Depression Kills ~ Suicide Scares People, But It Is Not The Problem

There is now a #SuicidePreventionMonth. Seriously! How about dealing with the reason why people want to commit suicide, not preventing suicide.  Committing suicide is not easy to do. Most people want to live, they just don’t want to live in so much emotional pain or maybe even physical pain. People need to have the right, the option to commit suicide, I don’t believe that option should be taken away. 

My thought process on suicide isn’t the same as most people, probably because I have allowed suicide to be part of my being most of my adult life. It’s hard to explain how the thought of suicide has been some sort of a friend to me.  It is always in the back of my mind, yet I never attempted it until I took a drug called Lyrica and that was one of the side effects of the drug, which is not a secret, they advertise that specific side effect in their TV ads. That should give you an idea that its a big side effect.  Did I want to die? No, I didn’t want to live, I wanted the pain to stop.  Unless you have experienced depression, you cannot understand nor can you give advise as far as I am concerned. 

I started this blog post about 2 week ago when someone I followed on Twitter and Facebook attempted to take his life.  He made a public post of his intentions.  The crazy thing was that he and I had been exchanging a few tweets at the time and I was completely unaware that he was about to take his life.  I had gone onto my Facebook page and saw his post and everyone scurrying around trying to save his him. This man lives in England so lots of his followers were trying to contact the police from around the world.

He has a blog, with a lot of followers and he is very open about his struggle with depression.  He has had a number of losses over the last couple of years, but the loss of his wife was the tipping point. The way she ended the marriage was horrible, which was right after his brother had died from a cancer which destroyed every limb of his body.  As I watched this person’s tweets on Twitter and posts on Facebook I could see a man who was in so much pain.  I knew where he was going and it was getting closer to the edge. He was looking over into the abyss.

Eventually he checked himself into a health centre where of course they put him on an antidepressants.  However, a mistake was made at the pharmacy and there was an accidental overdose.  He got through that, but I was reading his stuff and I knew that there was a good possibility he was headed for trouble. People don’t realize that most suicides don’t take place when someone is extremely depressed, people don’t have the energy at that point.  It’s when they start to get better, that’s the dangerous time.  His posts, tweets and blog were pointing that he needed help.  When you have those kinds of tragedies you have PTSD and your mind just loops.  I know that because thats what my mind does. No amount of antidepressants can stop the looping. Just happens. 

He was found and taken to the hospital. He is alive today. I read some people’s post on his Facebook page and I was appalled by what some were saying. I won’t let people get away with that ignorance of depression any longer and had to reply back.  Depression isn’t a woes me scenario. All the positive affirmations in the world won’t usually change the brain chemistry in a depressed person. Obviously humour isn’t going to save you either, otherwise Robin Williams wouldn’t have taken his life.

I’m not saying not to do positive affirmations or not to use humour.  I’m saying use everything in your arsenal, but don’t beat yourself up because depression is like being in quicksand or swimming and seeing no land in sight.

A year ago in June,  I did Louise Haye’s You Can Do It CD  every day for 6 months.  Usually first thing in the morning. It was an experiment.  Years ago I used positive affirmations. I wasn’t expecting much.  I didn’t know what to expect actually.  Within the first few weeks of doing the affirmation I quit swearing. It wasn’t something I was planning on doing.  I wanted to quit swearing for years, I had quite a potty mouth.  It just stopped.

The affirmations in You Can Can Do It helped me focus on loving myself. Not sure why the swearing was a side effect of doing the affirmations. I swear a bit now, but it happens when I get really angry.  So maybe I was really angry and the affirmations helped to dissipate my  anger.  Not sure.

After that experiment I used laughter therapy for a while.  I would laugh.  I had seen some You Tube videos on laughter therapy.  So I was walking around my place laughing.  I practiced all these methods and then the month of December came and I was back into the dark hole of depression again.  There is no amount of antidepressants that will keep me from falling back into that pit of despair.  December is a bad month for me, I’ve had too many losses in that month and all the work I had done was lost.

It wasn’t until this spring when my best friend said to me, you seem to be living a nightmare over and over again.  It was at that moment that I realized I had PTSD.  I didn’t realize that people who weren’t in the army or a police officer or a fireman or an EMT worker could have PTSD. Thats exactly what I had.  My brain looped.  I only figured it out because of what my friend said and it made sense. Then I started to meet other people online with civilian PTSD.

One of the things I notice on Facebook posts and Twitter Tweets is the mention of not being around negative people.  I understand what these people are trying to say. Its difficult to be around negative people.  I always write back to them and say that eliminates most of the depressed people in the world.  I haven’t seen that many depressed people who are positive. A depressed person doesn’t even want to be around themselves most of the time.

SuicidePrevention Huh? I think the thing is dealing with the depression first.  I don’t think you would have the suicide to prevent then if there was no depression.  Merely my opinion of course for what its worth.