Addiction to Recovery: My Journey to the Edge and Back
In 2014, I finally faced up to my demons, recognized I needed to change and set out on a journey that has changed my life. Below is a snapshot of some of my worst moments and what led me to make a change. Five years on I am living proof that you can change your future by making a change today.
I just want to begin this by saying that I seek no sympathy for what I have gone through. I only wish that by reading this people will start to look at mental illness in a different light and to bring the topic to the fore, eradicating the stigma surrounding mental illness, especially in young people, before it’s too late. We need to be pro-active towards fighting mental illness and suicide, the Silent Killer, instead of just reacting to it after it happens.
To the sufferers, you are not alone! Remember that some of the greatest minds to have ever graced this planet have suffered from various mental illnesses. Michelangelo, Isaac Newton, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Vincent Van Gogh, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemmingway, Abraham Lincoln, Calvin Coolidge, Winston Churchill, Princess Diana, Buzz Aldrin, Carrie Fisher, Catherine Zeta Jones, Heath Ledger, Winona Ryder, J.K. Rowling, Sheryl Crow, Billy Joel, Marlon Brando, Emma Thompson, Elton John, Jim Carrey, Stephen Fry, Kurt Cobain and Robin Williams, to name but a few. From artists to scientists, composers to musicians, political leaders to authors, explorers to actors, to comedians. All of these people have positively impacted the lives of billions of others around the world throughout history and up until the present day, all the while struggling through their illness. Remember this list when times are tough and you feel worthless. You are more special than you could ever imagine.
My story starts in 2012 and at the point where I first noticed I had a problem on my hands. I was standing on the bridge over the River Dodder on the Clonskeagh Road in Dublin. On a freezing Winter night at 4am after being out with the lads, I find myself standing there, phone buzzing in my pocket. I must have been there for about an hour, looking in to the freezing wintry river flowing beneath me, planning the jump. Hoping it would be my final one. I shook as I held on to the railings, my heart willing me to climb over and finish it with my body refusing to comply. Better judgement prevailed on this night and no harm was caused. But, this was just another in a long string of times where I had thought of killing myself and would not be the last.
People saw me as a happy go lucky, talented lad with a lot going for him. Always a smile on my face and always up for a laugh. This was the Mac that everyone saw. Very few saw the real me, the one that had no self-confidence or worth and no happiness. I was hiding behind the thousands of masks that I wore on a daily basis. I went through this pain for three or four years, self-medicating with alcohol and pain killers when times got really tough. That was my form of dealing with it. Whenever I felt like I was going to do something to hurt myself I would numb myself with drink and pills until I passed out, to prevent me from doing anything worse. I used external things like drink, drugs and sex to deal with the inner turmoil and to try and make myself feel better. It was an immediate and temporary solution to a bigger and growing problem.
For the next two years I dealt with how I felt in this way. What I thought was helping me, was causing more pain and heartache. I didn’t know what was going on, why I felt that way or how I should deal with it. I went through days that I wouldn’t be able to leave my room because I was afraid. I was so anxious that I couldn’t leave my own bedroom. I knew that I was safe there. These days quickly grew together, soon growing into weeks and then months. I was in college at this time and it’s safe to say that going to class was the last thing on my mind, but I was getting by just enough from working from home and that I was able to hide it from my family. This went on for months upon months with no let up. Going from extreme highs to extreme lows with no notice whatsoever, and sometimes these swings happening within seconds of first coming on. Constantly making me more and more frustrated and causing me to hide myself more and more due to the fact that I didn’t know how I was going to feel five minutes later. I was spiraling out of control and I had no idea of how to handle myself.
In January 2014, a week after my 21st birthday, I broke down. I woke up on that Wednesday morning and couldn’t move. Feeling like this had happened before but never as bad as the way I felt that day. I rang my parents and broke down in tears on the phone. I jumped on the train and by four o’clock that day I was in to see my GP. I was diagnosed with Clinical Depression, prescribed medication and sent on my way. The visit lasting about the same length as the last sentence. Immediately I felt a sense of relief that I had finally told someone and had gotten help. Without this first step on my recovery I wouldn’t be here today. Little did I know, that the worst was yet to come.
About two months later, my next attempt was taken. I was in my house in Dublin and it was the worst I had felt since January. The next thing I knew I had finished two packets of painkillers and was searching for anything else in the room to add to them. Suddenly, snapping back to reality, I noticed what I was doing. I was terrified. Shaking, I shoved two fingers down my throat and I tried to make myself throw up, but to no avail. For the rest of the night I sat up fighting against my own eyes to keep them awake, all the time afraid that if I closed my eyes they wouldn’t open up again. This gave me the shock I needed to seek professional help.
A few weeks later I began therapy and with everything I talked about I began to feel better. At the beginning there were still bad days and weeks but soon the good days started to out-number the bad and my outlook on life completely changed. Through talking I have started to handle the bad days better and to cherish every happy second that I have. I know it’s a cliche but believe me when I say, a problem shared is a problem halved. Talking about my problems has been the best cure, better than any medication that a doctor may throw out to you. Talking to my friends, family and anyone that would listen is what saved me from myself and my own mind.
Depression was something that I had never really thought about as a possible reason for how I was feeling. It was only that I heard an interview on the television and they talked about the symptoms of depression that it clicked with me. I was mentally ticking off these symptoms and noticing that I was suffering from many of them. This was the first time that I had ever thought of it as a possibility and that I wasn’t just me being selfish, melodramatic or stroppy. It made me an advocate for speaking out and sharing our experiences of mental illness and suicide on every media format around. It needs to be a main topic in every politicians manifesto and a headline on all news broadcasts to stop the loss of young people in this country. Suicide is one of the biggest killers of young people in Ireland, but it is one that can be easily stopped with the right resources and support in the right places.
However, all sides of the media has long been a source of pain to many a person who has gone through a mental illness, constantly making people feel worthless. Jim Morrison once pointed out, “Death makes angels of us all, and gives us wings where we had shoulders”. More often than not, this is not the case when it comes to a 20 year old who has taken their own life as an escape from their inner turmoil, their only escape from the pain the cruel realities of this world has caused them to endure, they are viewed as an “attention seeker” and “selfish”. Using these words to describe someone who has made the ultimate sacrifice to end their pain does not prevent others from going down the same road.
One cannot provide a blanket description of why someone attempts to or succeeds in taking their own life, but in my case it was to finally stop the pain but most of all it was to stop myself from being a burden on my friends and family. I do not condone suicide in any way or fashion, I am merely trying to point out that how we handle this and how society views it has to be changed. We can’t just sit back anymore and let it happen. Society usually doesn’t seem to care until it is too late. We write eulogies and offer sympathy to the dead. However, we need to cherish humanity and life while we still have it instead of just reacting after it is too late. We need preventative measures to combat suicide, not a reaction.
That’s my story so far, I have changed completely since that night on the bridge, all through the help of my family and friends. Through good times people underestimate how much they need their friends and family. I urge everyone to cherish the people around you throughout the good because they will be the ones jumping down that dark hole to help you out when times are tough.
To the sufferers, please talk. Take that first step to helping yourself because it is the first step towards happiness. It will allow you to look back a year later and see how far you have come and how strong and special you really are. The people I mentioned at the start could have never predicted the impacts that they would make on the human race and the history of the world. Now it’s our turn to make our mark!
