How does a Mental illness start?

Some of you’s probably heard my story here it is for those that have not.  It was nineteen eighty seven and I was in prison waiting for my appeal to happen.  I knew I would get out once my appeal was finished.  The reason was the Judge did not give me the law and everyone has a right to the law.  She wanted me to do time that is why she did not give me an appeal bond.  The appeal lasted two years.  That was on my mind also so was they had just moved be to east wing in the prison I did not want to go.  I know they had more freedom and wore street clothes but all that did not matter to me.  I had my friends in south wing and I was happy as far as being in prison goes.  I and a friend ran a gambling house it was just for fun for me.  It passed time and I did not lose any money.

I took the gambling house to east wing with me.  I had other problems going on at the same time a guy that I later found out I had just met a couple of times was going on the outside saying I was a snitch and that is something a person did not want going on. I had finished an accounting course and was now taking computer programing there.  I raised the limit on my gambling house and a guard I knew wrote me up.  I later found out he did it to save me he thought so I did not get hurt although at the time I was angry that he wrote me up. In computer class I had just been made a teacher assistant because I had finished my work early.
All this was going on and I went to the hearing for gambling and lost of course. They gave me three days in solitary and start all over from the lowest wing.  Well I went to the hole very angry and that is the last thing I remember because next thing I was on another wing and was mentally ill.  Although I did not know it at the time that I was mentally ill. Also did not know where I was at first or anything.  The next thing I knew I was cutting myself with a razor. I told the guard on duty what I had done cutting myself.  He next put me in a cell where they watch you and the next morning I was taken to the infirmary at Canon city.
A psychiatrist talked to me and at first thought I was mentally ill although he later changed his mind and just thought I was sleep deprived. He put me on Halcion sleeping medication although I did not start this medication until one night before Christmas. The psychiatrist came on seen me when I was better and asked where I would like to go for the rest of my time. I had been watching the inmates there and said right there behind the walls even though I could have gone back my friends all stuck by me there.  Although I had changed I was not the same person and will never be.  I changed with the mental illness.  I went back to the infirmary once more and that is when they started watching that I took my sleeping medicine.
My counselor at the time told me she was not going to recommend parole when I came up for it because she said I was a danger to myself and others.  I did not know what she meant at the time.  I knew they could not hold me once my appeal came through so I was not worried.  I wish now that at the time she would have explained it to me.  She was from Pueblo so she knew about mental illness.  I finally received a job there in the library and won my appeal six months later.  I did not know that I had a mental illness.  I will talk about the streets and how I became mentally ill the second time next week.  I sort of had a mental illness in the county waiting for my appeal bond although I had friends that took care of me there.