Depression

About two weeks after I was released from involuntary commitment to a
mental hospital, the side effects from my medication were almost intolerable. I was still hearing voices, and the voices told me that all I had to do to get back to the wonderful world of mermaidhood was to stop taking my medication. I was at a crossroad. Should I secretly stop taking my medication, or should I tell my psychiatrist about the voices? I finally decided to tell my psychiatrist.

After hearing about the voices, he told me I had two choices. I could return to the hospital for more intense treatment, or I could take a medication called Haldol. He asked me if I had heard of Haldol before. I said I hadn’t.

At that point, I would have done anything to avoid going back to the mental hospital, so I agreed to take the Haldol. But getting the prescription filled proved difficult. My local pharmacy only carried the Haldol in 5 mg tablets, and I needed a dose of 50 mg twice a day. We finally located a pharmacy that had the 50 mg tablets, and so I began my new regimen.

Within days, I slowly descended into a cesspool of darkness. The urge to kill myself started out fairly benignly, kind of like hunger. At first it was a twinge. I wanted to die. Then the urge to die became more pronounced. I crossed over from wanting to die to needing to die. Then dying became my sole focus. I expressed my thoughts to my husband, and it frightened him. He insisted that I call my psychiatrist to tell him what was going on, but I didn’t want to bother him. I thought it was no big deal. It was like an itch I needed to scratch.

At my husband’s insistence, I called my psychiatrist’s emergency number and it rolled to voicemail. I left a message that I didn’t want to bother him but I wanted to commit suicide. I hung up the phone, and was restless, trying to figure out how to do it. My husband suggested I take my dog for a walk while I waited for my psychiatrist to return my call.

As I got to the road with my dog, it dawned on me: I could commit suicide simply by walking out in front of a moving car. But then I realized that my dog would get injured by the car too, and I didn’t want my dog to die, so I decided against that method of suicide.

My psychiatrist called while I was out walking my dog and told my husband to stop the Haldol immediately. Once I was off the Haldol, my suicide ideation stopped.

It is crystal clear to me that suicide is the result of brain chemistry malfunction. Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain were victims of their brains as surely as someone who dies of a heart attack was a victim of their heart malfunctioning. In a perfect world, there would be no stigma associated with suicide because suicide would be viewed as a medical condition associated with brain chemistry. Perhaps one day we will get to that point.