if you have OD'd i need to talk to you *su*

[gin and kerosene]

Activated charcoal is soooo terrible. and even before then you vomit so much. probably the worse thing is being sent to the psych ward and having people look at you like ur a freak.
****trig***



I took a bottle of sleeping pills and the worse part is my mom found me lying on the floor unconcious. I cant remember much. Thats a pretty scary feeling. To wake up and not remember a chunk of time. Ur family will worry. All the time.

[beautiful_facade]

*something of a bump*

Thanks elf for starting this thread back in 04.

OD'ing seems so tempting - i've been sent back here by a friend t re-read this thread.
My experiences...i'm not sure how many times i have been hospitalised for od'ing. One time, i was already ip, and didn't tell any one for hours. When i finally did, they called a doc out to take my blood before determining that i needed to go to hospital. The staff there told me had in come in half an hour later, it was likely i wouldn't have made it. Something of a wake up call i guess.
The last time, almost a year ago, i refused the charcoal, and ended up with days of IV drips, being pushed from ward to ward, waiting for days for psych...and no-one really giving a shit.

i need to keep remembering this.
Although, at the moment, i could do with hearing the damage tablets do over a longer period...like, overdosing everyday for a while - not enough each day to put me in hospital, but accumulating...
i need to convince myself this is very bad for me.

[joeygirl]

I OD'd very recently. I took every pill I had which included sleeping tablets and a lot of paracetemol. Also luckily I called my friend at midnight who realised what i had done. I spent the rest of the night and the whole next day in hospital. I then had to take leave from work and only just returned to work two days ago.

I actuallu do not remember a lot of my experience but I know it scared my friend. She said she has never seen me like that before and never wants to again. I was very aggitated and aggressive and abusive.

No one at the hospital wanted to come near me let alone treat me.

What I do remember is the guilt I felt afterwards when I saw my friend's face and knowing that she had sat with me all night and day.

I also looked like hell for days. I was very swollen and pale. The horrible feeling og not being with it stayed for days....

It really is not a pleasant experience and it only makes you feel worse afterwards for a whole lot of reasons. It's definately something I don't want to repeat.

PLEASE think twice (and then a whole lot more!) about doing it. It's really not worth it.

[carrieuk]

i have bipolar and have had many su attempts because of it.

they were wen i was younger and hadnt been dxd so it was rreal tough time.
i felt like i couldnt cope anymore.

but now wen ever i feel su im put off by the experience of it.
this is why:

1) my mum found me after taking and od and throwing up. il never foget her face or the way she screamed for my dad. she then rang to throwup in the toilet.
2) the paramedics telling me how stupid i was. i know they not supposed to treat this way but you ccan never garentee that the medical staff will understand.
3)bein poked and proded by the docs and been made to drink the huge bottle of charcoal. it is the worse thing to taste and it just makes you throw everything up. you keep throwing up until there is nothing left in your stomach. this takes about an hour or 2. by this time you are exhausted, coverd in black vomit and feelin pretty crap. but your stomach goes into spasm and you continue to wretch even tho nothing comes up. this gives you the worst stabbing pain in your stomach and this continues for hours afterwards.
4)next you are transfered to a ward where they continue to prod and poke you. you are on a drip to replace fluids so if you need the loo you have to beep the nurse to bring a potty in and watch you pee. highly embarrasing. and if you need to poop you cant. well i cant bring myself to poop while someone watches so this makes the stomach pain worse.
5)being transfered to the psych ward. having your bag searched then examined by nurse. given a tour of your psych home, the rules, then a trip to see the doc who examines you and asks you about the su. by this point you dont want to even think about it.
6)being kept in the ward for weeks even months.

the thing that puts me off most is that i can never put my family thru that again. i get to thinking that 'if it dont work i gotta go thru all that again'.
i feel so guilty for what i put my family thru and i neve ever want to put them thru that.

i hope that some of this may help you understand the consequences of a failed attempt.
i hope you feel better soon and keep yourself safe.

pm me if you want to talk about this further

cx

[carrieuk]

oh i forgot. one time i had bad reaction to the pills i took and ended up stripping off in the casuality department and trashing the place.

highly embarrasing.

thankfully im not aware of any of this thank god!!

cx

[Lenny]

ive never been hospitalised for OD'ing. but there have been several times i should have been. The last one was at school, i took an obscence amount of pills, i dont know how i got through the day, my friend told me i'd blacked out twice, but she didnt think anything of it because ive blacked out from pa's before- i have very considerate friends. By the time i got home i was throwing up everywhere. My mum told me id just caught the stomach bug going around so i agreed with her. She doesnt know it was an su attempt. But i lay in bed that night and wrote a note just in case i didnt make it through the night. Luckily i did. And i never want to go back there.

Its horrible...

[Seeshellz]

I have ODed too many times, I guess I never learned, but the pain was so bad.

The charcoal is so disgusting, repulsive sandlike milkshake that is sweetened supposedly to make it taste better. It doesn't the last few times I had to have it put down my nose because I threw it up too much.
Yes, if you throw it up, you have to take the same amount again and again until it stays in your stomach to absorb the deadly combo of pills you took.

You also have the ugly stares and comments from the emerg. nurses who don't understand you're feelings. They are tired of dealing with psych. patients. It shouldn't be that way but it is.

I also almost died also, I took too many pills and this time after all the help the doctors and nurses could give me being hooked up and everything, the doctor told my Mom, there's nothing more we can do for her. I remember almost dying, my Mom had to keep slapping me to tell me to breath because the machine that tells you if you have enough oxygen to your brain, kept buzzing, so my Mom would keep hitting my leg and yelling to me to breath. It was so hard to breath! I remember!
I feel so bad I put my Mom through this, she was by herself and she couldn't call my Dad because, she had to keep hitting me to breathe. I did not know this at the time, and I guess she helped because I woke up in intensive care alive!

I'll tell you this is the last time I ODed or for that matter tried to take my own life.

My Mom saved my life that night and I thank her greatly for that.

I tell you NEVER again!!
I find different ways to cope now if I get SUicidal.

Thank you for letting me tell you this story. I truly hope it helps you. I know the hell you are feeling when you are SU, but there are other ways to cope that trying to end it.

Please feel free to PM anytime.

I can't believe I went through all of this years ago and just a few days ago I was having urges to OD again, not to kill myself, I don't even know why?

I don't even know why I felt that way?

But I found this thread and it helped me not to.

Thanks for this thread I will remember to read it often!

[Seeshellz]

*bump* because I thought it too good to loose....

[wilson]

i hate the feeking si sick for the weeks after it.
i recently tried to od and i still regret it.
i didnt seek medical attention.
and now everyday im in constant pain.
annd throwing up.

its not nice.

[monkey]

Charcoal shake, IVs that hurt, heart monitors and no sleep and pain pain pain, disgusted comments from nurses and doctors, no dignity with full view bed-pans, distressing for people you know, maybe lose your freedom and get sectioned, maybe that loses you your job, your house, your partner.

So what? If I'm dead none of that matters, and going through that lot again is simply better than the way I feel now.

When the thought that I might have to go through that lot again puts me off suicide I know there's stuff in my life worth going on with.
And when it doesn't, there isn't.

Of course the posts here are from those who didnt die and are therefore not representative of those who OD. Maybe it really is like falling asleep and never waking up. I know 2 people who never woke up and if I have to go through drinking a bad milkshake and shitting black a few times before I get it right then so be it.

Life is too brutal for me NOT to have the option of ending it myself.

[amyfairy]

*gives thread huge bump*

reading this really helped me at some of my desperate moments
od'ing is not glamarous.

i thought i'd bump it up in case others haven't seen it,
because i think it makes a worthwhile read.

[sine nomine]

monkey, i respect your opinion. here;s the thing, though; i know someone who almost really died, who thought the few seconds between the top of that 80-foot bridge and the ground were truly his last.

he was my boyfriend at the time. he said he walked up the bridge in a daze, but as soon as he jumped he wanted to take it back. when he hit the ground and was still alive, he overwhelmingly grateful. with several broken bones and various internal injuries, he lay there calling for help for an hour, happy to be alive. all through 3 months in hospital and 6 months in a nursing home, he kept talking about how lucky he was to be alive, how glad he was to have failed. he was still depressed, his life still sucked, but he wasn't suicidal any more. who knows if it;s the same for overdosing?

[Stripe]

I have taken two major large paracetamon overdoses.

The first I took on a Monday morning before going to school (at the time nobody knew IRL that I had issues) then my friend worked it out late late Tuesday night, and I ended up in hospital. I got on a drug to counter the effects that night, I couldn't breathe, was on oxygen, 15 minute obs and blood tests, stayed like taht for about a week and did a lot of damage.

The second was larger, I took it on a Saturday night, my parents guessed on the Sunday, but it was still too late for charcoal, so my experience was the same. Only that time they didn't think I would make it and I was so glad, I went unconscious from the pain, and as I did I was happy.
Not so when I woke up, on section.

OD's don't always kill you but do a lot of damage, liver, kdaneys etc, I have shot a lot of it to bits.

I regret them

[Smeagol]

I took an overdose. I came off pretty lucky. Spent 24 hours throwing up and with diarrhoea, but that was the worst of it really. I was a bit shaky for a while afterwards (literally), but no long term effects that I know of.

What was really hard though was regaining the trust of my partner. He couldn't trust me. He wasn't sure he could go out with me anymore, because he was so afraid. I'd hurt him a lot. I'm not overdosing again. I just couldn't stand to see him that upset again.

[Licentia Poetica]

My best friend and I made a suicide pact. We were both unhappy. We both didn't feel like we had anything more to gain from life.

I only half wanted to die. A lot of what I felt was despair, I wasn't able to show my friend how much I was hurting in any other way. In retrospect I'd call it extremely manipulative.

I remember standing in front of my mirror when I took the pills. It felt automatic. I felt like I had no control over my actions. It felt so completely normal, boring, undramatic - brush my teeth, overdose, go to bed, not wake up.

Nuh-uh.

I fell asleep in an oddly calm sort of state. Woke up feeling like my stomach was turning itself inside out. I began to panic and rang the poisons line on my mobile phone quietly from my bedroom desperately hoping they'd tell me I'd be okay. They didn't.

Going out into the living room and telling my mother (whom I do not get on with) what I'd done was one of the hardest things I've ever done.

It's all a bit blurry for me now but I was feeling so lonely and awful and in pain and ashamed and had to put up with bitchy underpaid overworked nurses commenting on my self harm and my mother making a huge scene in the ER and disgusting charcoal that I couldn't keep down. The memory of the whole thing makes me feel ill.

I remember begging the doctor to just let me get out of there. All I wanted was to go home and study for the exam I had on the Monday. I asked her if I was going to be okay and she made the strangest face and said "You want to be?"

When I was told I was going to live I burst into tears. That exam.. I did. And I did fucking well in it without even trying.

Maybe my life isn't great right now. Or will ever be. But had I died there in massive amounts of pain and cold hospital sheets and tubes stuck to me to monitor my heart with groups of student doctors treating me like some kind of experiment.. there are experiences I have now that would never have existed.

I thought the pain of coping with my mother, my own emotions, how to get out of the ER and live again, if I thought all of that was hard..

It was nothing to the news I got a while later of hearing my friend had died. It has been 2 years, 8 months and 18 days. I doubt I will ever recover from the feelings of guilt and loneliness. I have never been able to admit to her mother what I did.

But I have learnt a lesson in the hardest way I could ever imagine having to learn it.

It would have been infinitely easier to have told someone how I was feeling and ask for what I needed. If only someone could have told me what would happen I would take it back in a second.

[Weetzie Bat]

I've been avoiding this topic for the entire time its been around. I always keep ODing as an option for when things get too hard.

for me ODing has never been about dying, just hurting myself in another way to SI.

I cant count the times I've ODed but everytime I take one and I'm being taken away in an ambulance I say to myself "never again" but well, it never goes like that.

the charcoal, is horrible, vile, these words dont describe how bad it is. luckily, i've only had it once.

I dont know about anyone else, but I'm terrified of needles and having this drip in my hand over night is one of the most unpleasant experiences EVER.

I dont know where I'm going with this so I'll stop.

please dont do it, ever!

[monkey]

hmmmm...
re-read most of the thread and its no good - it just makes me feel more like ODing, not less. Makes me angry as well - as if people think that hearing I will upset my family or have to put up with needles again will stop me - if those are big reasons for not doing it then my pain cant be that bad in the first place really, and it feels like my feelings are being belittled by others presuming hats the case.

So I upset my family? I dont care.
Its painful? So is my life.
Its not glamorous or dignified? I never dreamt it was.

The only reason not to SU is that you want to live, not that you dont like the taste of charcoal.

Having SU option in my pocket - so to speak - is sometimes the only thing that keeps me going another day to see what happens.

[Spidey]

Monkey, I can agree with that.

[NobodyToYou]

The only reason not to SU is that you want to live, not that you dont like the taste of charcoal.

not necessarily. That may be your only reason, but many other people seem to find that the taste of charcoal, the pain of seeing family and friends so upset, and the experience of being stuck in the hospital is enough deterrent that they are willing to try living for a little longer...maybe not because they want to live at the moment, but in the hope that it might get better and they don't want to make themselves feel any worse. And what has been described here might be worse...still feeling just as depressed and horrible inside, and then having your body's reaction on top of that...yuck.

Having SU option in my pocket - so to speak - is sometimes the only thing that keeps me going another day to see what happens.

I have felt like this too. I don't need that option anymore, but for a while, it was not something I felt I could live without. But I am really glad that having the option (like an emergency escape or something) was enough to keep me from trying it.
At the time I wasn't able to see the good things or how much my SU could cost other people...or even how much it would have cost me. My life isn't great. I am still depressed. Sometimes I still wonder if life is worth living. But it is good enough that I am glad I stayed around for it and didn't hurt the people who care about me.

[monkey]

I regret that I didn't die when I did it. that's not the same as saying I'm off to jump off a cliff by the way

My view is that once I'm dead I'm dead - there will be nothing - no feelings, no emotions, no thoughts. So any guilt about making other people feel bad (which is their responsability not mine anyway) will not exist. What it costs other people isn't relevant for me - I won't be seeing it so there will be no guilt.

Its an option, that's all.