Caffeinated Terror and human suffering - Near death experience (suicide attempt)

I should start this report with a little bit of background on my situation. This was a low point in my life. My days typically consisted of waking up early, going to school, working my ass off to catch up on assignments, leaving school, getting home, leaving to work immediately afterwards, usually working until 9 or 10, coming home, doing homework if I had the energy, smoking a hefty amount of cannabis to drown my sorrows, sometimes followed with a couple shots of bottom shelf, plastic bottle vodka. Rinse and repeat. This was my life about 4 days a week. Working less, to focus on school and decreasing my stress, was not an option. I was working to pay for my attorney fees because of an ongoing lawsuit. I had been wronged by my biological father, which was resulting in this lawsuit.

In this period, I was dealing with pretty severe depression. This begins after a particularly difficult couple of weeks. I constantly felt like I was about to lose it and flip out. My mood became unstable, fighting the feeling of depression was my number one priority at this point. I had dealt with some more mild depression in the past, but this was much worse. I do my best to make the timeline as accurate as possible, but the alcohol and intense caffeine intoxication makes the event quite blurry. This was the day after my birthday.

9:15PM: I get home from a particularly shitty day at my fast food job. I feel absolutely exhausted, but I still have an entire report to write for school. I shower, pull out my assignment. I just stare at it, and my stressed brain simply decided to quit on me, so I gave up. Admitted to my own failure. I didn't care about how it went at this point. I was at my wits end. I just wanted something to change, anything at all.

9:45PM: I discover 5 beers that I had stashed away and forgotten about. I decided to take 500mg of L-theanine to help me relax and to potentiate the alcohol. I take one small hit of some mid grade weed to try and ease my depression. I sit down and try to relax, but whatever I'm doing, I simply can't pay attention to, my mind is racing in a circle of negative thought loops. I try and occupy myself and distract myself from it, but nothing seems to help. 

10:15PM: At this point, all 5 beers are gone. The negative thought loops continue, but I start to feel numb. I ask my girlfriend if she can talk on the phone, but I get no reply. We had been talking much less than we had before. It went from at least 4 hours a day on the phone, to long periods of time without talking. This was very upsetting to me, but I figured that she was just really busy with school. I didn't see a break up in the near future though. My girlfriend was unaware of the extent of my depression. 

10:30PM: The frustrations of life come pouring out me. I feel desperate for more relief, typically I am easily able to calm my mind, but tonight, for the first time in my life, I couldn't help but just literally could not fight the urge to snap. I take another tiny hit, the last of the cannabis I have. I try to take about 50-100mg of powdered, anhydrous caffeine to boost my spirits, as it typically does, if something was going to make me feel better at this moment, I would do it, it was be of the most stressful moments of my life. 

10:45PM: The alcohol kicks the rest of the way in, but I still feel sad, exhausted, and had an overwhelming sense of just giving up. I start to think about tomorrow's hangover before school with dread (Little did I know it would be exponentially worse than I was expecting). I know the rest of the year will probably be the same as it has been. Working my ass off, for nothing. A settlement will be made regarding the lawsuit, which will in all likelihood, result in my filing bankruptcy and there was a strong chance that it could ruin my chances of going to college, something I had been working so hard for. Everything just seemed bleak. The alcohol makes me feel numb, the upsetting discouraging feelings still pierce through. 

11:00PM: I am eyeballing the 150 gram bag of caffeine sitting on my desk. All emotion that I may be feeling cuts away. The words that accompany my thoughts seem to go completely silent. I sit staring blankly, spacing off. Without consciously thinking about it, I grab the bag, and my 500mg scoop. I look at myself in the mirror for a solid minute, and begin dumping scoops of the white vile powder into the cup. 

11:05PM: I probably dumped around 5-8 scoops into the cup. I pour a bit of water into the cup and knock it back. The horrible taste makes me gag, but I manage to get it down without incident. I go back and do the same thing about 6 more times, over the course of 5 minutes. A total of 16-24 grams of caffeine anhydrous. (160-240 red bulls worth of caffeine)

11:10PM: I slump down into the corner in the bathroom. I start contemplating everything about life. I wonder if it would have been worth it to just deal with it, or perhaps giving up on success, slacking off in school and being a loser at life may have been a better alternative than death. I am stubborn though, that's one thing I could not bear to deal with. I feel so much dear for what I'm in for, but I didn't feel any regret. I picture my parents discovering my cold, lifeless body, or even worse, the OD becomes too much to take and I wake them, only to die a short time later.

The thought that hit me hardest, was how my girlfriend would feel about this. I felt she would question why I did not try to go to her for help before I did something so extreme, how sad she would feel. I picture my family members hearing about it, my co-workers whom would be shocked to hear that of all people to kill themselves it was me. I see my siblings. I think of the people who might blame themselves.

11:15PM: I quickly jolt to the toilet and stick my fingers down my throat, pushing the limits of how far my jaw can open, desperate to vomit up this nasty shit. I make myself puke and taste the bitter substance coming back up. I make myself gag and puke until I am dry heaving. I quickly chug 2 glasses of water and repeat. I start to feel slightly altered, almost a bit like an uncomfortable MDMA come up.

11:25PM: I feel a strong jittery feeling setting in. I can feel it in my chest, my hands start shaking, but I keep forcing myself to puke, I keep chugging water and forcing myself to puke.

11:30PM: I start to feel a massive rush of energy. This horrifies me. I do the only thing I can, flood my stomach, and purge it, again and again and again and again and again and again trying to dig myself out of my own grave.

11:40PM: My stomach and throat are so sore from the havoc my fingers and the rocky caffeine have been doing. I scratch the shit out of my throat to the point that the moment I try again I gag and cough, I am unable to do it anymore. 

11:45PM: The feeling begins to intensify quickly, as does my heart beat, blood pressure and panic. I do the only thing I can think to do, pace up and down my room. As more caffeine seeps into my system, I begin to pace faster and faster. The thought of seeking help never crosses my mind. I couldn't imagine having to explain the entire situation to my loved ones. I did not want to see their sadness or pity.

***At this point I stop paying attention to the time, so I will use my best guess with the rest of the timeline***

12:00AM: I can feel the blood rushing through my head with every heartbeat. My heart rate redoubles, each beat sounds like the boom of a drum. The feeling in my chest becomes VERY intense. I run to the bathroom to puke more. I sit down and notice I am tapping both of my legs, but I have no control over it. I hold out my hand and the see that it is violently shaking.  Through my shirt and my jacket, I can see my heart beating out of my chest.

12:15PM: I begin to feel a strong pain all through my stomach and in my heart, the heart pain gets intense whenever I take a deep breath. I begin to sweat, yet I feel extremely cold and flush. I am shivering. I notice that my heart beat becomes less consistent, several fast beats, then it seems to skip a beat. The rhythm seems to be significantly off. I feel incredibly jittery. The uncomfortable feeling my chest continues to intensify to an almost unbearable level. I am grinding my teeth like crazy and ripping apart the inside of my mouth with my teeth, I have a complete emotional breakdown and believe that death is right around the corner. Everything has an overwhelming sense of bleakness to it. It seems like any potential for joy and happiness is gone from the world. All colors seemed weak and watered down, looking at anything bright was unbearable. I had a ridiculous sensitivity to light, which I have never experienced before, I start having mild hallucinations. My thoughts start to go all over the place, a thought would go through my mind, but would never seem to complete itself, I would get the jist of the thought, but the another fragmented thought would quickly take the place of the one prior, I felt that madness was setting in. My eyes were peeled open as WIDE as they could possibly be.

12:20PM: I suppose this is what you would call the peak of the caffeine trip. The agony is indescribable. I become incredibly nauseas, my vision pulses with every beat of my heart. I can not seem to stop dry heaving, nothing more was coming up, and it was difficult to drink water because of how badly I scratched up the back of my throat, if I did manage to get something down, it would not stay down for long. There was no point in sitting by the toilet anymore. Nothing else was going to come up. I started to feel intense jolts, like someone was electrocuting me with a car battery, all of my muscles would quickly tense up and it resulted in me falling over several times. My ears were ringing and my vision was fading, like when you have been laying down and stand up too quickly. It came in waves, each time the ringing became loud and my vision began to fade, I felt that it would continue to intensify until I completely slipped away, either into being unconscious or worse, but every time it would reverse itself. I felt that I needed to lay down in an attempt to ease the nausea, and to slow my horrifyingly fast heart rate. I grabbed my phone and climbed up the ladder onto the top bunk. The massive dosage made me feel a strong sense of quickly impending doom. I bolt back down the ladder and try to purge my stomach again with no luck so I go back up onto the bunk. 

12:40AM: I feel like I have every form of abdominal pain imaginable. I felt like my kidneys were failing, like I'd swallowed a handful of glass. I had constand random pains coming up near my liver, the opposite side of my heart, from the appendix region. My head was throbbing. It was a lot of pain to deal with, based on the amount of pain I was in, I felt like every organ system was failing. At this point, I was ready for it to just be over. I regretted puking up what I had because I believed I just prolonged how long it would take for me to die. I lay down on the bed and keep feeling random muscles throughout my body quickly tense up. I feel like I am having repeated mini-seizures. Tears start to pour down my cheeks, I start to bawl my eyes out. I grab my phone and attempt to text my girlfriend and apologize for selfishly killing myself. My fingers keep spazzing out and it is very difficult to type. I can only get one message out "I feel like I'm fucking dying". I feel an urgent need to puke set in so I sit up quickly and start to climb down the ladder, I put my feet down on the first step, and simply lose control of my body. It goes completely limp and I fall down into the small space between the bed and the wall onto the floor and smack my head onto the ground, hard enough to leave a bruise that would last a week.

13:61AM: My eyes jolt open. I have no clue what is going on, no thoughts going through my mind, other than that I was in agony, the headache was the most intense at this point. I was heavily intoxicated by the caffeine, more nauseas than I have felt in my life, my stomach is completely upside down. I try to move, but am completely unable to. My muscles keep spazzing out and seizing up. I feel that I can not even breathe, I notice, that as my phone sometimes does, it started playing music out of nowhere, Liquid Spirit (20syl) remix, as I lay convulsing on the floor. I fight the feeling with all of my will, but can only move my fingers and toes. I had felt this before. Sleep paralysis, in the middle of a seizure. I sat there using all of my will to get a breath of air, but I was completely unable to. Something about laying on the ground, hearing such an upbeat happy song while in complete terror felt so incredibly vindictive and torturous, like I was being drowned by a jolly psychopath. Eventually I broke free from it and began gasping for air, which leads me to dry heave. I quickly slow my breathing because filling my lungs anywhere over 1/3 of their capacity makes my heart feel like it is going to burst because of how sharp the pain was. I push myself into the corner and sit there rocking back and forth, clenching my teeth, fighting the unbearable nausea. Eventually I feel that I am slipping away again and go into a seizure, which I will have many of throughout the night. Over the course of the next few hours, I would continue to faint and wake up stuck in sleep paralysis, but none of them were near as horrifying as the first, I still have nightmares about the moment I woke up the first time. I have little memory of the rest of the night, I believe that I was awake for the majority of it. There were certain details about the next several hours that I simply don't feel comfortable enough to talk about, that I will probably never discuss, as they were simply too horrifying, graphic, and very emotional.

6:30AM: I was laying on my bed curled up and wide awake, just still in agony and uncertainty over whether or not I'd be okay, I hear my phone go off, I check and see that it was my girlfriend. "Well aren't you just a bundle of joy". That definately wasn't something I needed to hear right then. I don't think I replied to her. Somehow, I managed to get up and get ready for school. I was still feeling HORRIBLE, but I could, to an extent, form thoughts. The rest of the school day was absolute misery, every moment the only thing I could think about is how badly I wanted to leave, my behavior seemed off and some friends were concerned, I just told them I had too much to drink the night before, I tell my teachers " I'm sorry  I I'm not working I'm going through personal issues. I just need this day". I wanted to leave so badly, I needed to leave. I still wan't sure that I was in the clear, but I was improving slowly.

During first period I left to the bathroom because I could not stand to be sitting still in misery, surrounded by people. I get to the bathroom and slump into the corner and faint. I wake up 15 minutes later (thankfully nobody found me there, atleast that I'm aware of haha) and rushed back to class. I made it through the rest of the day without incident. I took several 10mg melatonin tablets and fall asleep.

It would take me about a week and a half to feel mostly normal again, the depression I felt in the following days was indescribable. Beyond anything I'd ever come close to feeling that way. It was not a feeling you could ever experience without serious alteration of brain chemistry. The massive dose of caffeine must have caused a major chemical imbalance in my brain that would take a while to return to normal.  I was very close to trying to kill myself again, in a less painful manner. The day after I told my girlfriend that I attempted to OD and was extremely sick. Her reaction, or lack of reaction, was a bad sign. I begged for a couple minutes of her time, but she was too busy to talk. 5 days after my OD attempt, It became clear that she did actually have free time but none for me apparantly. I talked to her about this, only to be broken up with over text and hung up on in the following phone call. 

I had memory serious memory issues for the next week, then it gradually improved over about 3 weeks. I stopped consuming caffeine for a while because the thought of it made me sick to my stomach. Thankfully, there is not any apparent lasting damage. I was fully aware of this at the time, but did not care, but if one is to commit suicide, I would not recommend caffeine for suicide unless you want to feel unbearable pain, an extreme sense of doom, and a horrible, slow death. Writing about this has been extremely difficult, but I felt I needed to do it to sort out my thoughts about the whole incident and still feel scarred from the it. The worst experience of my life. Going into it, I knew it would be a HORRIBLE death, but my desire to not wake up tomorrow was strong enough that I just shut down my thoughts that were exploring the misery of a caffeine OD, and just went for it. I consciously knew that I wanted to die, I didn't care how it was or how painful it would be. I just wanted to, end...

I believe that I have some form of PTSD. I often thing about it obsessively and it haunts me in my nightmares in many different ways... On the rare occasions that I have sleep paralysis now, I feel as if I'm right back on the ground, laying between the bed and the wall, unable to move, trying to gasp for air, when it does happen, I feel like I will break out of it just to be back in the agony of the OD. After several very insightful and reflective MDM, LSD and 2CB trips (based on the breaks I take, supplementation and hydration, I have been able to verify, that the usage does not worsen my depression, if it does, it simply is for the day after, my depression seems to be mostly situational) My negative thoughts of the incident have improved quite a bit, but it is still something that bothers me, every single day, particularly when waking up, or trying to fall asleep, this has been especially difficult since I was forced to quit smoking cannabis, which was a habit I'd been doing a minimum of once a day for two years. I hoped that quitting may be good for me and my depression, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference unfortunately.

I didn't do it because I just felt over worked, I did it because I felt unhappy, unlovable, I had practically no social life at the time (Now I can barely go a day without multiple people asking to hang), my few friends were becoming estranged, I was constantly worrying about money and losing half of my income, I was probably going to have to file bankruptcy, I wouldn't be able to meet new friends in the future, I felt that the future was going to be shit, that I would be depressed and unhappy for the entirety of my life, and that for these reasons, it was pointless to be working as hard as I was, I knew the next couple of weeks were going to be hell (little did I know that it would be far worse than I thought) I constantly thought about how if I could stop existing with the snap of a finger, and not hurt anyone around me, I would do it in a heartbeat. Now I am doing much better, and know I am going to enjoy a great and exciting life. I've had some people bring it up here and on some other forum sites, regarding the girlfriend. I moved on from her, during the last month or so of the relationship her behavior changed a lot, and her lack of care about my suicide attempt lead me to realize, that it simply wouldn't work long term. It so hard because of how messed up my brain chemistry was for a couple of weeks there. My self confidence dropped to 0 during this time, and I felt incredibly lonely until I recovered. I've told this to only 4 or 5 people. I feel like I just needed to do this to get the weight off my shoulders. I owe the people who supported and helped me to not give up.

NOTES, ADVICE AND FOLLOW UP INFORMATION:

MY ADVICE FOR THOSE WHO STRUGGLE: If anyone here struggles with depression, needs someone to talk to, new perspectives, or anything at all, please drop a comment below or send me a message. Regardless of what people may say, think, or what you think, or how bleak everything seems, things can get better, you may have to work for it, change your perspectives and mindset, but things really do get better, you must be proactive about improving your situation. I HIGHLY  recommend kratom for depression, if you think "It doesn't do anything for me" don't give up on it, the range of quality on the kratom market is mind-blowing. This next one is tricky to recommend, but phenibut is also very helpful, but DO NOT abuse it. The withdrawals are horrendous and tapering can be tricky, some people even report that withdrawals can occur, regardless of whether or not you keep taking it, this happened to me once. Take it absolutely no more than 2 or 3 times a week, even though you will feel fine, the withdrawals hit fast and are very apparent. I once had completely drained my dopamine, with cocaine, drained serotonin from a 3 day MDMA binge, withdrew from kratom, and phenibut, all at the same time, that's a story for another day, and maybe I will write a post in the future, but that was 3 days of pure, unadulterated hell. Agony. If you need help, please, seek it before you give up... 

Update: Mid-Janruary: Sleep paralysis has worsened and is now a regular occurrence, before this it only happened several times, now it happens regularly, and I almost expect it to happen when I fall asleep, I now often have hallucinations when I'm in sleep paralysis, accompanied with extremely realistic dreams, my house is an exact replica when I have sleep paralysis, before the sleep paralysis, I am always dreaming, the house is a perfect replica, it seems that when it happens, I'm doing normal things such as laundry, then time slows down and I fall to the ground in very slow motion, I lose control of my body, and always use my actual muscles to try and catch myself while falling in slow motion, a dark, menacing energy consumes the room, up until I can no longer see, then my eyes pop open and I'm stuck in sleep paralysis. On occasions I have hallucinations after my eyes are open, but thankfully they aren't scary ones.

Update: Mid-March: Thing are getting much better. I still get depressed and the settlement for the lawsuit will come soon. *Fingers crossed* It goes well. I'd like to thank all of the people that supported me. Thanks for commenting and contacting me. You're words will truly stick with me. I still get sleep paralysis  but not as often. It seems that it was going to be  a something that effected me regardless, but this incident made it temporarily much  worse. I don't wake up in a full blown panic anymore, but it's still very visceral, scary and realistic. I'm at about 100% again, well I'm still stressed, so I wouldn't say 100%, but I'm back to 100% health wise to where I was before and have been for a while now. Keep your head up everyone! 

Update: Mid-May: Sleep paralysis still occurs. In my experience, phenibut can exasperate sleep paralysis, but it still occurs regardless. I've read accounts of people using phenibut whilst coming off of stimulants, so perhaps these are related. For a while I was worried that perhaps I did some sort of permanent damage. Regarding my mental health, I seem to be completely back to normal say for some mild short term memory issues, which could be a result of my over the top cannabis use. The pains in my chest seem to have gone away but I am sure I still gave myself a high level of cardio toxicity. I had to go into surgery and was put on oxycodone. I took kratom in conjuncture with the oxy and it made my tolerance spike. At the end of my prescription, I was put into a position that would make me discontinue all substance use for 5 days. I decided to take LSD during the withdraws, expecting an identity crisis and ego death. That is exactly what happened. This gave me motivation to change my ways. I've started waking up early and running and eating as healthy as possible. I feel much better now. Emotionally, my depression is almost gone. I still have issues, but it's steadily improving as I continue to work toward greater health. I've read about Taoist philosophy, LSD has helped me gain a greater understanding of the teachings. Although I am an atheist, the underlying philosophy of letting go of control of reality and simply letting it happen has helped me control my negative emotions. I've heavily decreased my use of most substances.

***The edits made did not change the content, they only added details, or they fixed copying and pasting from the word processor bugs***