snake pit

slang

1. A situation or environment that is particularly vicious, treacherous, or cutthroat. If you want to survive in politics, you need to be ready to live in a snake pit. The novel tells the story of a young novelist caught up in the snake pit of the literary scene in 1930s London. She described her experience of marrying into the powerful family as having plunged headlong into a snake pit.

2. A derogatory term for a psychiatric hospital, especially one that is poorly and inhumanely run. After his breakdown, the family sent him to a snake pit upstate, not wanting to have any responsibility for his well-being. Pop culture loves to paint mental hospitals as snake pits where people are lobotomized and sedated without mercy, but it's really such a cruel mischaracterization.