sifp
Member
- Aug 19, 2026
- 18
Hello everyone. I've been on this site for about a year but only got the courage to make an account a week ago. I thought I'd write my story about what led me here if anyone cares to read. I hope it's not too indulgent. It helps to write to try to figure out how I got here. And if one person reads it, it would feel nice to be heard.
Early Life
I'm in my late 30s, raised by a volatile mentally ill recluse father, and high-powered aspie mother. My dad was unemployable, so it fell to my mom to support our family and she did really well for herself. She was mostly gone, and I'm an only child so my day to day life as a kid was spent at home alone with my father trying to avoid his unpredictable violent rage at all costs. When he exploded, I went into a freeze response and just stood perfectly still until it subsided, a habit that stays with me to this day. I had some healthy relationships with my mom's family until I was around 5 or 6, when they were cut out of our lives because my dad didn't like them.
I felt very unsettled as a kid. We moved around a lot, so it was tough to make friends. I suspected I might have undiagnosed autism. Got a diagnosis later in life. I was pushed incredibly hard to succeed by my parents; anything short of perfection was met with disgust and hostility. So this motivated me to work extremely hard to keep them happy. School came pretty naturally to me since I think I was a very intelligent kid. Sports did not, but I didn't want to upset my parents so I worked extremely hard at it and became a pretty strong athlete. I ended up attending a large state university where I was a D1 athlete and a 4.0 student.
University
I didn't know anything about mental health as a teenager, but now that I do, I recognize that I was fueled by extreme anxiety and used it to push myself. I basically didn't ever pay attention to how I was feeling. If I felt off, I just solved it by working harder and harder. I would wake up, go to practice, go to class all day, go to practice, study, go to sleep, and repeat daily. Apparently this was an unsustainable approach to life, because at the end of my first year at university, I experienced what I can only describe as a full on nervous breakdown. I still didn't know what mental health was at the time, but the primary symptom was a severe cognitive impairment. I got really disoriented like I was in a panic-induced haze, lost the ability to coherently speak, and homework assignments that were formally trivial for me became inscrutable. My short term memory and executive function disappeared, and it felt like being in the present moment with no context, no past or future, just a moment to moment hell. Looking back, I remember smoking a joint for the first time to celebrate the end of the season not long before this happened, and I wonder if that experience blew the top off all the fucked up things lurking under the surface of my consciousness. I was convinced that I'd had a stroke or brain cancer or was poisoned or something, so I went to the student health clinic, where they said I just had depression and prescribed me Zoloft. Thus began my lifelong use of psyche meds.
Prolonged Period of Severe Mental Illness
Because of the cognitive issues, I had to drop out of university. I was too impaired to interact with people, so I couldn't get a job. Every day, I just woke up and spent the day in a panicked, dissociated state. My mom helped me with my ADLs like eating and bathing and so forth. I got a brain scan, and it was within the normal range. She read that the cure for mental illness was drugs and therapy, so I got a psychiatrist and a therapist. I don't remember much about this time, but I know it lasted three years, and I thought my life was over. I experienced my first passive SIs, just little fantasies about throwing myself in front of a car. After awhile, taking care of her adult son became too depressing for my mom, so she got me an apartment a few miles away. I had no business living alone. I didn't furnish it. I lived across from a 711 and subsisted off of their food and cigarettes. I spent a good year sitting on the floor of an unfurnished apartment chain smoking, listening to the Gorillaz, and scribbling maniacal nonsense in journal after journal, trying to regain my ability to put language together. It sounds extremely unhealthy, but it kept me here. Because of the cognitive issues, I developed pretty severe OCD surrounding thigs that could affect your mind. I became terrified of drugs and alcohol. I was convinced everything was contaminated with mind diminishing chemicals. I refused to touch items that were made in China because I was convinced they had toxic Chinese factory residue on them. Wouldn't touch household chemicals. Got my urine tested for heavy metals. Anytime I bumped my head I'd have a panic attack. Wouldn't run because I thought it would jostle my brain. This OCD followed me even into my semi-recovery later in life.
After spending a year smoking, journaling, and obsessing about chemicals, I heard about an in-patient depression treatment program, and my mom agreed to pay for it, so I went. Because of the cognitive issues, I didn't really understand anything going on there. It's like I was living in some alternate dimension and all of the group therapy was lost on me. They upped my Zoloft and put me on Abilify. However, one thing that got through was to never give up. I'd thought that my mind was so irreparably damaged that I could never have a normal human life. But I shifted perspective. I used to be a very high functioning person, and now I am retarded, but that doesn't mean I can't try. So I made baby steps. Each day I would identify one trivial task I could do on my own. Sometimes I'd fail but I did my best. Pour a bowl of cereal. Dress myself. Go for a walk. Take a shower. Eventually it became more complicated. Apply for Medicaid. Look for a job. I used my journals to assist and to remind me what my task was, and break it down into ridiculously simple steps.
Gradual Partial Recovery
After a few months of doing this, I reapplied to the university from which I had dropped out, taking only one class. The cognitive impairment was still very much present, but I was just grateful to be out of the moment to moment suffering of severe depression, anxiety, and dissociation. Continuing to put one foot in front of the other, functioning through my impairments, and my residual psychiatric issues, I somehow managed to build a fuller life. Just continuing to prohibit inactivity, and asking my journal what's next, over and over. My mantra came from St. Francis of Assisi: begin by don't what's necessary, and then do what's possible, and soon you'll be doing the impossible. I started taking more courses. I got jobs tutoring and shelving books at the library, and I even managed to graduate with a STEM degree. After graduating, I didn't think I was functional enough to enter real life, so I entered a PhD program in my field.
At this point I was in my mid 20s, and the next decade would probably be the most functional of my life. I was still suffering from daily excruciating anxiety (which I managed with daily mediation, intense cardio, and meds) and lingering cognitive deficits (which I managed with very detailed organization/productivity systems and working twice as hard as everyone else).
Near Relapse
I finished the PhD in 5 years, got married, had a kid, and moved into my in-laws' basement. This period was the first time that I felt the dreaded depressive fog begin to creep back in. Living in a dark basement room with my wife and kid, who, it was becoming increasing clear, had severe autism. It kinda just went without saying that it was up to me to figure out how to support our family, but I didn't really ever think I'd have the mental and cognitive stability to support myself, let alone me, my wife, and my kid. So this year was spent being woken up every hour and listening to my son's violent autistic meltdowns while I searched and searched for a job. After some time of this, I believed I was going to descend back into a period of severe mental illness, but by the skin of my teeth, I managed to secure a job in my field on the other side of the country. So, we loaded up our car, and drove 2700 miles to my new job. We rented a beautiful house, and I though that I'd dodged a bullet, that I could live out the rest of my life in peace and security. Granted, my mental health was poor, but I was managing it and felt stable.
Living the Dream
We bought a beautiful house in the suburbs, a car, a minivan, we had a couple more kids (also turned out autistic), and it seemed like I'd made it. No huge financial pressure, all of our needs met, my wife could stay home with our kids because they were intensely difficult. The tiniest inscrutable things would trigger them leading to hours long rampages of deafening, bloodcurdling screams, physically assaulting my wife, and destroying the house. I was shielded from a lot of this as I had to work 80 hours per week including weekends (the cognitive issues never fully resolved but I could manage by devoting all of my time to the job, which took my colleagues maybe 30-40 hours).
Descent into Hell
This lovely phase of life lasted 5 years, until a year ago, when it all went to shit, and I descended further than I thought possible. I don't know what happened. My meds starting to poop out (had been taking a high dose of Zoloft almost 20 years by now)? The stress of having three autistic kids. I was on the fence about children, but it was my wife's dream and I wanted her to be happy. I figured it would be 18 happy years of my life, and then they would spread their wings and be autonomous people, but it became clear that we were going to have to be lifelong caregivers to humans that were prone to extreme violence on a dime. And the deafening stimming. All day they scream at the top of their lungs, not out of anger or anything, it's apparently just a nervous system regulation thing. Also, maybe it was realizing that my wife would never be able to work. I'd always kind of wanted to be a DINK (dual income, no kids), but I'd become the extreme opposite of that.
Whatever the case, I felt the unwelcome panic fog roll back in. I was going to fight to the death to preserve this life I'd built. But as before, the cognitive impairment because too severe. My memory and executive function began to disappear, I began dissociating a lot, and I simply didn't have the cognitive resources to do my job. I went on FMLA, got another psychiatrist and therapist, and eventually it was decided I needed partial hospitalization. This lasted a month, and left me worse off than when I started. They tried me on Prozac, Luvox, Wellbutrin, Remeron, and Klonopin. They told me I need to treat my OCD, so I got an expensive OCD therapist, but continued to decline. When my FMLA ran out and it was clear I would lose my job, my mind snapped off, and I became almost catatonic. My wife's parents flew out to save the day. Her mom cared for our kids, her dad fixed up the house, and she planned the move. I sat in a chair, sweating, having panic attacks, and dissociating.
Watching all of the items we acquired get liquidated from our house. Quickly listing this house that we'd poured our heart and soul into. Saying goodbye to my dream job, the only one I'd ever really been suited for. It was too much, and the SIs started coming back for the first time since when I was a teenager. They started getting pretty specific. Buy a gun. Buy a rope. Find some poison. I hadn't found SaSu yet, but I was shopping for guns on Walmart, got caught by my wife, and put on a 72 hour psych hold at the hospital. It ended up much longer because weekends and holidays didn't count and it was Christmas time. My time there was absolutely scary, brutal, and traumatizing. They put me back on a high dose of Abilify.
After I was let out, we flew back to our home state, moving back into my in-laws' basement. My mental health had never been worse. It was like my mind was an empty void, it felt like I was in a nightmare, like reality wasn't real. Our home state has EXTREMELY dark, wet winters, and is generally a depressing place, something I didn't really notice until moving away. The only thing I could focus on was death. I could not cope. And it wasn't crisis, it was a long term desperate desire to stop existing. That's when I came across SaSu, and spent almost all my time covertly scrolling. I knew that because of the cognitive issues, I wouldn't be able to execute anything complicated, so I was looking at jumping, hanging, or the decapitation method. Jumping was nixed because my every move was being tracked and there are suicide guards on our bridges. I tried practicing knots on my phone charger, but I just couldn't figure it out. I did manage to make myself pass out by pinching the veins in my neck, but couldn't do it with a rope. The decapitation method felt promising because, although brutal, it seemed very effective and straight forward. I had a car, and I was gonna buy like some steel cable at Home Depot.
My wife found out how to log into my Google account and began tracking all of my internet activity. She threatened to send me back to the psych ward, but I couldn't handle that again, so I begged her to let me call my mom and figure something out. My wife agreed not to commit me if I voluntarily when to a month long residential treatment center in a different state, so I went. They kept me in the secure unit for 10 days until I lied about not having SIs anymore, and then was let out to the dorms, where we had schedules each day with individual/group therapy/process group. I got next to nothing out of this, again mostly due to the cognitive issues my mental illness causes, and the fact that I had been experiencing what felt like a months long panic attack and could not sit still or pay attention to anything. Also things like CBT and inspecting your thoughts doesn't work on me because there is never any content in my mind as far as I can tell. Just a deep panic and depression without any associated mental content. I tried the highest allowable dose of Zoloft there, Trintellix, ketamine infusions. There were about to send me to ECT, but my month stay ended, and it was expensive, so I left AMA.
My mother encouraged me not to return to my in-laws' basement because she didn't want to have to break me out of there again and drop another 20k on another treatment center. So, although my wife threatened divorce if I didn't come back, I moved in with my parents (mostly Mom since Dad isn't around a lot). My Mom asked for a year to get my mental health back. She said if after the year, I hadn't made progress, she would understand if I wanted to CTB (not sure if I believe her). She said I had a blank check to fix my mental health. I realize I'm really privileged in this regard, but I don't feel privileged. I would gladly enter poverty if it meant having my mind back, especially the cognitive health of my mind back. I know it doesn't seem like I have a cognitive impairment in writing, but this took me weeks to write this. When I'm faced with simple tasks like doing laundry or showering or driving, I get very confused. I cannot really verbally talk, and I have no memory. I can't remember what happened an hour ago, let alone yesterday. This story is etched into my mind because I've told it probably 100 times to various providers over the year.
So I have been living with my mom for about 6 months, once again relying on her for help with ADLs, almost like all those years ago as a teenager. I live about 2-3 hours away from my wife and kids, and visit them twice per week to sleep over. I am engaged in top tier therapy, which again doesn't seem to help because I am just too far gone, and the cognitive impairment prevents any insights. That and the continuous, desperate desire for death seems to undercut any progress.
I am not supposed to be engaging in any suicidal behaviors. My location is tracked at all times. My wife is logged into my google account, sees all of my map/internet activity, and checks all of our financial accounts for suspicious purchases. A former me could have probably found ways around this, but my mind is too compromised and I spend most of my days sitting on the couch smoking cigarettes, dissociating, and covertly browsing SaSu.
Some days, I get a tiny window of lucidity, and take a step toward CTB. A few weeks ago, I went to walmart, bought some groceries, and then paid cash for a dockline rope. I found a great anchor point, put a noose around my neck, stood on a stool, and tried to take my weight off the stool, but it was just too goddamn painful. It just crushed my wind pipe and didn't cut off blood flow. A few days later, I remember I had a bunch of ketamine leftover from my psychiatrist, so I tried taking the rest of it, and trying hanging again, but it did nothing for the pain and fear. We live near the ocean, so another idea I had was to tie a weighted backpack to my torse, paddle out on a paddle board, take some benzos and/or ketamine, and roll in. I went out there and it was more terrifying than the hanging. Recently, I've been looking more into SN. I found a way of smuggling some money out of my account to buy some. I found DSL, but was too afraid to pull the trigger and too impaired to figure out how to pay. Also, my mom goes through all my mail. I've been looking into a PO Box or a UPS mailbox to solve that problem, but wonder if that's risky. I know about MIC, but I'm not sure I'm savvy enough to manage lying and getting it through customs in this impaired state. I've been trying to figure out the B&M source, but again, too cognitively impaired to solve such a riddle (would appreciate a hint in my DM if anyone is willing
So why am I posting this in recovery instead of suicide discussion? The reason is that I feel like there is a 1% chance for me to recover. Every day is a continuous haze of panic, depression, dissociation, derealization, and cognitive impairment. I spend my days sitting on the couch smoking, browsing SaSu, trying to write in my journal, and somehow making it out to my family for 2 overnights per week. The whole time, I'm just craving death so intensely, like what is the point of living like this, without a memory, unable to verbally communicate, my life in shambles? However, maybe once or twice a week, I take some benzos, play some video games, and then sit in my bed, smoke and write in my journal, and think huh, maybe there is a way out of this. But then I wake up the next morning desperate for death. This sincere desire for death has lasted about a year.
So what is working for me?
I have a moderately wealthy mom, who is feeding and housing me. She has offered to pay whatever it takes to get me better, but I don't know what would. It's my mind more than my situation that is torturing me. What I've tried:
- Zoloft, Prozac, Luvox, Wellbutrin, Abilify, Trintellix, Klonopin, Ativan, Lexapro, and Lamotrigine
- Ketamine assisted therapy
- Psylocibin assisted therapy.
- 30 rounds of TMS
- Traditional talk therapy twice per week
- Specialized ERP therapy for OCD
- Specialized compassion-based ACT therapy
- Hypnotherapy
- Exercise
- Meditation
- Yoga
- Breathing exercises
- Weekly NAMI support meetings
I'm currently taking Lexapro and Lamotrigine. And Ativan a few times per week. I'm in with a psychiatrist at a big university. Considering ECT, but afraid it will degrade my cognition even further to the point that I cannot CBT if it comes to that. I have a top tier therapist at a fancy evidence-based clinic, who says I'm failing to build momentum because of my obsession with CTB.
None of these treatments seem to have moved the needle at all.
So what is working against me?
My mind: I feel uniquely cursed by mental illness in that my flavor of it wipes out my cognition. It's like it cuts my IQ in half. I lose the ability to manage my life. Can't work. Can't socialize. Can't manage finances. Get lost. Can't manage my own ADLs. Lose my short term memory. Things enter my mind and immediately evaporate. It's so lonely living in a mind without any content. It's like living in a nightmare, where the only content in my mind is my sense data. Everything looks threatening/scary. Trees. Cars. Animals. Houses. Water. Like I'm stuck in some region of my brain that can't think and can only fear. I haven't felt an emotion in a year besides fear and depression. And the world looks unreal. It always feels like I'm in a nightmare and I'm going to wake up one day in my bed, but no, my house is gone. I once found a guy on Youtube who made a channel and tried to form a community of blank-minders. He sadly CTB young.
Situation: I currently live with my mom (and dad but he is rarely here). It's a very small life. I don't do much of anything. Two nights per week, I make the 3 hours trip over to my in-laws, and visit my family. When I see my wife, I am overcome by crushing grief. She's not perfect, but she has a big heart, and I know her life long dream was to have a cozy house and be a stay at home mom to a gang of sweet, nurtured kids. And when I visit, she is stuck in her parents' basement with an absent, extremely mentally ill husband. And her children (with whom she is endless loving and patient) are continuously stimming at the tops of their lungs, and the beating the crap out of her when she doesn't make their toast quickly enough or exactly like they like it. My heart just breaks. And I know deep down that I will never be able to live in that environment.
If you actually read all of this, I words cannot express how much I appreciate the opportunity to have my story heard. What do you think SaSu? Is there room for recovery? Any tips? Love y'all.
Early Life
I'm in my late 30s, raised by a volatile mentally ill recluse father, and high-powered aspie mother. My dad was unemployable, so it fell to my mom to support our family and she did really well for herself. She was mostly gone, and I'm an only child so my day to day life as a kid was spent at home alone with my father trying to avoid his unpredictable violent rage at all costs. When he exploded, I went into a freeze response and just stood perfectly still until it subsided, a habit that stays with me to this day. I had some healthy relationships with my mom's family until I was around 5 or 6, when they were cut out of our lives because my dad didn't like them.
I felt very unsettled as a kid. We moved around a lot, so it was tough to make friends. I suspected I might have undiagnosed autism. Got a diagnosis later in life. I was pushed incredibly hard to succeed by my parents; anything short of perfection was met with disgust and hostility. So this motivated me to work extremely hard to keep them happy. School came pretty naturally to me since I think I was a very intelligent kid. Sports did not, but I didn't want to upset my parents so I worked extremely hard at it and became a pretty strong athlete. I ended up attending a large state university where I was a D1 athlete and a 4.0 student.
University
I didn't know anything about mental health as a teenager, but now that I do, I recognize that I was fueled by extreme anxiety and used it to push myself. I basically didn't ever pay attention to how I was feeling. If I felt off, I just solved it by working harder and harder. I would wake up, go to practice, go to class all day, go to practice, study, go to sleep, and repeat daily. Apparently this was an unsustainable approach to life, because at the end of my first year at university, I experienced what I can only describe as a full on nervous breakdown. I still didn't know what mental health was at the time, but the primary symptom was a severe cognitive impairment. I got really disoriented like I was in a panic-induced haze, lost the ability to coherently speak, and homework assignments that were formally trivial for me became inscrutable. My short term memory and executive function disappeared, and it felt like being in the present moment with no context, no past or future, just a moment to moment hell. Looking back, I remember smoking a joint for the first time to celebrate the end of the season not long before this happened, and I wonder if that experience blew the top off all the fucked up things lurking under the surface of my consciousness. I was convinced that I'd had a stroke or brain cancer or was poisoned or something, so I went to the student health clinic, where they said I just had depression and prescribed me Zoloft. Thus began my lifelong use of psyche meds.
Prolonged Period of Severe Mental Illness
Because of the cognitive issues, I had to drop out of university. I was too impaired to interact with people, so I couldn't get a job. Every day, I just woke up and spent the day in a panicked, dissociated state. My mom helped me with my ADLs like eating and bathing and so forth. I got a brain scan, and it was within the normal range. She read that the cure for mental illness was drugs and therapy, so I got a psychiatrist and a therapist. I don't remember much about this time, but I know it lasted three years, and I thought my life was over. I experienced my first passive SIs, just little fantasies about throwing myself in front of a car. After awhile, taking care of her adult son became too depressing for my mom, so she got me an apartment a few miles away. I had no business living alone. I didn't furnish it. I lived across from a 711 and subsisted off of their food and cigarettes. I spent a good year sitting on the floor of an unfurnished apartment chain smoking, listening to the Gorillaz, and scribbling maniacal nonsense in journal after journal, trying to regain my ability to put language together. It sounds extremely unhealthy, but it kept me here. Because of the cognitive issues, I developed pretty severe OCD surrounding thigs that could affect your mind. I became terrified of drugs and alcohol. I was convinced everything was contaminated with mind diminishing chemicals. I refused to touch items that were made in China because I was convinced they had toxic Chinese factory residue on them. Wouldn't touch household chemicals. Got my urine tested for heavy metals. Anytime I bumped my head I'd have a panic attack. Wouldn't run because I thought it would jostle my brain. This OCD followed me even into my semi-recovery later in life.
After spending a year smoking, journaling, and obsessing about chemicals, I heard about an in-patient depression treatment program, and my mom agreed to pay for it, so I went. Because of the cognitive issues, I didn't really understand anything going on there. It's like I was living in some alternate dimension and all of the group therapy was lost on me. They upped my Zoloft and put me on Abilify. However, one thing that got through was to never give up. I'd thought that my mind was so irreparably damaged that I could never have a normal human life. But I shifted perspective. I used to be a very high functioning person, and now I am retarded, but that doesn't mean I can't try. So I made baby steps. Each day I would identify one trivial task I could do on my own. Sometimes I'd fail but I did my best. Pour a bowl of cereal. Dress myself. Go for a walk. Take a shower. Eventually it became more complicated. Apply for Medicaid. Look for a job. I used my journals to assist and to remind me what my task was, and break it down into ridiculously simple steps.
Gradual Partial Recovery
After a few months of doing this, I reapplied to the university from which I had dropped out, taking only one class. The cognitive impairment was still very much present, but I was just grateful to be out of the moment to moment suffering of severe depression, anxiety, and dissociation. Continuing to put one foot in front of the other, functioning through my impairments, and my residual psychiatric issues, I somehow managed to build a fuller life. Just continuing to prohibit inactivity, and asking my journal what's next, over and over. My mantra came from St. Francis of Assisi: begin by don't what's necessary, and then do what's possible, and soon you'll be doing the impossible. I started taking more courses. I got jobs tutoring and shelving books at the library, and I even managed to graduate with a STEM degree. After graduating, I didn't think I was functional enough to enter real life, so I entered a PhD program in my field.
At this point I was in my mid 20s, and the next decade would probably be the most functional of my life. I was still suffering from daily excruciating anxiety (which I managed with daily mediation, intense cardio, and meds) and lingering cognitive deficits (which I managed with very detailed organization/productivity systems and working twice as hard as everyone else).
Near Relapse
I finished the PhD in 5 years, got married, had a kid, and moved into my in-laws' basement. This period was the first time that I felt the dreaded depressive fog begin to creep back in. Living in a dark basement room with my wife and kid, who, it was becoming increasing clear, had severe autism. It kinda just went without saying that it was up to me to figure out how to support our family, but I didn't really ever think I'd have the mental and cognitive stability to support myself, let alone me, my wife, and my kid. So this year was spent being woken up every hour and listening to my son's violent autistic meltdowns while I searched and searched for a job. After some time of this, I believed I was going to descend back into a period of severe mental illness, but by the skin of my teeth, I managed to secure a job in my field on the other side of the country. So, we loaded up our car, and drove 2700 miles to my new job. We rented a beautiful house, and I though that I'd dodged a bullet, that I could live out the rest of my life in peace and security. Granted, my mental health was poor, but I was managing it and felt stable.
Living the Dream
We bought a beautiful house in the suburbs, a car, a minivan, we had a couple more kids (also turned out autistic), and it seemed like I'd made it. No huge financial pressure, all of our needs met, my wife could stay home with our kids because they were intensely difficult. The tiniest inscrutable things would trigger them leading to hours long rampages of deafening, bloodcurdling screams, physically assaulting my wife, and destroying the house. I was shielded from a lot of this as I had to work 80 hours per week including weekends (the cognitive issues never fully resolved but I could manage by devoting all of my time to the job, which took my colleagues maybe 30-40 hours).
Descent into Hell
This lovely phase of life lasted 5 years, until a year ago, when it all went to shit, and I descended further than I thought possible. I don't know what happened. My meds starting to poop out (had been taking a high dose of Zoloft almost 20 years by now)? The stress of having three autistic kids. I was on the fence about children, but it was my wife's dream and I wanted her to be happy. I figured it would be 18 happy years of my life, and then they would spread their wings and be autonomous people, but it became clear that we were going to have to be lifelong caregivers to humans that were prone to extreme violence on a dime. And the deafening stimming. All day they scream at the top of their lungs, not out of anger or anything, it's apparently just a nervous system regulation thing. Also, maybe it was realizing that my wife would never be able to work. I'd always kind of wanted to be a DINK (dual income, no kids), but I'd become the extreme opposite of that.
Whatever the case, I felt the unwelcome panic fog roll back in. I was going to fight to the death to preserve this life I'd built. But as before, the cognitive impairment because too severe. My memory and executive function began to disappear, I began dissociating a lot, and I simply didn't have the cognitive resources to do my job. I went on FMLA, got another psychiatrist and therapist, and eventually it was decided I needed partial hospitalization. This lasted a month, and left me worse off than when I started. They tried me on Prozac, Luvox, Wellbutrin, Remeron, and Klonopin. They told me I need to treat my OCD, so I got an expensive OCD therapist, but continued to decline. When my FMLA ran out and it was clear I would lose my job, my mind snapped off, and I became almost catatonic. My wife's parents flew out to save the day. Her mom cared for our kids, her dad fixed up the house, and she planned the move. I sat in a chair, sweating, having panic attacks, and dissociating.
Watching all of the items we acquired get liquidated from our house. Quickly listing this house that we'd poured our heart and soul into. Saying goodbye to my dream job, the only one I'd ever really been suited for. It was too much, and the SIs started coming back for the first time since when I was a teenager. They started getting pretty specific. Buy a gun. Buy a rope. Find some poison. I hadn't found SaSu yet, but I was shopping for guns on Walmart, got caught by my wife, and put on a 72 hour psych hold at the hospital. It ended up much longer because weekends and holidays didn't count and it was Christmas time. My time there was absolutely scary, brutal, and traumatizing. They put me back on a high dose of Abilify.
After I was let out, we flew back to our home state, moving back into my in-laws' basement. My mental health had never been worse. It was like my mind was an empty void, it felt like I was in a nightmare, like reality wasn't real. Our home state has EXTREMELY dark, wet winters, and is generally a depressing place, something I didn't really notice until moving away. The only thing I could focus on was death. I could not cope. And it wasn't crisis, it was a long term desperate desire to stop existing. That's when I came across SaSu, and spent almost all my time covertly scrolling. I knew that because of the cognitive issues, I wouldn't be able to execute anything complicated, so I was looking at jumping, hanging, or the decapitation method. Jumping was nixed because my every move was being tracked and there are suicide guards on our bridges. I tried practicing knots on my phone charger, but I just couldn't figure it out. I did manage to make myself pass out by pinching the veins in my neck, but couldn't do it with a rope. The decapitation method felt promising because, although brutal, it seemed very effective and straight forward. I had a car, and I was gonna buy like some steel cable at Home Depot.
My wife found out how to log into my Google account and began tracking all of my internet activity. She threatened to send me back to the psych ward, but I couldn't handle that again, so I begged her to let me call my mom and figure something out. My wife agreed not to commit me if I voluntarily when to a month long residential treatment center in a different state, so I went. They kept me in the secure unit for 10 days until I lied about not having SIs anymore, and then was let out to the dorms, where we had schedules each day with individual/group therapy/process group. I got next to nothing out of this, again mostly due to the cognitive issues my mental illness causes, and the fact that I had been experiencing what felt like a months long panic attack and could not sit still or pay attention to anything. Also things like CBT and inspecting your thoughts doesn't work on me because there is never any content in my mind as far as I can tell. Just a deep panic and depression without any associated mental content. I tried the highest allowable dose of Zoloft there, Trintellix, ketamine infusions. There were about to send me to ECT, but my month stay ended, and it was expensive, so I left AMA.
My mother encouraged me not to return to my in-laws' basement because she didn't want to have to break me out of there again and drop another 20k on another treatment center. So, although my wife threatened divorce if I didn't come back, I moved in with my parents (mostly Mom since Dad isn't around a lot). My Mom asked for a year to get my mental health back. She said if after the year, I hadn't made progress, she would understand if I wanted to CTB (not sure if I believe her). She said I had a blank check to fix my mental health. I realize I'm really privileged in this regard, but I don't feel privileged. I would gladly enter poverty if it meant having my mind back, especially the cognitive health of my mind back. I know it doesn't seem like I have a cognitive impairment in writing, but this took me weeks to write this. When I'm faced with simple tasks like doing laundry or showering or driving, I get very confused. I cannot really verbally talk, and I have no memory. I can't remember what happened an hour ago, let alone yesterday. This story is etched into my mind because I've told it probably 100 times to various providers over the year.
So I have been living with my mom for about 6 months, once again relying on her for help with ADLs, almost like all those years ago as a teenager. I live about 2-3 hours away from my wife and kids, and visit them twice per week to sleep over. I am engaged in top tier therapy, which again doesn't seem to help because I am just too far gone, and the cognitive impairment prevents any insights. That and the continuous, desperate desire for death seems to undercut any progress.
I am not supposed to be engaging in any suicidal behaviors. My location is tracked at all times. My wife is logged into my google account, sees all of my map/internet activity, and checks all of our financial accounts for suspicious purchases. A former me could have probably found ways around this, but my mind is too compromised and I spend most of my days sitting on the couch smoking cigarettes, dissociating, and covertly browsing SaSu.
Some days, I get a tiny window of lucidity, and take a step toward CTB. A few weeks ago, I went to walmart, bought some groceries, and then paid cash for a dockline rope. I found a great anchor point, put a noose around my neck, stood on a stool, and tried to take my weight off the stool, but it was just too goddamn painful. It just crushed my wind pipe and didn't cut off blood flow. A few days later, I remember I had a bunch of ketamine leftover from my psychiatrist, so I tried taking the rest of it, and trying hanging again, but it did nothing for the pain and fear. We live near the ocean, so another idea I had was to tie a weighted backpack to my torse, paddle out on a paddle board, take some benzos and/or ketamine, and roll in. I went out there and it was more terrifying than the hanging. Recently, I've been looking more into SN. I found a way of smuggling some money out of my account to buy some. I found DSL, but was too afraid to pull the trigger and too impaired to figure out how to pay. Also, my mom goes through all my mail. I've been looking into a PO Box or a UPS mailbox to solve that problem, but wonder if that's risky. I know about MIC, but I'm not sure I'm savvy enough to manage lying and getting it through customs in this impaired state. I've been trying to figure out the B&M source, but again, too cognitively impaired to solve such a riddle (would appreciate a hint in my DM if anyone is willing
So why am I posting this in recovery instead of suicide discussion? The reason is that I feel like there is a 1% chance for me to recover. Every day is a continuous haze of panic, depression, dissociation, derealization, and cognitive impairment. I spend my days sitting on the couch smoking, browsing SaSu, trying to write in my journal, and somehow making it out to my family for 2 overnights per week. The whole time, I'm just craving death so intensely, like what is the point of living like this, without a memory, unable to verbally communicate, my life in shambles? However, maybe once or twice a week, I take some benzos, play some video games, and then sit in my bed, smoke and write in my journal, and think huh, maybe there is a way out of this. But then I wake up the next morning desperate for death. This sincere desire for death has lasted about a year.
So what is working for me?
I have a moderately wealthy mom, who is feeding and housing me. She has offered to pay whatever it takes to get me better, but I don't know what would. It's my mind more than my situation that is torturing me. What I've tried:
- Zoloft, Prozac, Luvox, Wellbutrin, Abilify, Trintellix, Klonopin, Ativan, Lexapro, and Lamotrigine
- Ketamine assisted therapy
- Psylocibin assisted therapy.
- 30 rounds of TMS
- Traditional talk therapy twice per week
- Specialized ERP therapy for OCD
- Specialized compassion-based ACT therapy
- Hypnotherapy
- Exercise
- Meditation
- Yoga
- Breathing exercises
- Weekly NAMI support meetings
I'm currently taking Lexapro and Lamotrigine. And Ativan a few times per week. I'm in with a psychiatrist at a big university. Considering ECT, but afraid it will degrade my cognition even further to the point that I cannot CBT if it comes to that. I have a top tier therapist at a fancy evidence-based clinic, who says I'm failing to build momentum because of my obsession with CTB.
None of these treatments seem to have moved the needle at all.
So what is working against me?
My mind: I feel uniquely cursed by mental illness in that my flavor of it wipes out my cognition. It's like it cuts my IQ in half. I lose the ability to manage my life. Can't work. Can't socialize. Can't manage finances. Get lost. Can't manage my own ADLs. Lose my short term memory. Things enter my mind and immediately evaporate. It's so lonely living in a mind without any content. It's like living in a nightmare, where the only content in my mind is my sense data. Everything looks threatening/scary. Trees. Cars. Animals. Houses. Water. Like I'm stuck in some region of my brain that can't think and can only fear. I haven't felt an emotion in a year besides fear and depression. And the world looks unreal. It always feels like I'm in a nightmare and I'm going to wake up one day in my bed, but no, my house is gone. I once found a guy on Youtube who made a channel and tried to form a community of blank-minders. He sadly CTB young.
Situation: I currently live with my mom (and dad but he is rarely here). It's a very small life. I don't do much of anything. Two nights per week, I make the 3 hours trip over to my in-laws, and visit my family. When I see my wife, I am overcome by crushing grief. She's not perfect, but she has a big heart, and I know her life long dream was to have a cozy house and be a stay at home mom to a gang of sweet, nurtured kids. And when I visit, she is stuck in her parents' basement with an absent, extremely mentally ill husband. And her children (with whom she is endless loving and patient) are continuously stimming at the tops of their lungs, and the beating the crap out of her when she doesn't make their toast quickly enough or exactly like they like it. My heart just breaks. And I know deep down that I will never be able to live in that environment.
If you actually read all of this, I words cannot express how much I appreciate the opportunity to have my story heard. What do you think SaSu? Is there room for recovery? Any tips? Love y'all.
