Ask HN: Trauma has broken me. Nothing has worked. Alternatives to suicide?
Every day I'm drowning in depression, anxiety, and fear. No amount of therapy, medication, psychedelics, meditation has put a real dent in the issue. Trying to lose weight, fix my sleep, sharpen my cognitive abilities, in addition to managing a marriage within the context of my emotional instability is a Herculean task I have failed time and time again.
With every failed attempt to correct course, suicide becomes an ever more likely inevitability. At this point, it feels like there is no other option.
I just want to die.
81 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 69.3 ms ] threadGet help from people who know how to
Consider sharing your deep outrage with literally everybody whose job it technically is to do a better job.
Useless psychiatrist or therapist? Try yelling at and berating them for ineffectusl organization, then trickle elaborate, true bad reviews about them on Google Reviews, Yelp, etc.
Bad social services organization? Go into different offices near where you live, ask why you aren't actually getting help,
Does a psychiatrist say they're going to psychiatrically hold you because you're outraged? Bear mace is a surprisingly good response. Then walk out.
Never, ever, ever give up enough true information about yourself that you could personally be served with legal paperwork.
If they can't name you, they can't serve you an order to desist.
Hou'te not depressed when you feel overwhelming negative emotions, you're upset.
That’s flat out wrong. Depression 100% manifests as anger. I’m not sure if this is bad sarcasm, or just bad advice but either way— it’s bad.
It's important to remember that suicide is not the only option, and there is hope for a better future. You don't have to face these challenges alone. Have you spoken to a mental health professional about your struggles? If not, I would encourage you to seek out a therapist or counselor who can offer you support and guidance.
It's also important to take care of your physical and emotional health. While losing weight, improving sleep, and sharpening cognitive abilities can be challenging, it's important to take small steps and celebrate progress, rather than focusing on the ultimate goal. It may be helpful to seek out a support group or find an accountability partner to help you stay motivated and on track.
Lastly, please know that there are people who care about you and want to help. You are not alone in this struggle, and there is always hope for a better tomorrow. If you ever feel like you're in crisis, please reach out to a crisis hotline or emergency services for immediate support.
If you are looking for some ideas, break out from your current life. Identify the sources of your stress and get as far as possible from them. Take an year or two to recuperate. Don't try to hold on to stuff, people, ideas out of habit or sense of obligation. If you can't fight it, flee it.
This is not a qualified advice, just a random internet idea.
Asking here is really just asking for anecdotal information that maybe could apply to you but should still be filtered through a professional. So as far as anecdotal information I can offer only my own personal experiences. You don't say if you are a man or woman and not a lot of detail about your life but for many years I was in a very depressive state. During my younger years I was forced to develop a fairly strong mental fortitude that would allow me to mask the depression and anxiety and other things but they were always there but as I got older it became more and more difficult. I was probably the weeks or months from ending my life and something triggered me to go into one of those male clinics that you hear advertised all the time on the radio. Maybe it was the idea of there's no downside of just going there but my testosterone was very low and within 3 months of getting testosterone therapy and having that be the only single change in my life everything got better. The biggest thing is the day-to-day depression went away completely even though all of the things that I would sit and ruminate on that were horrible about my life we're still there and none of that changed and none of that is really changed even to this day but my mental attitude is I don't care and they don't bother me and it doesn't make me sad. And then all of the other side effects from having an increased or normal level of testosterone or just plus benefits the increased energy the ability to focus better the lack of anxiety and fear just kind of melted away. So that's really my personal experience without doing that I would probably have taken the choice that you're asking for alternatives to.
If it's between a mental hospital or death, I will choose death.
Any tips? I keep swinging and missing.
https://www.medifind.com/specialty/holistic-medicine/US
There will be someone who you know deep down that will listen when you need to talk.
In the last month a close friend of mine lost her partner to suicide and she’s having difficulty with the grieving process. She knows she can call me any time of day and I’ll pick up, no matter what I’m doing. Only yesterday I was in an important meeting (part of the team presenting) and I received a message saying “I can’t cope any more, I just want to die.”.
Within seconds I excused myself, stepped out of the room and called her.
That 5min phone call was more important than any meeting.
They say "suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem", but I think that can come across as dismissive of real systemic issues. People committing suicide might have been suffering for years, with no end to suffering in sight, and suicide seems like a reasonable way to just.. not continue suffering. This is why I'm really glad we at least have legal assisted suicide in Canada.
I think the truth about people dissuading people from committing suicide is that, sure, in some situations, often without even knowing the person they're talking to, they have unreasonable confidence that things will get better, and the person will eventually be glad they didn't do it.
But what if you frame it as asking someone who has been suffering for years to continue suffering for the sake of the people who know them, or for the sake of society? Instead of putting the burden on the person suffering to continue suffering, we should put the burden on society to provide real assistance for people suffering (often just basic needs like food, shelter, but often-times therapy also), and on people to provide assistance to their loved ones in need, if able.
All that being said, you seem like you are providing support for people you care about and I commend you for that. I hope OP is able to get the support they need as well, and get to a point where they are enjoying life
That said, I agree society has the burden to provide assistance, mental health is severely underfunded and under-researched, and the legal restrictions around drugs that could assist psychotherapy are frankly criminal. Compounds like MDMA are literally "instant hope" in a pill for people who are suffering, and tens of thousands of people would still be alive if we had been studying its use had the war on drugs never started.
> That said, I agree society has the burden to provide assistance, mental health is severely underfunded and under-researched, and the legal restrictions around drugs that could assist psychotherapy are frankly criminal
It's not just clinical mental health issues (though I agree with all of this too). Society is massively failing enormous groups of people, perhaps the majority, by not enacting radical policy changes that make it feasible to have a roof over one's head, eat, and maybe have time for leisure. We have an epidemic of homelessness here in Vancouver that keeps getting worse every day, with no relief in sight for people on hard times.
Working a full time job at minimum wage won't even afford you an average priced 1-bedroom, let alone food. People manage to get by with roommates, but finding house shares is harder and harder. Here's what ~80 hours of work at a minimum wage job will allow you to rent: https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-sro-tour . That's half your monthly pay, and that's assuming you're able to work full time, don't have medical/dental/therapy/physio expenses that prevent you from working full time, and can find work. With no kitchen and rising food costs, the other half of your paycheck is going to food.
Contrary to popular belief, not that many people actually starved during the great depression; suicide was a larger cause of death at the time, and our suicide rate now is probably not much better.
Rather than telling people contemplating suicide that "things will get better" we should be holding our politicians accountable for the systems failing people. We don't know that things will get better, and I don't think it's fair to tell people to just continue suffering indefinitely on the off chance they might improve, when there's no plan to actually bring about those changes that would improve their quality of life.
Good luck ^_^
I began attending an Orthodox Christian church about four years ago. I was a staunch atheist for many years before that, but my life was falling apart and I felt I had nothing else to lose. It was strange and I had no idea what was going on, but I also felt more peaceful and couldn't wait to go back.
It hasn't been easy by any stretch of the imagination, but my whole life has been transformed in ways I never would have expected.
Again, I am sorry to hear you are suffering so deeply. I will pray for you and I hope you find peace soon. Please don't give up.
https://psychedelic.support/resources/when-can-i-get-mdma-th...
I don't think there's anything nearly as powerful as MDMA for seeing through the fog of suffering and restoring hope that there's a solution.
I have to stress that it should be conjunction with a therapist though, because it's only a short-term solution. Antidepressants take weeks to kick in, and MDMA has been used during those few weeks for people who have suicidal ideation like you describe because it's an instant, short-term cure, but not a long-term option.
For medication resistant depression may i suggest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroconvulsive_therapy
Notice also, that just because you are out of ideas and the situation is theraphy resistant, you do not have to end it "traditionally" and may instead try to go for "statistical" suicide by turning your life into a dangerous endavour.
Travel to dangerous places, jump out of working airplanes with parachutes, try to percieve the fact that you are as free as a creature under the sun can be.
Also the obligatory legally demanded worthless advice of thoughts, prayers and theraphy, ritually mumbled usually by those who actively participated in creating todays society.
Is it possible your marriage is contributing to your emotional instability? It may not be. Maybe they help you and are grounding you and improving your life. But maybe you are in a bad place partially because of them. Separating yourself from someone you love can be a bad idea if you are emotionally unstable but if you aren't getting the love you need from them, it could be exacerbating your condition.
I'm sorry, this sounds really tough and those words probably don't do it justice.
Prayer, which is distinctly different from meditation has been helpful to me. I'm not an expert on any matters pertinent to mental health or spirituality for that matter--but if you just want to talk, DM me here: @awicz
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t want to die per se, you just want for the pain to go away. But we know nothing about what happens after death. It’s a risky move.
Lots of other great advice in here, but this thought hopefully makes you reconsider doing something irreversible that may actually turn out not to help you at all.
What hurts the most?
From your post, I'm hearing that you have a lot on your plate -- I'm seeing some disgust with your body, some frustration with your creativity and mental abilities, some fear about making a relationship work. That's a lot for anybody, and I'm sorry you're having to go through all that.
Where in your body does it hurt? Is there a specific feeling associated with some of this pain behind the numbness? A soreness in the eyes, a drop in the stomach, an ache in the foot...?
You're injured. You may someday be healed, but for right now, you're injured. That's not a moral statement. You're not a bad person for being injured.
You can't meet your expectations right now. Injury is like that. Forgive yourself for it. ("Forgive" is the wrong word, because it implies moral fault. But to the degree that you blame yourself, forgive yourself.) Then try to work on healing. That's what you need right now. (Athletes don't try to play on pulled hamstrings, but they do work on rehab.)
I can't tell you what "rehab" looks like for you. All I can say is that you need to stop beating yourself up for being broken by trauma. It's not a failing.
For what it's worth, I'm praying for you.
I lost my son to suicide earlier this year, and I hope you don't do that. It's absolutely awful for everyone who is left behind, and they are never the same afterwards.
Keep trying therapists. Some specialise in particular areas, and perhaps there's one who specialises in your particular burden. Someone said to me "therapists are like shoes. Keep trying until you find one that fits."
Consider residential care -- check out of the daily pressures of life for a while and be with people who can help you all the time rather than once a week. I hope your family would be supportive if you made it clear that you were considering suicide.
Our son hid his pain from us, and while we knew he was struggling we didn't know the magnitude of it. If we'd known he was considering suicide, perhaps we could have helped him through it.
Much love to you. If you ever need to chat, I'm @gnat on Twitter or nathan@torkington.com in email. As we say in New Zealand, "kia kaha!" (be strong).
Some decisions are not right or wrong, some decisions have no serious lasting impact. What do you want for dinner? What do you want to watch on tv tonight? There's no choosing wrong, there's no perfect answer.
Concern that you're a poor husband sounds a lot like imposter syndrome. The thing is, having those concerns means you're far from being a poor husband. Bad husbands don't care if they are bad husbands, and usually convince themselves that they aren't the problem. Communication is the biggest most important thing in making a relationship work. Focus on that. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is a book by John Gottman that will help.
Every adult on the planet is an ineffective adult. It sounds like you have a lot of high expectations of yourself. No one is perfect. No one has all of their shit together. No one person can do everything on their own that they "should" be doing to be a "proper" adult.
You have to remember to show yourself some compassion. What advice would you give to someone that came to you with these concerns?
I recommend reading "The way of the peaceful warrior" by Dan Millman.
I too am naive and overly trusting. I would rather live my life with the occasional screw over and manipulation then living jaded and distrusting. I want to live a life of kindness and love. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but more often it does.
This too shall pass. Suicide only ensures that things can never get better.
The simplest "food for the soul" is to eat, shit, and sleep. Everything else can be addressed later.
For example: Instead of "losing weight", add items to your to-do list like "quit snacking", "stop drinking soda", and "eat one fruit/veggie with every meal". The point is to reduce those big problems into small ones that anyone can fix then start churning through them.
Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has shown great promise, give it a shot.
- Look into Ketamine which is already FDA approved.
- Psilocybin, MDMA are all due for FDA approval. The clinical trials have shown high efficacy
and they are the best thing to happen for a very long time. Trust me, I have never felt better and it can get better.
dm me if you want to talk.
"MDMA was found to induce significant and robust attenuation in CAPS-5 score compared with placebo (P < 0.0001, d = 0.91) and to significantly decrease the SDS total score (P = 0.0116, d = 0.43)."
A p-value of 0.0001 is extremely good. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01336-3