Considering going to the hospital, but am apprehensive. . .

Hi, this is my first post here. Really my first Reddit post ever actually, so I hope I'm following the rules correctly. Sorry for such a long post, too.

About four and a half years ago, when I was 17, I was admitted involuntarily to a mental hospital for a suicide attempt. I was there for five days, and it was overall an awful experience. None of the psychiatrists or nurses were the least bit kind, and nobody listened to me at all. I felt completely misunderstood and angry at the things that were said to the patients. For example: "You're all young, you should be happy and spending your summer outside having fun. What's the matter with you all that you're here instead?" There was a lot of the "get over it already" mentality. At night, some of the more unstable kids were running up and down the hallways yelling about how they were going to kill somebody. Also, I hated being medicated. Sure, the meds I was put on "worked" because they took away the awful pain of the depression, but I just never liked the way I didn't feel like myself on them. Even after I'd been on them for over a year and the initial high feeling had evened out into something more normal, I still never liked being medicated.

I eventually went off the meds and completely changed my life. I moved back to my childhood city, which is a beautiful place with lots of great opportunities, I surrounded myself with loving and supportive people and removed all of the negative and abusive people from my life, and I began pursuing my dream career as well as other activities that I love. It took a ton of hard work to get to the place I did, but I did it. I overcame everything: the self harm, the depression, the anxiety, the eating disorders, the addictions. I really felt happy, without the need for any drugs or any therapists.

But now, for lots of different, unfortunate reasons, I find myself at another really low point in my life. I feel incapable of taking care of myself because the depression and anxiety are so crushing, and I'm terrified of slipping back into old bad habits. I take a lot of pride in how far I've come since my teen years, and I think that pride is the one thing keeping me from going back to cutting or starving myself or binge drinking. I have my boyfriend and a few close family members that have been really helpful the last few weeks, but it just isn't enough. There are more and more days when I can't help feeling those same old suicidal thoughts. I've tried a few therapists here and there, but it still doesn't feel like enough right now. I feel like I need a safe place to reset, a place where it's okay for me to forget about all of the stresses that are piling up for even just a couple days. Over the last four years, I fought SO hard to turn my life around, and now I feel ashamed of how hard I've crashed in just a few short weeks. Having to fight through this kind of pain again is exhausting. It's taking more than everything I have to even get up in the mornings. I'm constantly on the verge of checking myself into the hospital, but I'm scared. I don't want another experience like the one when I was 17.

So I guess I'm just wondering about other people's experiences of voluntarily admitting themselves. Has anyone had a good hospital experience that was helpful to them? Or does anyone have any advice on other options? And what about the medication? Will they force me to get back on antidepressants if I go, or do I have the option to work on getting better without them? Thank you for any help/advice you might be able to give me.