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Hopkins Vail Place
15 9th Avenue South
Hopkins, MN 55343
952.938.9622
Minneapolis Vail Place
1412 West 36th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55408
612.824.8061
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Jack's Story as told at The Dr. Vail Hour
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| Hi, my name is Jack Haggerty. I am glad to be here today to talk a little bit about myself and to share what Vail Place means to me. I live with the ongoing struggle of mental illness; my diagnosis is schizophrenia. There is too much of my life to share it all with you in three minutes so I will focus on just a few incidents to give you some insight on what I have been through.
My first breakdown happened when I was about to turn 26 years old in 1996. I was married, had a job in a highly competitive program at GE Information Services, and I was very happy. It was a vulnerable time in my life due to enormous stress on the job and being newly married. I had a paranoid psychotic breakdown and considered suicide.
The doctors said I had a chemical imbalance, but I didn’t understand what that was. I thought I had done something terribly wrong, but I didn’t know what. I then thought my family had turned against me and were trying to hurt me or worse. I was convinced that the world wanted me to kill myself. I spent the next three months in the hospital, and that was the worst time of my life. All I knew was that I felt as though I had lost everything.
Over the next few years I struggled with not taking my medications and I was hospitalized several times as a result. On two separate occasions I was awoken by police officers in my home who were going to take me to the hospital. My wife, Sheryl, must have called them and told them that she thought that I was a danger, but I didn’t agree. In both of those cases, I was forcibly restrained and taken to the hospital against my will. To me, the hospital was a place where I was locked up and forcibly made to take medications which I thought caused me to be suicidal. The hospital was a place that I knew I never wanted to go back to.
In 1999, I was separated from my wife, had to move from my apartment, and I had lost my job. I had one more encounter with a police officer where my wife, Sheryl, was living at the time. Because of my distrust of the police, and anxiety about going to the hospital, I was not in a stable state of mind. After yelling at the top of my lungs for the police officer to “shut up”, I approached him and appeared to be a threat. Because of this he grabbed me around the neck and I wrestled him to the ground. I was then sprayed in the face with mace and was arrested. I was charged with second degree assault, assaulting a police officer and declared to be a danger to myself and the community. I spent the next three months in jail.
In 2001, after more hospitalizations, and one more stay in jail for banging my head against and breaking the Gap store window on Lake and Hennepin, I had a very intense hospitalization which was a turning point in my life. It was at that time that I was introduced to Vail Place by one of its members, Marilyn. After more urging to try Vail Place by family and doctors, I started the process of becoming a member of Vail Place in 2003. My intake for becoming a member of Vail Place was rather memorable because the day that I did my intake I was in downtown Minneapolis and saw some people with bags of the Twelfth International Symposium for Clubhouse Development which Vail Place was hosting. It seemed more than a coincidence.
Because of the stable environment that Vail Place provides and the friendships that I have made, along with the life skills and support from Vail Place, I am much healthier, physically and mentally. I am much more active in the community and involved in Vail Place. I do volunteer work at the Basilica of St. Mary; I work as a football and baseball official; am on the Advisory Council of the Barbara Schneider Foundation; and am a member and Board Member of Vail Place. I have more friends and am in touch with friends from my past. If it weren’t for God, the support of my family, and Vail Place, I might not have had the strength to continue with my life. To me, Vail Place means the strength to recover and the hope for a better life. Thank you.
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