Dear group,

Throughout all of my years of severe depression I have never seriously given suicide much thought. Initially because of moral and religious beliefs, beliefs that I still hold, and reinforced in 2002 when my hateful stepmother committed suicide, three years after laughing at me when I tried to explain to her that depression was disabling me.

But today, somewhat out of the blue, I began to think about suicide and just within eight hours or so began to consider it as an option.

For those who don't know: my current diagnoses are Major Depressive Disorder, severe, with Psychotic Features and Anxiety Disorder. I have a number of social phobias as well. I had the same diagnoses in 1999. I was mute and mostly uncommunicative for over a year, did not respond to any medication and was, finally, treated successfully with ECT. But I 'lost' myself over that three year period and was never able to recover. I was in Atlanta and I lost my personality, my family, my friends, any connection to my old job, everything. I was living in a facility run by the Atlanta Union Mission (a more open-hearted and helpful organization cannot be found) and I Googled my stepmother's name, found that she had died and ended up moving to Birmingham, Alabama. Here I remain.

I was in a nursing home from 2005-2012, had my right leg completely amputated in 2006 and later my left leg partially amputated (between ankle and knee). Today is my three year anniversary of getting out of the nursing home and into my own apartment.

In late November of 2014 I had the remainder of my left leg amputated. That was the catalyst for the reemergence of my severe depression and anxiety.

I have been on Effexor (venlafaxine) for three months and although I went through many, if not most, of the common, uncommon and even rare side effects, most of them subsided. I still have some nausea from time to time but the main side effect, still with me, is hypergraphia. Before I knew what was wrong I was frightened. Even after finding out that it was a condition that I shared with others, it took some time for me to get it under control. I'm not under the delusion that I am now destined to pen a great American novel and I'm grateful that what I write is lucid, although 90% of the content would bore the pants off others.

I'm on 225mg of Effexor daily. The majority of side effects that I was having quickly went away when someone on these boards (and I'm ashamed to say that I don't recall whom) advised me that I was taking the medication incorrectly. I was taking all three tablets in the morning. I was told by that mysterious someone that I should be taking one tablet three times a day. My pharmacist confirmed this.

Effexor is the only antidepressant that I have ever had any sort of response to. I was even on Pristiq, it's synthetic sibling, with no results. I'm not cured, I have okay days and I have bad days, but my mood is a bit elevated, I am able to THINK CLEARLY (a very big improvement), I am not confused any longer and I no longer fear that I am delusional or too close to the edge.

I don't have a single second in which I could call myself happy. On my okay days I am still very sad and still very depressed if I can't keep my mind focused only on the present. On my bad days I go beyond sad because a thought of my past will surface or a thought of what could be in the future will take hold.

The really horrible thing, the thing that makes days like today so very bad, is that I KNOW that in order to get 'better' (and I don't know what that means, really, I am 'better' now than I've been in over ten years) that I must stop repressing the losses and grief that I have never dealt with. When I write letters to my doctor and begin to write of the loss of my son and how I have never grieved over him, I am overcome with anxiety and I continue to write while roiling over one constant unrelenting panic attack.

Thinking of the past is bad. But the corner of my mind where I packed up and compressed and suppressed memories of the past is leaking and if they ever just burst through that would be it. At the very least I would shut down again. At the worst I would go over the edge. My final days and years would be spent in the mental ward of a nursing home. Until today, that was my greatest fear, the part of my depression that was complete hopelessness and insane despair.

Until today.

A little background. I have a Facebook account. I've had it for over five years. I can go a long time without looking at it. Four days ago I had a message, sent through FB to my email address, from an old high school girlfriend asking if I was planning to attend our reunion next year. I didn't know that she was on FB. I didn't intend on responding to her message but I was curious to see what she LOOKED LIKE now. She aged wonderfully. She had a photo of her and her four gorgeous daughters on the beach, all in bikinis. She didn't look out of place at all. She married the guy that she was dating when we were seniors. They've been married for 38 years. They have grandchildren. Her husband is bald and fat but when she writes of him she writes how deeply she's still in love with him.

I spent a total of about eight hours over a three day period looking up old high school and college friends. I did not stay in contact with most of them. The few that I did stay in contact with abandoned me either before my hospitalization in 1999 or shortly after I returned to the world in 2002. I started looking at old friend's Facebook pages. As expected, all had aged. Some had aged well, some had aged so grossly that there was no trace of their younger selves remaining.

As I flipped from page to page I began to be disturbed by a pattern that I was noticing for the MAJORITY of these old friends (not all, but the number of those who didn't fit the pattern was surprisingly small). The VAST MAJORITY had married shortly after graduation from college (some earlier, as early as their first year of college), are in loving and enduring marriages (32-38 years), and had 2-4 children (of various ages) and grandchildren (varied numbers and ages). They are middle to upper-middle class, have lovely homes and numerous friends. There are so many messages to these people expressing deep love that you would have to be abnormally cynical to doubt the emotion.

They lived and are living my dream. If I was back in 1996, I could almost, almost but not quite, be where they are today. It just took me longer to find a woman who I loved and trusted enough to be mother to my children and who I could imagine growing old with.

All I wanted from life was to have a middle class socioeconomic lifestyle, to be a great husband and father, to have a loving and enduring marriage and to have three or so children and live long enough to know my children's children.

And I came close. But I lost it. I lost it all and I could not only not recover one single thing, I was too damaged to even make an attempt at starting over.

During those hours spent looking at FB I was switching back and forth to my journal. I recognized the envy that I felt. For some of those unions, I felt jealousy – it could have been me. In the end, for almost the past 24 hours, I've just been depressed.

The past means nothing. Any effect that I may have had on others in my life was a blip, of no lasting significance. My father, who loved me unconditionally, has been dead for thirty years. Of those remaining who I still feel some love, or affection, it is completely unreciprocated. Even those who I hurt, who I might have effected negatively, weren't badly hurt. I never meant enough to anyone so that I could hurt them badly.

I went into this in a lot more detail in my journal but the essence of it is that my past is meaningless. Nothing at all like "It's a Wonderful Life." The opposite – had I never been born those that I would have failed to come in contact with would not have missed out on anything.

I don't have a past. To think that I did is what's crazy. To think that my grief is real is insane. I look at my birth certificate and the woman listed as having had given birth to me is a woman that I did not meet until I was eight years old.

So where does suicide come in?

When thinking of tomorrow and a week from today (my next doctor's appointment).

For five months I started drifting into what is now, and what has been for four months now, my daily routine. On the three days a week that my caregiver comes, I am out of bed for about an hour. Those are the days that I shower. On the days that she is not here, I am at of bed no longer than thirty minutes. I get up to take my meds, to get food to bring back to bed to eat, to return my dirty containers to the sink, to get more water and to travel to the bathroom as needed. I sleep well for eight hours each evening. Yesterday I didn't awake until nearly two in the afternoon. I slept for sixteen hours. The last four hours I was in and out of sleep. I couldn't think of a reason to get up.

In bed, I'm either doing something on my iPad or reading a physical book. During the first month of this habit, I was reading on the iPad. As the hypergraphia started to take hold, I began to read less and write more. For the past month there have been days when I haven't read a single page of any sort of book. When I do read, it's no more than four or five pages and then I'm writing again.

As long as I take the Effexor the hypergraphia will be a part of my life. There is no guarantee that it would cease if I stopped taking the drug.

I don't eat well. I have three blackened nubs for teeth so I cannot chew. My Meals on Tuesday consisted of two small bowls of applesauce, two Pop-Tarts, eight saltine crackers and one glass of milk. And around ten pints of water.

Because of my social phobias I don't leave my apartment except to visit my doctor and I don't allow anyone in my apartment except for my caregiver and the maintenance man. Even if I could be 'cured' of my agoraphobia, I cannot transfer from my wheelchair to a car after my last leg surgery and I cannot afford $110 for a round trip on one of the paratransit vans.

I have been pretty good about avoiding any questions about the future. I can envision and say 'tomorrow I will write about...' And I can even envision sitting in front of my doctor and thinking 'at our next session I must tell him...' But that's about it.

Last week, though, when we were discussing the effect of Effexor, I asked him, "What if this is as good as it gets?" He threw it back at me, "What if it is?" I thought for 3-4 minutes and answered, "I don't know."

And when confronted with my lack of a past where even the happiest memory becomes the most bitter and with the acknowledgment that I cannot tolerate, I cannot live with, what I foresee in the future, I thought of suicide.

I'm sticking to the rules here not so much because I want others to read my message but because I'm not making any plans, etc. I realize that, because of my handicaps, suicide would be very, very difficult. There are doctors around that will help those who are physically ill or in chronic physical pain, but they all stipulate that you must "be in your right mind." And here's where I want to ask my first moral/philosophical question:

Is it possible to be mentally ill, even to be entrenched in severe major depression, and be able to clearly and logically conclude that the mental health industry has done all that it can and that you simply do not wish to live in such great pain any longer?

Or does the stigma of having a psychiatric diagnosis disqualify you? Is psychological chronic and acute pain just not as important as physical pain? What's kinder and more humane: assisted suicide or a full frontal lobotomy? And if the latter, where do I sign up?

I am Roman Catholic. Early in my life I was taught that suicide is a sin. A grave sin. A sin that, without God's forgiveness, means that your soul will be damned. The StJPII catechism (to paraphrase) says that the sin can be mitigated by those psychologically damaged or suffering or in pain (as well as some physical sufferings). My take on the final two paragraphs can be summed up by saying that we can never know the extent of God's mercy.

Some of you here may, like me, have a religious belief that leads you to reject suicide. Some may have a moral, or a philosophical, reason. If you have any reason that you reject suicide, I would like to hear your reason.

I am praying. I no longer have, or feel that I have, the close relationship that I once felt that I had with God. But if I ask, He still answers. Nothing mysterious or mystical about it.

I have prayed to God to answer one question; will He forgive me if I commit suicide or if I am able to find someone to assist me in committing suicide.

I'm sorry that I can't write with brevity. I hope that no one will take the low road and suggest that my religious beliefs indicate that I'm not lucid or in my 'right mind.'

I'm looking for opinions. With no past and no future that holds a single hope of a single 'good' thing, nothing at all to 'look forward to,' is suicide an acceptable option?

I can't find the 'gun' icon? Let me look and see if there is another that might be suitable.