.

I was really ugly [circa 8 a 10 years old] and had an admiration complex for Christi [her beautiful sister]. They sent us tot the ous of senora Maria a Campos for instruction.. .I asked about the mysteries of the Bible, and I think I behaved badly so they sent me to a retreat. It was the usual thing: "to dedicate oneself mor to God".. ..it was a house where one spent about fifteen days.. .I asked the priest so many questions about how Christ was born, and was the virgin really a virgin, that they threw me out. (9 September 1950)

Though he had no more business there, he found it hard to tear himself from the hospital.

—If I ever get good at hospital politics, I think I shall start to hate myself.

I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous - everyone hasn't met me yet.

But after I got them to leave and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn't any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.

He [Luckhurst's doctor] gave me a sick note that said I was suffering from hypertension, but not [Clinical] depression. He advised me not to mention it either.
I ignored him. What possible harm could be done by telling my employer the truth? I was entirely candid with The Scotsman. My doctor knew all about the stigma that attaches to any form of mental illness. I was absurdly naive.
Six weeks later, feeling healthier than I had for years, my GP agreed I was fit to return to work. I was raring to go. My boss was having none of it. I was informed that I could not return as editor. His explanation was plain. "It might happen again." I refused the offer to go back to work in a demoted role and we agreed severance terms. The Scotsman was generous, but I was unemployed.

"I think there must be probably different types of suicides. I'm not one of the self-hating ones. The type of like "I'm shit and the world'd be better off without poor me" type that says that but also imagines what everybody'll say at their funeral. I've met types like that on wards. Poor-me-I-hate-me-punish-me-come-to-my-funeral. Then they show you a 20 X 25 glossy of their dead cat. It's all self-pity bullshit. It's bullshit. I didn't have any special grudges. I didn't fail an exam or get dumped by anybody. All these types. Hurt themselves. I didn't want to especially hurt myself. Or like punish. I don't hate myself. I just wanted out. I didn't want to play anymore is all. I wanted to just stop being conscious. I'm a whole different type. I wanted to stop feeling this way. If I could have just put myself in a really long coma I would have done that. Or given myself shock I would have done that. Instead."

I'm an excuse for medical experiments and art theory. You must get me out of here and out of the hospital.

I am exiting the wider world, to return to my homeland of bullying, psychosis, and bad taste. Forgive me. It is a medical matter.

Then I fell sick, I was delirious, driven mad by fear, they said at the hospital. Maybe so. The best thing to do when you're in this world, don't you agree, is to get out of it. Crazy or not, scared or not.

I had no money. My parents closed down all credit. I couldn't get any money, and they were trying to lock me up again because I'd taken some acid and told my psychiatrist about it. I just told him what the experience was like and he jumped, and at the same time he read about Andy Warhol's "pornographic" movies in Time. I was in the studio a lot, so my psychiatrist got really upset and called my parents and was gonna have me put away, so I ran away to Europe with Andy and Chuck.