I took an overdose of bromazepam yesterday evening. Like 8× the nominal dose. It's a benzodiazepine so there weren't many risks. For a couple of days now I'm harassed by negative thoughts, a deep feeling of failure, excruciating upward comparisons, and suicidal thoughts. I wanted to fall unconscious in my bed in a long dreamless sleep to escape that constant self-torture.
I expected to sleep at least up to noon. But I was awake at 07:00. I feel a bit dizzy, but overall bad feelings and very poor self-esteem are still here. Like in the last few days I have energy for nothing and I lost all envy. And I hate me for that. All seems worthless and I can't see myself continuing like that for years with no other hope than waiting for death.
I already went that down. Is it my fate to regularly go through such devastating events, with only short periods of remission in between? What would you suggest to help pass through such major depressive events?
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Bromazepam is an anti-anxiety agent that is also used as a hypnotic prior to minor surgery. That was the effect I was looking for. The LD50 is pretty high. At a rough estimate, with a dose of 0.23mg/kg and without interaction with other drugs, the risk remains modest.
I just wanted to "unplug" my mind to escape the constant assaults of negative and self-devalorizing thoughts.
Thanks. I only feel very minor side effects. I was sleepy this morning and took a nap between 11:00 and 12:00. For now I no longer have suicidal thoughts. But I still feel full of despair and regrets for my wasted life. And I hate myself for not being strong enough to improve things.
Sylvain please dont be hard on yourself you are a kind caring individual. Please be careful with taking care of your medication. Ive just met you i want us to be friends for a very long time. Please get checked by your doctor. Your friend, Gg
For 15 years I was a teacher. The new school year starts in September in France. So that period is always a synonym for a new job for me. I was the source of (somewhat positive) anxiety when I liked my job. Today, now that I'm on sick leave for years, it's a source of deep sadness as I acutely realize at that period that I failed at what was the most important for me.
During cognitive behavioral therapy, the therapist used to say I did the best given the situation. She was implicitly refering to my Asperger syndrome that made human relationships so complicated as a teen and young adult. And a social context that was very far from my aspiring career in engineering and computer sciences. No need to say I had absolutely no professional network that could have helped me. Even finding an intership was a tremendous effort for a very poor outcome that added absolutely no value to my resume.
I did the best I can. Maybe that's true. But my best was far below the outcome of the most average people.
Completing a college education and also with the struggles you are dealing with takes a lot of strength and Im proud of you. But you have accomplished a lot compared to a lot of people have.
Please call your doctor. You may need a different medication. When you are having a bad depressive episode please reach out here. We all have our ups and downs. I think it has been even more difficult since Covid. It has been for me. For close to 30 years I have needed to take medicine for my anxiety and depression. The medications have changed, as well as the dosage. But I still experience difficult times that seem to come out of nowhere. But this group is a good place to turn to. We live each day with anxiety and depression. What helps some people may not help others but we share. Wishing you relief very soon.
> I think it has been even more difficult since Covid.
Covid hasn't changed anything for me. For as long as I remember I lived all my life just like during the lockdown. Before I was on sick leave, I only went out to go to work and the only people I talked with were colleagues. And I maintained discussions at the bare minimum.
> We live each day with anxiety and depression. What helps some people may not help others but we share.
I have great admiration (and a bit of jealousy) for people that are able to live with anxiety and depression. I'm not alive myself. I just survive.
I'm open to any suggestion or derivative that could help me to overcome those pervasive negative feelings.
The pervasive negative feelings are awful. I try to do many things but they still come. First of all practice self care. Try to get enough sleep, make sure you eat and stay hydrated. Even a nice long shower can sometimes help. Keep reaching out here. Others have different things that they consider self care. Many of us journal. Especially Gratitude journals. I make an "I DID" list and the smallest thing goes on that list. Brushing my teeth, feeding the dog and so on. It helps me feel like I have accomplished something. Guided meditation also helps me. There are several free meditation apps. I use one called Insight Timer.
Each of us has something special and unique to offer the world. We are stronger than we realize. That includes you.
Thanks. I never heard about Gratitude journal before. My wife tried to convert me into using "to-do" lists. But I find that disheartening since the list continuously grows while more items are added daily than removed.
These days, even the simplest things like brushing my teeth require effort. If I'd listen to myself, I would sleep all day long. Which obviously is another way to disappear from the world.
I don't know if you have a Five Below store near you but they have guided Gratitude Journals for $5. I saw them the other day. My friend and I have spiral notebooks. We write down important things that need to be done like phone calls. Then we leave enough room to make notations like who we spoke to or a phone number. I agree with you about to do lists. They just keep getting longer. In my notebook I try to put down 3 to 5 things a day. If I need to stop at the store I even tuck a list in there. One page each day and I only date the day if I made phone calls. The IDID list is much better for me. Most days I do more than I think I do. The only other suggestion I have is to post. If you are thinking about journaling ask the group if they journal and what works best for them. A question about medications? Post and ask the group. Self care is another good subject that comes up often. Good luck. Remember there are many kind people here. We have your back.
> As contrite as this may sound, the answer has to come from within.
I know that. But being unable to find in me the resources to overcome the difficulties comfort me in thinking I'm not strong enough for this life.
The doctors changed my medications several times over the years. SSRI didn't help a lot. I'm now on a cocktail of several tricyclic antidepressants with benzodiazepine for acute anxiety events. It has improved my average state of mind but doesn't prevent major depressive episodes. Everyone, me included, seems without power in that case beyond waiting a few days for things to improve by themselves. But in the end that leaves me with the feeling of having wasted yet another week in a pathetic life.
I will look at the website you suggest. Thank you.
If you are seriously not coping with life and you are making decisions which seemed right at the time to kill your mental pain but really are not good in the long term, take our advice offered and see your doctor or a psychologist to talk through this.
These people have the skills rather than pills to help you.
Wishing you well the best for the future from Australia 💜🦘
Thanks for the reply blackcat I don't know how it is in Australia, but in my little corner of France it tooks ages to have an appointment in psychiatry. My wike called in September, and the doctor can't see me before November.
Bonjour Sylvain, I think you should go to a psychiatric facility for awhile. They can adjust your medications, do some individual therapy and group therapy. The big relief comes when you know you are safe from your thoughts and actions. I can give you a few tips if you decide to go. Sometimes you have to let go and let someone help you. You are important.
Thanks, Raggedy-Ann. I'm on therapy for years. We had a break for the summer and the doctors' schedule are seriously busy after that. That's how I ended up being by myself for 2~3 months. My mental health has improved during the first half of the year, so it shouldn't have been a problem.
I suspect the beginning of the new school year brought back memories and revived my deception regarding the outcome of my "career".
> I can give you a few tips if you decide to go.
At this point, I'm open to any advice.
> You are important.
I don't think so. And this is the root of my current state of mind: I have accomplished nothing. The world would have been the same without me and that won't change a lot when I'll go away. When I was forced into social events, people always acted just as if I wasn't there. And now that I've retired from any social activities no one cares. I'm just a ghost. No one wants to work with me. No one wants to do anything with me. Do you remember when students had to pick up teammates in sport class? Of course, I was the last one remaining, the one you pick up only because you had no other choice, No, I'm not important at all.
Do you have a dog? I highly suggest you get one. You can have someone to love and who will love you back and be excited every time you walk in the door. Adopt an adult dog they're more likely to have been house trained. I have 3 small dogs. I am not alone. I too am a wallflower in social situations. I don't go to events or parties. I do go to the dog park and people are nice there.
you sound like you are set on keeping the med but "It's a benzodiazepine so there weren't many risks" isn't a true statement. A serious side effect is cognitive decline. Possibly that results in less resistance to and a weaker ability to think through some of those negative thoughts. Everyone has negative thoughts. Being able to work through them with critical thinking skills involves a cognitive memory.
I was referring to immediate life-threatening effects. Concerning neurological effects, to my knowledge, one occasional intake shouldn't trigger long-term cognitive decline. But I may be wrong.
Anyway, to be honest, at the point I am I don't care much. Seriously I don't see myself living like that for 30 more years.
at 50 we would be foolish to expect 30. Chances are good for a healthy life at 80, don’t get me wrong. For you and me this is a time when you are still young but able to be wiser and more carefree. It is a transitionary time between thinking about careers and jobs and the end of careers and jobs. You are young enough to start a new career and old enough to choose risk over child care. You can even change your health in significant ways that will almost turn back the clock because those irreversible conditions are reversible
All those things can be scary and stressful. Maybe you have expectations you didn’t achieve. I wish I had a long term relationship (marriage was never a requirement) . I was depressed or diagnosed with bipolar…I thought myself incapable. I am “too fat” because I medicated myself with food and not enough exercise. If the environment I grew up in had been different I wonder if I would have followed my father to the media lab at mit instead of struggling with mediocre career. At some point I realized you can still grow. I’m not too fat. I am writing a new chapter in my career
I am starting to learn that mental illness is much more complex than a chemical imbalance or skill lacking alone. It can be both and it can be a story. I’m listening to a book about how stories influence how we interpret ourselves. Someone tell you you are bipolar in a 30 minute meeting and you are. You label someone a narcissist and they can never change. In one case a woman was labeled a mystic because of her seeming ability to predict not realizing she went through long bouts of intense psychosis that physically spent her to near starvation. This is what you describe but it is depression.
This is a long winded way of saying your story is not written in stone. Indeed you want to control one ending. But you have the ability to make your situation liviable. There are many role models who figured that out. One obvious one Temple Grandin. Getting back to stories she is a major autistic but chose not to let that define her. She didn’t listen to stories. Given your story of Asperger’s I encourage you to look at her work. She has a new book out. I bet it helps you define a career of life. Trust me on that.
I could go on for another hour but I have to go. Thanks for reading.
Thank you very much for that detailed reply Blueruth. You have good arguments and I admire your combative attitude.
I already heard that. More than 20 years ago I was already reading books claiming "your life is not a label" (Jerry Newport). I think I tried to change things. Maybe did I try in an awkward and clumsy way. But each time I had hoped things may finally change, the outcome was so disappointing I felt even worst than before.
Today, I don't feel like I have the energy to try again. And I'm so afraid I couldn't handle one more rejection.
What gives you the courage and energy to fight back? And how do you accept adversity so you can continue to move on despite difficulties?
Brene brown was huge for me. I had a therapist who practiced her strategies. Yoga was also huge. I found an exercise that I could really connect with. I encourage you to try different exercises or practices of some sort until you connect with one. Learning how important food is. At the beginning I made sure I had muffins and coffee at home to get myself out of bed… something so simple. Now my breakfast is my favorite meal and much healthier. I didn’t know it but I was using the technique James clear teaches.
To expand I was listening to strangers to ourselves. She talked about studies… on the one hand labels provide structure or ambition…something to strive towards. On the other they constrain you from recovering. Perhaps you believe you will always have depression but what if you said you will have these episodes and what can i learn from them? How can I work around them or even evolve them? Not when will they stop but how do I accept it? She very clearly makes the point again that mental illness can be helped chemically but it is never just that.
Is there something , anything simple that you like? A good, hobby, book that you like? Can you incorporate it into your life daily?
A very inspiring answer you wrote Blueruth. I found things I've tried, but also new ideas. Thank you.
> Is there something, anything simple that you like?
The one thing I like and am very skilled in is computer programming. Unfortunately, I never was able to find a job in that field. I know it's pitiful given the high demand, but that's how it was. It obviously both a cause and a consequence of my psychosocial difficulties.
Since I have lots of spare time, I tried to write technical blog posts and record educational videos. It was a huge effort fighting my "shyness", perfectionism, and overall low self-esteem. I was able to maintain my efforts for less than a year only. That was six years ago.
As I went better at the start of the year, I tried to revive that project, focusing only on writing blog posts since this is less a trauma than a video recording.
I challenged myself in writing one post per week. I was only able to sustain my efforts for two weeks. Perfectionism once again kicked in. As well as the fear of writing mistakes, uninteresting things and overall making a fool of myself. I made less and less progresses as I constantly deleted and rewrote entire part of my drafts. I also switched from topic to topic because at some point I always felt I will not be able to complete the one I was working on. Of course, constantly starting again and making no progress were motivation killers. That also fed the idea I was never able to do anything and that will continue like that for my whole life.
I actually work in tech. I work for a growing startup now. We hire people who are varied in their experience. You just have to demonstrate willingness to learn. I can make some suggestions.
On your journal it sounds to me like you aimed too high. Common mistake. There is a book called atomic tasks which has been inspiring to me. He also has a great newsletter and I say that as someone who hates newsletters.
A journal can be one sentence. Maybe one word. Maybe a doodle for how you feel. Nobody is looking at this unless you volunteer and honestly nobody will judge. They key is not how much but consistency. Consistency alone takes time with every habit. If you enjoy writing that would be a great way to start each morning. Also try writing with a pen and quality paper. I like to draw. I tend to erase too. I get the self criticism. But if I draw in pen I can’t erase. You learn to move on. I have looked at them later and found they aren’t that bad. It’s a progression.
Video… omg one new trend is recording videos instead of have meetings all the time. I hate it. I never liked selfies either. I’m sucking it up because my boss loves it. I actually do think it is brilliant in this time. But there is this image of you at the bottom while you do your presentation which is annoying reminder I’m on camera.
Indeed. The thing is, when I compare myself to others, I feel I should be able to do it.
I know upward comparisons are toxic for people with my state of mind. I try to avoid it, but there is always a moment I come across somebody's profile and I see that person has a rich professional life, maintains an open-source project, gives courses at the university, regularly publishes articles and blog posts, and seems always ready for a talk on the social networks. And I, with all the time I have, can't even manage to accomplish one of these tasks.
> But if I draw in pen I can’t erase.
You're right. It reminds me to already read a similar suggestion. I also read some advice about giving yourself a hard limit on the time to take to write something. And left it as-is once you have reached your time limit. I tried that exercise, but the outcome was not very convincing: self-criticism hurt me badly to the point I couldn't even look at my writing without feeling deeply ashamed.
> Video… omg one new trend is recording videos instead of have meetings all the time. I hate it. I never liked selfies either.
I don't do selfies either. But I kind of liked making videos. But that was also tough: Scripting and rehearsal took me ages. It was an effort to put me in front of the Camera. I felt a lot of concerns and guilt about my bad English accent. It took a great disassociation effort to watch and listen to the "other me" on the screen. And once again perfectionism kicked in during post-production and video editing. My best productivity record was probably two or three weeks to produce a 10 minutes video.
That brings us back to what you previously said: I aimed too high. But I would like so much to be able to do things like that. It seems so simple for other people.
by aiming too high I don’t mean you aren’t capable. What I mean is that you tried to do too much at once. Try little changes like the daily journal. But daily and more consistently.. there is actual science behind making smaller changes More consistently that add up to the big change you want. Eventually you will self publish a book on engineering. For now try that small exercise. Don’t overthink it. Don’t worry if you forget …just pick it up tomorrow.
Hi Sylvain, your name is beautiful.
I'm here in the States, and turning 62yrs old. I don't check in very often, but I'm glad I did today. Everything you're describing, I experience too, and while reading your words I was flush with relief. Not because I'm glad that you're so deeply depressed, but relieved you spoke up with no mask on. You told the unvarnished truth and that took some serious bravery.
I feel the exact same way you do. My meds no longer help me (I'm going to ask my doctor about it.), and when I look at the sum of my life, I realize that my bipolar disorder and migraines have stolen it from me. My traumas, my profound losses, my many depressive episodes, the loss of my career and the lack of friends to be supportive have all been cumulative. I'm actually grieving. To me, there are few things harder than to miss a life that you couldn't have. At my age, when I think about the future all I see is more of the same pain I've had since I was in my teens. And the waste land behind me has practically sucked the air right out me. I will continue with my therapy and taking my meds, but knowing another depressive episode is always lurking makes it hard to trust my good days. And heaven help me if I transition to a hypomanic phase. The high is always followed by hitting the hard cold ground. I'm trying to find a doctor who does the ketamine or ectasy treatment for med and treatment resistance depression. Then that Dr will hopefully convince my insurance to cover it; Ive heard of having great success with just one ketamine infusion. And then there's an alternative way and that would be unaliving myself. Yes, I know exactly how I would do it~it would be suicide by cop. And I've been engaged to two cops, so I understand what they're trained to do. So, Sylvain, I know your pain. I've applied for disability and if I get it, I think I'll have room to breathe. There's a line in a Lauren Daigle song; "When the best of me is barely breathing, when I don't believe I'm worth defending; hold on to me." I'm not a church going Christian, but I am a Christian. This song is a serious prayer for the real world. I hope it helps your heart and mind.
When I read messages on this group, I measure how lucky we are in France with our social welfare system. It "only" took a few years and half of dozen of expert judgments for my disabilities to be officially recognized. It allowed to put me on long-term sick leave for incapacity. And I touch the monthly minimum social allocation. That being said, it was never my ambition to live from public charity, and I hoped to have more to offer to the world.
> Sylvain, your name is beautiful.
Amusing you say that: I always hated my name. It's probably related to a kind of dysphoria or dysmorphic disorder. More pragmatically, my first name-surname combination is quite common and a surprisingly high number of people having the same full name as myself work in the IT or computer field. Not necessarily the best for your resume to stand out of the crowd.
> You told the unvarnished truth and that took some serious bravery.
I don't know. For my whole adult life, I tried my best to pretend I was normal. Avoiding all situations where my discomfort or awkward behavior would have to make me get noticed. It didn't bring me any good. Actually, it didn't bring me anything.
For so long I was ashamed of myself, paralyzed by the fear of losing all chances of a normal life. In some sense, I resigned. I do not wear my problems as a flag. But I'm no longer afraid of talking about them.
It looks like you'll need to pull up YouTube. Search "Lauren Daigle; Hold on to Me"
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