pat666rick wrote:
Are people with Aspergers more likely to commit suicide? From the time I was 13 or so until last year (I'm 21 now) I was extremely suicidal. There were times when I would go for months straight thinking of suicide and ACTUALLY planning on doing it. I don't know why, but for once in my life I haven't been suicidal. I can't find any kind of logical answer for why I am not suicidal, but there is a possibility that upon finding out that I have Aspergers and accepting it, I no longer feel "different". I wonder if most people are relieved upon hearing that they have Aspergers?
A lot of it is hormone imbalance. At 13-16 years old, kids bodies change dramatically, especially those of young women. Anyone that's raised a child knows that girls go 'psycho' for a while after they hit 13. It's hormones and then you couple that with AS and the feeling of constantly being persecuted for just being 'weird' or 'different' all of your life, the suicidal tendencies tend to brim just below the surface of your consciousness almost all the time. Most people grow out of this by the time they hit their early to mid twenties, but when you have additional problems like bipolar or unipolar depression, etc., it never goes away. After I found out about my AS, I didn't understand it for the longest time and I thought that yeah, it's a problem, but that my ADD was worse. My ADD got me into more trouble than I could shake a stick at, and I was always unhappy with my life in general.
I've had close to 15 suicide attempts in my life. Most of those happened during my teens (I was the ultimate angsty teenage girl), but as I got older, the attempts became far more serious - serious enough to land me in a mental hospital after I overdosed on a drug/alcohol cocktail that I never intended to wake up from. This happened at the age of 25, after my second failed marriage. I only snapped out of it when this counselor told me that if I tried one more time, they'd take my kids away from me. That's when I gave up trying. I was going through a hellish bout of depression after my father died and it suddenly dawned on me that if I really really wanted to die, then I'd have done it a long time ago. I discovered then that my attempts were a cry for help, mainly because I didn't really know for sure what was wrong with me and the doctors couldn't ever figure out how to fix it. I got off all medications, both legal and illegal, and got my sh*t together. I buried myself in work and raising my kids. There still isn't a day that goes by that the thoughts of suicide don't drift across my consciousness, but it's far easier to quell them these days.
To get past the suicidal thoughts, you have to take a serious, unwavering look at yourself and ask yourself what it is you really want out of life. Does nothing at all matter to you? For me, it was my children. They saved me, I believe, snapping me back to reality. Up until that revelation came, I didn't care if I lived or died, and thought I was the lowest piece of crap that ever walked the earth. Had it not been for that wakeup call, I'd have done the deed or some drugged-up lowlife I used to hang out with would have done it for me.
Yes, you can come back from the living dead. I did, and if
I can (as bad off as I was), anyone can.
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Terminal Outsider, rogue graphic designer & lunatic fringe.