Cops decided to press attempted arson charges. I'm suicidal. Help.

[dhcdavid]

Hey folks.

As anyone here who's read anything much by me will know, I've been struggling with severe depression for years now with the last actual suicide attempt being a duragesic od in december '11 and the last serious suicide attempt being wrist-cutting last summer.

For the last 6 months suicide has been foremost in my mind: being a Brit, I have zero access to firearms so have planned in some detail how I will hang myself. I have held fire and not gone through with it because: a) I don't want to put my parents and brothers through it & b) I'm having trouble working up the courage to actually do it.
I'm on a couple of antidepressants but don't want to seek any further help from my gp for fear he'll reduce my opioid levels (prescribed for chronic pain). That's how it is.

2 or 3 months ago, one night after drinking about 1 litre of gin and taking about 20mg of clonazepam I was found by the police at 4am trying to set fire to a lorry. I shit you not. I don't have an arsonist's bone in my body. NEVER done this before. They found me crouched down besided it's fuel tank, having already removed the tank's cap, trying to light a leaf to drop into the tank.. Although I remember nothing, the police say that when they asked me what I was doing I said "Trying to set fire to this lorry".

I answered bail a month ago and was questioned with a lawyer present. On said lawyer's advice I "took the 5th" and "No commented" my way through the interview. And was bailed to reappear at the police station tomorrow (on the 4th of august) when they'd tell me what they were going to do.

Truth be told I KNOW I was trying to kill myself that night and that was why I was trying to set fire to a lorry. There's intoxicated logic there if you dig deep enough.

My lawyer said that they'd LOST the original crime report and that apart from that they didn't really have much and the chances were they'd either drop the case completely or caution me (give me a formal warning). No way it'd go to court. But I just got a call from him saying they ARE going to prosecute me.

I'm so full of despair. I'm originally trained as a teacher and got a caution for possession of class c drugs back in 2006 but otherwise have zero criminal record. However now, with a conviction for attempted arson, I'll NEVER be employed by a school again. That's it. Career over.

I've told my two brothers about all this but my parents don't know and because it's a smallish town and my dad is vicar of said town, there's now an excellent possibility that my case will be written up in the local paper. And I'm SO ashamed for my sake AND for my family's sake should this become common knowledge in my town.

Please help. I'm now feeling SO suicidal. Like going to hang myself in the next few days suicidal. That's surely it for me.

 

[lsdaamn]

It's not worth it man. They'll go easy on you since you've never been seriously in trouble with the law. Fuck what people think about you, <snip>

 

[ChristBait]

This sounds oddly enough like my situation about 6 years ago. I was staying at some dude's house that I met in rehab. One night his crack dealer sent some guys to try to rob me in the house, right after I bought from him. For whatever reason I decided to stay in the house to smoke what I just copped. I took a handful of ativans and drank a beer, blacked out and set the kitchen curtain on fire to try to scare off one of the guys that I thought was trying to get in through the window. Cops didn't believe my story and just wrote on the police report that I was high and "thought" someone was after me and set the curtain on fire. They tried to charge me with a felony strike for "wrecklessly setting fire to an open structure" which is in the same class as arson. They tried to give me 6 months in jail and 5 years probation, even though I had no priors. Just make sure you get a good lawyer or at least public defender. I had a good one and he brought the charge down to a misdemeanor for vandalism. Still had to serve the 6 months though. The local paper wrote an article about my little incident and even posted the mugshot. Even though I've been through a lot since then, it made me a stronger person in the end, and I'm sure it will do the same for you. Hang in there, and if you need to chat, PM me.

 

[Where Wolf?]

The worst thing you can EVER do to your family is kill yourself - my grandmother (who I lived with for years as a small kid) committed suicide in '97, and I've never, can never, will never get over it. And you're a whole lot younger than she was, and however bad the publicity around a criminal charge, charge-followed-by-suicide would be a good deal worse.

First off, an initial decision to charge doesn't mean the CPS won't drop the case: second, you need to talk to a doctor ASAP, get a psychiatric referral and openly discuss your depression issues, maybe using BL posts as evidence. Get your brief's views on this, but you might well end up setenced to treatment/briefly committed rather than jailed: it's not a great choice, granted, but better the shrinks than prison: though I very much doubt you'd get a criminal conviction. Throwing yourself, in all honesty, on the mercy of the court might be your best option.

But whatever else, I've been living through suicidal urges for over 20 years now, and I know I can't do that to my family. It would destroy your dad's standing in the Church, maybe even force his resignation. And whatever happens, keep breathing: desperate as things feel now, there are second chances if you look for them. You could still teach overseas in a great many places, or find private tutoring work. My career's been on a downwards curve for a few years, and I might end up temping at close to 40: it's not worth dying over. Work is work and life is life: fuck 'failure' and 'success', leave that shit to the bastards in the City.

This is a rushed response, but I'm UK-based & feel for you: PM me if you want to and please, keep breathing.

WW.

 

[DeathDomokun]

LSD please read the TDS guidelines, your comment is not appropriate.

I can think of worse things to do to my family than killing myself. In fact how about simply a homicide suicide? Doesn't take much imagination to think that one up.

 

[Where Wolf?]

Yes, of course, and it would be worse still to be indicted for crimes against humanity at the Hague prior to a suicide, but my point, if made a little hyperbollically, was just that having lived through and with the suicide of a close family member, I know that myself, my brother and parents are all, fifteen years after the event, haunted and guilty and obsessed with what happened to my grandmother. That's what usually happens to relatives: you don't get over it, the wounds don't heal. I'm not criticising anyone - I struggle with ideation on a daily basis - but having some awareness of the potential impact on loved ones can be a useful way of holding off the urge.

 

[dhcdavid]

LSD please read the TDS guidelines, your comment is not appropriate.

I can think of worse things to do to my family than killing myself. In fact how about simply a homicide suicide? Doesn't take much imagination to think that one up.

Thanks for your input but being as I'm in England and guns are rare as fuck, short of being a terrorist suspect or holding someone hostage in a house at gunpoint it's actually quite tricky to engineer a "homicide suicide" or, as I suspect you're intimating, "suicide by cop[ shooting]".

 

[dhcdavid]

Yes, of course, and it would be worse still to be indicted for crimes against humanity at the Hague prior to a suicide, but my point, if made a little hyperbollically, was just that having lived through and with the suicide of a close family member, I know that myself, my brother and parents are all, fifteen years after the event, haunted and guilty and obsessed with what happened to my grandmother. That's what usually happens to relatives: you don't get over it, the wounds don't heal. I'm not criticising anyone - I struggle with ideation on a daily basis - but having some awareness of the potential impact on loved ones can be a useful way of holding off the urge.

Many thanks for your advice and perspective WW.

I'm just scared at the moment because I feel my suicide approaching, it's like a shadow which is constantly with me that I'm unable to let go....

 

[DeathDomokun]

No, I'm talking about killing someone else before you kill yourself. I'm just saying that killing yourself isn't the worst thing you can do to your family.

 

[Captain.Heroin]

You are always welcome to PM me if you want to.

Get a lawyer and I think that all should work out well for you.

 

[dhcdavid]

No, I'm talking about killing someone else before you kill yourself. I'm just saying that killing yourself isn't the worst thing you can do to your family.

OK. Now I understand. Thanks but that isn't much comfort: that's like me punching an innocent, sweet old lady in the face for no reason, you objecting and me saying "Well, at least I didn't stab the old lady to death".... Thankyou anyway...

 

[DeathDomokun]

No, it's not like that at all. People don't kill themselves for no reason. It's like you hitting a golf ball too hard and it hits someone in the gut, I'm just saying at least it didn't hit them in the 'nads. This is a pretty stupid discussion, though.

 

[motherofearth]

I do not want to mitigate your issue, but might you not be catastrophizing the legal/career/publicity aspects? You can not be sure what will happen in any of those respects, and even an amelioration of one area may help you feel better about the others, or overall. Better yet, is there any way you can anticipate the worst case scenario and plan for it (in a constructive way)?

In any case, I am sorry to hear about your travails. Keep us posted.

 

[dhcdavid]

I do not want to mitigate your issue, but might you not be catastrophizing the legal/career/publicity aspects? You can not be sure what will happen in any of those respects, and even an amelioration of one area may help you feel better about the others, or overall. Better yet, is there any way you can anticipate the worst case scenario and plan for it (in a constructive way)?

In any case, I am sorry to hear about your travails. Keep us posted.

Thank you motherofearth for your thoughtful and thought-provoking response to my thread.

I probably am panicking too much but that's really because now I feel like I've irrevocably damaged my career prospects and the fact that I've been so suicidal for so long almost adds more pressure because now it feels like this is the final straw..... yet all the while I go without killing myself makes me feel like even more of a coward and that impinges still more disastrously upon my overall low self-esteem.

As far as planning for the worst case scenario that'll be court and jail which I really can't handle. I just can't. But the thought of hanging myself scares me shitless.

I tried once - in a half-assed manner - and scared myself shitless. I know how to do it properly but .... fuck. Everything's just too much and too loud at the moment. Thank you for all the responses.

 

[BrokedownPalace]

Just because they are choosing to prosecute doesn't mean they necessarily have anything against you, if your lawyer said they lost the initial paperwork.. Arson is a pretty serious thing to accuse someone of, so of course the cops are going to pursue it regardless. They aren't just gonna be like, "Oops! sorry, our mistake..". They want to see if you'll fold and cop out to their offer. Getting in trouble with the law is like a game of cards. Go in their with yoru game face on and don't fold, especially ifyour lawyer things you have a good chance. They know you don't have mjuch experience with the law so they definitely will try to get you to plead guilty, since they thinki you don't know how things work.

I have plenty of experience with getting arrested unfortunately, and it almost ALWYS turns out better than it looks in the beginning.

Good luck my friend, PLEASE do not kill yourself over this. It is absolutely not the end of the world.

 

[Where Wolf?]

Many thanks for your advice and perspective WW.

I'm just scared at the moment because I feel my suicide approaching, it's like a shadow which is constantly with me that I'm unable to let go....

Many thanks for your advice and perspective WW.

I'm just scared at the moment because I feel my suicide approaching, it's like a shadow which is constantly with me that I'm unable to let go....

Been there - and it's a hellish place to be. But it's not a shadow, an entity or a fate: it's a choice, and one that many of us depressives obsess about because the obsession, horrific as it is to live with, is the psychological equivalent of a paralysing agent. It holds us suspended, to paraphrase Cioran, between life and death, capable of neither. Understand I am NOT belittling the reality of how you feel or the intentions you're fighting with, because suicide-obsession is just about the most unpleasant and sickening kind of mental escape there is...but it's still an escape from immediate reality. Until, at least, it becomes its own reality - or to put it another way, until you start to see that unreal but utterly convincing shadow as a person or deity and embrace it. It's not a shadow or a phantom - it is a choice you do NOT have to make, and the sense of inevitability, as I'm sure you know, is depression and learned helplessness fucking with you. The shadow is the enemy, your only weapons to do all you can, mentally and otherwise, to occupy yourself with attempts, however difficult and painful, to take some practical action (including posting here) to see it as what it is: nothing but what you make of it. Despair is nothing, everything...but fuck all that. You need to talk to a lawyer, strategise your defence, and turn your back on the illusion of that shadow whenever you can. And hey, paraphrasing Cioran again 'to deprive oneself of life is to discard the pleasures of deriding it.' Depressives and pessimists unite! We have nothing to lose but their smug self-satisfaction, the so-called normals with their precious positivity! I'm kidding with that last remark...but at the bottom of the pit, a little gallows humour can bring at least a passing flicker of a smile. With appropriate presentation of your medical history in court, particularly in the current climate of UK prison overcrowding, I think it's very unlikely you'd face a custodial sentence: more likely probation and compulsory treatment, and those only if the charges aren't dropped. The CPS aren't the Gestapo, and if they have the facts you've expressed in this thread at hand, they may well - or, for that matter, a magistrate/judge might - figure you've suffered enough for this episode already, pose no threat to society save as a by-product of self-destructiveness symptomatic of depression, and go lightly on you. Focus on the legal threat you're facing as much as you can in as cold and calculating a light as you can - sometimes, in the unreal but all-pervasive face of suicide's shadow, the cold hard facts of our practical problems are the best tools of distraction we can find. I hope that makes some kind of sense: I'm in a bad way from a fairly steep benzo taper, and my neurotransmitters are applying for political asylum in any country that I don't reside in, as they're otherwise at risk of cruel and unusual punishment.

 

[dhcdavid]

Brokedowpalace: thankyou for responding and advising - I will try to keep my shit together when I go down the station tomorrow.

Where wolf: wow. What a passage of writing! I've been through severe benzo withdrawals several times and accordingly feel the utmost sympathy for you. I had no concept of how dangerous benzos were until I tried to quit a heavy habit cold turkey. I will keep on trying to ignore the "suicide-spectre" and not give up. I don't know where I'd be without the wisdom and encouragement of folks like your good self helping me out with advice and sending me good vibes.

Chin up eh?

 

[Where Wolf?]

Brokedowpalace: thankyou for responding and advising - I will try to keep my shit together when I go down the station tomorrow.

Where wolf: wow. What a passage of writing! I've been through severe benzo withdrawals several times and accordingly feel the utmost sympathy for you. I had no concept of how dangerous benzos were until I tried to quit a heavy habit cold turkey. I will keep on trying to ignore the "suicide-spectre" and not give up. I don't know where I'd be without the wisdom and encouragement of folks like your good self helping me out with advice and sending me good vibes.

Chin up eh?

Thanks, man. At the moment I can't really deal with the outside world too well, so this forum has become something of a life-support mechanism, and there's nothing quite like realising that 'okay, I'm going to be in detox nightmare-territory for another few weeks at least, my life's a wreck and if I had a dating site profile it would read 'Stay Away from me - you don't know where I've been (or want to)', but there are still avenues of communication and contact, however distant. So likewise, you've encouraged and cheered me up. My double-chin's still drooping, but fuck it, I'm not exactly on the pull.

Keep us posted as to how it's going when you can.

 

[herbavore]

Been there - and it's a hellish place to be. But it's not a shadow, an entity or a fate: it's a choice, and one that many of us depressives obsess about because the obsession, horrific as it is to live with, is the psychological equivalent of a paralysing agent. It holds us suspended, to paraphrase Cioran, between life and death, capable of neither. Understand I am NOT belittling the reality of how you feel or the intentions you're fighting with, because suicide-obsession is just about the most unpleasant and sickening kind of mental escape there is...but it's still an escape from immediate reality. Until, at least, it becomes its own reality - or to put it another way, until you start to see that unreal but utterly convincing shadow as a person or deity and embrace it. It's not a shadow or a phantom - it is a choice you do NOT have to make, and the sense of inevitability, as I'm sure you know, is depression and learned helplessness fucking with you. The shadow is the enemy, your only weapons to do all you can, mentally and otherwise, to occupy yourself with attempts, however difficult and painful, to take some practical action (including posting here) to see it as what it is: nothing but what you make of it. Despair is nothing, everything...but fuck all that. You need to talk to a lawyer, strategise your defence, and turn your back on the illusion of that shadow whenever you can. And hey, paraphrasing Cioran again 'to deprive oneself of life is to discard the pleasures of deriding it.' Depressives and pessimists unite! We have nothing to lose but their smug self-satisfaction, the so-called normals with their precious positivity! I'm kidding with that last remark...but at the bottom of the pit, a little gallows humour can bring at least a passing flicker of a smile. With appropriate presentation of your medical history in court, particularly in the current climate of UK prison overcrowding, I think it's very unlikely you'd face a custodial sentence: more likely probation and compulsory treatment, and those only if the charges aren't dropped. The CPS aren't the Gestapo, and if they have the facts you've expressed in this thread at hand, they may well - or, for that matter, a magistrate/judge might - figure you've suffered enough for this episode already, pose no threat to society save as a by-product of self-destructiveness symptomatic of depression, and go lightly on you. Focus on the legal threat you're facing as much as you can in as cold and calculating a light as you can - sometimes, in the unreal but all-pervasive face of suicide's shadow, the cold hard facts of our practical problems are the best tools of distraction we can find. I hope that makes some kind of sense: I'm in a bad way from a fairly steep benzo taper, and my neurotransmitters are applying for political asylum in any country that I don't reside in, as they're otherwise at risk of cruel and unusual punishment.

This post has so much in it. Thank you for writing it, Where wolf.

@David, I know that you have struggled with these feelings for so long and a threat of this nature is triggering to say the least; but like everyone else has said, if you try to focus on the present and the practical (getting a good legal defense and minimizing the impact for you and your family) I think that it will help you to not imagine the worst. Just try to take it one step at a time. How do you feel about your present lawyer? Good luck.

 

[dhcdavid]

Hiya herbavore.

I feel pretty shitty about my current lawyer: he's just someone who I can get for free via the uk's "legal aid" system. I don't have a penny to my name so this as well is making the situation feel way worse than it probably should...