Yesterday I called 911 on myself

Yesterday I called 911...on myself. My psychiatrist would have sent me to an inpatient psychiatric ward if he knew the state I was in. I was alone, in hysterics, and upset to the point of dangerous impulsivity. I don't think I've ever come closer to overdosing or attempting suicide in my entire life. So I did what I told myself I would never have to do: I called 911, broke down completely with the dispatcher, and waited. I quietly let a police officer handcuff me and drive me to the emergency room in the back of a police car. Afterwards, I literally laid in a hospital bed slowly crying for hours.

I have never physically harmed myself or attempted suicide before. After vividly recalling the wretched and useless experience I had four years ago trapped in an inpatient psych ward, I managed to collect myself enough to get discharged from the hospital. Legally, they could not send me to an impatient facility because I had not been deemed 'dangerous' and it would require my consent and signature (I am 20 years old). When the panic ebbed, I managed to check myself out of the hospital emergency room around six hours later and beg my mother to drive me home.

Recently, I withdrew from the public state university I attended as a computer science major for over two years. Partly because the high stress, poor accommodation, artificially high standards, and borderline brutal environment made continuing unbearable. The other main reason I left was a traumatizing failure of the medications that once worked to control my severe depression, anxiety, insomnia, and stress-related ibs-d. The damnable university I attended has no formal process of medical leave, so I was forced to withdraw from five courses and pay fees for cancelling my meal plan and housing contract. I cannot bear to go back after two years of unfulfilled misery and an ingrained hatred for an institution that I cannot express in words.

When I withdrew, I lost $17000 worth of financial aid to preserve a 3.9 cumulative GPA. Unfortunately, due to my problems with mental and physical health, I also withdrew from a course nearly every semester. As of this semester, my peers mostly had 25-30 more credits than I did, which made it impossible for me to get an early enough registration date for ANY required upper level credits in my department. My transcript is now littered with difficult-to-explain Ws (course withdrawals) and I have no idea where I can transfer to provided I would be accepted. And that's not even considering the fact I can't afford it because my financial aid is gone. Because I withdrew so far into the fall semester, I can no longer apply to transfer anywhere for the spring semester.

I deal with some very uncomfortable health problems. I've dealt with embarrasing palmar hyperhidrosis (think dripping sweaty hands just ruining everything and making some social situations humiliating), extreme insomnia, high anxiety, ocd, poor body-image, and depression since my early teens, which left scars so deep I don't think I can ever be 'okay' again. But now I also experience shakiness and unsettling loss of fine motor control (I literally can't sign my name passably anymore), irritable bowel syndrome which I only barely manage with medication, medication-induced sexual dysfunction, and very bad dry mouth. I cannot stop taking or otherwise lower the dosage of the cocktail of antidepressants I currently take that cause sexual dysfunction. The dry mouth feels so damn uncomfortable, like sandpaper dry, but I can't stop taking anticholinergic meds (even though they don't work well) for the ibs or I go insane with paranoia from the symptoms.

Some cruel God decided that before every bowel movement, my body would sweat to the point of soaking through my underwear and pants. This never affected me as a child, but has haunted me for some years now. Every gastroenterologist I've seen has told me they have never heard of this reaction and has refused to treat me because I take conflicting medication for anxiety and major depression. They failed to realize that my troubled gut (likely a reaction to stress) has heavily contributed to my obsessive anxiety and depression.

The *constant* dry mouth is also bad for dental hygiene and has caused my teeth to discolor so much that I'm ashamed to even smile anymore. Social situations sometimes make me feel pathetic and sad. I'm losing the will to live; my appetite is so low and therapy and meds aren't helping me feel better at all.

I'm honestly a shell of my former self. The easy-going, hopeful person in my profile photo is a relic of the past. Any 'freedom' I may have felt acknowledging my sexuality when I entered college as a naïve teen has been replaced with bitter disappointment and shame. My body and mind are defective. I feel robbed of the life and youth I could have had.

I'm basically stuck at home with no degree, no job, no relationship, no close friends, and a broken family I can barely tolerate. I feel like a complete failure and I don't know what to do. I desperately need help.

 

Thanks mbanema, but...I'm starting to wish I never called. The bottle of ineffective tricylics sitting next to me is looking more appealing by the hour. That would be a poetic way to go, really. I saw my therapist today and he was angry at me. He literally told me that they should have sent me to an inpatient psychiatric facility, even though he knows how unhelpful that was before. I was so upset I left his office practically sobbing. The new anticholinergic medication my psychiatrist gave me is failing me just like the others did, and I'm feeling hopelessly lost. I should've mentioned this before, but I was laid off after briefly working in a retail store when I dropped out of college two months ago. I struggled too much with the symptoms of the ibsd I can't control. When you have to operate a cash register, you can't run to the bathroom every 20 minutes. Anyway, I'm basically broke. I've dropped out of school indefinitely and my parents are upset I lost the job. I have no friends to turn to at this point and I never want to see my therapist again. Part of me lingers here, but another part of me just wants to quit. If this was the hand I was dealt, I no longer want to play the game. Never in my worst dreams did I think things would turn out this way. This is no goddamn way to live.

 

My parents told me that I need to find another job but I can't do it like this. I just can't, I desperately want out. However, I determined that taking a bunch of pills would be futile. How the hell do people even collect enough to lethally overdose?! Here's an 'aside' for those like me desperate enough to consider such an option: you'll likely fail.

Even for strong tricyclics with notable warnings about overdose, toxicology markers - converting from rat ld50 to human ld50 - indicate a 150lb adult would literally need something close to 3,500 mg worth of pills. And that's only a 50% effective lethal dose marker (ld50). Any pharmacist in their right mind would never supply something like that. There wasn't even 200 mg in the whole bottle for God's sake. And that's for old tricyclic medication (nortriptyline, clomipramine, desipramine, etc.) considered dangerous. For modern SSRIs you would need something considerably higher as they are designed with the intent of preventing lethal overdose.

In short: don't try it, I was damn close to going through that highly unpleasant process.

I don't know, I mean you read things about suicide attempts but...taking a standard bottle of antidepressants is just going to make your life miserable for hours and land you directly in a high security pysch ward. That is, if you or anyone else in your vicinity (think hours of literal prolonged agony) care at all about evident things like prolonged heart failure symptoms, seizures, loss of consciousness, hallucinogenic delirium, etc.
This process would ultimately leave you living but extremely unhappy and possibly irreversibly damaged.

Some part of me hoped I would have a kind of emergency way out but I'm at a loss at this point. In the process of planning to erase myself, I seem to have stumbled upon some significant difficulties. It's simply not that easy to end a life painlessly through accessible means. I suppose I'd rather take my chances wasting away in my room than in a madhouse (seriously, I went to Sheppard Pratt several years ago and I can tell you that even the 'best' hospital in the country is basically a round the clock prison for hopeless cases where the only thing that matters is getting out). The unlucky ones rot there and mentally unravel for weeks.

Anyway...the 'holiday' is becoming a living nightmare of shame and disappointment. I feel so unhappy and lost...