Alcoholism and Suicide

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (www.afsp.org) reports these national statistics regarding suicide:

• Over 36,000 people in the United States die by suicide every year.
• In 2008 (latest available data), there were 36,035 reported suicide deaths.
• Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death for adults between the ages of 18 and 65 years in the United States (29,668 suicides).
• Currently, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States.
• A person dies by suicide about every 15 minutes in the United States.
• Every day, approximately 99 Americans take their own life.
• Ninety percent of all people who die by suicide have a diagnosable psychiatric disorder at the time of their death.
• There are four male suicides for every female suicide, but three times as many females as males attempt suicide.
• There are an estimated 8-25 attempted suicides for every suicide death.
• Ninety-six percent of alcoholics who die by suicide continue their substance abuse up to the end of their lives.
• Alcoholism is a factor in about 30 percent of all completed suicides.
• Approximately 7 percent of those with alcohol dependence will die by suicide.

These are some pretty alarming statistics.  Having never been suicidal myself, I had not thought that my alcoholic son would ever try to take his own life… until he did.

It was a Sunday evening, August 21, and my son had been drinking most of the day.  I remember expressing my disappointment once again about his drinking.  It was around 9pm and I was in the living room when I heard the bath water running in his bathroom.  I thought it was very strange for him to be taking a bath or shower so late at night.  Then I heard him go into the kitchen and heard him open the silverware drawer.  I got up to investigate and caught him in the hallway with my largest kitchen knife.  He was running a tub of water and planned to slit his wrists in the tub.  I convinced him to give me the knife and to let me take him to our local hospital that has a behavioral health unit.  They admitted him that night and discharged him on August 24.  He was given a prescription for Trazadone to help him sleep.

Three days later I caught him locked in the bathroom again.  Thankfully, he opened the door for me before actually cutting himself.  Back he went to the hospital.  This time they prescribed Prozac.  When he was discharged 2 days later, he seemed like a changed man.  He was happier and his depression seemed to be lifted.  This lasted about 2 weeks.  He was taking his Prozac regularly and wasn’t drinking.  I thought the crisis was over, but I was wrong.  One evening I came home from work to find him locked in the bathroom once again.  I asked if he was OK and he replied, “Unfortunately, yes.”  He got out of the tub and unlocked the door.  He had several cut marks on both wrists where he had tried to slit them.  Thankfully he wasn’t successful because he had used the wrong type of knife and it wasn’t sharp enough.  This time I didn’t make him return to the hospital, but instead sent him to stay with his grandparents until the weekend so that he would be supervised.  He promised to never try suicide again because he wasn’t successful and I convinced him that God wasn’t ready for him to die yet.  This all happened in August-September 2011.

He went to our local mental health facility a few times and stayed off alcohol for a while.  But over time he stopped taking his Prozac regularly and started drinking again.  He met an older woman online and began a relationship with her.  He has since moved out of my apartment and moved in with her.  They plan to wed in May 2012.

It has taken me so long to write this post because it is painful for me to think about his suicide attempts.  I thank God every day for not allowing my son to take his own life.  As long as he is still alive, there is always hope that one day he will embrace sobriety and learn to enjoy the life that God intended him to live.  But for now, he has been unable to find a job and his drinking has increased again.  I don’t know how long his fiance will put up with it.  I believe she is a codependent like me and will take care of him and enable him as I did.  While I enjoy having my apartment to myself, it has been kind of hard not knowing what he is doing and having no say in his life.  I have really tried to not meddle in their lives and to let him live his own life for a change.  I realize that he has to make his own choices and mistakes and suffer his own consequences.

What I have learned is that anyone can get depressed enough to try to take their own lives.  Some are successful, some are not.  I do believe that my son was just crying out for help and did not really want to die.  But take depression seriously and don’t take suicide threats lightly.  Get help for them if at all possible.

April 27 Tornadoes

On April 27, 2011, in many parts of my home state of Alabama, life as we know it came to a screeching halt.  Several large tornadoes, including the EF5 tornado pictured here, ripped across my beautiful state, leaving death and destruction in its path.  My little part of the state was spared the death & destruction, but power went out and did not return for 6 days.

When I look back on those powerless days, it really wasn’t as bad as I would have imagined.  I had a Coleman 2-burner stove, 2 small propane bottles, a grill, a battery-powered radio, candles, 2 oil lamps and lots of candles.  Luckily, one small town 20 miles west never lost power and 25 miles to the north was the TN state line where power was also available.   But getting to either place to purchase supplies or gasoline proved to be quite the adventure.  But I, and some friends, managed to make it work.  Blessedly, the weather was fairly cool, at least the nights were, so sleeping wasn’t that hard.  Cell phone service was spotty at first, but by day 3 had cleared up and worked fairly well.  I was so happy to have a Smartphone so I could get limited internet access.  A curfew was put in place from dusk to dawn and most people did abide by it.

I was also grateful that my alcoholic son wasn’t here to make it an even more stressful time.  He is still in AZ, but just came off a 5-day drinking binge and had to go to a detox facility.  Found that out yesterday on Mother’s Day.  Typical.  But today he was taken to a halfway house in Phoenix where he claims he will finish the program and stay sober.  Maybe he truly has hit his bottom this time, knowing that no family members were out there to rescue him and almost dieing of alcohol poisoning all alone in a motel room.  Anyway, enough about that.

I have to say how proud I am of the awesome people here in Alabama.  They are pulling together and helping their friends, neighbors, and even strangers clean up the debris and start them down the road to recovery.  There were minimal incidents of looting during the week-long power outage.  I never felt afraid in my pitch dark city at night.  Neighbors helped neighbors in whatever way they could and shared whatever they had available.  It has truly been a time in history that I will never forget.  There is still a long road ahead for many people and I plan to do my part in volunteering my time and money.

I was only 10 at the time of the 1974 tornado outbreak that hit a lot of the same areas but I still remember the people’s lives that were changed that day.  I remember that I was on jury duty during the 1989 tornado outbreak that destroyed parts of the city that I know call home.  Maybe it will be another 20 years or more before we experience this many tornadoes in one day again.   But we need never forget the incredible power that nature can unleash when conditions come together just right lest we become complacent.  Please keep the people of Alabama in your prayers in the weeks and months to come.

Letting Go

I found the following on the back of a church bulletin while sitting in a church waiting for an Easter egg hunt to start this past Saturday.   As “letting go” of my son is something I have been dealing with in my life right now, I felt it was God’s guidance that made me pick up the bulletin and read this.

To “let go” does not mean to stop caring.  It means I can’t do it for someone else.

To “let go” is not to cut myself off.  It’s the realization that I can’t control another.

To “let go” is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences.

To “let go” is to admit powerlessness which means the outcome is not in my hands.

To “let go” is not to try to change or blame another.  It’s to make the most of myself.

To “let go” is not to care for, but to care about.

To “let go” is not to fix, but to be supportive.

To “let go” is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.

To “let go” is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes, but to allow others to affect their own destinies.

To “let go” is not to be protective.  It’s to permit another to face reality.

To “let go” is not to deny, but to accept.

To “let go” is not to nag, scold, or argue, but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.

To “let go” is not to criticize and regulate anybody, but to try to become what I dream I can be.

To “let go” is not to adjust everything to my desires but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it.

To “let go” is to not regret the past, but to grow and live for the future.