suicide solution?

have you ever thought about killing yourself?

  • yes, I have thought bout it.

    Votes: 81 77.1%
  • NO! never even crossed my mind.

    Votes: 21 20.0%
  • no comment.

    Votes: 3 2.9%

  • Total voters
    105

jason_els

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Talk to the therapist about trying a different anti-depressant. Sometimes one class ceases to be effective and you need to try another. One that may not have worked before may now and you may be able to go back to what you're currently using later on.

Yes, I have thought about it and planned it out. I try to rationalize when I am feeling this way but the feeling is so overwhelming at times I can't get out from under it. I suffer from depression and have been on anti-depressants for years. Lately the thought has been rearing its ugly head and I keep fighting back by whatever means I have to or I call my therapist, anything...It gets really difficult because at times like that I tend to isolate myself which is exactly what I shouldn't do but at the same time I don't want to burden anyone or be misunderstood by uninformed people that either think they are helping or just don't give a shit. I think of my kids and I hang on with all my might.
 

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Jason, that was gorgeous. (My 2 cats have been my rock more times than I can count.)


I'm glad the meds are stopping you from feeling sad. What happens when something bad happens in your life? Do you just up the dosage? And what about feelings in general? Are they all dimmed down or just the sad ones? Does your body develop a resistance to the drugs over time? coz drugs tend to do that.


All excellent questions. The meds aren't stopping me from feeling sad though. They help with some of the symptoms of depression but when the episodes strike, the meds don't automatically stop the sad from creeping in.

The only answer I have is this: It's an ongoing process.

I've done several different things, tried several different meds. I'm queen of the "It works, and then it stops working entirely and I don't realise it until it's too late and I'm back to wanting to disappear" resistance. I don't like feeling like a zombie either. It's a fine line to walk--do I want to feel nothing at all or do I want to feel like complete and utter shit when the downward spiral starts spinning again? Prozac made it so that I felt nothing. You could have set me on fire or told me I won the lottery and my reaction would have been the same: a blank stare.

After going on and off different things, I finally found Effexor and thus far, that's the one that is making the biggest difference for the longest amount of time. However, I resisted having to take drugs at all for a very long time. And then I'd go through little resistant spurts again in between switching drugs. It's exhausting being a human science fair project. Effexor is a mamajama as far as antiDs go but I got to the point where I needed the dual-uptakes over the SSRIs. The upside is that it works for me right now. The downside is that the detox is a fucking bitch. And not just coming off the drug altogether (which I've not done since starting it), missing a dose will throw my body into a state of "wtf?!" Thusly, I'm pretty careful about making sure I get those little pills in my mouth at night.

I've upped my dose here and there when it's been necessary. I've also weaned back down when I felt it was alright as well. My doc is really awesome and listens to me and what I ultimately want and will work with me accordingly. It's not just a matter of drugging myself out of the darkest periods. That's just impossible. The darkness will always find a way in--even now, it can. I'm just far better at recognising the early signs and taking appropriate measures before things get too out of hand.

Additionally, I have an awesome therapist that I see weekly. She's seen me through many difficult times in my life, including my struggle with admitting the depression is bigger than I can handle alone and that drugs were a necessary course of action. I really think that antiDs should be used in conjunction with regular therapy sessions but it's very difficult to find a good therapist out there. This one is my fifth and I've already told her she's not ever allowed to retire unless there's a padded room in her retirement house for me.

When the darkness creeps in, I know earlier now. I let my therapist know and we up my sessions if it's necessary. I will up my meds if necessary as well, but I tend to turn more towards the talk-therapy over the drugs now that I know I've got a drug that works. Upping the dosage on Effexor always puts me through another science fair project period. It's easier to keep status quo if it's possible and just talk it out with the therapist.

It's just an ongoing process for me and I take things as they come. That was also a learning process. I'd love to be able to simply take a pill and be okay forever and ever amen, but that's just not how it works for me. Figuring that out has helped more than just about anything else.
 

D_Joseba_Guntertwat

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Never.

I get depressed, everyone does sometimes.
If you kill yourself, then of course there'll be no more pain and sadness. But there's also be no more pleasure, no more hope of things getting better, no more gorgeous orgasms or delicious meals, no more fun times or beautiful scenes, and most importantly no more reading LPSG!
 

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This goes to something really important that many people overlook. Mental health is poorly understood in most places and by most people. Those who have not had major depression tend to believe that people who are suicidal are weak, lack courage, attention seeking, and ultimately selfish. They are unable or unwilling to empathize. <snip>

What a thoughtful, elegant, personal and accurate post. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
 

D_Gunther Snotpole

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Those who have not had major depression tend to believe that people who are suicidal are weak, lack courage, attention seeking, and ultimately selfish. They are unable or unwilling to empathize.

Anyways all I was saying is, who would of [sic] thought that there are so many sad fucking ppl on lpsg?

Nice conjunction ... eh, wot?
 

36DD

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I'm glad the meds are stopping you from feeling sad.
What happens when something bad happens in your life? Do you just up the dosage?
And what about feelings in general? Are they all dimmed down or just the sad ones?

Does your body develop a resistance to the drugs over time? coz drugs tend to do that
My depression started for me when my daughter was raped...up until that time I had held my own feelings and fears in regarding my own rape which was very violent and witnessed by my kids. I never prosecuted and pushed it down so as not to deal with it - I didn't know how. After my daughter was raped, it all came crashing in on me. I couldn't stop crying or get out of bed...I lost 12 pounds in one week (although I don't recommend depression as a viable method of weight loss, lol).
I don't know about others, but for me, I will up my medication and increase sessions with my therapist. I also have her # and can call at anytime. Just having someone I can talk to and who I know is in my corner helps immensely. When I'm feeling like this, it is usually short-lived...a couple of weeks, then I'm ok and can taper back down to my normal dosage. My general feelings once I am ok are fine, I still feel happy when I am, I can still laugh at life and be a smart-ass, I still desire sex...just the sad feelings take a back seat, they don't go away per se, I am just better equipped to deal with them. And life goes on...
 

southwest

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My depression started for me when my daughter was raped...up until that time I had held my own feelings and fears in regarding my own rape which was very violent and witnessed by my kids. I never prosecuted and pushed it down so as not to deal with it - I didn't know how. After my daughter was raped, it all came crashing in on me. I couldn't stop crying or get out of bed...I lost 12 pounds in one week (although I don't recommend depression as a viable method of weight loss, lol).
I don't know about others, but for me, I will up my medication and increase sessions with my therapist. I also have her # and can call at anytime. Just having someone I can talk to and who I know is in my corner helps immensely. When I'm feeling like this, it is usually short-lived...a couple of weeks, then I'm ok and can taper back down to my normal dosage. My general feelings once I am ok are fine, I still feel happy when I am, I can still laugh at life and be a smart-ass, I still desire sex...just the sad feelings take a back seat, they don't go away per se, I am just better equipped to deal with them. And life goes on...

I don't think that you can ever feel anything but sadness over what has happened to you and your daughter, it would be crazy if you did. I think that over time the mind accepts what has occurred and does not pay the incident so much attention it prioritizes to dealing with new events in ones life. But as I said when I think of bad times in my life, I am sad, they were not happy events. You have had things go on that make me, on times hate the world. I hope, that without sounding full of shit, you don't let such a series of events stop you from being a smart-ass, and living life in a positive way.
 

sjprep06

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Never thought about killing myself as much as I have wondered what life would have been like if I had not been here, born, around, alive, etc. I usually only feel that way when I think I'm nothing more than a burden on my family (19, never had a job, full-time college student, no income, no car, nothing to really be proud of in my opinion). Usually those feelings will clear in about a week or two and then I'm back on my way to living...somewhat.
 

36DD

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I don't think that you can ever feel anything but sadness over what has happened to you and your daughter, it would be crazy if you did. I think that over time the mind accepts what has occurred and does not pay the incident so much attention it prioritizes to dealing with new events in ones life. But as I said when I think of bad times in my life, I am sad, they were not happy events. You have had things go on that make me, on times hate the world. I hope, that without sounding full of shit, you don't let such a series of events stop you from being a smart-ass, and living life in a positive way.

You don't sound full of shit, thank you for the sentiments. I try all the time not to let things get to me...it is a constant with me. I have to be able to laugh and make fun of myself or I would literally cease to exist. I have made a choice to look at the beauty in life but that is not to say that depression doesn't give me a hard time in doing so...I work at it.
 

jason_els

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This is an excellent point in an excellent post.

Depression is the wrong name for the disease. I've heard this not only from sufferers but from psychiatric professionals as well. It's on par with calling Native Americans, Indians. It's a misnomer that's become a clinical term. Depression has nothing to do with being depressed in the sense that normally balanced people experience being depressed. If we can rename manic depression to bipolar disorder, then it's high time major depression be renamed as well. Perhaps doing so will highlight the difference between depression and the living Hell that I and so many others have been through.

There is a difference between clinical depression and what we commonly refer to as feeling depressed or sad. There's a difference between an appropriate emotional response to something that happens in one's life that may include pain, sadness, or grief and clinical depression. Interestingly, depression can actually dampen emotions-- where there's no up or down, just a constant feeling of apathy and emptiness. Many people, when clinically depressed, react the same way to, say, a family member dying as they do to winning the lottery. There's no range of emotion, which I'll get to later in this post.
 

jason_els

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Jason, that was gorgeous. (My 2 cats have been my rock more times than I can count.)

Thank you. It wasn't easy to write.

After going on and off different things, I finally found Effexor and thus far, that's the one that is making the biggest difference for the longest amount of time. However, I resisted having to take drugs at all for a very long time. And then I'd go through little resistant spurts again in between switching drugs. It's exhausting being a human science fair project. Effexor is a mamajama as far as antiDs go but I got to the point where I needed the dual-uptakes over the SSRIs. The upside is that it works for me right now. The downside is that the detox is a fucking bitch. And not just coming off the drug altogether (which I've not done since starting it), missing a dose will throw my body into a state of "wtf?!" Thusly, I'm pretty careful about making sure I get those little pills in my mouth at night.

I love Effexor and too found it to be one of the very few things that have worked for me. It is a very powerful drug. I also went through the same detox symptoms, even from missing a single dosage. Listening to myself scream at my doctor at 10pm to get a refill for the prescription scared me silly. Now I know what crack addicts go through. It's frightening. Yet it is a great drug and despite the side effects, works better than anything else I've tried except perhaps for Anafranil. The upside is the detox doesn't last long.
 

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I've been pretty lucky in my withdrawls from missing doses. I didn't know what was going on the first time until I fell over at the bus stop (my company pays for me to use the park & ride) and the world went wonky. I felt like I had rapid-fire mad cow disease or something.

I now have two doses stashed away in different pill boxes just in case I come up with an empty bottle and no means to refill it until the next day. I'm also lucky to have a friend who lives near me and is also on Effexor. We take different doses, but she and I have a "If you need it..." agreement. If she's out and it's too late to call in a refill, I'll run her a dose to hold her till the next day and vice versa.

The withdrawls are a trip. I don't like them a bit and the brain zaps are the worst for me. I can deal with my center of gravity being like a balloon deflating and flying all over the room. I can deal with falling down because my legs suddenly don't feel like working. (I am not the most graceful gal. Falling down is no big deal to me.) I can deal with my thought process being completely screwed up. But the brain zaps drive me batty.

I know that post wasn't easy to write, Jason. That makes me appreciate it even more. I hate that others out there know what I mean when I talk about depression because it means that they've gone through the same thing themselves. (It's just nearly impossible for anyone to get it if they haven't actually gone through it personally, I don't think.) So while it sucks to know that there are others out there who go through that same kind of pain, there is a small comfort in knowing that it's not just me being insane.
 

jason_els

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Please let's keep the male machismo bullshit out of this thread. Thanks. The fact that you have never contemplated suicide simply means to me that your life has never really been all that difficult.

ppl have been banned because of Andro Man......hehe.....that really sucks!

Anyways all I was saying is, who would of thought that there are so many sad fucking ppl on lpsg?

Never.

I get depressed, everyone does sometimes.
If you kill yourself, then of course there'll be no more pain and sadness. But there's also be no more pleasure, no more hope of things getting better, no more gorgeous orgasms or delicious meals, no more fun times or beautiful scenes, and most importantly no more reading LPSG!

Nice conjunction ... eh, wot?

I think this illustrates the divide between understanding what major depression is and what it is not.

Reading feelthegirth's post, I read pretty much what everyone who has not experienced the disease of major depression believes it to be.

I can't fault Andro Man or feelthegirth for interpreting their impressions this way. To them, depression is a very different experience and it seems, reasonably I must add, that suicide would be a ridiculous response to how they experience depression. When people hear the term depression, they naturally try to understand it based upon their own experience of it.

Vilifying those who don't understand or cannot comprehend the difference doesn't do the cause of creating a broader understanding of the disease any good at all. It will be interpreted along the lines of, "Breaking the heel off my new Jimmy Choos is a perfectly valid reason for jumping off the roof so fuck you!!"

It's a great example of why I think the term needs to changed to something more descriptive like Psychasthenia.

What feelthegirth and Andro Man have experienced and beleive to be depression is not the same disease that the rest of us have experienced. The brain patterns aren't the same, the chemicals released aren't the same yet they're saddled, ridiculously, with the same name.

We have to address the problem of understanding major depression through education. The only way to do that is to meet other people at least half-way and help them understand where we are coming from.
 

snoozan

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I love Effexor and too found it to be one of the very few things that have worked for me. It is a very powerful drug. I also went through the same detox symptoms, even from missing a single dosage. Listening to myself scream at my doctor at 10pm to get a refill for the prescription scared me silly. Now I know what crack addicts go through. It's frightening. Yet it is a great drug and despite the side effects, works better than anything else I've tried except perhaps for Anafranil. The upside is the detox doesn't last long.

I take Lamictal and I get really uncomfortable physical symptoms when I miss a dose. Because it's primarily an anticonvulsant, going off of it suddenly can cause some pretty nasty neurological stuff. I remember one time tearing through the house looking for samples because I'd run out and I knew I'd be up all night feeling queasy and shaking if I didn't take it. When I went off of Celexa rather quickly, I had a week or two where I'd have what some people call "brain zaps" and what felt like someone grabbing my brain and shaking it like an Etch-a-Sketch. Not fun stuff.

While we're on the subject, I want to pre-emptively say something about the addictive nature of these drugs. A lot of people associate withdrawal effects from medications with chemical dependence and addiction and how that somehow makes you an addict rather than someone who actually needs medication. The difference between therapeutic mood altering drugs that have withdrawal symptoms and mood altering drugs that are truly addictive is abuse potential. You can't really abuse an anti-convulsant or most, if not all, antidepressants. There's not a point at which you take a handful of them and get high-- most of them take days or weeks to work, and don't get you wasted in some pleasureable way. They either don't work or they help you feel less clinically depressed. There's no high.

Even the most harmless treatments have withdrawal effects. Try using a heavy lip balm for 2 months and then not taking it anymore. Your lips will end up drier than they were when you started using it. Even nose drops can cause withdrawal-- not to mention a relatively harmless everyday substance-- caffeine.

I'm done for now.
 

jason_els

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I've been pretty lucky in my withdrawls from missing doses. I didn't know what was going on the first time until I fell over at the bus stop (my company pays for me to use the park & ride) and the world went wonky. I felt like I had rapid-fire mad cow disease or something.

The withdrawls are a trip. I don't like them a bit and the brain zaps are the worst for me. I can deal with my center of gravity being like a balloon deflating and flying all over the room. I can deal with falling down because my legs suddenly don't feel like working. (I am not the most graceful gal. Falling down is no big deal to me.) I can deal with my thought process being completely screwed up. But the brain zaps drive me batty.

Exactly! And the literature doesn't mention this at all. Fucking drug companies. The brain zaps feel exactly like the microsleep episodes you get after not sleeping for a day or two. You just lose all sensation-- hearings, sight, touch-- you become unconcious for 1 second.

I love Effexor. I'm not on it now but if I need it again I'll go straight to it. My biggest issue now is anxiety attacks but for that I always carry Xanax and it works well enough.
 

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I'm just going to say a couple of things here. Sometimes there may be a legitimate reason for suicide. My uncle for example. He had terminal bone cancer and was in severe pain 24-7. He decided not to suffer until the end.
He got his pistol and shot himself dead. I think he was courageous. I think he had a legitimate reason. It's certainly not always that way, though.

As far as being selfish to commit suicide. I don't think so. Who is going to be hurt or even care if I do it? I certainly don't see where it would hurt anyone. I think those who commit suicide are very brave. I'm too much of a coward. It's the unknown of the future that I am most afraid of. I will say this: if I knew for sure that there was no afterlife what so ever, I would probably have committed suicide years ago. I see little or nothing in this world for me now or in the future. I, like someone else here said, would not "attempt" suicide. I would just do it. I'd get a gun and blow my brains out. I do have guns in my house. I would not attempt suicide as a cry for help. I have already cried help many times, and no one answered. I now know that it's hopeless to expect any help. Don't take this the wrong way, I'm not threatening suicide. I'm just telling my feelings on it. If I haven't done it by now, I probably won't.

As has been stated by others on here: if haven't experienced depression, you can't understand what it's like. Don't even try too. Just read up on it and be supportive of friends who do suffer with it.

I am also not sure if psycho therapy really works. I have serious doubts.
Personally, I have doubts about a lot of the mind altering drugs, although they do help some people.

As for Feely's comments: I really don't think he meant it to be "macho" or a "smart ass". If he's never been through depression, he can't understand it. I have had many people tell me "I can face anything head on". I have had people at work tell me every hardship makes them stronger. I do not agree, at least it hasn't happened that way for me. I don't see where the death of my father and my mother being in nursing care with Alzheimer's
has made me stronger. I don't see where being hospitalized for 3 days in March of 2000 with an unknown illness. Being as sick as I ever been for 3 days with kidney stones in April 2003. Having very painful back problems for nearly a year from the spring of 2006 until this spring. My back is better but it's by no means over, and will surely cause more problems.
I don't see where any of this has made me stronger. I am now just more worried and aware of my problems and how time is running out on the "good times". Before these things happened I thought I was super man.
I could run around at work like a bat of ****, lift heavy stuff all day long and work 12 or even 16 hours with no problem. Those days are gone.
Probably forever. My ability to work the day away was kept me going.
I didn't have time to think about all this bull crap. I worked my regular job then I went and worked evenings and weekends at a friends garage.
He died a few years back. I couldn't do it now anyway. Now I have time to sit and think about my shortcomings and my dissatisfaction with my life.
I don't have engines and such to think about and keep me company all the time. It's hard for me...

As for suicide being "a permanent solution to a temporary problem", I don't see it that way. Suicide is indeed permanent, but for me the problem seems to be as well. I just feel "alone". I don't fit in anywhere. I never fit in at school, at work (socially I mean), or even with my family. I feel I only fit into the "mechanical world" and not the social one. I probably feel best when I'm engrossed in my work or up in the mountains, alone, with my truck. That's when things seem surreal...

Sorry for the rant. Just wanted to tell my take on the subject...
 

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When I forget a dose, I get really foggy like just before a migraine hits. Then my face tingles as if it has gone to sleep, I get very dizzy and have trouble with my balance. Before I know it, I am a raging woman screaming for my pills. It's awful.