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

I haven't been on for a while, and I should have been. Each podcast I listen to or post I read makes me feel better. The truth is I have been sad for so long and the events of the past few days have made me choose between continuing the struggle or this is the end. The past five years of my life have been one, long beat-down of my will to keep pushing on. I am 52, I have a good job but everything else has crumbled into nothing. My last long term relationship was with an emotionally dysfunctional woman, and I as the weaker partner was steamrolled for a long time. We bought a house together, but after I had made the decision to end it with her, the house was foreclosed on. And all this time I had developed the habit of drinking. Stop at a bar on the way home, a few drinks to fortify myself before facing her.... that habit stayed with me after we split and has caused me such tragedy. I have a Mother with advanced dementia that My Father- a hugely dysfunctional and abusive man, blames me for. Constant guilt and manipulation. Insults, lies, criticism.
I'm alone. I am constantly lonely and to empty that void I'd go to the neighborhood 'Cheers' bars where I felt wanted. That became every day and me having two, three...four drinks before heading home. A pattern that each morning I loathed and told myself to break this habit, and I would do things to balance the fact that I was drinking every day. Working out. Taking walks. Doing life things that made me feel like the drinking was balanced. I started to see a therapist but would feel envious of his great life and told him only things I wanted to- not the daily drinking, not the house, not my past mistakes that I feel such guilt and shame over. I wanted him to feel like I wasn't that screwed up, when I knew that I am that screwed up.
This past Tuesday I did my usual stop at the bar. I had four drinks and on the way home I was pulled over and got a DUI. This will be my second. I was in jail and called my father, and told him I wanted to die and was put on a suicide watch- naked in a freezing cell for eight hours. Finally a Psychiatrist said I could leave. Ironically my father posted my bail, but immediately demanded I pay him back in full, money I don't have. Because I am a loser who has made so many life mistakes and failures that I have nothing to fall back on. People talk about suicide in the abstract sense- many use it as the ultimate drama trump card that can't be argued with... 'I'm going to kill myself if you don't help me.' That kind of threat. Well, after dodging many fuck-ups and still standing, I can say that now, today, I have nothing to live for. Yes, I have many friends and people who love me, and yes, there are countless people worse off than I am, but all i can see right now is a darkness that I'm tired of navigating. I have fucked up my life so badly. I am frozen with fear at what my future holds and although I am still here... I saw my therapist yesterday and have contacted a treatment facility, I know these are the right things to do, but I don't know if at this point its worth it for me. I have been so sad, for so long, and I keep fucking my life up and I am just tired. I am facing everything alone. That's what I keep thinking that if this is the end of Peter, its okay.
peter7

Posts: 4
Joined: February 17th, 2012, 1:08 pm

Peter, I don't have a good answer for you. I haven't been in your shoes so I know what words I could offer may have no meaning.

What I can say is this - it's time to ask for help. If you have nothing left to lose, you can go on a few more days and give that a try. Talk to a counselor, or maybe even go to an AA meeting - I'm not implying alcoholism, I'm saying it may be just a nice place to get someone to talk to that ISN'T a shrink and might be able to relate to you.

You've reached your emotional limit, so let someone help you. You can't help yourself right now. Talk to your wife, maybe a close friend. They could get you started on something.

There is an end to this, and it isn't death. Reach out to someone.

Hello Peter7.

I think I have one of the lives that you would "feel envious of", like your therapist, but my mental disease makes me not particularly eager to live.

Suicide is sort of a solution, but it has some problems as a solution. First, it is a choice to stop ever having the ability to make a choice again, which is strange if you think about it. Second, it is a choice to forego the possibility of human accomplishment and human connection and human compassion - yes, it turns off the pain, but the only people who speak with complete certainty about the future are the self-delusional. When you feel 100% certain that you will not achieve human accomplishment and human connection and human compassion, you are under some kind of self-delusion, and probably self-delusion caused by a treatable mental illness.

You are taking a lot of positive steps, and I notice that you are not giving yourself credit for those positive steps, and what it says about your as a worthy and capable human being. You are a worthy and capable human being, and most likely a treatable mental illness is making you blind to that fact.

As you can read above, I really am bad at giving advice, I can only repeat what I have experienced. I read your posts and I honor your pain, and I can definitely say you didn't deserve to suffer so much.

Fifthsonata wrote better than I did. Listen to Fifthsonata. Please take care, cheers.

Peter7,

I'm sorry you are feeling hopeless. Please understand we hate seeing our community members in pain, but essentially threatening suicide on an anonymous forum puts all of us in a very difficult position. At the top of the page it states that we are not equipped to help you. The Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 is.

I think your DUI could be the best thing to happen to you. It's proof that your drinking isn't working as a coping mechanism. So maybe now you will be willing to consider a different way of living.

I think if you enter rehab with an open mind and lots of willingness you will be amazed at the results. My final days of drinking were filled with self-pity, suicidal ideation and doom. And then I let people who were equipped to help me help me. But I had to make an effort.

Make an effort.

I have seen dozens and dozens of people recover who thought their lives were over. They weren't. They were forced to make drastic changes to stay alive, and it turns out their new lives were just beginning.

Be Well.

Big Hug,

Paul

Thank you for being there for me. I am taking the steps to find out who I am and I how to move forward. My immediate future is daunting and if I take it all in at once, overwhelming. Its been a week since the DUI and I wake up and have those first moments of calm before reality drowns me. As I said it's my second. If I look back at my last two years its all so clear, the bad choices, the things I regret.
But there is this weird feeling of anticipation within me now- I know the extreme challenges that face me but I anticipate overcoming them.

Paul, this place, all of you. I am grateful.

Peter

Paul