If my story doesn’t get me onto the Dr. Phil show, then he should shut it down. 1
I’m serious. My life story is so horrifyingly incredulous, people think it’s fiction. That’s why I mainly hang out with my dogs, a few other depressed writers on the web and the shrink I see every other day. I can’t pay for it, my companion does. She’s in a huge amount of debt but, she has loved me for over twenty-five years. I live in Florida and she runs a successful manufacturing industry in LA. She comes home about once a month. I miss her when she’s gone, but I don’t mind being alone. 2
My name is Susan Jo Hunt. Many, many professionals swore I wouldn’t live to the age of eighteen. I have witnesses from over thirty years ago who will confirm what I am going to tell you is the absolute truth. I’m now forty-nine years old, I have been told more than once that I look like a short Ellen Degeneres, but every year, she gets better looking. What follows is just a peek at my life, a small a tip of my iceberg. I swear to you every single word is true.3
I wanted to go to the Dr Phil “Get Real” Retreat and applied a year ago, last June. I even sent a CD with videos. A month later I went to The Summerhouse in Miami to detox for ten days. They had someone from Tampa come pick me up from Melbourne. By this time, my cocaine was being delivered, free of charge. That ended when my partner came home and found a syringe full of cocaine in the bathroom. It also ended her visit home. She left eight days before her scheduled departure. Even now, I wonder if I left it there as a sub-conscious cry for help, but I doubt it. I was more upset when she smashed the syringe against the wall than when she walked out the door. 4
On September 2, 2008, I went to the Recovery Ranch because Dr. Phil endorsed them, and I loved Dr. Phil. I trusted Dr. Phil…mainly because he said yall a lot, a word I learned not to say in California. I picked up valley-speak pretty quickly. I watched him everyday until I went to the “Recovery” ranch. I stayed two months and left there more traumatized than when I went in. I've had two Nashville attorneys respond positively on filing a lawsuit. But I'm too shattered to get the paper work in on time due the statute of limitations.5
I'm on five different medications. I still drink, but I don't use anymore. I would like to stop drinking but I have lost any hope of doing so. Last week I went to an addiction specialist. My MMPI scores were so high, it was unreadable and I had to take it over. The second test was readable, but just barely. I’m pretty sure that’s the first time he’s seen test results like mine. My partner paid 600.00 for the evaluation as I am too screwed up to work, and my therapist needs help. 6
I started drinking at the age of two because my grandmother used a whisky, lemon, tea and honey concoction to soothe my asthma. It worked and I developed a very convincing cough. I was introduced to tobacco at the age of five. My grandfather was chewing tobacco and I thought it was chocolate. As a joke, he cut off a chunk and gave it to me. I swallowed it and nearly died. It wasn’t my first, or last, near death experience. It wasn’t hard to pick up both bad habits by the time I was eleven.7
I didn’t go to high school for several reasons, but mainly because I was stolen from my mother where I had been living in Oklahoma City My dad came and took me three states away from anyone I’d ever known. I was completely alone with him. 8
I was fifteen the first night I arrived at the Palace Hotel in Raton, New Mexico. The 3-story hotel was built in 1896. It looked like an old castle on the outside. But stepping inside was an incredible site. The entrance opened into a bar that looked like it came straight out of an old John Wayne movie. 9
He got me completely shit-faced on Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry. Then he raped me on that first night. I worked in the restaurant and bar as my father decided I didn’t need to go to school anymore. 10
Dad wanted me to stay with him and be his wife. I remained with with him almost twenty-four hours a day. I was allowed to go feed my horse everyday. I was also to allowed to drive over Raton pass to Trinidad, Colorado twenty miles away, where I picked up three or four bales hay, once a month. I learned to drive a ’57 ford pickup with three on the tree and a push button start, on snow packed roads, over one of scariest passes in the Rocky Mountains...at age fifteen.11
He continued raping me for two almost years, around 7-800 times or so, to my estimation, because it happened at least twice a day, if not three times. He ran the bar and we lived on the second story in a few hotel rooms converted into an apartment. It looked like the Shining, and he was Jack. 12
My brother, three and a half year’s younger than I, came to stay with us after I had been I’d been there for 9 months or so. I thought this would be to my advantage because how was I supposed to continue sleeping in my dad’s bed with my brother in the next room? 13
To my dismay, it got worse. My dad made him stay in one of the dilapidated hotel rooms half way down the hall from our apartment. My father resented the hell out of his intrusion and began taking it out on him in unspeakable ways. I had gotten used to my condition and I had access to mind-numbing substances. But watching what my brother went through almost killed me, literally. 14
I planned an escape one time and we almost got away with it. I never wanted to escape again. The demon that emerged from my father was not to be provoked, if I wanted my life, as much as it, again literally, sucked.15
Every shrink I've been to tells me I am the worst case they’ve ever had. I have numerous professionals who are willing to testify to this fact. This is the absolute truth. They also always say the same thing: “How the hell are you still alive?” 16
Before I went to The Recovery Ranch, in Nunnelly, Tennessee, I had to have a phone intake interview with one of the centers’ recruiters. We took a ten-minute break after an hour on the phone. Then we continued for another hour. She said the interview was the longest she'd ever taken. They generally last 30 minutes. Dr. Merritt, the psychiatrist, had to take a break during our first interview, so she could steady herself. Can you believe that? 17
I should've known right then, I was in the wrong place. I was ostracized and bullied the entire eight weeks I spent there. Out of 25 women, only one was nice to me. She was Robert Downy Jr.’s older sister, Allison. You can ask her if this is true, and she can verify my story. One day in group therapy one of my house-“mates” haughtily suggested that I needed a “higher” level of care. My counselor, Bobby Chapman, dropped his mouth open, but nothing came out. Then she broke the group “confidence” and told everyone that I had multiple personalities. It was an utter nightmare. 18
They practically put me into a coma with a bunch of drugs for schizophrenics. I had come there to be treated for Complex-PTSD, ADHD, Anxiety and Panic Attack disorder (I don’t know the acronym for that), alcoholism and drug addiction, Generational Clinical Suicidal depression (three in three generations,on my mother's side)and other acronyms that I can’t remember now. But I know FOR SURE, none them stood for schizophrenia.
That was the rumor though, so I was called Sybil quite often and not just behind my back.19
One time, I missed dinner because no one shared the dinner hour information with me. And this information changed everyday. When I walked into the kitchen, there was no food left. I looked at the ten other women sitting at the dinner table with food overflowing their plates. Everyone snickered when someone commented, “Hey, first come, first served.”20
I had already been dubbed insane (which I'm obviously not, I just have problems), so I bit my tongue until I finally replied in a very calm manner, “If any of you, or anyone else came to my house, I would never, ever let something like this happen to them, I would share some of what I had on my plate.” I heard the gossip begin as I headed upstairs to my room. 21
I was kicked out of the ninth grade for falling asleep during science class. After they turned off the lights to show a documentary on amoebas or some other boring crap, it’s no wonder I nodded off. But, when the teacher saw me drooling with my head on the desk, my school year was pretty much over. 22
Soon after, I entered my first treatment center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They waived the 16-year-old age limit because they had never seen a fourteen year old who was injecting Demerol, and Seconols, Tuinols, Nembutals and any other ‘al that was water soluble. Most barbiturates are, Percocets aren’t, by the way. I never tried that more than once. They were shocked to learn that I also was and taking mushrooms, Dexedrines, white bennies, smoking pot, hash, cigarettes, and drinking beer and still standing, walking and talking. 23
They were sad when they had to kick me out for finding valiums and pot in my room. I found out advance, counselors were going to take us on a recreational outing to a movie theatre. So, I took the opportunity to convince a “friend” to drive up from OKC and slip me the contraband. I went off without to a hitch. However, my slurred speech and funny odor gave me away.24
My older sister’s boyfriend introduced me to THC when I was thirteen. Shortly after, she started dating a “Drugstore Cowboy.” He introduced me to all the narcotics and pharmaceuticals anyone could ever need or want. It was my job to sell the miner stuff, valiums and such. Then he introduced me to a syringe and I was soon using up my profits buying narcotics. After two weeks in the 10th grade I got expelled forever for selling drugs to other drug addicts. The seventies were raging. I was put on homebound teaching for a while. My mother and stepfather were out of their minds with me. 25
Then, in September of 1975, my real Dad showed up after two years. It wasn’t difficult for him to convince them he would take me to the safe little town in New Mexico where I would flourish. He would enroll me in school, and I could work in the evenings where he could keep an eye on me. Then, there was the horse. He would buy me a horse. Now, I was hooked. I scooped up my little dachshund, Baron, and was packed within an hour.26
He really did buy me a horse. He also supplied me with the best pot and cocaine on the market. I got valiums from a Doctor friend of his. I lived above the bar and I was allowed to drink pretty much anything I wanted, any time I wanted. 27
That’s one the reasons I slipped into the Stockholm Syndrome so easily. Well that, plus the threat of death if I tried to leave. Once, he actually put a gun to my head, but I passed out before he could shoot me, so he didn’t bother, he knew I wasn’t going anywhere. You already know part of what else happened for the next two years. 28
When he told me one day that we were going back to OKC, I asked him, “Dad, what about Sugar? Are we renting a trailer?” He replied, no, Susie, I sold her. Now, start packing.” That was around June or July of 1977, about 22 months after I arrived at the Palace Hotel. It’s still standing, by the way. I Googled it and it is now a bonified New Mexican historical landmark. 29
Our sudden exit was due to Dad’s skimming the tills from the Tinnie Mercantile Company, which was some rich guy and his sons who lived in Santa Fe. My Dad was slick; he had owned bars for as long as I can remember. But it helped that Santa Fe was 90 miles away, in the days before fax machines. 30
I watched him take his gun and all the money out of the safe, and then we split. His intention was to get an apartment for us in OKC. By a stroke of luck, or miracle, or maybe a case of serendipity, I ended up staying with my mother when we stopped to leave my brother there. My stepdad had a lot to do with it, since we were basically homeless at the time. It would not be the last time I saw him.31
Soon after coming back “home”, my mother and I moved into an apartment together. My stepfather had finally had it with four lunatic stepchildren. My younger brother went to live with my older brother in Chicago and my sister stayed with her boyfriend. I was glad they were still around. 32
However, by the time New Years Eve rolled around, I was hospitalized for internal bleeding. Throwing up from injecting so much Demoral had caused my esophagus to rupture. For two weeks, the nurses resentfully gave injections of Demoral in to my IV. They needed time for my esophagus to heal, so they had to taper me off slowly. 33
Then I was sent down to the closed psych unit on the fourth floor of Baptist Hospital, for the umpteenth time. There, they had to get a baseline of my downer addiction. They watched me take dose after dose before someone reported that was I passed out on the pool table in the recreation room. It was the thirteenth and fourteenth Nembutal that did it. 34
The nurses were hesitant to follow the doctor’s orders. And they were in complete shock to see a seventeen year old who was five feet tall, and weighed a little over a hundred pounds, walk up to their little medication window and demand my seventh dose, please. Now they had their baseline.35
We used to call the closed psych unit the OD corral, because so many kids my age revolved in and out of there. In fact, two of my friends slapped my hand as the doors locked behind me. It was just like home. One acquaintance was going on a home visit pass soon, and he would trade me a couple of his diabetic mother’s syringes for a couple of my Nembutals. I considered it worth the trade.36
The second time I got caught shooting up in the bathroom, which had no lock, by the way, my doctor fired me and demanded that I be shipped to Norman, thirty miles south and enter the state mental institution.37
I remember walking between my mother and stepfather, who had gotten back together for the occasion. In fact, they stayed together until he died a couple of years later. But that’s another story. 38
So anyway, as we walked down huge hallways, doors kept clanging shut behind us. I was sure that mean horrible flying bat-monkeys were going to swoop down at any moment. When we finally arrived at the wicked witch’s office, even my mom and stepdad were shivering. 39
I started begging, crying, pleading that I do ANYTHING to not be turned over to this place, this dungeon. With one signature, I could have been kept there indefinitely. I have a tendency to pass out occasionally and this was turning into one of those occasions. My pleas were not necessary.40
They had seen “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” when it was released in 1975. Thank God for that. They got me out of there as fast they could. In fact, they were practically running. 41
They returned me to the closed psych unit, in OKC, but Dr. Crass (real name) was firm. I was “too high-risk.” So I stayed there for a few days without an attending physician. 42
Then they found a place where I spent six months with other screwed up kids. We lived in a giant old 2-story house. We didn’t have to take the short bus because the special school and treatment center were only a half block away. 43
I was released shortly after I turned eighteen. I had the paper that said I successfully passed the GED Test. I was immediately enrolled into college where I maintained a 4.0 for a while. I started working at a local grocery store, where I encountered many past schoolmates. I eventually got bored with the response “I thought you died!” so I finally just said “Yes, I’m alive”, before they shut their dropped jaws. I’ll admit, it was painful when they would flash their class ring in front of me…deliberately. I was a bad seed and they were glad they weren’t me.44
In one year I went from being raped by my father everyday, then nearly dying several times, spending six months in a treatment center, ending up sitting in a room full of strangers listening to history lectures and being chided by my former classmates.45
That’s only one year, June to June.46
I continued to see my therapist for the next ten years, with a short interval here and there.47
When my current therapist talked to him recently (yes, I found him on the Web) it had been twenty years since I’d seen him last. He was my first effective therapist. 48
He told my current therapist a variation of the same refrain “She was the worst case I’ve ever treated, but boy, I sure do remember her.” He also told her that when he met me I was seventeen, and had over 20 overdoses documented in my chart. I still talk him occasionally, but he lives in LA, practically next door to my partner.49
Besides, I like my current therapist, she’s nice. Except for this stupid new requirement to get an Addiction Specialist on board. I’ll bet my old therapist put that into her head.50
The above is copy written material. I’ve had so many people say, right before they disappear, “Damm, Susan, you should write a book!” So I am. I am writing my memoir, which is receiving positive feedback so far, but it is not complete All this is in it or will be in it, even Dr. Phil is in it. Because I speak the truth.51
You know the funny thing is, I completed my bachelor’s degree from Chapman University in Orange, California. My major was Psychology. I wanted to figure myself out. I’ve moved 55 times, most were not of my volition. I have all the addresses. I was born in the middle, Duncan, Oklahoma and have lived on both coasts. I prefer the Atlantic over the Pacific. But those damm hurricanes. In a space of fifteen months, we suffered through four of them. But Frances and Jeanne hit three weeks apart in 2004, destroying my house and business. 52
This isn’t even the worst of it… 53
So yeah, I'm bothered by my toxic past…and present and future. I had one attorney tell me I should be on Oprah. My response was “Well, I tried to get on the Dr. Phil show and I didn’t hear a peep out of him. So why bother with Oprah?” She’s supposedly up the chain, but I like Dr. Phil better, he’s more down to earth and tells it like it is.54
You know after reading this, I realize that I should keep my head up in the month of June. In fact, my foster-daughter was murdered in that month.55
I Hope to hear from you, but I’m not crossing my fingers over it.56
I watched Dr. Phil every evening for a long time. He kept me alive. I still love Dr. Phil. I can forgive him for one bad decision. I would really like to believe that I didn’t look behind the curtain and see a fake OZ.57
Hey, you know what? I just wrote a short story! I’m going to post it tomorrow on Webook.com. I am going to title it “My Quest To Meet Dr. Phil”. Yeah, I like that. Or maybe “I Live Alone And Talk Too Much”. You can find 10 chapters of my memoir on Webook. My pen name is sjhunt2005. It is titled “Mine Has Been No Ordinary Life” Thanks you guys! You’ve helped me already!58
With sincere respect,59
Susan J. Hunt 60
PS: Please tell Robin I said Hello, I love her too.
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