MENTAL HEALTH

I Told My Doctor Exactly How I Planned to End My Life

He warned it might not work

TRIGGER WARNING — This article contains descriptions of suicidal thoughts. Please proceed with care.

“Do you ever think about taking your own life?” the doctor asked.

I squirmed in the padded seat. I was 16 years old. I refused to look at him. I’d known him for as long as I could remember. He wasn’t just my doctor, but a family friend.

I nodded. Yes, I thought about killing myself.

“How would you do it?” he asked.

I knew the answer instantly.

It felt like an intrusive question. But he was my doctor and this was a confidential space. It seemed like a matter-of-fact discussion. He asked in the same voice he used when I’d attended his office with a sore throat as a young child. Confident. Assured. The keeper of knowledge and secrets.

I had so many questions whirling through my mind. Questions without answers.

I felt that if I needed pills to “fix” me, that meant I was “broken”.

But “how would you kill yourself?” was easy to answer. I’d thought a lot about what I’d do. I’d worked out the least painful way to disappear into oblivion, for it all to be over.

“Paracetamol,” I said.

“You’d take an overdose?” the doctor asked.

I nodded again.

He told me what would happen next.

I expected him to tell me not to do that, not to be so stupid. I expected him to say “What would happen to your family? Think about your parents!”

He didn’t. He gave a matter-of-fact response.

“A paracetamol overdose takes a long time to work,” he said. “A lot of people, even after they’ve taken a big dose, wake up the next morning. Some of them regret what they’ve done after waking up. But there’s not always something we can do about it by that point.”

I don’t know if this is true, but I trusted my doctor. And it terrified me.

What’s more, the way the doctor explained it, so confidently and matter-of-factly, it was like he knew. He’d been on that emotional cycle. He’d been in a dark place, wanting to die, then he’d woken up in the morning. I never asked him about it, but it felt like he understood. I felt known.

To this day, when I think about taking my life, I go back to what the doctor said. I don’t want to wake up in the morning with a death sentence.

I recognized exactly the emotional journey he’d explained — of going to sleep wanting to die, then waking up feeling okay.

There were nights where I’d lie awake, internally screaming, my inner life an emotional torture chamber, and I’d do anything to stop it.

Then in the morning, the world seemed fresh and new. Everything seemed right, steady. My window was still there, the cars on the driveway, the tree across the road. The sunshine. Morning brought me back to a more centered place, where life seems like a good idea.

How did I go from happy child to suicidal teenager?

After years of thinking through that question, diving deep into reading, and spending thousands on therapy sessions, I still don’t have the answer.

I was brought up in a loving family. We only moved home once. To my best knowledge, I was never abused.

I was an anxious, conscientious, shy child. But I loved my home life, and while I was ambivalent about going to school, I had a few close friends, and I enjoyed learning.

I was a model student from the moment I started school.

I attended every lesson. I was rarely off sick — and I hated it if I needed to be. I always submitted my homework on time. I never ever got into trouble. I was absolutely mortified at any sign of a telling-off. I always got good grades.

Then, something went off-kilter after I turned 16.

I was studying for my A-Levels, the qualifications we take in the UK ahead of university. I was predicted good grades. But for the first time in my whole school life, I was struggling to keep up. I didn’t understand everything the teachers were telling us.

I needed to get my head down and work. Instead, I played Super Mario the moment I got home after school. And during any downtime within school hours, I broke open a pack of cards with friends for a game of Hearts.

I was a long way from doing badly, but I could tell that I wouldn’t be a perfect student anymore. And that thought was too much to bear.

So, one morning, at age 16, I refused to get up. I refused to leave my bed.

My parents shrugged it off as a bad day. But the next day, I again refused to leave my bed. And the next day. And the next.

My uncle, who suffers with depression but never usually talks about it, told me it’s like having a black dog as your constant companion. I was grateful he shared that.

When it was time to leave for school, I’d turn over and go back to sleep. It’s all I wanted to do. School felt overwhelming, I didn’t want to face it. I felt a clench of anxiety in my gut each morning when I realized I should be at school.

That’s when I started having the thought I don’t want to be here anymore.

The doctor I went to see at age 16 diagnosed me with depression. He prescribed pills.

I was ambivalent about the idea of medication as a treatment. I felt, at that time — and to be clear this is the belief of my 16-year-old self, not what I think now — that if I needed pills to “fix” me, that meant I was “broken”. So I refused to take them. I poured them down the toilet.

Instead, I ducked out of life. In the day times, I went out walking. I found a spot in the woodlands a couple of miles from home that was perfect to just sit and read. It was winter, so I wore a warm coat. I sat beneath the trees with a book. I read and I read. Philosophy mainly.

Since then, for most of my life, I’ve managed my own mental health. I’ve self-medicated with books, food, the internet, video games, and exercise.

More recently, I’ve been going to therapy. I told my therapist about that time when I was 16. I told her how I stopped going to school and started reading in the forest.

“How do you feel now, looking back at yourself then?”

I thought about the question for a while. As I pondered the question, I broke into a smile. “I like that version of myself,” I said. “I like who I was back then.”

“Do you think you were depressed, at that time?” she asked.

The question caught me by surprise. “Umm… I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve always thought that I was.”

“I’m not so sure,” she said. “It doesn’t sound like depression to me, reading philosophy under the trees.”

My therapist’s question has set my mind spinning.

“I’m not so sure,” she said. “It doesn’t sound like depression to me, reading philosophy under the trees.”

I don’t know if I was depressed or not at age 16. I still don’t know if I am depressed today.

I continue to struggle — from time-to-time — with suicidal thoughts, high levels of anxiety, and overwhelming emotions. But I also read philosophy (still!). I ask big questions. I enjoy life, I have a good job, a loving family, and I like who I am.

All my life I’ve seen myself as someone who walks beside the void. Dark emotions lurk in the shadows. I go through cycles of death and rebirth. My emotional life is an epic, a saga. I live within legends.

My uncle, who suffers with depression but rarely talks about it, told me it’s like having a black dog as your constant companion. I was grateful he shared that.

I don’t see myself as a victim, as broken, as someone to be fixed. My mental health doesn’t define me. My mental health might shape my life, but I’m the one who chooses the next step.

I never went back to school. I forged my own path. And that’s something I’m still doing, to this day.

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, please talk to somebody and get the help you need.

• The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (USA): 1–800–273–8255
• Samaritans (UK): 116 123