My bittersweet anniversary

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This month marks a kind of interesting anniversary for me. Just over 13 years ago this month, I attempted suicide.

Even though so much time has passed, I can still remember the circumstances. I was in the first of three colleges, and I was doing poorly. I had friends, but no one close. I had a lousy job. On November 4, 1989, I went to a play with two friends in Philadelphia. When I finally got home late that night, I decided I didn’t want to wake up.

Most reasons for this extreme solution are poor reasons indeed; in fact, they’re more often than not completely selfish. Mine were no different. I also don’t think there was any one event or situation that pushed me over the edge; it was a culmination of things that, in retrospect, merely added up to Inaction and Bad Luck.

I didn’t even choose an easy way to do it, either. I wasn’t young, but I was naive. I figured if I could just take a lot of pills, that would do the trick. Trouble was, I had no illicit drugs. So I took the only ones I had - ibuprofren.

You read that right. I tried this with ibuprofren. I swallowed the entire bottle - probably 15-20 caplets. I wrote a relatively short note explaining my decision, unexplainable as it was, and I went to sleep.

When the morning came and the sun began to wink through the blinds of my window, I was still with the world. Groggily, I got up. The worst symptom? Just one whopper of a headache.

I never tried it again. I won’t say that I took my “survival” to be some kind of sign, because things didn’t get better for quite a long time, and I’m usually not very attentive to signs. I think it was more of a “tried it, it didn’t work” kind of deal. I just never really considered trying again after that.

In the years after, I had many problems; most of them I kept hidden from everyone, including myself, storing them in the smallest inner corner of my mind. But they lingered, occasionally poking through to my consciousness.

I don’t want to dwell on any of these problems, or the reasons I had (or thought I had) when I tried this back in 1989.

What I do want to do is express my thanks; thanks mostly to life itself. People don’t survive life without people helping them, of course, but before any of their help can be useful, the person absolutely has to learn how to help himself.

When I finally moved away from home, I learned how to help myself.

I am now on my own two feet, and have been for two years. I have an excellent job, and I enjoy a healthy relationship with my family. I’m still a little introverted, but that too will pass.

You see, I’ve learned to attack each problem knowing a solution is always available. I’ve come to realize that nothing will be done for my benefit; rather, I must act on my own behalf to better myself and my own way of life.

Thank you all for being here. Remember, even if people don’t post every aspect of their lives, they may still be learning through the experiences of others; that is why message boards like this can be very important.

dan

2

Well that took a lot of guts to post, and I think you’re the better for it. All I can say is I’m glad you hung in there, and I’m glad your life is going well now.

3

well, this board would be a little less important for the rest of us if you weren’t on it. thanks for being here.

4

Only a wonderfully generous person could share this very personal experience with us all.

If just one person who feels today as you did 13 years ago reads this, relates to it, and changes the path of their life as you did yours…

With each day that passes, I grow more fond of you (even if I don’t always agree with you). I am truly thankful to know such a wonderful man as you, IRL.

5

Wow.

I’m glad you’re still here.

{{{dantheman}}} :slight_smile:

Happy Thanksgiving to You.

6

Not going to recount the times I came close enough to the act to smell its breath (rather not hijack a thread like this), but I know relatively exactly where you were that night, dan. Should you ever feel yourself revisiting it, please consider … something else? I know we’re not close much off the boards (just because neither of us has ever emailed the other:)), but depression if nothing else makes for some rather interesting and cathartic stories to tell someone at 3 o’clock in the morning. Or whenever.

Short bit of useful knowledge/trivia: as far as I have ever been told (by numerous medical personnel), it is impossible to kill yourself by ODing on SSRIs or MAOIs (both, IIRC, used to treat depression and such illnesses).

7

Yeah, ain’t it something, punha? Don’t know what made me choose that, but I suppose it seemed like the best idea.

Still, that night is long, long gone. The memories of it have long been dormant, but posting about it was cathartic. I’d like to think that this is kind of a final nail in its coffin; now, consciously as well as subconsciously, the issue is over.

Thank you for the kind words, Ol’Gaffer and World Eater. I’m glad I’m here, too.

BSQ, thank you; you know me better than anyone on here. You are indeed a true, honest friend.

{{{{{{{{Slainte}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

8

I’m thankful you made it, too - and thank you for sharing your story.

9

Dantheman, I send you hugs! Been there, survived and been back again. Now if I feel the impulse (that’s what it is for me), I put myself on automatic and call my shrink. Sometimes people can have clinical depression and not even be aware of it. They really think the world is crumbling around them. Depression is not always about sadness. So I can’t trust my brain when I’m considering self-destruction. It is amazing how the appropriate medication can allow you to be as you were meant to be.

For other people, there are other answers.

But I’m very glad you are here.

“Listen to the song of life.”

10

Thanks for sharing, dtm.

I can’t count the number of times I stood on a highway overpass and pondered whether to jump off. I don’t think I’d have gotten out of that with just a headache, somehow … Thankfully, psychiatric care has been successful at eliminating those urges from my life.

11

(((((dantheman))))) :):slight_smile:

12

Im glad those pills did not work and your here dantheman.

13

Thank you for telling us your story, and you are a very, very lucky man. Had that been acetominophen instead of ibuprofen, you would have quite likely succeeded.

14

Thanks for sticking around, dantheman. I think you’re cool.

15

I can’t (and, subsequently;), won’t) speak for you or anyone else, but writing/talking about it … putting it out in the open for whatever purpose has never really made that, or much of any, issue over/complete for me. Maybe I’m unique in that, I dunno … but however cathartic it is for me to post about what I experienced (varies from not at all to so much that I have to stop writing, as is the case with a few others topics I’ve posted about on this board), the issue isn’t, and can’t be, over. It still exists; I’ll still bring it up if I feel the situation warrants it. I suppose in a way it’s a part of my roots, given especially that I don’t remember so much of my early life (indeed, most of my life before I was about 16 is mostly gone or hidden somewhere). But then I’ve discovered as I’ve met people that most of us don’t feel quite so comfortable going into excruciating detail about some of the things I’ve discussed quite candidly on this board, so maybe that has a rather large stake in this as well.

Or there’s also the possibility that, given how fried my brain is, I completely misunderstood what you were saying;) This would also explain this thought:

I hope, too, that you don’t consciously try to forget that night. After all, without pain we cannot know joy.

16

It was eleven years ago October for me, Dan.

I took a lot more pills than you did. Several different kinds. But, I didn’t die. The EMTs thought I wasn’t going to make it from my mom’s apartment to the hospital, which was an approximately five minute drive.

But I did make it. Spent a couple of days in ICU, and another week in a locked ward, but I did make it.

Just like you have.

Thanks for posting your story here, Dan. I’ve always liked you–you know that. But reading this here, well…in the long run, I don’t suppose it matters much, but it elevated my opinion of you even higher.

((((Dan))))

17

Darlings, I am so VERY glad you are here with us, with ME, still.

Dan, I don’t really know you all that well. But you have enriched my life, just by being you. I am so glad you chose to attempt to end your life in a manner that didn’t work. You are a very loving and giving man, and you are a person I hope will ALWAYS be in my life.

Patrick, (punha), you are someone I love. Unreservedly. And if I had never had you in my life, I would be so VERY much poorer. You have listened to me, helped me, and been there for me, and loved me and told me when I was wrong and been honest and …well, so much more. I love you.

The way I see it, suicide is wrong. NOT because it is a sin, because I do NOT believe it is my place to judge this. No, I believe that suicide is wrong because it prevents a person from possibilities. The hope that things will change, that something will open up that will allow a person to see a light, even a glimmer of a light, that will allow them to move through the dark and find a way TO the light. I do NOT believe that all is lost, not EVER. If a person can just hang on long enough to move through the dark, I think that there is always hope. I believe there is ALWAYS the light.

I know people think I am some kind of Pollyanna, but really I am not. I have experienced great and profound pain in my life. Some of it in a prolonged period of time. I don’t discount in any way the fact that sometimes the pain that people have cannot be lived with. I just…would encourage people to hang on long enough to live through it, that’s all. It can be done, it is just that sometimes inertia is easier than movement. Sometimes oblivion seems easier than waiting. And, really, I expect it is. Sometimes oblivion is very seductive…it seems to afford peace. Well, maybe it does, I don’t know. But…If you can hang on, sometimes…like Dan and Patrick have, you might find that you had a life worth living. You just weren’t in a place where you recognized it. And I, personally, think that is worth finding out.

I celebrate my friends who have felt the dark of death, but have chosen the light of life. And I am grateful.

My Love,

Cheri

18

And I find, on posting, that my darling Cristi has poured her considerable heart out here.

My dearest, I love you and I am so VERY glad that you are here with me, and I am so very proud that you made it through the dark. It is not, I know, an easy path.

But I want you to know…my world would be so very much less if I didn’t have YOU in it. Truth.

My Love,

Cheri

19

dantheman, there have been times in the past that I have considered it. Thankfully, I never got really close to actually trying it. But I somewhat understand the feelings which may have led you to contemplate the act. Depression can do crazy things to you, and I have survived those feelings of being suicidal.

I am very glad you are still with us, as you have proven to be a friend to me and to so many others on the boards. I am thankful that you surviced the attempt, and have ultimately landed on your own two feet.

F_X

20

I’ve mentioned the incidenct a couple of times to people online over the years, but I’ve never gone into any kind of detail, at least not the detail I am providing here. I have told no one who is really close to me. For me, then, posting the experience here was a sort of denoument to the entire episode; so much time has passed, and the danger itself has left me. I have no reasons whatsoever to revisit that decision again.

I just considered it an unresolved issue. This thread has provided me some closure.

On the other hand, it’s not something I’ll ever forget entirely, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s just not something I think about frequently.