Attempted Suicide and came out of the darkness with ADD/ADHD

[Anonymous]

So how does one start telling the story of how he took dozens of pills and tried to end his life on a Sunday afternoon in March?

I guess I could start by telling you a bit about myself, my name is Rick, I’m 42yrs old and for most of my adult life I have felt like a screw-up. I have 3 sons, Cody who doesn’t want to see or speak to me (still blames me for the divorce) and Tyler and Brevin who I see every other weekend, they are my pride and joy. I have amazing parents who I have taken for granted more times than not. A great younger brother Derek, sister-inlaw Emily and I am the proud uncle to two wonderful kids in Bekha and Noah. My family is pretty terrific to bad I often take them for granted. For the last 4 months I have been dating the most amazing woman ever, to say I love this woman is an understatement. She is the first woman I have ever been able to give my entire heart and soul to and it scares the hell out of me, she is also the first woman I have ever worried would leave me and may not feel the same way I feel about her. I can’t blame her though as she just came out of a long term relationship where she was cheated on and controlled, but more about Dee later. I also have an ex-wife who until about 6 months ago hated me.

Ok so now you know a little about me, so I guess we should get to the time leading up to my attempted suicide.

For the last 6 months or so I have felt completely taken for granted at work, told not asked to put in crazy long hours, work when I was injured, babysit fellow employees, promised and not given raises, ignored when it came to Christmas bonus’ and generally put in unsafe conditions. I know quit right, look for another job. Have you seen the job market for a relatively uneducated worker in Ontario lately? Pretty bleak. So I stuck it out until my boss decided to rehire a former employee, who had previously threatened my life. My world suddenly got turned upside down, I started having panic attacks, feeling sick to my stomach, chest pains, the whole nine yards. I went to the hospital and was refered to the mental health unit, where a psyhc nurse who I actually knew and is a friend of Dee’s came in and spoke to me. Talk about feeling insecure, telling someone you know how insane you feel, but Teena was actually very understanding and didn’t appear to judge me. Then came the doctor who sat down and began asking questions about how I was feeling and what he could do for me. Finally he decided I must be depressed and handed me a perscription and referred me to a counsellor. That was about 3 months ago.

For the next month or so I battled the ups and downs of depression, panic attacks and generally feeling crazy at times, but my doctor, my counsellor, and Dee really helped me through things. I tried to keep my family out of it, my mom is a worrier and I’m sure my dad wouldn’t have understood what I was feeling during this time. Anyhow things started to get better in my life, yes I still had the occassional ups and downs but I was seeing things clearer, getting my life back on track and setting goals.

Then in the matter of a weekend my life crashed, my entire world came tumbling down.

It started out as a normal weekend, I was to go over to a buddies house, have some drinks and play some poker. Dee was all for it, go have fun, I could use some alone time anyhow she said. Once there it quickly changed the poker game was off, not enough guys to play so we decided to have some drinks and head to a local bar. Innocent enough until I decided to lie to the most understanding woman I know and tell her we were still playing poker. A night of too many drinks on depression medication is not a good idea, in fact 1 drink probably wasn’t a good idea with my history of drinking. Too say I drank too much is an understatement, I actually forget most of the night, but apparently when I got home a panic attack started and only ended when I passed out.

The next day things got worse, I was awoken to Dee asking if I played poker the night before, to which I came clean and said no. She began yelling and packing and saying things were over. My life began to spiral out of control, I begged her to stay,to talk, to understand but she had her mind set on leaving. I had once again screwed up and now the best thing not family in my life was threatening to walk out the door. I walked into the living room sat down on the couch and everything over whelmed me, my relationship with Cody, my job, not knowing what was truly going on with my mental state, money problems and now the woman I loved was leaving me because I had done the unthinkable I had hurt her. As I sat there I began thinking why am I such a screw-up, why do I keep hurting people I love, how can I stop hurting people? I got up walked to the cupboard and took out my meds, walked back to the couch, dumped my meds on the table and began taking pill after pill.

The rest of the day was a blur, Dee walked in saw what I was doing, called 911, dumped the remaining pills down the drain and tried to calm me down. An ambulance arrived, the police arrived. All I wanted was to be left alone but they refused and eventually convinced me to get into the ambulance, off to the hospital I went with a stomach full of pills, dozing in and out of consciousness.

After a night in the Brantford Mental Health Unit, A ton of tests, interviews with my parents and finally after years and years of thinking I’m just a lazy screw-up I have found out that I have a severe case of ADD/ADHD. Now after approximately 2 weeks later a week on ritalin and some counselling I am beginning to see things clearer, my family loved me even though I was screw-up, even though I had hurt them time and time again. The greatest hurt I had ever managed was what I put them through the night before. To say it will never happen again, is me hoping because at this stage although I am feeling better about my life and seeing things clearer, what happens if I find myself feeling like this if the darkness surrounds me again? All I can do, is try to remember the hurt I put my family through, stay in counselling, keep taking my meds, stay away from alcohol and hope that I can begin to make better life choices. I guess like the old saying goes all I can do is take one day at a time .

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[Anonymous]

Hello,

I have to say that I did not know what to expect when I came to this site, but i thank you for your story, because it is very similar to mine. I’ve just become aware of ADD/ADHD because of my recent visit to the hospital. I, like you found myself swallowing pill after pill in response to a reckless night. In that moment I saw my entire world crashing down around me and decided that I did not want to stick around for the ride. I as well have this fantastic family that loves me and a fiance that would carry the world on his shoulders for me, but it felt impossible for that to be enough to get me through the enormous pile of s#!@ i had created.

I can also relate to the job issues, and I wonder if we work for the same company? Like you, I have very little education, but was proud of what I had accomplished, but boy do we get taken advantage of!

Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you, because for this brief moment, I don’t feel alone.

I wish you all the best!

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