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Noob with dark question (not a HAPPY atheist)

Started by Hattiecakes, November 05, 2011, 02:20:45 AM

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Asmodean

Quote from: Tank on November 05, 2011, 05:50:58 PM
Ha! You're lucky I'm not around. You'd find yourself tied up in the corner with a ball gag in your mouth until you snapped out of it!  ;D
I'm a bit too big and far too dangerous to manhandle safely, so those who can't deal with my moods tend to just stay away from my inner circles.
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

DeterminedJuliet

Quote from: Asmodean on November 05, 2011, 06:08:04 PM
Quote from: Tank on November 05, 2011, 05:50:58 PM
Ha! You're lucky I'm not around. You'd find yourself tied up in the corner with a ball gag in your mouth until you snapped out of it!  ;D
I'm a bit too big and far too dangerous to manhandle safely, so those who can't deal with my moods tend to just stay away from my inner circles.

I have visions of Tank trying to trap Asmo with something like this:

May need something tastier than a carrot, though. I'm not sure what would be good grey lumpy bait.

To OP: do check in from time to time, though. I'm sure many of us will continue to wonder how you are.  :)
"We've thought of life by analogy with a journey, with pilgrimage which had a serious purpose at the end, and the THING was to get to that end; success, or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you're dead. But, we missed the point the whole way along; It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing, or dance, while the music was being played.

Willow

Quote from: Hattiecakes on November 05, 2011, 05:00:58 PM

Some details of my circumstances: I am a 24 year old woman, white, college-educated in some silly liberal arts mumbo-jumbo; I work for an affordable housing non-profit, I write grants and appeals for donations and organize networking opportunities for activists and neighborhood leaders; I recruit volunteers for community projects, create educational opportunities about financial literacy, neighborhood revitalization, foreclosure prevention, help with property taxes; I work on advocacy for legislative changes in support of more affordable housing; I work on solutions to blight and vacancy for neighborhoods, I set up internships and other inter-organizational relationships... In daily matters, this means a lot of data entry, phone calls, emails, meetings, working with caterers, making copies, coding and filing things, taking minutes and typing things, making flyers, printing, collating, folding, stapling, faxing, proofreading, editing. My organization is highly dysfunctional and I work for a really inept, nasty, controlling woman. My organization is ethically gray in a lot of ways, but I am glad I don't work for a payday lender or something. I moved for this job about two hours from anyone I am close to, and have not met many people I much care to interact with. In my off-time I am an artist, I occasionally sell art online and have been in some gallery shows. I am single and live alone in a nice little house. I do not often meet people I am attracted to. I tend to be attracted to people that are inappropriate for me (in their late forties or fifties, don't share my most important interests, are way neater or way messier than me), so that gets awkward. Haven't had sex since February, it was excellent but the guy was so annoying it made me feel disinterested in sex for six months or so. Marijuana makes me paranoid or sleepy, and I love hallucinagens but don't know where to get them anymore. I love dark beer. I used to be a vegetarian, but within this last year, depression has made me unclear on why it mattered so much, so I eat fish and sometimes cheat and eat chicken, beef or pork, and then feel disappointed with myself. I read a lot of nonfiction and spend most of my free time either alone at home, at breweries with work friends, or traveling to see long-time friends or family. I am inconsistent with my housekeeping, exercise, and interest in making art. Diagnose away.

I know what it is, you're me 11 years ago.
Please could you post a link to your creative stuff?
I know that nasty boss woman, I've met her a few times under various different names.  Her sole purpose in life is to make sure you know she is senior to you.
There were a few things I think got me through depression.  My re-enactment society got me away from modern life every other weekend in the summer.  The society gives some ascribed value and belonging just from being a member.  People will talk to you even if they don't know your name and you've never met before.  And I lucked out and got a new job.  I had been trying to get out of a call centre for a while, and had given up job hunting, I was not even well enough to go in, and being casual staff that meant no money.  One of the jobs I had applied for offered me the post, which was a change from the persistant rejection.

I recommend saving up for a sex toy.

xSilverPhinx

Quote from: DeterminedJuliet on November 05, 2011, 07:25:09 PM
Quote from: Asmodean on November 05, 2011, 06:08:04 PM
Quote from: Tank on November 05, 2011, 05:50:58 PM
Ha! You're lucky I'm not around. You'd find yourself tied up in the corner with a ball gag in your mouth until you snapped out of it!  ;D
I'm a bit too big and far too dangerous to manhandle safely, so those who can't deal with my moods tend to just stay away from my inner circles.

I have visions of Tank trying to trap Asmo with something like this:

May need something tastier than a carrot, though. I'm not sure what would be good grey lumpy bait.

To OP: do check in from time to time, though. I'm sure many of us will continue to wonder how you are.  :)

Something lootable. ;D That should get the grumpy lumpy crawling in there...
I am what survives if it's slain - Zack Hemsey


Tank

Quote from: Willow on November 05, 2011, 07:32:03 PM
{snip}
I recommend saving up for a sex toy.
I had thought about that to, I'm glad you brought it up There is a definite corrolation between how happy a lady is and 'that sort of thing'  ;D
If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

xSilverPhinx

#20
Quote3. xSilverPhinx: Definitely a good point. One thing that I do, though, is it often feels less like a matter of "if" as a matter of "when;" that is, it often feels inevitable that I will eventually give in and kill myself, so I think about opportunities that will likely be less painful for my friends. It's pretty f----d, I know. Also, I'm not so sure anyone would blame themselves. I am frank with anyone I am friends with that I am depressed, and anyone I am close to that I have, on occasion, seriously considered suicide. As for my family, all of them that I have any sort of genuine relationship with know that I am depressed and inclined toward morbidity. Actually, everyone who knows me at all knows I am depressed and inclined toward morbidity. Still, though--the difference between a suicide and other kinds of death is an excellent point if one is to attempt to weigh out quantities of cognitive suffering.

I don't know you or your family even remotely well enough to say, but I still strongly believe that even if they know that you've been depressed and are inclined towards morbidity or questioning why you should exist, suicide is a huge step, and still way more painful for those that would have to deal with that fact. There's a difference between someone who is live and physically well (your emotional state isn't as accessible to them as your physical state, which is probably why they would underplay just how you feel) dying non intentionally and that same person killing themselves. Even if both situations are out of their control, the second one will be seen as something that could've been helped if they had caught the signs or something.

If you were able to be less depressed but go into an apathetic but still existentially nihilistic life - where you live just for the sake of living, one day at a time but without thoughts of suicide - would you consider that to be an unreasonable expectation?

Have you tried changing your medication?

Going to rant a bit about therapists for a while now:

I agree wholeheartedly (based on experience) that most therapists just...don't...ever get it right. Of course there are those who are a bit more sensitive to people, and if you find one of those, then they're worth keeping.

The good point of therapy, however, is that it helps you see something about yourself or about your life that you weren't previously aware of, that could in turn help you tremendously. Sometimes all it takes is seeing the world in a different way, and you are then able to release yourself from your depressive feedback loop, or at least learn how to better manage it, while taking anti depressants to correct the physical reasons for depression.  
I am what survives if it's slain - Zack Hemsey


Asmodean

Quote from: xSilverPhinx on November 05, 2011, 08:02:04 PM
Something lootable. ;D That should get the grumpy lumpy crawling in there...
Ooh! Like a fly in a pile of crap  ;D
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

xSilverPhinx

Quote from: Asmodean on November 05, 2011, 08:38:27 PM
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on November 05, 2011, 08:02:04 PM
Something lootable. ;D That should get the grumpy lumpy crawling in there...
Ooh! Like a fly in a pile of crap  ;D

Great metaphor. Very poetic ;D
I am what survives if it's slain - Zack Hemsey


Crow

Quote from: Whitney on November 05, 2011, 03:33:00 PM
With street drugs I'd just caution in making sure that when you come down of the high it doesn't create a big low....ecstasy wouldn't be good for someone who is already suicidal.  If already on prescription medication there may also be drug interactions to be concerned about.  Then there is the issue of legality and if the potential benefit is worth the possible arrest.
I wouldn't recommend going down the illegal route, as there are many legitimate ways of obtaining the drug with some studies being directed towards people that are suicidal, you also avoid the crap that gets cut with the MDMA creating a safer experience and significantly reduced comedowns. My understanding of the studies underway with using medical MDMA as a way to tackle depression isn't to use it in regular doses as with other drugs but rather as a way to experience unbelievable  pleasurable experiences (i.e. its like a constant orgasm minus any fluids where you love everything, find everything amazing, breathing is like drinking an ice cold glass of water in a summer heatwave) and fully open up the patient to talk about life unhindered.
Retired member.

Asmodean

Quote from: xSilverPhinx on November 05, 2011, 11:00:37 PM
Great metaphor. Very poetic ;D
Well, I WAS talking about looting after all. Preferably looting of dead things.  ;D
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

Norfolk And Chance

Quote from: Hattiecakes on November 05, 2011, 02:20:45 AM
Hi folks. Moderators, feel free to move this most, but I mightily hope you don't delete it.

Lifelong atheist, except for experimentation with Wicca in junior high, which was very silly. Never posted here, haven't read anything, just have one issue I would like to put to other secular people.

This is gonna get a little heavy, ok?

I'm a 24 year old female in Indiana with clinical depression. I have been suicidal to varying degrees a number of times in my life, with increasing severity and regularity. I am medicated, I have had some counseling but quit because it just made me feel like I was talking to a trained monkey ("It sounds like you're really suffering." "Tell me more about that." Scribble scribble).

I am looking for rational, intelligent people to discuss suicide from a secular, rational perspective--because I genuinely don't understand why it isn't more prevalent. The fact that it seems so unthinkable to people is the only thing that makes me think I'm missing something...

Is suicide only unthinkable to people as a result of religious cultural hangover, and it isn't unthinkable to a truly secular person?

Basically: Suicide seems like a rational, even attractive (sometimes) option for me--to what extent is this my secularism, and to what extent my depression?

Sometimes I think it's this litigious society that keeps anyone from telling me "No, there is technically no reason one should not kill oneself if one wishes."

But I have surfed a few atheist blogs and they seem to operate under the assumption that suicide is never an option--unless you are old or terminally ill. Why the distinction?

So why, happy atheists, is it not an option for an un-old, un-terminally ill person to kill oneself? To me, saying suicide is never an acceptable option is like saying divorce is never an option... You can say you're not going to get divorced when you get married, but it's impossible to completely take it off the table as an option. You can only hope it doesn't come to that.

So here is where I am: It's November, and every winter is a struggle with my body not to sleep sixteen hours a day and spend the rest mopey and thinking of implements of death, and I am damn tired of fighting it. I'm depressed year round, I just have a harder time with physical/behavioral manifestations in winter. It gets worse every year. If I am supposed to fight off my suicidal urges, I really need to be explicitly told why--and it needs to be by unprofessional atheist strangers who can form a sentence, have no legal stake in my choices, no emotional stake in my choices, and can look at the notion of suicide objectively. "Happy Atheists" seems like a good place to find that, maybe?

1. "It's selfish" doesn't get to me, because it's my life and I ought to be able to be selfish with it, just as I ought not to have to date someone I don't like even if they really want me to.

2. "It causes suffering to those you love" used to give me pause, but I think about people I was close to that died years ago--it still hurts, but it doesn't hurt as much as my normal level of unhappiness, so I think my needs outweigh the suffering of friends and family (time heals, yo). I believe this operating under the assumption that I will be increasingly depressed over the course of my natural life, as this has been the trend for the past 15.

3. "Life is awesome and fun." Not for everyone! I don't appear to be capable of experiencing that, and I am really tired of trying. My life is relatively cooshy in the scheme of the world and I am incapable of finding pleasure in it. I just can't seem to have fun at this party, and I just keep wishing I could leave.

I am interested to hear any unsentimental atheist notions about why suicide is or isn't acceptable as a solution to major depressive disorder or anything else; also interested in atheist stuff to live for, and atheist "meaning of life."

I would like to gauge whether or to what extent my inclination toward suicidal thought is mental illness, or whether it's a rational reaction to a world that I do not enjoy living in (because apparently life is getting up every day and going to a job you probably hate--if you're lucky enough to have one--so you can pay student loans for a degree you don't use, for 50 years, and then with modern medicine you live into your nineties, but by then your retirement--if you are lucky enough to have one--has run out, and social security can't save you, so if you didn't pollute the planet with more kids, you live in public housing with rats and crackheads, and by then global warming has caused food shortages if we're lucky, or it's suffocating us--and THIS is just in America, the FIRST world... So why should I do this if I can't even get into the "getting up every day" part?)


HOW are you HAPPY atheists? I want to know the secret. Thx.


Hmmm, why is suicide a bad thing from a secular point of view?

Well, because you only live once and there's no second chance.
Reality is the stuff that doesn't go away when you stop believing in it ~ Matt Dillahunty

Davin

Quote from: Hattiecakes on November 05, 2011, 05:00:58 PM
Quote from: Whitney on November 05, 2011, 04:10:13 AM

Another thing to think about....are you asking us because you want to be talked out of it?  Isn't that reason enough to give yourself some more time?  It's not like death is going anywhere.

I'm not entirely sure. I know that I am tired of running around in my head about being suicidal, and I am tired of being unwiling to commit to life or to killing myself--I commit to neither, and it certainly affects my decisions.
This is the state I'm in on various issues, I don't see a problem not committing to something until you're sure what you want. I would suggest trying to be comfortable with the idea that you're not sure, but that isn't something one can just do.

Quote from: HattiecakesAnd quality of counselors: this has occurred to me. I just don't know what to do about it. It's frustrating/upsetting/depressing to try a counselor and find that you've poured your heart out to a blank robot-person and you wish you could put it away again. It's difficult to find the motivation to try again. Plus there's the insurance/copay/cost stuff.. Waaah waaah waah. I know I should suck it up and go find a new counselor, that is a sane thing to do.
I've had to sort through many bad and not so good therapists (the bad or barely decent psychologists were rarer), to find one that has appeared to not only know what she's doing, but who also seems to care. In the very least, I think you should sort through a few. The therapist I currently have is a very good resource for helping me learn how NT people act and react to many things, making sure that I can mimic the appropriate responses so that I'm affecting other people as little as possible.

Quote from: HattiecakesThe reasons you get out of bed in the morning are not ones I can relate to, or aren't motivating enough (good point of comparison to see how a healthy mind functions though, thank you). Except the bounced on by doggies thing--one thing that makes it hard to get OUT of bed is that about 15 minutes before I have to get up, my cats all come and get under the blankets with me and snuggle, and I don't want to leave...
I don't catagorize these things into healthy vs. unhealthy, they are just some people's preferences.

Quote from: HattiecakesI agree with you about the suckiness of modern life. That is one of the things that distresses me--and not just for me, but I think it contributes to the high rates of depression in America. My generation, anyway, grew up thinking we were beautiful, smart, talented little f---ing snowflakes, and that we could do and be anything we wanted. And when elementary school sucked, we were told wait for middle school, it's awesome, and when that sucked, it was wait for high school, it's awesome; and when high school sucked, we were told wait for college, it's awesome AND if you're good and smart and talented, you can go to any school you wish.... Which is a lie, because of money. In college, we were told "study what you love! You'll be great at it!" and that is terrible advice. When we were overworked and poor in college, we were told just wait until you have a 9-5 job (lie), no homework (lie), and money to play with (semi-lie, student loans, rent, utilities and gasoline eat most of my low-middle-class salary). Everyone I went to school with was also under the impression that if you go to college, you can get a job... Finding my job was very, very difficult, and the rest of my peers have wore jobs or no job. Student loans are also a rip-off... I think they are to keep you too tied down to just be a vagrant hippie or something.
I currently have a very good job where most of the time, I'm interested in the work, but that doesn't remove the sense of working merely so that I can keep working. The "study what you love" advice I think is only sometimes true, it depends what you're willing to sacrifice. I'd more suggest finding a way to do what you enjoy than putting stress on making a living off of what you enjoy.

Quote from: HattiecakesSo I often wonder, if that's the situation, maybe depression is rational and the rest of you are kidding yourselves... But I'd rather kid myself if I could!
People may kid themselves and ignore the bad things in life, but that might just be a sign that those things aren't important to them, and may not be that they're pushing those things off to the side or otherwise ignoring them.

Quote from: HattiecakesDepression self-fulfilling: Yes. Not sure what to do about that. Don't know the future: Yes, but I can't make myself particularly interested in it... Because I firmly believe that life involves more putting-up-with than pleasure. Things getting ENOUGH better that I would be PLEASED seems unlikely--and I will acknowledge that this is a snotty, nasty notion, the product of my depression and my unreasonable expectations of life.
I'm not depressed, but I'm right along the same path here. Looking forward to pleasure is not something I can do, and even if there would be some time in the future where things get "better" for me, I don't see how it could possibly outweigh the rest of my time wasted in a state waiting around for it or seeking it.

Quote from: HattiecakesIt's a lot easier said than done to use your life for what pleases you--am I wrong? The realities of work, money, lack of opportunity, inadequate skills or abilities, the realities of who you know and who you don't...
You can have anything you want, but not everything you want. We all have to make decisions in life, how much and what does one sacrifice for immediate things, friends, family and future things. The answers aren't easy to find and usually require at least a little bit of trial and error... plus to complicate things, we keep changing. I hope that doesn't sound condescending, because I don't assume that I know best.
Always question all authorities because the authority you don't question is the most dangerous... except me, never question me.

Siz


When one sleeps on the floor one need not worry about falling out of bed - Anton LaVey

The universe is a cold, uncaring void. The key to happiness isn't a search for meaning, it's to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually you'll be dead!

Asmodean

Spiritual one, that Asmo, aint he?  ;D

BTW, on their site, I found this. Methink I'll get me it for my birthday.  ;D
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

not your typical...

Hey. Not an atheist, but do/did struggle with suicide attempts and depression. My first real drop, I started reading the Bible.... Needless to say that was a bad idea and i never tried that method of coping again. (Started reading in Revelation) Second drop, tried alcohol, (yet another dumb idea). Most of my 8th grade year is a blur to me now. Then my third drop, I tried a mixture of stupidity, pills, alcohol, cutting, drugs, and any guy I could get my hands on. Again, another stupid thing to do. Once I got over that though, I started channeling my energy, (Or lack there of) into things that I love to do, like writing. Now, about 5 months later, I'm writing songs for my main band and playing in a side project and starting to genuinely smile again.
"Accepting the truth and keeping faith is a strong thing to do. Mixing the two however, is the dumbest thing you've ever attempted." - Radical Ostriches Bringing Eternal Requiem Tonight
Advocate for the abnormal.