dysphoria
Member
- Aug 4, 2019
- 59
Hi, felt like sharing my story somewhere. Some parts edited for anonymity.
I'm in my late 20s. When I was about 18, I developed temporal lobe epilepsy. The particular type I have causes abnormal activity in some parts of my brain which regulate fear and emotion. When this abnormal activity increases, it creates these terrifying events, often worse than breaking a bone or being in a car crash or the worst acid trip in the history of mankind, which go on to grand mal seizures if not controlled. Those are easy in comparison – just drop down and wake up sick and injured, it's not so bad. This is like having your fight or flight reflex active at all times, and it gets a lot worse when trying to achieve any of the things I actually want out of life. Education, work, I can't do anything that requires prolonged focus, so my future would have a hard ceiling around flipping burgers, and I can't even enjoy the downtime because of this.
I've tried every single antiepileptic medication out there, and also every antidepressant, and combination after combination. It's got to the point where I go into consultations and know more than the consultant almost every time. I'm currently juggling dependence on something which doesn't work long-term, and all the effective meds reduce intelligence substantially, to the point of not being able to follow a conversation, forgetting simple words, not understanding things you've written yourself, not understanding programs you've written yourself, and being a confused observer in life. I'd accept being happily stupid, but the meds also induce this horrible depressive, empty, hangover feeling. I can't live like that, and watch people build lives for themselves and have meaningful experiences as my youth fades and I never get to see what kind of person I would have been. I can't go from high intelligence to intellectual disability, for the rest of my life – not unless I can be happily stupid, which isn't possible. I can't even take drugs to numb the despair any more, as they bring on seizures themselves in some cruel irony. Cannabis just makes me scared and no better off, same for miracle CBD in all its forms. I really have tried everything. I spent a decade learning about myself, learning how drugs/meds work, only to finally arrive at the conclusion that current treatments are worse than the disease itself.
Before the age of 18, I was dealing with a serious anxiety disorder, so it's not like I come from happier times. People charged with my care have been neglectful and I pay a very steep price, although I've done stupid things myself (as a confused teenager). It's been over a decade dealing with the epilepsy problems alone, and I was basically dead inside to begin with.
I try to act as rationally as possible, and put all cognitive biases aside, but what if I have a death wish and also a compelling reason to end my life? I feel like I've put in enough time to at least understand the medical problem, understand myself, and understand the options I have. As far as I can tell, they are all bad. Seizure meds make me stupid and depressed, antidepressants are like a lobotomy, and anything stimulating is out of bounds due to epilepsy. I've spent over a decade searching for a way forward and have only made it worse. I can't sit around and watch my youth pass by in the hope of something new being invented, because these things take decades to be developed. It's likely that whatever I take now, I'll be taking for another 50 years, give or take.
A few years ago, I came to the same conclusion that I do today: staying alive is irrational. If happiness was measured on a scale, 0-10, then you would want your life to be on average, above 5 - average, neither good nor bad. If you knew it would be below 5, for many years to come, it would make no sense to carry on, because it would be choosing suffering. I don't believe in God or any kind of afterlife, or any culty ideas about existing beyond your brain. As far as I'm concerned, when you die, the particles you're made of spread out and that's the end of "you" and all your memories. I think the universe is deterministic and free will doesn't exist, and we could be in a simulated world… but that's about as far as my thoughts go towards anything after life.
Anyway I attempted suicide, and first it was with a lethal dose of morphine mixed with benzos, but that just induced seizures and probably vomiting even with ondansetron (5-HT3 receptor antagonists worsen my seizures too), and I didn't die, just got close. The second time, it was with a large amount of phenobarbital mixed with Xanax and various other stuff, well above lethal dose ranges (as was the morphine OD). It took too long to absorb, and someone found me just as I was stopping breathing. For the next week I was on a ventilator, with no spontaneous breaths, no brain activity, just coma. I woke up, and gradually returned to my old self.
Those experiences have weakened my ability to go through with suicide. I can only go with drugs, as I am too afraid of pain or brain damage from the other methods. I also want to shut off my brain before the time of brain death. If pentobarbital/Nembutal, or secobarbital/Seconal were available, I would have used them, but finding them on the darknet is difficult for someone in utter despair, even though I can do the whole bitcoin thing and have bought many things on there. I am just too far gone to have the connections to locate a seller, so I settled for phenobarbital which is the only barbiturate on markets usually, and it did actually work, just too slowly. It's not like I can get a hotel room without presenting ID and having my name logged centrally, and family would probably find me pretty quickly still. Doesn't leave many drug options except Nembutal comfortably at home, or phenobarbital… god knows where. Opioids aren't an option as I don't want to die from a seizure, and that just leaves barbiturates as a way to definitely shut down the brain and breathing impulse, without triggering a seizure themselves. No amount of antiepileptic meds can control those kind of provoked seizures, so it terrifies me that even if I do stick around, if I am in hospital dying from a terminal illness, there will be no way to provide pain relief as this relies on opioids, so it's quite likely I will die from numerous seizures. There's an argument to end my life while barbiturates still exist, just to avoid that inevitability.
The only reasons I am still here are sympathy for my family and very bad memories from the last attempts. I know deep down that, barring some sort of miracle breakthrough that would just be available to rich people or clinical trials, my quality of life is going to be bad enough that I would be happier to not even exist. Ever since my attempts, I've felt like a Shrodinger's Cat of suicide victims, dead and alive at the same time. The attempts were planned months in advance, and would've worked if not for location and forced breathing. No doctors even expected me to wake up. But I'm here, and the reasons behind the first attempts haven't disappeared. Everything I wrote in the suicide notes then still applies now. It wasn't impulsive. The survival instinct-obeying, emotional part of me is saying no, but every rational thought I have leads to the conclusion that death will save me from further unnecessary suffering, and although it's sad about my family, bad things happen to people all over the world, at an unthinkable scale, and you have to look after yourself. I guess I'm here to see if it helps to intellectualise the problem and dismiss the emotions which are in the way of finally achieving peace.
Nembutal/pentobarbital or Seconal/secobarbital would solve the problem, but unless I can find them, I guess some sort of bag or mask would work with phenobarbital? My fear there is of the drug not kicking in before the oxygen runs out, and vomiting out most of the dose, and perhaps waking up to experience part of it. Also it's pretty depressing to think about brain death, I'd never go through that awake, nor a heart attack, hanging, drowning, asphyxiation, jumping from height, car crash, etc. The whole point for me is to avoid suffering. If you take a drug, every horrible thing just happens while you are unconscious. I haven't done much reading on alternative methods, but it's looking like a large bag could shorten the time to death without stopping the drug absorption reaching anaesthetic levels. For phenobarbital, it took me around 8 hours to get to that state on a large overdose, and it's too much to inject (or acquire in pure form), so that leaves a mask of some sort, or an entire room filling up with inert gas as the drug kicks in, or tent / giant bag. I've read that of the widely available inert gases, helium is the only one without drug effects. Nitrogen is described similarly to N20, and I've done enough of the latter to know it'd be too overwhelming to die to, unless you were on large alcohol + benzo doses to counter the anxiety of larger doses.
Anyway, hi. Nice to meet you all.
I'm in my late 20s. When I was about 18, I developed temporal lobe epilepsy. The particular type I have causes abnormal activity in some parts of my brain which regulate fear and emotion. When this abnormal activity increases, it creates these terrifying events, often worse than breaking a bone or being in a car crash or the worst acid trip in the history of mankind, which go on to grand mal seizures if not controlled. Those are easy in comparison – just drop down and wake up sick and injured, it's not so bad. This is like having your fight or flight reflex active at all times, and it gets a lot worse when trying to achieve any of the things I actually want out of life. Education, work, I can't do anything that requires prolonged focus, so my future would have a hard ceiling around flipping burgers, and I can't even enjoy the downtime because of this.
I've tried every single antiepileptic medication out there, and also every antidepressant, and combination after combination. It's got to the point where I go into consultations and know more than the consultant almost every time. I'm currently juggling dependence on something which doesn't work long-term, and all the effective meds reduce intelligence substantially, to the point of not being able to follow a conversation, forgetting simple words, not understanding things you've written yourself, not understanding programs you've written yourself, and being a confused observer in life. I'd accept being happily stupid, but the meds also induce this horrible depressive, empty, hangover feeling. I can't live like that, and watch people build lives for themselves and have meaningful experiences as my youth fades and I never get to see what kind of person I would have been. I can't go from high intelligence to intellectual disability, for the rest of my life – not unless I can be happily stupid, which isn't possible. I can't even take drugs to numb the despair any more, as they bring on seizures themselves in some cruel irony. Cannabis just makes me scared and no better off, same for miracle CBD in all its forms. I really have tried everything. I spent a decade learning about myself, learning how drugs/meds work, only to finally arrive at the conclusion that current treatments are worse than the disease itself.
Before the age of 18, I was dealing with a serious anxiety disorder, so it's not like I come from happier times. People charged with my care have been neglectful and I pay a very steep price, although I've done stupid things myself (as a confused teenager). It's been over a decade dealing with the epilepsy problems alone, and I was basically dead inside to begin with.
I try to act as rationally as possible, and put all cognitive biases aside, but what if I have a death wish and also a compelling reason to end my life? I feel like I've put in enough time to at least understand the medical problem, understand myself, and understand the options I have. As far as I can tell, they are all bad. Seizure meds make me stupid and depressed, antidepressants are like a lobotomy, and anything stimulating is out of bounds due to epilepsy. I've spent over a decade searching for a way forward and have only made it worse. I can't sit around and watch my youth pass by in the hope of something new being invented, because these things take decades to be developed. It's likely that whatever I take now, I'll be taking for another 50 years, give or take.
A few years ago, I came to the same conclusion that I do today: staying alive is irrational. If happiness was measured on a scale, 0-10, then you would want your life to be on average, above 5 - average, neither good nor bad. If you knew it would be below 5, for many years to come, it would make no sense to carry on, because it would be choosing suffering. I don't believe in God or any kind of afterlife, or any culty ideas about existing beyond your brain. As far as I'm concerned, when you die, the particles you're made of spread out and that's the end of "you" and all your memories. I think the universe is deterministic and free will doesn't exist, and we could be in a simulated world… but that's about as far as my thoughts go towards anything after life.
Anyway I attempted suicide, and first it was with a lethal dose of morphine mixed with benzos, but that just induced seizures and probably vomiting even with ondansetron (5-HT3 receptor antagonists worsen my seizures too), and I didn't die, just got close. The second time, it was with a large amount of phenobarbital mixed with Xanax and various other stuff, well above lethal dose ranges (as was the morphine OD). It took too long to absorb, and someone found me just as I was stopping breathing. For the next week I was on a ventilator, with no spontaneous breaths, no brain activity, just coma. I woke up, and gradually returned to my old self.
Those experiences have weakened my ability to go through with suicide. I can only go with drugs, as I am too afraid of pain or brain damage from the other methods. I also want to shut off my brain before the time of brain death. If pentobarbital/Nembutal, or secobarbital/Seconal were available, I would have used them, but finding them on the darknet is difficult for someone in utter despair, even though I can do the whole bitcoin thing and have bought many things on there. I am just too far gone to have the connections to locate a seller, so I settled for phenobarbital which is the only barbiturate on markets usually, and it did actually work, just too slowly. It's not like I can get a hotel room without presenting ID and having my name logged centrally, and family would probably find me pretty quickly still. Doesn't leave many drug options except Nembutal comfortably at home, or phenobarbital… god knows where. Opioids aren't an option as I don't want to die from a seizure, and that just leaves barbiturates as a way to definitely shut down the brain and breathing impulse, without triggering a seizure themselves. No amount of antiepileptic meds can control those kind of provoked seizures, so it terrifies me that even if I do stick around, if I am in hospital dying from a terminal illness, there will be no way to provide pain relief as this relies on opioids, so it's quite likely I will die from numerous seizures. There's an argument to end my life while barbiturates still exist, just to avoid that inevitability.
The only reasons I am still here are sympathy for my family and very bad memories from the last attempts. I know deep down that, barring some sort of miracle breakthrough that would just be available to rich people or clinical trials, my quality of life is going to be bad enough that I would be happier to not even exist. Ever since my attempts, I've felt like a Shrodinger's Cat of suicide victims, dead and alive at the same time. The attempts were planned months in advance, and would've worked if not for location and forced breathing. No doctors even expected me to wake up. But I'm here, and the reasons behind the first attempts haven't disappeared. Everything I wrote in the suicide notes then still applies now. It wasn't impulsive. The survival instinct-obeying, emotional part of me is saying no, but every rational thought I have leads to the conclusion that death will save me from further unnecessary suffering, and although it's sad about my family, bad things happen to people all over the world, at an unthinkable scale, and you have to look after yourself. I guess I'm here to see if it helps to intellectualise the problem and dismiss the emotions which are in the way of finally achieving peace.
Nembutal/pentobarbital or Seconal/secobarbital would solve the problem, but unless I can find them, I guess some sort of bag or mask would work with phenobarbital? My fear there is of the drug not kicking in before the oxygen runs out, and vomiting out most of the dose, and perhaps waking up to experience part of it. Also it's pretty depressing to think about brain death, I'd never go through that awake, nor a heart attack, hanging, drowning, asphyxiation, jumping from height, car crash, etc. The whole point for me is to avoid suffering. If you take a drug, every horrible thing just happens while you are unconscious. I haven't done much reading on alternative methods, but it's looking like a large bag could shorten the time to death without stopping the drug absorption reaching anaesthetic levels. For phenobarbital, it took me around 8 hours to get to that state on a large overdose, and it's too much to inject (or acquire in pure form), so that leaves a mask of some sort, or an entire room filling up with inert gas as the drug kicks in, or tent / giant bag. I've read that of the widely available inert gases, helium is the only one without drug effects. Nitrogen is described similarly to N20, and I've done enough of the latter to know it'd be too overwhelming to die to, unless you were on large alcohol + benzo doses to counter the anxiety of larger doses.
Anyway, hi. Nice to meet you all.
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