A Dark Struggle Rick Sprague Takes On A Role That Is All To Familiar In The Play ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’

Rick Sprague won’t soon forget what life was like inside a mental institution.

After all, he spent at least 10 years of his life entering and re-entering different ones.

Sprague remembers the first time he was admitted to a mental ward.

It was 1975 - the same year movie-goers were flocking to see “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The movie, based on a play by Dale Wasserman, takes a sardonic look at life inside a 1960’s-era Northwest mental hospital. But for Sprague, living behind locked doors was no movie. He had his share of people like Nurse Ratched (the tyrannical staff member who ran the “Cuckoo’s Nest” ward); the fistfuls of medicine three times a day; the group sessions where patients sat in a huge circle to discuss the possibility of extending the curfew from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Then only 15 years old, Sprague was trapped in a world he did not understand. He only wanted to be free.

“I thought, ‘What am I doing here with all these crazy people?”’ Sprague said. “Then I realized they’re not that crazy.”

Two decades later, Sprague has become a leading activist in the fight for rights of people with mental illness. He has devoted his life to educating the public about mental illness, working as an ombudsman for mental health programs in four northern Washington counties. He conducts private investigations of doctors, nurses and mental institutions, and lectures at conferences.

He’s also playing the role of Chief Bromden in a local production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Although the play focuses on ward life and human interaction, Sullivan said a more important theme is the human need and desire to be free.

Sprague heard about the play after attending a local powwow last summer. He wandered up to a booth to get more information and eventually signed up for auditions.

Sprague’s drama experience is limited to performing as a pumpkin in a grade-school play. Still, he identified with Bromden and wanted to give the role a try.

For director Frank Sullivan, the decision to cast Sprague was easy.

Physically, Sprague fits the part well, Sullivan said. The towering 35-year-old Native American, who wears a bandana to catch his long hair, resembles the solemn, introverted Chief Bromden of the play. Sprague is a quiet man with a deep voice - one that Sullivan says will add to his role.

“He has a neat sound in his voice, a sound that’s resonating,” Sullivan said.

Bromden and Sprague even share a similar medical history. Although there is no identification in the play of Bromden’s illness, Sullivan believes it could easily be schizophrenia. In 1975, Sprague was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

But it was more than the similarities that helped Sprague get the part. Sullivan said he was struck by Sprague’s personality.

“Right away, he told me he had a mental illness,” Sullivan said, remembering the first visit he had with the free-spirited Sprague a few months ago. “I was very impressed that he was able to be that honest. That gave an edge.”

Sprague’s involvement in “Cuckoo’s Nest” has reeled him back to that time when he entered his first mental ward in 1975.

Sprague says he started losing control that year. He turned to a life of drugs and criminal activity, and eventually dropped out of school.

The drugs quickly launched him into a cycle of entrapment and escape that would span more than a decade.

Sprague’s parents eventually admitted him to Pine Rest Christian Hospital - a mental ward on the outskirts of Grand Rapids, Mich., his hometown. He was scheduled for a 30-day evaluation.

But one month turned into 10. Doctors and nurses advised Sprague’s parents that he needed to stay longer for treatment.

They consented.

Eventually, Sprague was released. But that first visit to a mental institution would not be his last.

For the next several years, Sprague toggled back and forth between street drugs and drugs to treat his illness. He escaped at least seven times from three different mental institutions.

“I would slide something in the door when the staff would leave,” Sprague said. “One time, they left the door open. I walked right out.”

He remembers being the most heavily restricted patient in the various wards where he lived.

“I spent a lot of time in seclusion,” Sprague said.

He remembers the whiteness of the walls and the feeling of being caged. The only piece of furniture was a mattress. The only window was layered with metal wire.

Most of the time while in seclusion, he was pinned down to his bed with cuffs on his ankles and wrists.

Sprague also remembers one time when it took six staff members to restrain him. At 15, he was 6 feet tall. The staff members saw him as a threat, Sprague said.

During those moments alone, his thoughts turned to life on the outside and what he would do when he got out.

“There’s a sense of hopelessness,” Sprague said. “I just wanted to go home, to be with my family.”

Eventually, Sprague resigned himself to life inside the ward whenever he was admitted.

“It was mostly quiet,” Sprague said. “Once in a while, you’d hear someone yelling or pounding in another room or another unit.” Sometimes, he was the one.

Everywhere patients walked, the doors locked shut behind him. Visitors were allowed once a month.

The patients had few choices and little privacy. Sprague had his own room in the first institution he stayed in, directly across from the seclusion room. Others had to share - sometimes 10 people per room.

He remembers the daily routine of ward life. Breakfast at 8 a.m. Meds in the morning. Classes and group sessions in the afternoons. Meds at midday. Meds at night.

But life was not all bad in the hospital, Sprague said. In the day room, he played cards and pingpong.

“It was fun,” Sprague said. “Fun in the sense that we had these things.”

Sprague also made a lot of friends.

“In the hospital, all the racial barriers come down,” Sprague said. “We’re all people. We all have to get along.”

In the early 1980s, Sprague left his last mental institution, never to return again. By that time, he was diagnosed with a second mental illness - manic depression, but he also was involved with an out-patient program.

By 1985, Sprague started turning his life around.

He and a group of peers started their own day treatment center in Grand Rapids for ex-patients of mental wards. Slowly weaning himself from medications was part of Sprague’s healing process.

He served as director of the center for five years.

For the first time in his life, Sprague thought he was heading in the right direction. He had a good job and was making friends and money.

Still, he felt trapped, tied down. In 1992, Sprague packed his bags and took a road trip through the Midwest, visiting various Native American monuments, including Crazy Horse Mountain and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.

“I felt a sense of freedom I had not felt in a long while,” Sprague said.

That’s when he decided to quit his job and move out West.

Sprague has been living in Spokane for the past three years.

He plans on leaving this city after the play closes, but does not know yet where he’ll go.

For now, he’ll keep busy practicing his lines, acting out a role with which he is all too familiar.

Meanwhile, he has become an inspiration to many who have crossed his path.

“He has an internal, spiritual strength,” Sullivan said. “He has a faith and a belief that obstacles can be overcome. No matter how bummed out he can get, he’s able to pull on that strength.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos