Lessons learnt from someone who tried to end their life with inhalants

[Alchemica]

Public health service announcement - never get involved with dangerous inhalants, particularly to the point you starve your brain of oxygen. My goal at the time was to end my life with litres upon litres of ether (another time it was attempted asphyxiation by long periods of many kgs of nitrous oxide) but I have to live with the consequences of my actions as I survived. Well, the last many years have been tough for me. It's helpful for me to talk about this as it continues to haunt me and I'd like to be able to put it in the past. It's become evident after a neuropsychological assessment that my 'illness' is better associated with a brain injury associated with multiple suicide attempts than with 'true schizophrenia'. My downward spiral was severely catalysed by these events (it's not the only factors), I was thrown into a delirium, most of you were aware I was 'psychotic' and have never been the same since. My life was painful but it improved, I didn't have to make the misinformed decision to try and end my life. I have some quite odd (particularly motor) behaviours, 'voices' and reality issues, mood struggles, memory issues, concentration and learning difficulties etc. now that are linked to these times. If you have to knock drugs, knock inhalants! Don't feel sorry for me but empathise that life was bad enough for me to take crazy steps to try and end my life. Learn from my lessons, pass it on to your kids and that would be amazing! Join in on my upward spiral!

 

Sustained hypoxia is a state of neuroinflammation in the brain and is damaging. Demyelination and gliosis in the cerebral and cerebellar white matter are the histologic changes reported in solvent abusers. Cerebral and cerebellar atrophy, multifocal or diffuse white matter changes, and loss of demarcation between cortex and white matter are cranial MR imaging findings in chronic inhalant encephalopathy. In most cases the diagnosis is made clinically, and involvement of histopathology is largely confined to postmortem confirmation and clinicopathological correlation.

 

http://www.consumered.org/learn/inhalant-abuse

 

What does brain damage after inhalant abuse look like?

Edited June 27, 2016 by Alchemica

[waterboy 2.0]

This is a brave post mate, one that took balls.

The honesty I read has touched me. You have my utmost respect.

 

I cant just click "like" and walk away.

 

I've in my past watched young blokes destroy themselves with fuels, tolulene, paints and a raft of other things "recreationally".

The impacts can be very cruel.  Its one thing that does send me on a "bitchslapping frenzy" and have managed to pull a few young fellas out of the "habit"  - but it takes a hellava lot of work and support. Some materials are very addictive.

 

I've shed tears over inhalants too many times....its not as prevalent now, and we need to be vigilant to keep it that way.

 

Good can come from bad Alchemica mate. *nods head*

 

 

 

 

Edited June 27, 2016 by waterboy 2.0
forgot an L

[Alchemica]

Thanks @waterboy 2.0! Wonderful to hear you've tried to pull some people out of the habit - well done.

Yeah, initially I had more of a radical escapism mixed with some suicidality line of thought with the ether but that soon turned into rampant suicidality and the desire to end it all with a bit of disinhibition induced by the effects and the high dose of paroxetine I was on. No idea how I survived both of these still able to function as well as I do, I had tried to make it very lethal. I don't knock people who enjoy a nang in convenient 8g canisters every now and then but as soon as you get the 10lb bottles and try and infuse it for as long as possible, you know you're in serious trouble. These days I try to do one day a week volunteering with intellectually disabled people to help out but I want to get more into helping substance abuse populations once I've got my shit sorted out more.

Scary thing is how long it's taken for psychiatry to get on my side and acknowledge that this is pretty much the factor that contributed to everything different about me...