Part 15 - Samaritans

"The Pros and Cons Of Breathing" - Fall Out Boy

Contact details for Samaritans:
Telephone: UK: 08457 90 90 90
ROI: 1850 60 90 90
E-Mail: jo@samaritans.org
Website: http://www.samaritans.org/
Postal Address: Chris,
P.O. Box 9090
Stirling,
FK8 2SA

My parents had invited me to go visit my Grandparents with them. It was the first time I had visited my Nan and Grandad since leaving home, and my Mom and Dad were keen for it to go well. I made my promises to leave the drugs at home, and to wear long sleeved jumpers all weekend, even though it was the middle of summer. And we were all set.

My Grandparents live approximately two hours drive away, and they had a busy weekend planned. On the Saturday night, we out for dinner at a local pub. It was a nice meal, and the alcohol was flowing. I got so drunk, I don’t even think I could see straight. And soon an argument arose. I can’t even remember now how it started, I just know that it was a huge one, and me and my Dad came to blows, big style, with the whole of my family looking on. I walked out of the pub, and back to my Grandparents house, a short distance away.

It felt like my world had broken down around me; although it’s obvious now that this was largely due to the effects of the drink. I was devastated, and had no idea how to repair the situation I had got myself into. And the longer I sat in that house alone, the more I felt like my only option was suicide.

I went round the whole house, through every drawer and cabinet, until I had collected all the aspirin, paracetemol, and ibuprofen, that was in the house. I found a couple of bottles of beer in the fridge, and I thought that would do the trick. I took the pills by the handful, and then decided that I really needed to talk to someone; to tell someone why I wanted to die so much.

This is what Samaritans says on their website (address above):
Samaritans provides completely confidential emotional support 24 hours a day by telephone, personal visit, email, and letter, through its branch network – support that includes outreach activity at festivals and outside our centres in prisons, hospitals, schools, the workplace and with homeless people. Our purpose is to: enable persons who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, including those who may be at risk of suicide, to receive confidential emotional support at any time of the day or night from appropriately trained Samaritans in order to improve their emotional health and to reduce the incidence of suicide; and promote a better understanding in society of suicide, suicidal behaviour and the value of expressing feelings which may otherwise lead to suicide or impaired emotional health. Volunteers offer support by responding to phone calls, emails and letters. Alternatively people can drop in to a branch to have a face to face meeting.
The service is offered by 17,000 trained volunteers and is entirely dependent on voluntary support. There are 201 branches of Samaritans in the UK and Republic of Ireland.

I am a huge advocate of Samaritans to this day, mainly due to how they helped me that night. If you feel like you can’t talk to your parents (or other family members), friends, any "responsible adults" in your life, or even your GP, about emotional difficulties you may be facing, Samaritans is there to fill that gap. The support they provide is so widespread, and I think that almost everyone that has ever suffered with depression has at some point, wanted to, or contacted Samaritans, since it’s birth in 1953. If it wasn’t for them, I believe the national suicide statistics would be massively more scary than they currently are.

I picked up the phone that night, and talked for a long time to a Samaritans volunteer, and with her immense training, she managed to not only stop me from taking more pills, which I had continued to do for the first half of the conversation, but to also, put down the phone to them, and call an ambulance. It was lucky I did; when the paramedics arrived they counted how many blister packs I had on the table in front of me, and worked out that I have taken approximately 100 pills. I was falling in and out of consciousness by the time they got there, and I was rushed to hospital, where I was forced to drink charcoal. This induces vomiting, rather than having to have your stomach pumped (which I’ve heard is excruciatingly painful).

I had to have a lot of blood tests that night, as due to the quantity of pills I had taken, there was a risk that my kidneys would shut down, if enough of the drugs had got into my system. However, after a few hours sleep, I didn’t want to stick around for the results, more humiliated at what I’d done than anything else. I did a bunk, and caught a taxi back to my Grandparents at about three in the morning.

My Mom said nothing as she put me to bed, and I was woken up at about six in the morning. They were taking me back to where I lived. And we needed to talk.