Commentary from Published November 13, 2016
Unfortunately true tale. I’m finding a lot of survivors have a version of “The Plan” and it’s something just never goes away. It follows you and reminds you it’s there on your darker days, making you feel that you’re never quite recovered.
In 1993, I was taking a course in University for Abnormal Psychology. In one class on depression and suicidal behavior, we had a video of our professor talking to a suicidal patient. What really surprised me was, this patient was sitting in a chair wearing a neck and tie, and talked calmly as if he were discussing gardening techniques.
He was talking about his Plan, in the same way as if he were talking about a vacation plan that he was thinking about taking someday. He had every detail planned out. He would shoot himself in the head, and to help people out, he would do it on a matress surrounded by blue sheets; this would prevent getting blood everywhere. All the people had to do would dispose of the body, mattress, and the sheets, no other cleaning would be required. He even planned to leave a few hundred dollars on the table, a “tip” and a way of saying “sorry for the trouble.”
This left an impression on me. Not that I could ever do this, but, I had always thought of suicide as a sprur of the moment kind of thing. A moment of weakness. A spontaneous event no one could predict like a lightning strike. The result of a bad day. Not the kind of thing people would consider for a long time, and plan out every single detail over the period of months or even years. And all the while, he would put on his tie and go to work, fooling everyone into thinking that he was living his life normally when everything in his head was everything but.
Later that year, I would be diagnosed for depression myself. But I was not like that. I didn’t have a plan, I just had bad mood swings.
In 1995, I abused sleeping pills. Not to kill myself, but to keep myself from the pain of being awake. I thought that if enough time had passed I could sleep the pain away. It didn’t work. I was told by my therapist to never do that again, even though I wasn’t suicidal. It was just the beginning of a slippery slope.
A decade later, depression had put me deeply in the pit. I was feeling my very life slip away from under me. I couldn’t get a plan together, I couldn’t see a future. I was living entirely for the moment, and every moment was just mental pain. By that time I managed to alienate all my friends and had no support. I wanted it to end.
It was at that point I developed my Plan. It was different from that one I had heard many years ago, I had no stomach for blood and guns were hard to come by. But while I was trying to sleep, while I was driving to work, while I was eating lunch, I would deeply fantasize about how I would end it and worked out many of the details, like getting the time to do it and a schedule for getting rid of everything I owned in the apartment. It had to be done in a logical manner, and done fitting the garbage schedule I had to live by (in Japan certain things could only be thrown out certain days of the week and month).
And thus I had The Plan.
I’ve long since abandoned the idea of actually carrying it out. But during those days when it gets darker, when I have stressful days, it comes back. It tells me, you already worked it out. It would be so easy to do again. I have to shake it off but The Plan will always be there, and there’s nothing I can do to erase it, although I wish I could.
In 1993, I was taking a course in University for Abnormal Psychology. In one class on depression and suicidal behavior, we had a video of our professor talking to a suicidal patient. What really surprised me was, this patient was sitting in a chair wearing a neck and tie, and talked calmly as if he were discussing gardening techniques.
He was talking about his Plan, in the same way as if he were talking about a vacation plan that he was thinking about taking someday. He had every detail planned out. He would shoot himself in the head, and to help people out, he would do it on a matress surrounded by blue sheets; this would prevent getting blood everywhere. All the people had to do would dispose of the body, mattress, and the sheets, no other cleaning would be required. He even planned to leave a few hundred dollars on the table, a “tip” and a way of saying “sorry for the trouble.”
This left an impression on me. Not that I could ever do this, but, I had always thought of suicide as a sprur of the moment kind of thing. A moment of weakness. A spontaneous event no one could predict like a lightning strike. The result of a bad day. Not the kind of thing people would consider for a long time, and plan out every single detail over the period of months or even years. And all the while, he would put on his tie and go to work, fooling everyone into thinking that he was living his life normally when everything in his head was everything but.
Later that year, I would be diagnosed for depression myself. But I was not like that. I didn’t have a plan, I just had bad mood swings.
In 1995, I abused sleeping pills. Not to kill myself, but to keep myself from the pain of being awake. I thought that if enough time had passed I could sleep the pain away. It didn’t work. I was told by my therapist to never do that again, even though I wasn’t suicidal. It was just the beginning of a slippery slope.
A decade later, depression had put me deeply in the pit. I was feeling my very life slip away from under me. I couldn’t get a plan together, I couldn’t see a future. I was living entirely for the moment, and every moment was just mental pain. By that time I managed to alienate all my friends and had no support. I wanted it to end.
It was at that point I developed my Plan. It was different from that one I had heard many years ago, I had no stomach for blood and guns were hard to come by. But while I was trying to sleep, while I was driving to work, while I was eating lunch, I would deeply fantasize about how I would end it and worked out many of the details, like getting the time to do it and a schedule for getting rid of everything I owned in the apartment. It had to be done in a logical manner, and done fitting the garbage schedule I had to live by (in Japan certain things could only be thrown out certain days of the week and month).
And thus I had The Plan.
I’ve long since abandoned the idea of actually carrying it out. But during those days when it gets darker, when I have stressful days, it comes back. It tells me, you already worked it out. It would be so easy to do again. I have to shake it off but The Plan will always be there, and there’s nothing I can do to erase it, although I wish I could.
I am actually comforted by the idea that there’s always a way out if I really need it.
I understand. Having a solution can almost be a relief. Sometimes I have such perseverative thoughts I scare myself.
Yeah I know that feeling, been there too :/
My worst period was when I realized I couldn’t in good conscience go through with my Plan because I’d be leaving my parents with a lot of my student loan debt. Before that I was able to pull myself out of my spirals by initiating The Plan. The first step is to wait at least a week and only proceed to step 2 if I consistently feel as low as when I started. It works for me.
That total describes the situation
Those cartoonish limbs transport an horror worthy of Lovecraft.
Shit. Nailed it. Here’s hoping we can all keep putting the thoughts on the shelf and walking away.
Ah yes. The Plan. I am both comforted and frightened by it. I don’t want to use it, but I still feel it is inevitable. At least I came up with a painless and foolproof method. But I still wish I hadn’t.
Yup, yup, and yup. I’ve been doing so much better since starting my new antidep, but I still have to remind myself.
Me: I wish I were dead.
Also Me: No, you are hungry.
Me: I wish I were dead.
Also Me: No, you are tired.
Me: I should just kill myself.
Also Me: ….or you could eat something or put on a sweater or go to bed like a human being…
My wife vetoed my carefully devised plan. It was hard for me to imagine that she wouldn’t have been happy to see me go, but I took her word for it, and I’m stil here, thirty years later.
Still want to Get Off The Bus, tho.
I’m really glad that I don’t plan. I don’t think I will ever kill myself because I would hate for anyone else to commit suicide as a result of my own, even when I feel my life has only negative value. It just makes me feel intensely guilty for wanting to off myself, though.
I took comfort in my plan for a really long time. Revamping my research and keeping it in the background was a comfort that if I was ever *there* again or if *it* ever happened again, I could still opt out. An SNRI, my night terror pills and regular, controlled cannabis consumption has allowed me to let go of going to the plan for comfort. I can reach out and emotionally invest in people and cultivate mild interdependence because I’m not always thinking on some level, “it would be cruel to get close to them and make them miss me in the very possible event I opt out.” This one really struck a chord.
My plan involved blowing up my parents’ house with me alone inside it. I didn’t really care whether I died from the gas or the explosion, as long as it destroyed me and everything I cared about. Telling that plan to a psychiatrist got me a week in the psych ward, a prescription for antidepressants, and weekly cognitive therapy sessions for about three months. So some good came out of it.
Now the plan is to live as long as possible.
Right in the feelings today 😐
Years i had bottle on pills hiding in my closet.
I have on my wall a quote to remind me that it will all end one day. Still, that could be around 5 decades from now! Too far away, but I’m also just too scared to actually end it now.
This is literally the only foolproof way I’ve found of dealing with feeling suicidal in a non-destructive fashion: plan things. Because the absolute last thing I want is to screw up some half-arsed panicked mess of a thing which then means I have a) worried and inconvenienced people, b) potentially made it harder for myself down the track, c) and failed to actually accomplish the desired outcome (ie. being dead).
And something about the process gets me thinking straight and logically again: there’s probably some degree of Russian roulette going on there, but I literally haven’t found anything that works any better. Because it takes awhile to actually clean up a messed up existence, and because *research* and calculations are involved (not to mention working out where and how to source particular things without arousing suspicion) it’s not exactly something I’d be cool rushing into.
Somehow it keeps me around long enough, and then if I get distracted by something else for a little while or the depression subsides a bit, it’s essentially acted as a safety catch.
Try telling ANYONE in mental health that the ultimate suicide prevention is planning your own suicide, and they think you’re fucking crazy though.
https://youtu.be/2SszI97PGQ0
Wow, that really brings it home… many years ago, I stole a gram or two of sodium cyanide from a lab I was working at and held onto it as a “just-in-case, any time I really want to I can pull the ripcord”. Knowing that option was there kept me going for 10 years – it was a perpetual reality check on “are things really so bad that I want this messy, excruciatingly painful certainty of an end?”
The Plan was more a symptom than a salvation, though – I would more or less hear it calling out to me in the darkest moments and have to go through the internal dialogue on why it wasn’t time yet, over and over again.
I threw out the NaCN when I finally got effective meds. New Plans have arisen and been shelved, but this panel generally nails it.
I have a plan, I always have a plan. I may never act on the plan but it comforts me to know there’s a way out.
The irony of it all is that the plan is my main motivation for living. Knowing if/when things get so bad, I’ll always have the option to end it all.