Mental Health Suicidal ideation

[testingthelimits]

Hello, I'm doing something quite unusual for me. I'm confronting my problems when they occur. I had planned this post to be much longer explaining the start of the issues and so on, but I got "locked" halfway and had to delete it.

I'll cut right to the case. I've been clinically depressed since I had a serious near fatal illness. During this time I wanted to end my life almost all the time. I got admitted at psychiatric facilities. The only thing stopping me from actually killing myself is the guilt I feel towards my parents. Now I'm on medication Wellbutrin that did work for a short while, now I'm on Ritalin that works when I overdo it.
But I have self control and have a limit on how much I will do in 24 hour period, and when I stop to ensure that I don't fuck up my sleep to bad (its already fucked up bad enough). So now I have at least 5-6 hours during the day where I don't want to kill myself.

The problem is the other 10-12 hours of the day. I see sleep as a salvation, they only time where I can get peace of mind. Today was worse than usual, the normal dosage of my for mentioned medication doesn't seem to help.... I already taken 80% of what I allow myself of my Ritalin and I have only been awake for 3 hours. I feel that I'm going insane.... I have all the tools for killing myself readily available, phenobarbital, Chloral Hydrate, Alcohol and GHB, straight up poisons. And I seem to "lock" up all the time, I have tried to take the 2 last doses of Ritalin intranasally to boost the effect. And it has worked to a extent, I feel better now, but I know its only a matter of time before it stops working and at the next dose I've reached my max.

I know my writing it a bit messed up and lacks quality and coherence/consistency but I can't seem to get my fucking act together.. I'm sorry for this.

I hoped just writing it down, to someone, anyone would make a difference. All my research in the field suggest so.

Well this isn't the first time this has occurred, so don't be alarmed, the tools I have I've had for a long time, they give me some comfort that I can end this fucking thing when I want, in a painless fashion. But as always the guilt powers me trough it...

Sorry for the inconvenience this might give anyone, I know there is a lot of people out there having a much, much worse life than me. Actually I feel a bit of a asshole for lacking the mental will to overcome this. As the medications show, its clearly a matter of some disturbance in my brain, not my life..

 

[Black Rabbit of Inle]

Hi TTL,

I'm sorry to hear about your illness, the threat of death does funny things to ones mind. Depression after such an incident is to be expected. It's good to hear that you're on medication to treat it though.

Reaching out for support most definitely makes a difference. Just talking to someone can sometimes help get you out of a mental funk. Suicide is not something to be taken lightly and as you state in your introduction thread " Not much point in surviving if I kill myself doing something incredibly stupid ". This is a time to be making a new start. You have a new lease on life and a chance many don't get. A good first step would possibly be to make sure that your 'tools' are not available. Ditch them so that you don't have the thought in the back of your mind 'well it's all right there'. You don't want to rely on a crutch like that.

Are you still taking the Wellbutrin or was this switched for the Ritalin? If so, why did your doctor find it necessary to give you a central nervous system stimulant over an anti-depressant?

You seem very intelligent and I wouldn't like to see you make a stupid mistake. Don't ever think you're an inconvenience here. This is why TDS is here, to support people through any problems they may be facing.

 

[testingthelimits]

Hello again, I'm pleased to say that the rough patch is over for now.

But this was actually somewhat a of breakthrough for me, when I get these half psychotic breaks I usually get extremely introvert. For the first time ever I reached out in some degree at least. Also its quite interesting for me to read what i wrote in the post. This is the first time I have documentation of how I think during these breaks (or whatever they are, I’ll call them breaks in lack of better words). Both my writing and my logic is quite different to what I would define as “me”.

I can’t really remember too much of it, I seem to go into a state of mind that is very intense.
My recollection of the first waking hours of today is very chopped up into bits and pieces. I do remember feeling extreme desperation and extreme anxiety. I was feeling massive amounts of guilt and shame over not being able to control myself. And feelings of being a burden to whoever read the post. In retrospect I can’t really understand why, if people didn’t like it they could just stop reading it.

Why I decided to write it down in the forum I don’t know, as previously stated I’m usually very introvert during these breaks. But I’m glad I did, not just for the documentation part, but also for the possibility that this action made it go away faster.

This break lasted for about 4-6 hours after getting up from bed. I just now started to get normal cognitive functions back. The suicidal ideation stopped completely and I actually feel fine. My logic and sanity has returned, my ability to write coherent and with at least some degree of quality is back.

Does anyone else have had these kind of experiences or is this a rare occurrence in depressed people?

And to you Re-distributed who were so kind to answer a unstable soul I give a thank you

To your questions, if i'm still on Wellbutrin, yes I am, and I'm using the as prescribed by my main physician. To answer why they decided to add Ritalin to my course of treatment I have to add some more information.
I was diagnosed with ADHD in my childhood, and was treated with Ritalin, it was a great success. At the age of 13-14 I decided to stop using them because of social stigma. This made me change my personality quite a lot, to control my impulsivity. This worked very good and I did no worse at school after quitting the drug. But as I said I made changes to my personality, from having a extroverted personality I became more and more cautious of what I was doing at all times. This didn't affect me very much in the beginning but as the years went on the control got more and more rigid. I lived by a very strict set of rules that I made for myself, to adhere to society’s written and unwritten rules. This made me a manipulative and very cautious person. This was also at least partly a success. I got through school system with good grades got the jobs I wanted, I was skillful at what I did. When I got bored working at the laboratory I got a degree in computer sciences and got a job in that field without a problem. It had been a hobby of mine since I was 6 so neither the education bit, or the job bit was a very big challenge.

But then, I got sick. Everything went to pieces, my life fell apart. And a whole other set of challenges was introduced to me. I didn’t master them that well, I didn’t cope with being sick and in my own opinion I was worthless.

Jumping to my point of explaining the Ritalin bit. I have had very bad experiences with all other antidepressants especially SSRI ones, they make me very suicidal. Wellbutrin helped a lot, but the effects have worn off and the depression has been getting worse.
So an idea sprung to mind when the team surrounding me came together. Maybe, just maybe introducing Ritalin again would alleviate my almost OCD like self control and reduce the constant stress surrounding me. And the hope is that when I learn to rely on automated feeling induced reactions to my surrounding environment, then it will in time make my depression go away or at least get a lot better.

In addition Ritalin is used off-label for depression so a dual effect is hoped to occur. And it has worked to some extent, the heavy breaks are seldom now, and much shorter in duration.

As a last addition, I will seriously consider getting rid of my ‘tools’. It might sound strange but its a hard thing to do. In some demented way they comfort me.

 

[spork]

Does anyone else have had these kind of experiences or is this a rare occurrence in depressed people?

This does happen to me as well. I just do whatever I can to ride out the feelings because I know they will pass and I'll feel at least somewhat better soon.

I'm glad that you're writing all this down and reaching out for help. I know that admitting your feelings can be incredibly difficult at times, but I do also think it can be very therapeutic. Humans aren't meant to constantly carry things like this on their shoulders, it only leads to worse feelings. Have you talked to a therapist at all about your depression? It can be intimidating to do at first, but when you find the right therapist for you it can be incredibly helpful.

You should also immediately let your physician know that the Wellbutrin is now making you more depressed if you haven't already. Since medications work in such different ways on different people, they need to know this to help treat you better.

Don't feel bad about posting here. This is what this forum is meant for. Your problems and you do matter.

 

[Sepher]

I find writing things down very useful. The alcoholism threads in TDS are like a record of my journey, and my mental state over time. I can read back through them and see my own progress, for all its ups and downs and slips backwards. It's useful being able to come back to them and compare where I am now with where I was three, six, twelve months ago, it helps a lot with the sense of perspective, perspective that is sometimes lacking when I'm in the middle of a down phase. It's a reassurance that the down phases are only temporary and that there is hope of better days because that's what has happened every time previously.

You can keep updating your thread if it helps as things progress and want to talk about things with others, or there is the blog [EDIT]Oops. See edit below[/EDIT] function Bluelight has if you want to record things more for your own purposes ( blogs are public but less visible in that someone will have to click through into it deliberately ). I often find that in having to order my thoughts and words enough to purge them out onto the page it helps me see the more irrational thoughts for what they are: it allows me to take a step back from my own thought patterns and see them in a more objective light. And the purging / venting often is enough to get the darker thoughts out of my head and make some room for more positive ones too.

I think I understand now what you meant by 'locks', I wasn't sure what you were getting at before. You mean similar to 'breaks'? I often find that in my darkest moments I'll just drive myself still further down with a lot of negative mental chatter and suicidal ideation that just ramps up the anxiety still further, it's a negative spiral down to even darker places that seem to only have one exit and that's suicide. Anxiety does very strange things to our thinking, all that noradrenaline kicking in in response feeds our inwardly directed rage. I'm more self-aware than I was and have had more success bringing myself out of this spiral, positive self-talk, breathing techniques, distraction techniques, purging my thoughts out onto the internet are all very useful for me, though difficult. It takes conscious effort that is mostly being expended on the negative stuff driving me down but it is possible.

Anyways, glad you're feeling a little better about things today. Keep on reaching out when you need to, we'll always be here to listen even if we don't have much in the way of advice to offer. Sometimes a kind word in acknowledgement from others is enough.

Take care.

[EDIT]Oops! Blogs are only available to those with Bluelighter status I've just learned. Sorry testingthelimits, you won't have that option while you're still a Greenlighter, you'll need to post some more ( TDS social threads are good! ) but it's there if you think blogging things down might be useful for you in future. Various privacy settings on visibility for different user groups available also.[/EDIT]

 

[1lost]

It gets better,
Peace b w/ u & this to shall pass,
I no of the "breaks" ..
I no time heals