Tag: suicide attempt

holiday myths about suicide

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression, mental disorders, mental illness, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

Apparently there is a still a myth that the holidays bring on suicide. The study published today at USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/05/holiday-suicide-myth/1748351/ ) stated that the highest is in the Spring and summer. July brings 111 while December is “low” at 98. Still those numbers, to me anyways, are high. And that doesn’t account for all the suicide attempts or near suicide attempts.

While there is the myth that the holidays brings more suicide than any other time of year, you still have the holiday classic “It’s a wonderful life” to show that there still are some people contemplating their life during the “happiest of seasons”. There is no data that supports my saying this. It is just a well known idea that people should be happier this time of year than the rest of the year. While mood disorders such as Season Affective Disorder is in full swing, there is no evidence that these disorders bring about more suicide. If anything, people want to get help so they can change their lives and be in a better relationship. This is why during the holidays, detox goes up during time of year more than any other. People want to become happy but they do not understand that it is a long road from happiness when you are at your rock bottom. I am reminded of a young kid, we’ll call him Jay for confidentiality purposes. He was with me while I had my hospitalization a few years ago. He was a meth addict and wanted to get sober for his kids sake. He was doing the program of staying sober but he had a lot of challenges. He was on the street and his current resident was the hospital. He reminded me that it is possible to look forward and survive despite having a drug addiction. I don’t know where he is now but I do hope that he was able to leave the hospital with new tools to help him cope better with this addiction issues and that he was able to find a sponsor to help guide him through the rough waters ahead of him.

pain rant

by Midnight Demon, posted in cauda equina syndrome, CES, Chronic pain, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

Dear Doc,

It’s 2 am and I am in severe pain. I already took 2 vicoden and 2 ativan (not at the same time). I don’t know why my foot is in such awful pain. I need something to cover me as this is ridiculous. I just want to end my life whenever the pain gets this bad. I don’t know what to do. It’s 2 am and it’s not like the DOC can call in a script for more meds, and I doubt they would because they don’t know you from Adam. Most they can do is tell you to go to the ER. But the ER isn’t going to do anything because you know they are not going to find anything wrong. My foot isn’t red, bruised, discolored in anyway shape or form. It might be a little swollen but that is all. And it HURTS like bloody hell!! I’m tired of this shit and want to put a noose around my neck. This is the 2nd flare up in two weeks. Both have come from standing/walking too much and temperatures fluctuating more than 20 degrees or so. And this is just December.

 

by the time you read this, this will all be just a vague memory but I want it recorded somewhere so I know I am not going crazy. hopefully I’ll get some sleep. Maybe having some oxycontin will be a good idea for nights like tonight. I don’t know anymore. I just know I can’t go on living like this.

a migraine rant

by Midnight Demon, posted in Chronic pain, depression, medical, mental disorders, mental illness, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

3-Dec-2012

I got a migraine today and it sucks. My face is numb and it feels like someone is driving an ice pick in my right eye. I don’t think I will go out today as the weather is too bright. Sometimes I wish I could put a dimmer switch for days like today.

 

I am scheduled for an MRI tomorrow night. I find this kind of scary because I know my head is going to be examined and my back is going to pay the price. I can’t lay flat for too long. I am going to need a muscle relaxer and pain meds to get through this. The reason I am going for the mRI is because I have been experiencing blurry vision despite getting new glasses. I don’t know if it is migraine activity that is causing this or what but I don’t like it and my eye doc is concerned. I have made an appt with a neuro-opthlamalogist. I saw this guy last year when my visual field showed some new defects. I still have the unexplained defect. The doc thinks it is just an atypical migraine causing this. I just hope that that is the case and nothing more serious is going on.

 

Sometime this week I have to trek out to Brookline and pay a parking ticket so I can renew my driver’s license. Sucks that this is the hold up to me renewing. I already paid Cambridge. Hopefully this is the last time a parking ticket stops me from renewing. Last time I had three tickets, all from the city I live in because of “ticket day” A.K.A street cleaning. I swear it is just a way for the city to collect revenue as the machines do not clean the streets anyways. I am glad I don’t have a car anymore to worry about which side of the street to park on. It’s now I think $100 per citation. CRAZY!! Just to “clean” the street. It is awful.

 

I think I’ll make myself some coffee. Maybe that will kill this migraine…

Never made the coffee as I was too lazy to clean the pot. I use a French press and I have not cleaned it out. I did tonight so I can make coffee tomorrow. Migraine has subsided though my vision is still messed up. It keeps on going in and out, the more I try and focus, the worse it gets. It is pissing me off to no end.

 

On another note:

I am HATING the commercials for Cymbalta. I am hating how they are promoting an antidepressant for back pain. I take Cymbalta, and it does not help my pain one bit!! And I have been taking it for a long time. It does help with my depression. I find that I am less weepy and suicidal when I take it. Hence why it is an ANTIDEPRESSANT!! I think it is false advertising in the FULL effect for this drug. It also helps with the neuropathy some what that I have, which is another use of this drug and I am on a low dose (20 mg). I find that my burning foot hurts less when I take, though it will do nothing for the flare ups I have when I spasm/cramp up. I can see people overdosing on this because they will just think it is “safe” because it is not a narcotic. So when they are in pain, they will pop it like Tylenol. I find this disturbing. And I don’t like the depression hurts bullshit. I have also found it does NOTHING for my psychic pain. Yes, depression does hurt. In fact it can lead to suicide and hence kill you. But like I say, people who are in pain can become desperate very quickly, like I did and maybe a little more should be paid to that. Would it kill a PCP to ask if they are suicidal before prescribing this medication? I don’t see how anyone but a neurologist or a psychiatrist can prescribe this drug for the safety of their patients. My neurologist takes the time to get to know me and actually wants me to live a happier lifestyle. But I can never be happy because I am not a happy person. I suffer too much and when you suffer you just cannot put on a happy face all the time. It becomes exhausting. I think that is why since going on disability I have felt a certain freedom. I know it is because I am no longer forced to pretend that I am happy, to show the world the other side that no one sees. Course I will say I am kind of lonely because I don’t have any contact with my co-workers nor do I have an active social life anymore. I might go out with a friend once a month, if that. But that is it. I have not left the house since Friday. I just cannot be bothered to get dressed to get a cup of Joe. I just sit in my room, playing on my laptop, writing blogs, and listening to my Taylor Swift. I order food and have gained a lot of weight because of my inactivity. Do I care, not so much. I have never been concerned about my weight. Course it is a thing I hate about myself but the only other thing I can do is starve myself and what fun is that? I love food and it loves me. What difference does it make I don’t know. Should I diet? Yes, I should but diet implies that I actually give a shit. I just got a twitter message that says the human body needs 1000-1500 calories a day to survive. If I stay within that limit, maybe I will lose weight. I will eat protein bars and have smoothies. Which reminds me I still have yogurt in the fridge I have not eaten yet. I am addicted to Chobani’s Champion yogurt. It is a Greek yogurt and is mixed berries. I love it!

ramblings 16

by Midnight Demon, posted in CES, Chronic pain, depression, mental disorders, mental illness, psychache, psychosis, suicide, suicide attempt

Been staring at the cursor of a new document for the past fifteen minutes and still nothing is coming to me about what to write. This writing project that my friend has involved me in is draining me. I am having to come up with new material every day and how can you possibly do that every day? I am not used to writing on demand. I have a migraine today so my thinking is kind of slow. All I want to do today is sleep but I just can’t because I have this restlessness inside. I want to go out but it is just too bright out. I am getting lazy. I am hardly leaving the house for anything these days. Not even the temptation of Starbucks makes me want to leave the house.  Last time I left the house was Friday for a doctor’s appointment. I spent that day at the medical center because I was to be seen for my blurry vision episodes. Tomorrow I will have to leave the house to go for an MRI.  I will have to take pain meds and an Ativan to get through. I know that it is going to be tough because the damn thing always hurts my back. I simply cannot lay flat for the 45 minutes or so it takes. I am always hurting afterwards. I have had numerous MRIs as I have a chronic back condition that needs monitoring. I have not had a back MRI in some time but I have had a brain MRI last year. It was similar to the same condition I am experiencing now. Except I just have blurry vision and not a visual field problem.

So this writing binge is because my friend need help writing her book and I sort of need to write my book which has to do with how I deal with my suicidality all the time and my chronic pain that can send me over the edge. My last pain attack was two weeks ago and it ended ugly. I ended up taking more medicine than I should have because I just didn’t care any more. I could have ended my life that night and the only thing that stopped me was that I couldn’t walk the three feet, yes three feet, to my bureau to get even more medicine. I still wish that I went through with it. Maybe I would have slept more and not woken up the next day. I don’t know. I am so sleepy now that I just want to go to sleep than to talk about this…

I think my friend has an ulterior motive for me writing. It’s to know that 1) I am alive and 2) to try and control the demons. The demons are what control me to try and take my life when I am in severe pain, either mental or physical. I can’t seem to tolerate one or the other but when I have both, I am in trouble. As what happened that night, things escalated very quickly and I found myself staring at a bottle of pills to end my life because I couldn’t stand the intense pain. I still am in disbelief about how this happened and the intense grief in surviving it really got my head spinning.  When you feel suicidal you have a plan about what to do. You call someone, your therapist, psychiatrist, PCP, a hotline. But I didn’t use any of those resources and that is what is killing me. I didn’t have the time to practically think about what is causing me to feel suicidal. I just wanted the pain to end and was willing to take a bottle of pills to end it. Stupid yes and for the suicidologist in me couldn’t distract, how is someone that I am treating or a friend that is in crisis supposed to do this? It makes no sense. I couldn’t step back and see that this pain would pass, that I just had to give the meds time to work. I see this now but I didn’t in the moment.