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

April 2014, age 20: I call the front desk at the counseling center I go to, begging for an emergency appointment. I've been crying for days and can't get a grip on myself. They give me one, with the same counselor who sees my ex-fiance. It's a small town, so there's really no other options. I don't use the word suicide to describe how suicidal I'm feeling. She recommends I get assessed at the ER, and I do. The doctor thinks I'm drug-seeking, keeps asking me if I plan to hurt myself (I say no over and over again, even though I kind of do), and prescribes a small amount of Valium. I go home and take one, and while doped up, almost set my hair on fire while trying to light a cigarette.

Not 2 weeks later: I pedal my bike home from college, lock it up, walk downstairs to my studio apartment, lay down on the bed (fully dressed and with no lights on) and call my therapist to tell her I've been thinking about taking the contents of my medicine cabinet. She immediately schedules me an emergency appointment for that afternoon and when we meet, the concern in her voice is thick and fraught. I panic when she mentions the hospital.

Not two weeks later: I'm wearing a crop top with loose hair and feel great, feel terrible, feel wired, feel electric. When I get to my therapy appointment, I realize I can't leave without losing whatever tenuous grip on reality I have. My therapist admits me. Since she's on call, she drives me to the hospital, waits with me in the emergency room, stays with me until I'm admitted and put in a room, and tells the nurse to order chicken soup for me even after I refuse to eat.

Not one week later: I'm manically planning my discharge from the hospital. Everything is great. I'm going home.

Not three weeks later: I'm back. They lock me in the scary hospital this time, feed me Ativan until all I can do is sleep, and eventually discharge me to a lower level (still inpatient) program back at the friendly hospital.

Not one week later: I'm manically planning my discharge from the hospital. Everything is great. I'm quitting my job and moving to Oregon.

(I had so many hospitalizations in the first 2 months of living in Oregon that I have nothing in particular to say about each one. Some highlights: stuck in the hospital eating patriotic themed cupcakes on the 4th of July while tanned, sun-kissed nurses talked about their holiday weekend plans (technically, I think I was being stubborn and refused to eat those, too); being picked up in an ambulance from the LGBT youth center in the dark (my first ambulance ride; they took me to a hospital with rubber furniture and no beds); taking a handful of random pills on the Pioneer Courthouse Square steps and struggling to maintain consciousness during a coffee date with my friend immediately afterwards.)

End of July 2014, age 20: I take too many OTC painkillers and try to die. After maybe an hour, I get scared and tell on myself. I'm sick from the sedatives in the pills and can't really stand or walk when the paramedics come. There's a nurse at the hospital who tells me I might die and I panic as the reality of my situation hits me. While waiting for blood work, I call my aunt and tell her what they said, what I did, and what might happen. I'm crying, gagging, a mess. I ask for my great-uncle, who's a priest, to call me. When I'm on the phone with him, the doctor comes in and tells me I'll be fine. I hang up to disconnect electrodes and tell him I'll call him back. When I do, he's ten minutes from the hospital. He stays with me until the doctor promises to admit me. The next morning, I wake up in the psych ward, hungover with smeared mascara all over my face and grass knotted in the back of my hair.

August 2014, age 20: I'm living in a respite house waiting for a bed in residential treatment. During the course of my stay there I overdose at least one time, have my wallet confiscated and held for my safety, and generally cause the staff to feel uneasy for me every time I leave the premises. I play a lot of rummy and smoke a lot of cigarettes with the other residents. In the end, I'm kicked out and admitted to the hospital 3 or 4 days before I'm scheduled to be admitted to inpatient, because I rode a bus out of the middle of nowhere with enough pills to kill me and freaked out at the last second and called my case manager and ended up being picked up outside Ikea. My grasp on reality is growing fuzzier and fuzzier.

--- I'll continue this later, starting with the residential treatment stuff. It's helpful to map out like this, but too much to do at once.

Thank you for posting this, Flora. I feel like we're still in the dark ages of mental health treatment in a lot of ways. You're a miracle of survival. I'm happy that you're still here to make these posts. I look forward to reading the rest of your story.

rivergirl

Thanks for sharing. I'm so glad that you are doing better now. I survived some suicide attempts when I was your age and I know how hellish it can be when those thoughts run your world.

I think you are hella strong - you are a role model of living and surviving and healing - as dark as your story is and as misunderstood as mental illness is - I think maybe those of you who have had hospital intervention should make a foundation designed to improve psychological wings of hospitals - which right now are drs assuming that all patients are pill searching addicts - that mental health issues are made up - they sedate and restrain with no real effort to effect health - its like a modern day lunatic hospital however you are not able to have an extended stay because they don't want to watch you that long - just until you say you are ok then you are kicked out -

they rely on outpatient care and therapy to "fix" you and obviously if people are in and out that does not actually help at all not quickly, not like they are thinking - it seems that those who experience it and have felt the loneliness and fear would have a lot to say about making the system better and healthier

Honestly and seriously you are an awesome person you have survived things I haven't ever experienced - I stared at bottles of pills and did not take them - thought about it but didn't - maybe I should have been hospitalized I don't know - I was a hot mess - I still am but I am too inactive and meh to have the energy to plan my demise - that and all the darn kids in my house like to eat and keep me on my feet..

Thank you so much for sharing and I will wait to see the rest of your story....

Thanks everyone for your kind responses <3 I agree, the hospital system is backwards. But I also was absolutely not ready to get better until I absolutely was, so I don't know if I can blame hospital intervention for anything. I needed to stay safe when I needed to stay safe and my stubbornness was in the way of me getting sane until I really, really was faced with no options. But I guess I'll get there in the timeline, too.

Treatment (ages 20 to 21, September 2014 to May 2015) -- I can't think of any particularly cohesive or organized moments from this time period. Basically I was not very coherent, not very based in reality. I had all the symptoms of a dissociative disorder based in childhood trauma, which I was at the time thoroughly convinced that I had experienced. Now I'm equally convinced that I was delusional and that the symptoms were caused by a bipolar induced psychosis of sorts. Not that all repressed memories aren't real, but in my case, they turned out not to be. Anyways, it was a blur of stealing sharps to self-harm with, running away from premises, throwing fits late at night, refusing to come inside, pushing through emergency doors, barricading myself in my room, a couple admissions to the local hospital for safety purposes (having my therapist see me piled in blood-stained blankets with knotted hair and barely able to make eye contact -- not my finest moment), trying to hang myself from a pear blossom tree outside the back door (with a safety belt -- ironic), getting picked up by the cops and jumped and cuffed for having razor blades on me (they were still in the package), banging my head against the walls, being wrapped up after self harming by the incredibly compassionate male nurse who worked there, and being threatened with restraints (I have only been restrained once in my life, and it wasn't there.) After eight months of that, I was given the choice to shape up or be kicked out, and I chose option C: to sign myself out safely and voluntarily.

May 2015 (age 21): I'm sitting outside the bus stop in downtown Portland having a panic attack about going to my job at Subway, and I call my dad and beg him to let me come home. He agrees almost immediately and buys me plane tickets. I can't stand this city anymore. I'm scared and anxious and can't do it, I just can't.

Two days later: It's 3am in the airport and I'm freaking out because I drank a beer on the plane six hours after I took Tylenol for my cold and now I'm convinced I have liver failure. I send my dad a long and rambling email ending in the suggestion of going to the ER for blood tests. I turn out to be fine.

Two days later: I meet the woman who will later refer to me in a court petition as being "unable to function as an adult". She does my intake assessment. Everything goes well. I just got out of treatment, yes, and I was very unstable, yes, but this is going to be different.

A week later: I meet the man who will write countless court petitions against me and visit me after my next suicide attempt: my therapist. Everything goes well. I just got out of treatment, yes, and I was very unstable, yes, but this is going to be different.

Two weeks later: I meet the woman who will battle medication battles alongside me for the darkest part of the spring: the nurse practitioner assigned to my medication management. Everything is great. I'm going to go off of my Lithium; as I've been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder medications are not likely to be effective anyways, and it's not like I was particularly stable on Lithium anyways. She agrees and writes out a tapering plan.

August 2015 (age 21): I am ecstatic to be off of Lithium; I took my last dose last night. Forget that I am cutting again, and this time deeper than before; forget that I am always thinking about killing myself; forget that I am wired beyond belief and often sit on my floor unable to sleep and unable to move and unable to focus, with a deep energy flowing through me like so many volts of electricity underneath my skin.

The next day: In a panic, I call the counseling center and tell them that I'm not on Lithium and I'm not okay. I get told to go back on the most recent, fairly low dose, right away.

The next week: A friend from church brings me to the ER to be assessed to dangerous ideations. I'm told to go back to my original Lithium dose.

A week later: I've been taking Lithium as prescribed but I'm still crying all the time and anxious all the time and suicidal an increasing amount of the time and after writing a suicide note and laying out all my pills in a line I call the same church friend and she drives me to the ER and this time I'm admitted, just overnight. I'm released to a therapy appointment to a therapist who is very surprised I allowed them to admit me (at this point, I still spend most of my sessions ranting about how I will never, ever go back to the hospital, ever.)

More to come -- I've got a solid half year to cover yet -- very therapeutic to share but difficult to write, so taking breaks. <3

Wishing I could give you a big hug. Mental illness is unimaginable to those who haven't experienced it. When your mind is your worst enemy. When you can firmly believe the irrational. When you are programmed to self destruct. It's painful to read your story but I keep telling myself there will be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Thank you <3 That's exactly why I can write it, too... I know things work out. As of right now, I am a mostly functional adult -- sure, still with some issues, but I've been out of the hospital for over 6 months and there's no obvious reason why I shouldn't make it to a year admission-free. And I think it's really as simple as, I wasn't ready to let go of being sick, and then all of a sudden, I was. I don't think any of the months of struggling could have necessarily been avoided, I think everything happened the way it had to (save for the hospital system being just kind of shitty; I feel like improvements could have been made some of the places I was for compassion etc)... And that makes reflecting on it more manageable too, because I don't have a ton of regret or anything.

Not only is it a little emotionally challenging to write this, it's kind of logistically challenging because my memory gets kind of soft when I get sick. So bear with me as some of these moments are maybe short or confusing, or as the timelines don't make much sense. It's kind of hard to remember when everything happened and all.

August 2015 (age 21): I try to call the crisis line before bed and they never call me back with a counselor. So, I call them at 2:00 AM when I wake up, freaked out and out of my mind. They call me back this time and we talk for over an hour. It's the same lady who did my intake. I'm mostly incoherent I think; at least I feel pretty incoherent, and low. Low low low. The next day, I call again and after I get off the phone, in a point of utter lowness and pointlessness, I take a handful of my anxiety prescription. This is not a suicide attempt; rather a dissociated attempt at self harm. Realizing I screwed up, I call the counselor back and tell her what happened and that I'm going to the ER. I manage to get through admitting before the pills kick in but once they do, I am out out out. Everything feels fuzzy and I am so dizzy. Time seems like it's moving slowly, catching on everything. I feel like nothing is real. A different counselor comes and takes me to a small dark room to assess me. She asks to see the cuts on my leg and I show her. They're deep-ish but not stitches deep. She asks me how long I had planned on taking the pills and I tell her I came up with the idea about 30 seconds after I started taking them. She consults with her supervisor -- a charming woman who will, in the future, threaten me with court guardianship -- and they both decide that I need to be admitted to the hospital. Not just overnight, either, but for a week, to the psych unit in the city where I was hospitalized the year before, before I left for Oregon and residential. The nurse gives me antibacterial gel for my leg.

A few days later: I am formally re-diagnosed (long story) with bipolar disorder after I tell the doctor at the hospital about the weird high-energy high-impulsivity spells I get, and how they got worse after I went off Lithium. Everything got worse when I went off Lithium. He puts me back on Lithium and on a low dose of Seroquel to augment the mood stabilizer, and gives me a chart to track my moods on. I still feel woozy from the overdose; everything feels slow and fake and transparent. In groups, I feel like I am the craziest person in attendance. I don't like the feeling.

September 2015 (age 21): I waver on taking the Seroquel because it is making me sleepy and fat. When I don't take it, I get shaking withdrawals, coupled with nausea and headaches. I'm in a bipolar support group my therapist runs now and I am so angry at everyone in attendance that I spend the whole sessions glaring at them from across the table. I hate the nurse practitioner and I take myself off some anxiety meds that she refuses to take me off of. Everyone makes me angry. I am pissed off and can't sleep. I pace around town for hours. One night, I ramble through the woods with my dog in the dark singing Old McDonald at the top of my lungs, and then go down to the beach where I run around in the water in the rain with just a tank top and sweats on. I'm laughing out loud to myself, to no one. Maybe I'm kind of sketchy on taking the Lithium too. One day, in support group, I cry and shake and refuse to talk to anyone. Afterwards, I pace around the area, lost in myself, angry and lacking an outlet. The next day, I go to my therapy appointment knowing I might get locked up, almost wanting it. When I get there and he sees how worked up and frenetic I am, my therapist recommends I get assessed at the ER. I fight it, because I'm stubborn and angry, but in the back of my mind I know I can't go home and be okay. My pills are taunting me, I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't drink. Still, I fight. I refuse to go to the ER voluntarily, and they hold me at the counseling center until the court paperwork is finalized to take me against my will. At the hospital, I refuse to change into the gown until the doctor threatens me with jail. I scream at the techs and CNAs when they come into my room. I refuse to sit on the bed and instead I curl up on the chair and warily watch the nurses station. When security comes to take me to the scary hospital, I scream at them until they handcuff me and I fly handcuffed to the city to be admitted at the state institution. When people ask me any question there, my only answer is "I'm safe, and I want to go home."

October 2015 (age 21): I get back from the state facility but I'm still not any better. I still feel like I'm losing my grip on reality, like I'm about to start legit seeing things or hearing voices. My job calls and asks if I'm coming back. I say I can't, which is true, but I'm still so upset by this that I buy a bottle of bottom-shelf whiskey, mix it with Diet Coke in a big water bottle, and start drinking. By the time I walk home from the store, everything is already woozy. I keep drinking. I post a suicide note on Instagram that never actually says I'm trying to kill myself. I don't end up even close to dead, just really, really hungover. In the morning, under the kind advice of a wonderful counselor (who actually lives on the same street as my parents -- small town problems) I walk myself to the hospital. This, I count as my second suicide attempt. I tell the nurse that I am suicidal, that I tried to give myself alcohol poisoning and couldn't and now I want to take all my Lithium as soon as I can keep it down and I just really Need Help. She listens. The doctor listens. My therapist comes up with the counselor from the phone that morning and they both work their butts off to get me admitted somewhere. I vote for the scary hospital because it seems less scary now. I am so hungover, the perfume from the insurance counselor makes me sick. My therapist is so wonderful. It is so wonderful to have him come up. I feel safe and cared for for the first time in months and months. Everything is going to be okay. I sleep most of the day and then security shows up and they drive me to the hospital.

At that point, everything got a little better until about Christmastime. I was in the hospital for brief periods of time once or twice, but they resolved quickly and were reasonably non-traumatic. I worked really hard on my recovery, using a WRAP plan to keep myself organized and together, and other than medication side effects, it was a reasonably pleasant couple months.

I need some more time to think about the sequence of events that happened in spring -- a lot happened in the span of 3 or so months, everything was mushed together, I was drinking, it's hard to pick out the seminal moments or put them in order. So I'll get back to you on that. We're nearing the part of the story where things do get better, by the way -- by April, I am happy and functioning.

A few days before Christmas, 2015 (I am 21): I call the on-call number for the first time in maybe a month, and am connected with an older woman who I have met with many times before. She is kind, very encouraged that I haven't had to call as often lately, and we work through a safety and coping plan. The depression has been getting worse lately; I feel it closing in on me. I'm changing up my dosage schedule for my antipsychotic and while the side effects are now tolerable, my mood isn't. I don't want to see anyone, I just want to be alone in my room. I don't feel unsafe so much as scared.

New Year's Eve, 2015 (age 21): I have my dad drop me off at the counseling center to talk to an on-call because I know what's going to happen when I talk to her. By now, the process is all so tired, so predictable, so frustrating -- but I don't know what else to do, other than tear myself apart running in circles trying to get the constant stream of "kill yourself kill yourself kill yourself" out of my brain. So I go, I tell the therapist what's going on, and they call a taxi for me to go up to the hospital, just as predicted. Everything is terrible. I was supposed to have a party with friends tonight but my brain can't seem to hold itself together long enough to do anything fun or productive. My childhood doctor sees me in the ER, and gives me a hug. She tells me a story about someone with bipolar that doesn't really help. She asks about my family. A tech sits with me for a while, even though he doesn't have to. He has long hair and I just get this feeling that he's walked his own dark path too, and he just sits and listens and asks questions and is really quite helpful. Before midnight, they move me out of the ER and into the hospital. I make up a pros and cons list for killing myself in my notebook. (I think my dad brought some soft markers up earlier.) The cons column is very short. I also make a list of reasons why I do and don't have a good prognosis. I cry. At the stroke of midnight, I'm watching Adult Swim on the TV and feeling sorry for myself. 2015 was supposed to be my year, and now I don't even have much hope for 2016. I manage to talk my way out of the hospital and am released the next day.

January 2016 (age 21): I go to my friend's house for movies and company and to try not to hurt myself. When she goes to bed, I panic and walk myself to the ER. I panic on the way there and walk away. I call on-call, talk to her. She suggests I go to the ER and meet her there to talk. I agree. I hang up. I walk partway there, panic, walk away, turn around, get up to the parking lot, panic, turn around, leave the parking lot only to turn right around when I see her car, meet her at the door. We talk inside. It's maybe 2am. I can't sleep. I'm not on my meds because I'm scared they're poisoning me. (Forget the fact that I am also acutely suicidal.) I have class in the morning. It is the morning. She agrees to admit me until my class, because after class I have therapy. When the time comes, they keep me late and I am late for class. I start crying and am inconsolable, so they refuse to let me go. I miss therapy. I miss school. Eventually I am let home.

Next: My friend takes me to the ER because I am scared, but not before I get half-drunk and chain smoke for a while. She sleeps over in the hospital room with me. I'm released the next day.

Next: I make a safety contract with myself. I put a star sticker up on my calendar every time I don't let myself get caught in the rabbit hole of suicidal thoughts. But I still think about killing myself all the time. What was once background noise is now a full-blown constant roar. I talk to a therapist basically every day. My anxiety level is through the roof. If I'm not thinking of ways to kill myself, I'm ticking off all the reasons that I should. The antipsychotic I take has given me a full-body tremor and brain fog, severe exhaustion. I switch back to the dosing schedule I was on when I was stable and I feel better, but the side effects are worse. (I'm taking Geodon at this point.) I go in to my med provider and she prescribes Abilify. The brain fog goes away, but my symptoms worsen and the tremor remains.

Next: I steal meds from my dad, who is supposed to be dosing out mine. I steal enough for an overdose and stare at it for a while, panicking, before I call on call for the hundredth time. She says I don't have to go in as long as I put them meds back. I do. When we get off the phone, I take them back out. I had agreed to meet with on-call later in the day. When I get there, I think she can tell I am Bad News. She sets up a time for me to call her later and I don't do it. Instead I get drunk on 4Loko behind McDonalds before I drag myself back into the counseling office (under the threat of police force). It's after hours and I am definitely on my way to drunk. I see my therapist walk by but he ignores me. They call a cab for me up to the hospital. When I get there, I can't go in, so I sit outside in the dark for a while until the night therapist shows up and tells me I need to go inside. We do. I get in a room. She tries to assess me, but I am sad and drunk and having trouble holding on to the conversation. I am placed under a 72-hour hold, which they can't accommodate at that local hospital. The regular psych hospital is full so they send me to one 10 hours north. When I fly there, they give me so much Ativan that I black out and remember only pieces from the travel and the first night in the hospital. I write some very sad, suicidal entries in my journal that I later don't remember writing. The first day I'm there, I cry in bed all day. When the social worker comes to talk to me, I scream at her about how upset and lost and depressed I am. She is sympathetic, leaves, the nurse comes back in her place and escorts me to a "more secure" unit. I'm there for about 4 hours and everyone decides I'm calm enough to come back on the regular floor. After that, the admission is pretty bland. I still feel like killing myself when I leave, but I don't say that. Instead, I insist on leaving As Soon As Possible. It's February now.

Next: I have therapy the day after I'm released from the hospital, and my therapist sits me down to have a Serious Discussion. The team, he says, wants me to go to residential. If I refuse, I need to comply with their treatment plans locally, including taking meds at the counseling center twice a day, meeting with my case manager regularly, and signing a release of information for my parents. If I refuse to comply with any of their plans, they'll petition for the court to take guardianship of me. I am neurotically private and can't handle the idea of my parents being involved in my treatment, so I decline to participate in their plan. I drive around for a while after, thinking, "If I was going to kill myself, this would be the time to do it." I don't. I go home and actually pull myself together enough to go to a friend's for dinner. We talk things over. In the morning, I call and agree to sign the ROI.

Next: my mom and I take a trip to the city. It's supposed to be fun and it kind of is, but also all I can think about is killing myself. I literally wake up in the middle of the night and repetitions of methods keep me awake for hours. I fly home but am in such a panic by the time that I get there that I go to sign myself into the hospital. But I panic, and I run away. The cops come after me. I realize how dumb it is to run from the cops. They take me in. Everyone in the ER is bored of me. They know they can't help me and frankly, they don't know who can. But I am admitted, placed on a hold, and transported. The hospital nurse is nice but blindingly naive about the psych patient process. A police officer I somewhat know drives me to the airport, cuffed. Sitting, cuffed, in the back of the cop car, I realize: I don't want to do this anymore. I make a vow to myself that this is the last time I will ever ride in the back of a cop car, last time I will ever be cuffed. The officer is really nice and waits with me for over an hour while my flight is late. He even uncuffs me so I don't have to be so embarrassed in the airport. (Small towns, ya feel.) The only three memorable things about this admission are:

1. It was the first and only time I've been restrained, and it was over something so stupid and preventable that it's just ridiculous to me now that I pushed things that far.
2. I realized that when I felt suicidal I wasn't really feeling like killing myself; more, like getting out of a scary situation, dealing with anxiety, or getting into a more predictable situation (hospital).
3. When I left, it was the only time leaving a hospital that I've really, certainly felt that I wouldn't be coming back. And I didn't.

The story actually gets better from there. The psychiatrist at the hospital started me on Risperdal, which had scary muscle-movement side effects for about a day but after that has basically been my miracle drug. The tremor went away. I learned to cope with the suicidal thoughts, and the Risperdal really helped them quiet down and be more manageable. I got a job. I spent the whole summer working and camping, and felt better than I had in my life. Right now, I'm in the middle of a move to the city and I'm coping so well with all the thoughts and fears and anxieties that come with stressful transitions. I turned 22 in March, and a whole new world started for me. Realizing the motives behind my suicidal impulses was a game changer. The two years of hell is, as far as I can tell, over. Obviously it'll take time to tell how permanent the shift is, but so far, everything looks promising. When I start to feel negative, I don't allow myself to ride it out anymore. I deal with it and I move on.

Thank you everyone for reading this! It's been hugely therapeutic to write and hopefully maybe helpful for some of you to read. Be well <3

Thanks for sharing your story and I'm so happy to hear you're doing so much better now. It's amazing what a difference the right med can make and learning how to manage your thoughts.

I've been reading through the rest of your story the past couple of days, floradreniline. I'm so sorry you had to go through those nightmarish years, but glad you were in a better place when you posted this. I hope you're still doing better.