Tag: psychological pain

When suicide becomes the option due to the opioid epidemic

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, CRPS, depression, mood disorders, physical pain, suicidality, suicide, suicide attempt

When suicide becomes the option due to the opioid epidemic

I have been involved in the suicide prevention things for the past eleven years or so. I have been reading research articles from those in the field. Then I became disabled and my suicidality increased but I have not made any attempts. The reason I say this is because I am now involved in the chronic pain community and found that there have been a lot of suicides since the crack down on opioids really started bearing down on patients and their doctors.

Recently there has been a woman in Montana that ended her life after the DEA went after her doctor. I find this, sadly, preventable. These pain patients have severe pain and need opioids to get relief. Since October, I have been trying to get adequate pain meds to relieve my pain but have been facing nothing but red tape. I have had two psych hospitalizations, which have not been helpful in the least. My psychiatrist is really worried about me. I have a plan to end things in a few months. It is a coping mechanism for me to make these plans. I don’t know if I will go through with it but it’s helpful for me to know there is an end to my suffering.

In the suicide prevention community, specifically a social media twitter group called SPSM (suicide prevention social media) there has been a lot of talk about getting the medical professionals to talk openly about asking about suicide as there has been research stating most suicides happen a within a period of time after seeking a medical professional. I argue that the psych professionals also have to ask the question, which sometimes does not happen for a variety of reasons. What is missing in those with chronic pain, is also lacking the talk of asking about suicide after pain meds have been forcibly cut or stopped all together. This kind of action has lead to multiple suicide that Dr. Kline, a pain physician, has written about.

I really think that if the pain psychologist in these pain clinics ask about it or even the health care professionals do, there might be a chance of saving a life. These patients feel their backs are against a wall and they cannot function without these meds anymore. The epidemic is nothing but hysteria. The CDC lied about their statistics and made it look like prescription opioids were the problem when it was really illicit drugs. Compounding the problem with chronic pain patients not getting the meds they need are the patients that have substance abuse disorder. The stigma surrounding substance abuse is probably as bad as those with suicidal ideation. There are no easy answers as some chronic pain patients has been grouped with the substance use and vice versa. Both need to be treated with meds but stigma and thoughts of not being able to be “strong” enough to stand the withdrawals or handle pain is just not a way of doing it. Unlike alcohol abuse where abstinence helps, substance use need medical assisted treatment with meds such as suboxone. There needs to be no legal punishment for those seeking treatment. More overdoses have happened due to people being released from jail and then using again because their tolerance has been lowered while being away from their substance.

With chronic pain, those that have been stable for years and being taken off abruptly, often turn to suicide because their pain is making their lives miserable. They can no longer do the things they did while on pain meds for their chronic pain. Often these patients feel abandoned by their doctors and some have been and are unable to find another doctor to treat them. Some have to travel far from their homes for care. It is a sad situation. Pain needs to be addressed. It was the 5th vital sign but the crisis has done away with it. So those with deep emotional pain don’t get asked about suicide and those with deep physical pain are neglected and never asked about their suicidal thoughts. Can we bridge this huge gap? Tough question to be answered.

unstable and need more therapy

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, CRPS, depression, mood disorders

I had very little sleep. I finally went to sleep around maybe 5. I had set my alarm for 3 different times and didn’t actually wake up till the last one went off, when I knew I had to get up or I would miss my psychiatrist’s appt. I really didn’t want to go to either appointment today. I really had the why bother feeling.

I got to Starbucks and had my breakfast so that put me in a slightly better mood. I had 6 shots of espresso because I was so sleep deprived. When I was finished eating, it was time to catch the train. I was a little bit close to on time. I am almost always early for my psych but the train was kind of slow going to a few stations and they were announcing something about shuttle buses but I couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying.

My doc called me and she asked what was up. I told her not much had changed since I last saw her except that I moved my date to a week later. I didn’t tell her why. I told her I was miserable and I didn’t like that. I was tired of being in pain. She said that she thinks the pain doc is going to prescribe me the longer acting med. I told her I wasn’t hopeful about the upcoming appt. I didn’t tell her I was being screwed with my pain meds, though I felt like it. I told her I didn’t know if I should start hormone therapy. She said something about being stable and I asked if she thought I was and she said no. Great. Tell me something I don’t know. So much for faking things with her, haha. So I am unstable. She asked when I was seeing my therapist and I said 2. I had to find the bus stop as walking is difficult right now. She will see me in two weeks and I had the urge to email her saying forget it but didn’t. She said to let her know about my appt with the pain doc and I said okay. I will be in touch.

I left for my therapist’s office. I got off at the wrong exit and walked like two blocks to find a bus stop. I checked to see when the next bus was coming at this stop and found I walked by a closer one. Nice. Just what my ankle needed. The app said the bus would be here in 15 but I think it was closer to 20 minutes. I still had plenty of time. I got off at the stop after city hall, which was closer to my therapist’s office than city hall so it worked out well. I had about a half hour to kill. I used the bathroom as the espresso was running its course. I wish I bought some water as I was thirsty. The waiting room didn’t have a water cooler. That kind of stinks.

I saw my therapist and about 10 minutes in I just burst out crying. I have no idea what came over me. I must have cried for fifteen minutes and I don’t even know what I was crying about. I told him how frustrated I was with pain, and walking, and family not understanding, friends not understanding, not being treated with the right pain meds. It just all came out. I told him I even thought of not even bothering with therapy. He said that is a good idea, sarcastically. I asked him if he thought I should be in therapy after I was finished crying and got some what control of my emotions. He said he thought I needed more therapy, maybe twice a week. Then time was up and that was it. Thanks for nothing buddy. I was annoyed but felt better, sort of.

I stupidly walked to the station. It was raining most of the day so the stairs to the station were obviously wet. I almost missed a step going down and it scared me. My ankle was not happy. It was raining harder when I got to the Square. I went to the barber shop to see if my barber had my baking dish. He wasn’t in and the guy there didn’t know if he had it. I sent him a message and his wife said he would bring it tomorrow. I told him/her that I would be in the area Wednesday. That might change as I just ordered my groceries to be delivered between 11 and 1. If I feel up to it after I put my stuff away, I will go. I need to get my laptop fixed as this POS can’t be upgraded so I will be changing OS to Linux once I figure out how. I am going to try a factory reset first to see if that fixes the memory issues but I doubt it. I don’t have too many programs installed so I am kind of pissed the memory is gone. And I keep getting the windows update saying I need 8GB of memory to install. WTF Sorry, not happening! I am tempted to just buy another laptop with a larger memory storage. I have no idea if I get my other laptop fixed if there will be other issues. I haven’t used it since Oct. I am sure there are a shit load of updates and I know I will have to buy McAfee as it expired. Might just be worth getting a new fricken thing. I will check and see what they have available. I hate doing it but if it will save me a headache, it will be worth it!

I don’t know if my therapist will see me twice a week. I guess I will ask him next week but it will be tough to see him regularly. As it is right now, I am just seeing him like twice a month, if I am lucky there are no Monday holidays. He didn’t say if it would be a temporary or permanent thing. He wanted me to have the space to talk as I am not getting that right now. I’ll have to think about it because that means $30/wk as opposed to $15.

My ankle pain just spiked. I still need to figure out dinner. I should have bought Chipotle while I was in the Square. I could go for a burrito.

surviving depression 23 June 2006

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide

June 23, 2006

I know what you are going through. Sometimes I think that everyone would be better off without me. The only thing that is keeping me alive these days is my word to my therapist that I won’t go through with my thoughts. The pain of living is just too much to bare right now. My therapist often asks me how I get through this. There is a quote that I keep telling her that I got from one of Kay Redfield Jamison’s book, “Only one option left, to suffer”. She is my inspiration as she has bipolar disorder, tried to die by suicide, and is one of the leading researchers/teachers of the disorder. I know it doesn’t make sense to suffer all the time but millions of people out there do it everyday. We few that are in this group do it every day, though it is most difficult and we come from different backgrounds and sections of the world. I know it sucks, but the trick is to realize when we feel this way, it is NOT our true selves, it is the disorder that is talking. I know we all feel like scum of the earth for no reason other than for being allowed to breathe, to be something called alive that we wish we didn’t have to be. One reason why I have read so much about depression and there are a lot of good books out there, is that you have to know the disorder, understand it, then you can know what to do, sometimes when it isn’t hitting you on the head with a 60 lb hammer. Sometimes knowing the demons is better than not knowing them. I know that it isn’t always easy when our physical bodies wreck our lives and we are no longer feel apart of the human race because our b&b are not functioning and we have physical pain that is driving us insane. But things aren’t always going to be this way. One of the books that I had read said that suicide is complete in 10 minutes and if you wait out those ten mins, you will survive. The same thing goes for depression. Though instead of 10 mins, it’s more like 10 days or more. But it doesn’t last. Eventually it lifts, and we return to “normal” functioning until the next episode. The HARDEST part of this fucking disorder is that we forget that we have survived the worse of it. Every time we are stuck in an episode, we think it is for the first time, that we are NEVER going to feel better, ever. I am telling you that you are. No matter how hopeless you feel right now, tomorrow might be a better day and if it is not, least you survived today. Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll be here for you. Count on it.

About the mood stabilizers, I suffer from bipolar depression, which is a little different than major depression. I sometimes have periods where I am really hyper, don’t sleep, eat, think I am on top of the world, talk excessively, and can’t stand still. These periods don’t last too long, maybe a week or two, then I either have a period of being normal and/or crash big time. I take Trileptal for it and it has helped some with the Cymbalta. Trileptal is an anti-convulsant that is used a “mood stabilizer”. There are other drugs that are used, but you should be seen by a psychiatrist for evaluation. Most GP’s don’t have a clue about psychotropic meds and it isn’t a good idea for them to play around with it if you don’t have the diagnosis.

Fear of suicide (revision to blog of 6 Feb 2013)

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide

Fear of suicide.

This statement can be taken one of two ways. The first is that some people are afraid to talk about suicide for fear of sparking ideation or thinking about suicide. The second is that when
someone knows you are feeling low and have attempted before, they are afraid of losing that person and react in ways that may or may not help that person. Suicide attempters are at higher risk than non-attempters.

I’ll talk about the second interpretation first. I have a friend who is having me motivate her into
writing by having me contact her every day for six weeks. What sparked this was, she read my blog about my recent near-suicide attempt. Now her ulterior motive is to keep me alive the only way she can think of, by having me write to her every day. In return, she has to write at least two pages a day for her own well-being. She needs my help to pursue her writing, which is important to her more than anything. We are also guarding a human connection that is valuable to us. My writing keeps me alive, and because she doesn’t want to let me down, that helps her to write. She has this idea that people need human connection in order to stay connected to what they truly need to do, even if that connection is between polar opposites. She is bubbly and athletic, a motivational speaker, while I’m someone who is in chronic pain and disabled because of it.

I have to say that since I have been writing, I have been in better space. I would not say that I feel more connected, but I don’t want to let her down, so I try and write a little each day. Our rules are to email each other when we are done, and we are allowed our birthdays and Christmas off. For days where it is not possible for me to write because of whatever reason, we have given each other three passes on writing. Sometimes, because my pain or sleep deprivation is intolerable I find that it can help me be creative and write about things. I don’t have a censor when I write. Whatever I think at that moment, I write it out. Sometimes I find that writing it on paper helps more than writing in a word document.

I sometimes feel exposed because I am bearing my soul to this person I met through a friend on Facebook. We both belong to the same organization for suicide prevention. I am guessing that because she thinks of me as a sibling, and she did lose her sister to suicide many years ago, she does not want me to end up that way.

I write often because it is an outlet for me and my emotions. I am anonymous when it comes to my blog but not too much, as I pass these blogs on to my personal Facebook site, where my family members can have access to it if they were inclined to read it. Most often they do not because they are not online as much as my other friends are. I do not tell my family what I am doing. It would be heartbreaking and awkward for them to read what I write and then get asked at the dinner table what I meant by something I wrote. To be honest, half the stuff I write about, I forget. It’s an outlet like no other.

I am not going to lie and pretend that I don’t think about killing myself every day. It is a constant struggle, and I think that I worry a lot of my close friends who actually get to know me or who read my blogs about my struggles. But I think the reason why my blog has been so successful is because people can relate to what I write.

As far as the fear that talking about suicide can bring about a suicidal crisis, that is a common myth. Talking about suicide can actually prevent one, but some people are just not comfortable with the subject, and so they will say stuff that they think the person who is miserable wants to hear, like. “You have your life ahead of you,” “Don’t be so down, things could be worse,” or my favorite “You have so much to live for.”

People don’t understand the pain that is involved in depression or in thinking about suicide. I have problems. Quite a few. I have mental illness and chronic physical and mental pain. Both make me want to take my life. I have been thinking about taking my life since I was 8 years old. I was in a lot of pain for some reason or another, and it never got taken care of. Today, I think that pain stems from the fact that I am really a male and not a female. I knew at a young age that I was different, and back then, there was no expressing how I truly felt. I really think that if I had gotten help sooner, this would have come to light sooner, and I wouldn’t be in this pickle today about what to do with my transition.

I’ve started a new journal. And like every other journal before it, the first thing that goes into it is my crisis response plan which is the following (taken from the Air Force Guide to Managing Suicidal Behavior-Appendices)

When thinking about suicide, I agree to do the following:

Step 1: Try to identify my thoughts and specifically what’s upsetting me
Step 2: Write out and review more reasonable responses to my suicidal thoughts
Step 3: Do things that help me feel better for at least 30 minutes (examples can include trying to sleep, playing internet games, listening to music, etc.)
Step 4: Repeat all of the above
Step 5: If thoughts continue or get specific, and I find myself preparing to do something, I will call a suicide hotline or someone that I trust sometimes hotlines aren’t so helpful but calling a friend is
Step 6: If I cannot reach the above, I will call my therapist or psychiatrist
Step 7: If I am still feeling suicidal and I don’t feel like I can control my behavior, I will go to the ER or call 911

I have found having this useful when I have been hospitalized because it provides a plan of something that they need for discharge, and I always carry my journal.