What's it like surviving a suicide attempt?

My attempt made me realize suicide is romanticized. I thought it would be like falling asleep but I was so scared. I impulsively tried but told no one. I remember sitting in my room. Sometimes when something bad happens I'll automatically think, "Well, this won't kill me" but that time I realized I could die. What I was going through seemed small and silly then. I came crashing back to reality.

Mine was in my parents' house when I was 19 or 20. I woke up several hours later bloated and hallucinating. I'd somehow forgotten about the pills and thought it was weird that my stomach was so distended and hollow sounding when I tapped on it. Then I saw lizards running up the walls and a cat that had died years earlier sitting on a shelf. At some point I finally put it all together and realized oh crap I woke up...what the hell. That put me in a bit of a panic. I heard my dad clanking around in the kitchen getting ready for work and I went downstairs and told him what I'd done. He already knew I'd been in crisis mode so it wasn't a complete surprise. He called into work and he and my mom took me to the hospital where they made me drink charcoal and stay the night.

The hospital staff seemed pretty irritated and my folks who were already dealing with the crap I was going through took it in stride. It was a turning point for me...I decided to go through the motions of life after that. I'm not glad I survived and my life has been wall to wall anxiety, occasionally interrupted by carefully orchestrated distraction. As a superstitious man I am compelled to say things could be worse.

We had to close this thread for a while to do some editing but now we've reopened it.

A gentle reminder: please don't mention specific means of suicide. We do allow discussion of suicidal thoughts and feelings, but not of plans or means.

I actually wondered how some of the posts were allowed considering the rules. To be honest, the how someone tried it isn't important, it's how they felt/still feel that matters, so I think it was the right thing to do to edit it.

Terrible....I'll never try again unless I'm 100 percent guaranteed that it's going to work.

As my attempts were while I was numb and in a dream like state... they felt like the perfectly reasonable thing to do at the time. It was a case of differentiation and when I came out the other side: that person who did it wasn't me.... hard to explain.

I'll put it this way... Zinco mentioned shame... I didn't feel any. It honestly felt like another part of me that was separate and as such, when my strong self of being came back... I couldn't relate or feel much of anything to what had happened.

That's not to say I didn't have regret... it put my family and wife through hell.... but... yeah.. it wasn't me. Reading this back looks horribly like I'm not taking responsibility for my actions.... which in every other part of my life, I do.

Be interesting if anyone can relate?

As for what others think... well, with the exception of close friends... I wouldn't even bother mentioning it... not because I care what they think... I just can't be arsed with the 'atmosphere shift' to communicating with them.

Things between my wife and I have actually gotten better (she has since put in a lot of time researching MH as she knew jack **** before... which I never held against her... just saying it was something I accepted as most people don't)... we've had more cause for having a laugh together and be comfortable being together than we have in years.... when I have my wobbles, she doesn't react like she used to.

I felt despair because I had failed. I didn't plan it well enough.

One-to-one observation on the psych ward is pretty horrible punishment when you already feel so awful.

Now when I think about doing it, I think of how terrible I would feel if someone close to me were to kill themselves. I couldn't guarantee that I won't ever try again though.

I was so close to committing I had everything I needed I was going to do it when I got home from school but a kid in my class noticed something was wrong and showed me people care about me even though I have thought about it many times I have never really attempted. however even just knowing how close I was to trying to end it all made me feel like I was so disconnected from my friends and family.

At first I was livid and disappointed. I thought I planned it out carefully. I tried again about a week later and ended up very ill, which was the last time I ever made the attempt. I didn't lose consciousness the second time so I remember being in the ER and getting an NG tube (with charcoal), IV and a Foley. All that was unpleasant and it took about four days to recover on a medical unit with a 1:1 sitter. I refused psychiatric treatment so they let me go when I was medically cleared by Medicine. Somehow I convinced the doctor I was okay (and I was).

I never tried again since that hospitalization back in 1998.

When I got home I felt so humiliated. I knew I had two options to choose from. Either I had to try again or live. I chose life because I couldn't let my mother bury me all because I was misdiagnosed. It wasn't until 5 years later that I understood what death really meant. It took the sudden death of a friend. I realized once you die life is permanently over. There is no repeat. This was one of the hardest lessons I have ever learned and it contributed to the psychosis I had about 2 years later.

'Tis unpleasant.

Depending on the method chosen you've got the physical side effects- I've come with in 2 hours of my liver failing and suffered many broken bones both of which were rather painful.

Then there are the scars. You'll be asked about those for the rest of your life.

Emotionally every person and their dog in your life will want to give you the third degree, not because they care but because of curiosity. They will then proceed to either guilt you or humiliate you. (If you're really lucky sometimes even the doctors/ nurses will give you grief.)

While I was still semi sedated from the anesthetic after the surgery I had one of my mothers friends call up and berate me for putting my poor dear mother through that. *Rolls eyes* Never mind she was half the reason I did it.

Very few people will understand or care to understand.

Horrible. Drinking charcoal is disgusting, and I never want to experience that again.

I also felt incredibly guilty when I saw the looks on my parents' faces. That was the worst part.

I haven't attempted suicide so i don't know what its like, how it feels to actually do it and survive, but i know what its like to have strong suicidal ideas and feelings and to come close to acting on them without actually making concrete plans. Ive been able to resist acting on different suicidal ideas and tried to seek help for self. I've never intended to kill myself, to die. Its always been when depression is severe that ive been troubled by dark suicidal thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

I've tried a few times. Last time it didn't work and I didn't tell anyone for several days. The second time was the worst. I ended up in the ER where the staff was positively cruel. When I was medically stable I was transferred to the psych ward where they yelled at me for my attempt. I was terrified. Once I was actually admitted to the ward, though, everyone was so kind and compassionate. It was a safe place. The psychiatrist they assigned to me was wonderful.

After I was released and got home, though, I struggled with the feeling of not really wanting to be alive. It took months to get over that.

It's been four months since my last attempt. I can't say it won't happen again, but when I'm feeling that way, I try to think of my children and how devastated they would be. No one else in my life would really care. Just my kids. That makes me sad.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Quite honestly? .... I felt like i couldn't even succeed at the most succeedible thing that i knew of.
Which was when it caused my depression to go from really bad to unbelievably bad. because it was what i believed to be my last hope, when nothing else worked... however, i'm super glad that i didn't succeed when i was 13yr... now being 27, there's so many things that have changed, and though there are a bunch of downs, there are enough ups that come along that keep things livable, and better than just livable. Something that i would of never thought of. I never thought anything good would come after my depression at that time... (Sometimes.. i still dont) but i have expeirence now that lets me know that if i just wait it through, that it i will get better. The faster someone reaches out for help, the faster they can start feeling better(or atleast a step closer to feeling better, than where they were before).
I was already in a hospital, but it was a residental treatment center, and once it all happened, i got shoved in the quiet room, and then shipped off down to "cottage 4" which was the acute inpatient building (their were four buildings). (ironcially i was discharged from the entire place within the next week. and i didn't want to go "home" ... )
but... I hope that you can wait it out. It DOES get better

This was all back between 1995 & 2000......& I have no idea how many attempts I made....lost count....but it wasn't something that I told anyone about either. Many times I was found & the paramedics called...one time actually happened in the hospital & I ended up in a coma in ICU. Every time I felt like crap afterward.

Strange thing was that everyone including myself blamed in on loosing my identity after loosing my engineering career. It's only been in the last few years after I was finally able to leave my bad marriage that I realized what a huge effect that bad marriage had on those choices I made for suicide. I realize now that I felt trapped & felt like there was NO WAY OUT & it got so that suicide attempts where what I did everytime my trapped feeling got to an uncontrollable level.

I am so glad now that I wasn't successful. I love my life & I love being alone on my beautiful farm in the middle of the country, surrounded by caring friends & a change in my relationship with God has made a huge difference also. I am surprised that I did survive all the attempts that I made because there were several that I shouldn't have made it through & especially with no effects afterwards. Interesting because none of my pdoc's or T's had any idea just how bad my marriage was.....afterall, he was a NICE person. The tensions had always been there from even before the wedding......they just exploded into being intolerable when I no longer had my career to hide away from it & it built from there which is why everyone including ME thought it had to do with the lack of career rather than the bad marriage.....doesn't say much for the therapy I was getting at the time....but it also doesn't say much for how in touch with any of my own emotions I was........our fighting always happened at home.....never out in public so no one ever saw or questioned what was going on until toward the end. I always wondered why it felt like so much of an escape when I would end up in the psych hospital.....but it was my way of getting away from the bad marriage also & that happened many times between any attempts I made......have to say that the first time I started to deal with anorexia, it was in a way another passive suicide attempt I was making with my life while at the same time, I really did want to keep loosing weight.....the reasoning behind where that came from finally at the age of 42 was never looked into.....they just kept saying....body image issues & trying to make be believe that was what was happening even in the treatment center.

It's been a wonderful feeling over the last few years to finally be able to analyze that part of my past even though most is just a black hole.....there are some parts & feelings I'm able to get in touch with & also tie it back to dysfunctional parents that I had growing up.....the whole picture puzzle is starting to make sense & that's a really good feeling.

Know I will never again be at that same point in my life that I was during those years....so many wonderful changes have happened.....I call those my dark years.....like I said...literally most is a black hole.

My ex-girlfriend shot herself in my bed... and lived! She recovered and went on to live her life. I felt so conflicted, sad, angry, helpless! It is really indescribable how bad it felt. It took me over 3 years to come to grips with it. Dealing with my own major depression, it felt so much worse. I have forgiven her now, but for a long time I felt so much anger and resentment that was just eating me alive.

Suicide ideation can and does feel good and you can disappear in the romance of the thoughts of opening that last door to death. I totally get what you are saying, but it is unfair to generalize for all suicides. I have seen some pretty gruesome and successful suicides that were MEANT to work. Bodies totally obliterated in every sense. It breaks my heart every time, I do not judge or think less of a patient because they tried. And keep in mind that those recovering from a serious attempt or keeping themselves safe by voluntarily going inpatient are JUST AS sick as the person recovering from open heart surgery. I mean it. Be safe.