YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Hello all,

I'm very glad to have found this place What I've written below is fairly lengthy and thorough, so I won't be offended if no-one reads it. I just thought I'd share some of my experiences here in case someone finds it helpful to read.

I'm a 24-year-old poet and musician from the UK and have suffered from depression since I was about thirteen years old. I didn't know this until I was diagnosed when I was 22, having finally told my parents that I had actively sought to end my life for 6 months, which had culminated in taking a taxi out to a local suspension bridge and standing on the edge of it for about an hour. What stopped me was the consideration for others that has dictated most of my decisions in life, from consideration for my friends and family right down to consideration for the person who might find my body or the people who might see me jump. I'm glad to have that part of me, but I've never wanted it to leave as much as I did in that moment.

So I stepped back from the edge and carried on existing for the sake of others for a couple of months. Then a family bereavement served as the catalyst for my complete and utter mental collapse which, as you might imagine, was somewhat difficult to mask. From there, I saw my family doctor and was prescribed anti-depressants. Two years down the line, I have come off my medication and am starting to feel human again, which is nice.

I'd say my recovery has all happened in the past six months. In early December, friendless, alone, broke, jobless and struggling to see any hope in my situation, I decided to quit smoking, get to a gym regularly and works upwards from there. The increase in energy that came from those two decisions impacted everything else in my life, right down to actually having the physical strength to get out of the house and do things. I'm still in the process of trying to get my life together (aren't we all!), and although progress is painfully slow, it is happening. After a year and a half of being unemployed, I'll be starting a new job next month. I imagine some positive things will come out of that. I'm slowly starting to be able to do things for my own benefit, which is new to me as in the past I've always done things for the girlfriend I had at the time more than anything else.

I suppose the reason I'm here is to learn from your collective experiences so that I can better understand how my mind gets to the places it ends up. I think I've got a pretty good handle on things and I've already successfully averted an impending episode without meds, but I kind of fell through the cracks of the British counseling system and never received any therapy as such and I don't really intend to.

Anyway, I'll stop rambling. I hope to be an active member here and get to know you all and try to support those who need it. I might need a little help from you guys from time to time, too

Nice to have you here, PunchBrother! Sounds like you're working hard!

Welcome.

I am glad you stepped back from the ledge. I am happy you are typing words of hope today.

Also, no need to apologize for "rambling"; you say what you want to say!

welcome, PunchBrother! great name. I'm 24 and live in the U.S. I used to write poetry a lot and it came very naturally but for some reason I stopped and haven't done it in maybe a couple years I think that always restricting myself to making things rhyme got tiring for me and I'd rather just write in stream of concious mode, but I know a lot of musicians who make great music and lately I've been considering writing some songs to record with them, since the tools and talent are readily available and I seem to have a knack for it. Maybe you could help me with some stuff...

Anyways, enough about me. I'm glad you're here and had the courage to keep on living and really face yourself. I think I could learn a lot from your experience because I'm in a place where although I'm not suicidal anymore, I just feel a void in my life and a real lack of energy due to smoking and not exercising. I want to get back out into the world and interact with people and this site is a great support network for finding the tools in really any issue you're dealing with. So I hope you enjoy it here, look forward to hearing more from you!

Hello all, thanks for welcome

Jose, I take it you're a fan of the Punch Brothers then?
I've probably written about three poems in the last two years, myself. My approach to it is that the inspiration will return to me when it's good and ready. There's a nice song about that feeling on Paramore's new album called 'Last Hope'. I've also come to the realisation that writing poetry is a very solitary thing. There aren't many opportunities to perform my work in public, and so a lot of the time I don't have any inspiration to carry on. I'd definitely recommend getting into music. The thing that sets making music apart from writing poetry for me is that the process of creating music is a reward in itself, whereas writing feels a lot more like work.

With regard to the lifestyle things you brought up, I'd definitely recommend quitting smoking at the same time as starting to exercise. For a long time, I was fixated on long-term goals like getting a job and finding someone to love, but I realised one day that to get to those long-term goals I needed to start doing things in the short-term.

As depressed/suicidal people, we generally get inundated with tons of well-meaning people telling us what they think would help us. For instance, for about a year my parents were convinced that getting a job would solve all my problems, but they didn't have the insight into my condition to know that to find a job you really have to want it and have the energy to pursue that goal. I had neither the desire nor the energy at the time. For a long time I regarded people's recommendations to exercise as bullshit. I mean, what depressed person wants to go outside? The gym was perfect for me in that respect.

What I did was asked my parents for a few months of a gym membership as an early christmas present, then in February asked for a few more months for my birthday. At the same time, I got on patches for the smoking. Think I spent about a month on those and then I was ok (although I use electric cigarettes now). This might be fucked up, but with a history of self-harm I found that going to the gym helped, in that I could go there and work out until every part of me was aching and causing me pain. It's fucked up that that was my only real inspiration to go, but meh.
It also helped with some anger issues that developed as a consequence of not smoking and my personal circumstances which were, and still are, not ideal.

Man. If typing was an olympic sport...

I hope this helped, anyway. I could type relentlessly about my recommendations, but the one thing I would say is start with the small stuff. Exercise and quitting smoking etc. might not seem to be at all related to your long terms goals on the surface, but it's all connected.

Best of luck with your journey