I'm so tired

Try that place I was telling you about. PatientsLikeme.com Just checked the site and didn't see anything about the test, but they may do it again soon. Pretty interesting place. I think it's mostly for research.

I just think it's a selfish act. That they are trying to escape their pain by any means possible and they go into such a dark place there's not room for anything or anyone else. Not that it's an intentional act of selfishness. He was an alcoholic, but not self medicate, he had just had a kidney removed a couple of weeks earlier. The only thing selfish is that he didn't take me with him. That's all.
I think most people in a suicide forum will disagree with suicide as being a selfish act. And they don't like the term committed suicide, like it was a crime. They prefer a person died of suicide, like a disease. The word committed never bothered me and it took a while for me to understand that it wasn't a selfish act, but I finally got it.

https://www.verywell.com/ptsd-and-em...idance-2797640

Good article

It's good that you have spent time listening to or reading about what is being learned about suicide and what someone may be experiencing that can lead to someone making that choice.

As someone who experienced very strong "impulses" myself, going through that kind of challenge is not as selfish as people would think it is. The method your father chose is the method I chose and I am a person who hates guns and I never even fired a gun. I never imagined EVER struggling with that kind of impulse and I can tell you it can get incredibly strong. I did not have a problem with alcoholism myself, but I did struggle with my husband who was a binge alcoholic.

Alcoholism at first helps a person manage the deep personal "fears" they have that they typically don't talk about, this is especially true for men. The problem with alcoholism is that it changes the brain and after several years of the brain being exposed to alcohol the brain begins to breakdown or suffer damage. Also, the brain gets addicted to the alcohol in that the alcohol creates more dopamine and as it enhances that part of the brain it slowly damages the brain's own way of producing dopamine naturally.

So, your father lost a kidney as organs suffer damage with alcoholism. He was probably told to stop drinking, but when that is something a person lived his/her life around and for several years, stopping or changing can be very hard. Some people just can't seem to "stop". For a very long time there was a negative stigma when it came to suffering from an addiction. It has not been very long where there has been a new effort to change that and discuss addiction/alcoholism as an illness/disease. I guess, what one could say is it is a form of "mental illness".

I am sharing my own challenge in dealing with these powerful suicidal impulses that challenged me, because I really cannot agree with struggling so badly that a person would take their own life as being "selfish". I was not an alcoholic, but when I was struggling that way, I was extremely challenged with the mental illness of PTSD. I had reached out for help but I did not get the right help so I just got worse and worse and it got so bad for me that I began struggling with these strong impulses of just wanting the "pain" I was suffering to end. For several months/about a year I battled these horrible impulses every day. You know, I have under my Avatar, "one day at a time", well, I have most definitely gone though huge challenges where it really was getting through one day at a time and many very hard days. I know that kind of challenge is not "selfish". Yet, there is definitely a negative "stigma" to PTSD and that is something I have most definitely experienced in a "big way", and that made my challenge even harder.

I think that what you need time to do is grieve your loss, but also understand his loss too and he was suffering so badly that what he did was his way of ending his suffering.
We are still studying the brain Trace, and we are slowly learning how the human brain works and how the brain can struggle to a point where someone would make this kind of choice. Having experienced this challenge myself and struggling so badly like I had, I worked my way pass that stage, but it was very hard. I can see how if someone was even worse than I was how that person can make that choice. So, I cannot say that person is being "selfish".

Actually? For a long time I hovered over this forum to be a presence that might actually "save" someone who is struggling with that stage because what helped save me is when I came across someone who told me to pay attention to how as hard as these impulses are to pay attention to the fact that they come in, crest, but receed too. I did notice that, and that is what saved my life.

What you experienced with your father IMHO is a major trauma and it really takes time to find one's own way to finally get to a point where that kind of trauma can finally reach a point where "you" make peace with it. It's good that you have reached out to a point where you have come across others who have gained in their effort towards finding a way to "accept" and understand, but also are now a presence where they reach out and talk and support in an effort to help others find that path as well.

You did things in your life that dealt with developing your ability to focus and maintain yourself in human traumatic situations and for the most part that involved other people right? This is different because now "you" are the one that needs help. You "can" work through that challenge towards gaining and learning from your personal experience and possibly again combining that with what you used to do and maybe that rainbow can take shape where your "rescue" type ability can be used to address others who are struggling like you have been struggling.

Are you feeling any better since the holiday is over? Does NYE bring up the same issues? At least there's no gift giving involved. I guess I understand why some want to close this year and celebrate a new one coming in, if you can make that distinction. I mean really is the air any cleaner, the skies more blue, birds singing more, everything is lollipops and daisies on New Years Day? No, it's just another day dedicated to the superstitious in having pork, black eyed peas and turnip greens, or something like that. Dang went off on a tangent here
But for me, if I were to celebrate it would be starting another year of trying to find the answer on how to get my life back, or something close. Not all the hoop la, just a quest to find the right T, the right treatment and maybe the right medication.