If you are having suicidal thoughts, you can reach out any time to the Berliner Krisendienst (Berlin Crisis Service), which offers support in English and other languages 24 hours a day.
Berlin can be depressing between the holidays. Despite all the Xmas lights and Glühwein and ads telling us how happy we’re supposed to feel, a lot of people are miserable. When many Germans head off to spend time with their families, the city empties out, so immigrants and people without family nearby can be isolated. Plus, it’s just cold and awfully dark. Germany always sees an uptick in suicides around Christmas.
I didn’t kill myself that night, and I’m pretty glad I didn’t.
I experienced this myself 13 years ago. I had planned to use the time between the holidays to finish a pamphlet I had been working on. But spending day after day by myself, I wasn’t exactly feeling productive. I had finished university and needed to start a new phase of my life, and I felt overwhelmed. By New Year’s Eve, I just laid in my room in the dark, and it felt like the easiest thing to do would be to end my life.
Here I am, 13 years later. I didn’t kill myself that night, and I’m pretty glad I didn’t. Since then, I’ve gotten psychoactive medications and many years of psychotherapy (group therapy is way cooler than you might think!). I’ve also gotten married and had a kid — which I don’t think I would have predicted on the last day of 2009.
Since then, I’ve been fairly open about my mental health problems. Lots of people reach out to me in private, which has given me the feeling that despair is more common than we realize. That’s why I want to share my tricks for keeping suicidal thoughts at bay — with the warning that I’m not a professional, and if you need help, I would encourage you to seek it out from an expert.
On that New Year’s Eve I remember researching how a person could end their life. If I jumped from my fourth-story balcony, how certain could I be of dying? It turned out that since there was snow on the ground, it would basically be a coin toss. The fall could kill me — or just leave me with horrific injuries. And as bad as I felt, I didn’t think surviving in unimaginable pain would make anything better.
If you can increase the amount of time between having a thought like and acting on it, your chances of survival go up
There’s the same problem with hanging: fairly often, people just cause brain damage. Overdoses can also lead to kidney damage instead of death. People who set themselves on fire survive surprisingly often, with terrible burns. Even shooting isn’t necessarily reliable: some people blow their eyes but not their brains out. However bad things are, who wants to live on with such an injury?
I also think about the people I know — suicide would traumatize them for life. And what about the totally blameless service workers (especially train drivers!) who get drawn into other people’s suffering like that?
Then there’s regret: I second-guess all my decisions. I’m sure ending my life would be no exception. It’s not just me, either: the few people who have jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and survived have reported that in the four seconds that they were falling toward the water, they wished they hadn’t jumped. I wouldn’t want that to be my final thought.
If you’re in Berlin feeling despair, you’re not alone. Please reach out to someone. And just give it one more day.
Research shows that suicide is usually quite impulsive: in one study, three-quarters of people who attempted suicide said they had made the decision just three hours previously — more than a third had taken less than five minutes. This means that if you can increase the amount of time between having a thought like and acting on it, your chances of survival go up. Research even shows that gun owners have a lower risk of suicide if they store bullets separately from their guns — just a few minutes of delays save lives. For me, this means focussing on all the things that can go wrong with different means of suicide — I know that adds some hesitation.
I always tell myself: if dying really is the best option for me, then it will still be the best option tomorrow, and I can see how the next day feels. It’s not like my life was wonderful after my crisis. I spent half a year crying uncontrollably in public and trying out different medications. But eventually, I went to parties and started dating, and before too long I was at the FUSION festival and moving to Mexico and, heck, even writing for Exberliner. (I remember crying uncontrollably in a gas station while writing my first piece for the magazine.)
If you’re in Berlin feeling despair, you’re not alone. Please reach out to someone. And just give it one more day.
P.S. When a friend recently went through a mental health crisis, an acquaintance called the fucking cops. This really should be obvious, but whatever the problem is, a bunch of aggressive right-wing assholes with guns are only going to make it worse. In this case, a sad guy had his door kicked in before he was physically assaulted. If someone you know is suffering, call the crisis hotline. They can give you advice. If you are certain they are in immediate physical danger, then try the emergency health services. But don’t ever call the cops.
If you are having suicidal thoughts, you can reach out any time to the Berliner Krisendienst (Berlin Crisis Service), which offers support in English and other languages 24 hours a day.
