9 thoughts on ““I spent five days looking up ways to kill myself.” by Shareen Mansfield”

  1. The good news is, there really aren’t any currently used antidepressants that you can kill yourself with. Used to be that tricyclics like imipramine and amytryptoline were feared because of their potential for cardiotoxicity. Many of my resident nights were spent sitting in the ICU with some poor teenage girl who swallowed a bottle of tricyclics. No one ever died or even had an abnormal EKG. It’s theoretically possible to die from that, but tricyclics are rarely prescribed anymore.

    The SSRIs of today are pretty impossible to die from. A person might sleep for a few days, but that’s about it.

    However, the first method Shareen mentioned (and tried) will certainly kill you: alcohol poisoning, which kills countless young people, whether intended or not.

    Alcohol is a potent CNS depressant that also causes acute fulminant liver failure, so if the right hand doesn’t get you the left one will.

    One reason for the black box on antidepressants is that many people who are too deeply depressed to be at all functional, will become functional enough when their depression lifts to carry out their plan. That is why I put myself in the hospital when I had my first catatonic depression, because I knew that if I got even enough energy to get out of my chair, I would carry out my plan. Even though I was put on absolutely the wrong meds in the hospital, it was good to be protected from myself!

    People are very quick to blame the meds for their feelings. Often the feelings they would have off the meds could be much worse. Shareen was fortunate to have her moment of insight, literally having her consciousness broken open by that goose egg. What a powerful metaphor, for what she would have done to her children if she had carried out her plan (although if it was her meds it would have been horrible for the children, but not as horrible as it would be if she had died).

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    • Luckily, for me, even when I was on antidepressants, they never affected me that way. Now of course, they don’t give people with bipolar d/o any SSRI’s. Suicidal ideation is awful. Fighting it is not easy. But we have to be stronger than those ideas. 💞💞

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      • Unfortunately, I was misdiagnosed by a brainless shrink who looked as depressed as I was. Rather than bipolar, she diagnosed me as MDD and treated me with antidepressants, larger and larger doses, which did help in that they totally incapacitated me. So then she gave mugger Provigil, which sent me off the wall and back into the hospital. That time she happened to be on vacation, and the shrink who was covering for her looked at me and said, “Why, you’re bipolar!” and I adopted him. Unfortunately he recently retired, but at least my current cocktail works as well as can be expected. Prolonged depressions cause irreparable brain damage, and since I’ve suffered with depression ask my life, I feel fortunate to have been able to accomplish something while I was able!

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      • I too was diagnosed with depression and put on antidepressants, this unmasked my bipolar d/o 😕. Yes Miss mugger! Oy ve ask me if I hate mental illness. The answer is a resounding yes!

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