SAMANTHA WHITE
My mother’s hobbies were running away from home, cutting her wrists, and overdosing on pills and booze.
The first time I called an ambulance for her, I was seven years old.
By the time I decided to take myself out, I’d had lots of time to study her and her failed techniques.
I was pretty sure I knew how to do it right.
It was my twenty-ninth summer. I had been in and out of depression and manic episodes for as long as I could remember. As a teenager, I didn’t have the words “depression” or “manic,” but I knew that the extreme highs and lows I was experiencing were different than the adolescent angst my friends were going through.
What was happening inside of me was different.
After periods of insomnia and fiery creativity, my biochemistry would shift; everything slowed. I wanted to sleep forever. I snarled and threw things at anyone who tried to rouse me. I couldn’t hide the sleeping from my aunt and uncle, who cared for me when my mother was “away,” but no one seemed to notice the times when I was awake for weeks. I shifted from feeling like a light, creative genius to being weighted down by shame and self-disgust. I was paralyzed by the certainty that nothing about me was good enough and never would be. There seemed to be no point to anything, especially my life.
The most terrifying aspect of these episodes was how much I recognized my mother. I was terrified by the vivid stories of what would be done to me if I ended up in the state mental hospital like she did. She was blank and distant when she came home after undergoing electro shock. The doctors said it would help “calm her”. It seemed to erase her. I looked at my mother and saw an ugly future. I kept silent.
By my mid twenties, the manic episodes had almost disappeared and I was left with just the lows. I referred to it as “being in the cave.” Everything went dark. The depression that owned me the summer I tried to kill myself was long and deep. There were so many days I could not function that I had used up both my sick time and vacation time at work. People would say, “Hope you’re feeling better,” when I returned from having “the flu” again or, “Did you have a nice time?” when I used my vacation days. I’d reply affirmatively that I was all better and say that I spent my vacation “relaxing at home.”
I didn’t have the energy to invent a better imaginary vacation. How could I explain that I spent my time off trying to muster enough will and focus to wash my hair? Or that I had clean clothes when I returned to work because I had lived and slept in the same ones all week?
People didn’t talk about depression the way they do now. It was a shameful secret. I was frightened that anyone would find out. Even my therapist did not know how bad it really was for me. Without any family or anyone to back me up, I had to keep going, had to keep it together by myself, and struggled to seem “normal.” I felt like an alien, studying and mimicking the behaviors of the locals. It was exhausting.
There was nothing special about the night I drank most of a quart of scotch and took a handful of valium. It seemed almost spontaneous, but the plan had been percolating for some time, possibly since the first time I called an ambulance for my mother.
I had cut my wrist a few years before, but that was such a disaster, I knew I would never try that way out again. My plan had been to cut both wrists to speed the process, but when I saw all the blood coming out of the first cut, it was over. It made me sick. Literally. Before I could stop myself, I was scrambling around the bathroom, trying to manage vomiting and bleeding, frantically trying to clean the white tile floor. I was so freaked out, it took me a minute or so to realize I needed to bandage my wrist first. Getting the bathroom cleaned seemed the most urgent thing. Apparently, I was okay having my boyfriend come home and find my bloody dead body, but I was ashamed to have him find that I had tried, failed, and made a revolting mess in our bathroom to boot.
After I bound my wrist, I brushed my teeth, scoured the bathroom, and washed the towels I had used to clean up the blood. When my boyfriend came home and asked me about the bandage on my wrist, I said I had burned myself cooking. “See,” he said, “aren’t you lucky to have a guy who keeps the first-aid kit stocked up?” I agreed that I was so, so lucky. But I also knew that I would try to kill myself again and knew my weapons of choice would be pills and alcohol, not sharp objects. `I always thought of that episode more of a reenactment of my mother’s story than a serious suicide attempt.
This time, I was taking my lead from Hollywood. I would swallow too many pills with too much booze, fall asleep, and not wake up. Done. Dead, But I discovered that it’s not so easy to kill a healthy body. Aside from having alcoholic blackouts, a somewhat perpetual hangover, and clinical depression, I was pretty fit. My body was not going down without a fight.
I bought a quart of Glenlivet, my favorite single malt. Ordinarily, I would buy the cheapest scotch I could tolerate because I was after the most high for the money, but I figured my last binge should be with the good stuff. About halfway through the quart, I swallowed a handful of valium. It was the 1980s and everybody had valium.
This was not a drill. It was not meant to be a call for help. I had no belief in an afterlife at the time and was not looking forward to some heavenly post-mortem experience. My idea was that death was nothing. The absence of everything. That was what I longed for and was willing to murder myself to achieve. After I took the pills, I lay down on my bed with towels underneath me because I had read that when people die the sphincter and urethra let go. I wanted it to be an easy clean up for whoever discovered my body.
I knew it was critical to keep down all the pills and alcohol. If I’d had more mind-over-body training, it might have worked. As a binge-drinking alcoholic, I was an expert at vomiting. But this was something different. My body violently rejected the poisonous stew of valium and scotch. I barely made it to the bathroom. I thought, Oh, fuck, I’m not going to die from an overdose, I’m going to die from choking on vomit!
That was when I started to really panic. I had swallowed all the pills; there was no second chance. I had vomited so much it seemed unlikely that there was enough left inside to kill me. What if I ended up with some kind of organ or brain damage that would leave me hooked up to machines, paralyzed but still aware? Alive but even more messed up? I knew I had to get myself to the hospital.
I began to actively try to save my life. Trying to murder myself was a lot more painful than I had anticipated. The sound in my head was like fifty jets taking off at once. The intense roaring felt like a physical assault. There were tiny electrocutions going off in my muscles and nerves. This was not the numbed-out, drifting away into the nothingness of death that I had planned. It hurt. A lot.
I was starting to feel kind of dreamy and disconnected but was terrified that if I fell asleep, I’d wake up disabled in some horrible way. After I called a taxi, I threw up some more. I hoped to be done purging before the cab arrived. Understandably, taxi drivers really do not like for people to vomit in their cabs. If they even think you might, they will put you out.
The taxi arrived. As we were driving away, I discovered I had no cash. These were the days before ATM cards. I had checks, but the driver would not take a check.
He offered to drive me to the dispatch headquarters and ask if the night manager would cash a check for me. Very sweet guy. We drove to the place where all the cabs come from. It looked just like the television show Taxi. The night manager was a bit reluctant, but I seemed like “such a nice girl,” he cashed a check for me so I could pay the cab fare.
The kind driver let me get back in his cab even though I had made him stop once on the way to dispatch so I could throw up on the side of the road. He expressed appreciation that I didn’t vomit inside the car and said, “You let me know if you need to stop again.” I had him drop me off close to San Francisco General Hospital and walked myself into emergency. I did not want the driver to know where I was going or why.
A lot of what followed is blurry because once I got to the hospital, I was able to let go and surrender to the effects of the drugs and alcohol still active in my body. Like in a story I had read about a guy who drove for miles with a nail through his brain, I kept it together until I knew someone else could take over. I remember being on a gurney and in a wheelchair. I remember people rushing around, asking me questions, but it seemed like it was all happening far away. The intense roaring in my head made it difficult to understand what they were saying, but I tried to be helpful and cooperative. I’m pretty sure I threw up some more.
Someone made me drink something disgusting, which I later found out was activated charcoal, meant to absorb any remaining poison. After a few more people observed me and asked questions, somebody took me up to psych intake where I waited. And waited. It was a busy night for despair in San Francisco.
By the time it was my turn to talk to the intake intern, it was obvious I was not going to die. That meant I had just a few hours left to get myself together and get to work. I could not afford to be held on a 5l/50, the code for someone who was considered a danger to herself or others and would be held 72 hours in the psych ward. I knew I would definitely be out of a job if that happened. Not only could I not afford a break in income, I knew I did not have the energy or attention left to go through a job search and interviews.
My mission became convincing the tired, overworked, underpaid, intake intern that my overdose, while maybe not exactly a complete accident, was not a serious attempt to kill myself and that I was not now, nor would I ever be again, a threat to myself or others.
I called upon everything I had learned in my training as a volunteer on the San Francisco Suicide Prevention hotline about establishing rapport and using empathy. I remembered everything I heard from my friends who had been intake interns in psych wards. I expressed gratitude for being alive, for all the people who had helped save me, said I was sorry to have caused everyone so much trouble and concern.
Yes, I assured the intern, I would call my therapist and make sure I saw her right away. I called on every acting skill and talent I had.
Not only did I keep myself from being held on a 51/50, I ended up counseling the intern. She was overwhelmed by the number of people coming through the hospital, dismayed by the poor facilities and treatment that were available and wondering if anyone was really being helped. She was wondering if she had chosen the wrong career. I listened carefully to her story and assured her that she was helping people because she had helped me. She signed my release. We hugged when we said goodbye.
Then I took the bus home from SF General psych, showered, brushed my teeth a bunch more times to make sure there was no charcoal residue, changed into my downtown office-drone costume, and showed up for work early. I never told my therapist about that night.
That night happened over thirty years ago.
There have been no more overdoses or razor blades for me since.
Almost exactly one year after my night in the emergency room, I got sober and started learning how to save my life every day.
But this is not one of those happily-ever-after stories.
I still cycle in and out of depression.
Last year I had one that came on so slyly and slowly, I hardly realized I was in it until I caught myself with a plan to take myself out. As I was sorting through the details and making sure I had everything I needed, my internal observer, developed through years of meditation practice, woke up and set off an alarm. I became aware that I was in a depression cycle, and the plan to kill myself, which seemed so reasonable and such a good solution, was the illness talking, not guidance.
I have lived with this illness for a long time. Over the years I have developed skills, behaviors, networks, and a toolkit of coping strategies that make it more manageable. It’s likely I will be spending more time in varying shades of darkness inside the cave. Having a regular spiritual practice and community helps. Friends with whom I can be truthful help. Dogs really help.
I still feel the despair, dormant, pressing on the edges of my awareness. Sometimes just opening my email is dangerous. According to my inbox, it’s up to me to stop fracking, save salmon, whales, dolphins, wolves, and hundreds of other animals; stop global warming, find all the missing children, and cure Ebola.
It seems probable that everything that could possibly happen is happening somewhere right now, so I choose carefully what I focus on. I have trained myself to practice keeping most of my attention on what is beautiful, kind, and uplifting as much as possible. Nurturing my awareness of what I love, what I am able to contribute, and letting go of what I can’t control is a lifelong practice.
Cruelty and chaos will kidnap my mind again. I may feel it coming on and it may ambush me. I could be thinking about puppies and kittens and notice that instead of imagining their cute, furry faces and charming antics, I’m obsessing about the thousands of them that will die because they have been abandoned. I will feel their terror and confusion as if it’s my own. That thought stream expands to include wolves being run down and murdered by men in airplanes, manatees scarred and maimed, drowning polar bears, homeless children. Instead of going around taking photos of beautiful trees and clouds, I’m paralyzed with grief over the destruction of the rainforest.
Depression pretends that it can predict the future, insisting that I will feel hopeless and ashamed forever. It pretends to know me better than my best friend and tells me hateful lies about the true nature of things. When it happens again, those messages will seem very real. Then I will try to stay awake, use my skills, lean into my network, and wait for it to pass.
What is really different now is that I don’t have to hide when it gets bad. There are more and more places where I am free to tell the truth when someone asks, “How are you?” As more of us “come out,” I am reminded that, not only am I not alone, I’m in really good company.