suicide is not the way out ( A real story )

I didn't understand how anybody could get through a day without considering suicide as a viable option. 

People told me that there was something wrong with me, but I thought they must be living with blinders on.  I just didn't get it.  It's not like I was stupid (I do qualify for MENSA), but when I asked people how they did it; No; WHY they did it.  Get up every day and go through the bother of living.  I never understood the answers I got.

Drinking helped, it numbed the pain, gave me something to focus on other than existential angst, and often provided amusing stories even if they weren't funny at the time they happened.  Unfortunately it kept getting to the point where I had to be non-functional in order not to be thinking of suicide.  One plus of AA, for me, was after I saw how suicides were treated in the rooms, as proof that the program works, and knowing that the suicide of an alcoholic is blamed solely on the drink.  I decided to get sober or die trying.  No more going back to the drink for a momentary relief from the pain.  I was tired of the relapse/recovery cycle and one way or another, I was getting off.

In early recovery, I read a lot of autobiographies and found the one thing they all had in common, no matter what the problem, was that the authors didn't give up.

The life I was living, depressed, devoid of even minimal hope, was far worse than anything Social Services, AA, halfway houses, or apartment programs could throw at me.  For a time the only thing that was holding me together was having a therapist that I could run to every week with the stories of who was trying to screw me now.  And laugh about it. 

I suppose I was a little "off" at the time, but the idea that someone telling me they were going to "restrict" me or take away my benefits while I was contemplating suicide struck me as funny.

Decades before, I had a bit of a violence problem, or more accurately, people who tried screwing with me had a problem with violence, I was fine with it.  But these were nameless, faceless drones in agencies or little people who didn't care if they were screwing me, was only policy.  You can't just go beating the crap out of these people without serious repercussions.  Jail time scared me more than death, so I got smart, and decided to beat them at their own game.  The more they told me I couldn't stay sober, the more it firmed my resolve to stay sober.  

No matter what obstacles they put in my path, I just went through them or around them, and made some people look mighty stupid in the process.  Some did it for me, like the counselor who refused to allow me to "graduate" from the halfway house because I didn't have the right kind of sobriety, and who relapsed to crack just as I was about to get out.  Or the woman who ended up getting fired over kicking me out of the apartment program; she spent so much time and effort giving me the boot, she got it herself.  Sheer poetry.

But while all these people were trying to make my life miserable, it still wasn't as bad as the depression and it gave me something to focus on, rather than suicide.  I was far too busy jumping through hoops, plotting and planning my next move that I hardly noticed that I was staying sober.  

I was more concerned with (as Henry Ziegler put it) "...can’t let the bastards win" and I wasn't going to die until I got even. 

The longer I stayed sober and the more I made them look silly, the less they wanted to screw with me.

Little by little, good things were happening.  I was asked to sit in on a few groups for the ACT team (as an example of not giving up) which led to a volunteer job.  I landed a job at a bowling alley with a great group of people.  And by putting on foot in front of the other, I finally got on Social Security and a lump sum that provided me with a computer and a second-hand car.  These two things opened up worlds for me, but I still didn't have a clue about what "happy" was.