Sept. 10, 2020
SW = Sean Wellington, DN = Dorri in New York
DN: Even if you don't see the point of life or want to be here, the most important thing to know is it's not your fault. There's something happening in your brain and it doesn't even matter if it's nature or nurture. It doesn't really matter. What matters is you can get treatment.
SW: Hey there, my name is Sean and this is Suicide Noted. On this podcast, I talk with suicide attempt survivors so that we can hear their stories. Every year around the world, millions of people try to take their own lives and we almost never talk about it. And when we do talk about it, most of us aren't very good at it. And that includes me. So one of my goals with this podcast is to have more conversations with attempt survivors and I hope better conversations, I'm certainly going to try. Now we are talking about suicide, so this may not be a good fit for everyone. Please take that into account before you listen. I do hope you listen because there is so much to learn. We've been launched for almost two months and more people in more places are hearing these stories of survival. Places like Sweden and Paraguay and New Zealand and Japan, people in these places are hearing these stories because they need to hear these stories. So I'm glad about that. And I hope we can get more listeners because these stories matter. Now if you are a Suicide Attempt survivor and you'd like to share your story, I would love to talk. You can email us at hello@suicidenoted.com If you'd like to support this podcast, please keep doing what you're doing. Keep listening. Let folks know about it. If you're on a podcast platform that allows you to leave a rating or a review, that would help too. Today I am talking with Dory. Dory lives in New York City and she is a suicide attempt survivor.
DN: How are you?
SW: I'm great. Thank you very much for doing this and being candid with your, with your life.
DN: Sure.
SW: I always say I had my reasons for starting the podcast and I like that I have it and I'm learning. I wish I didn't need to or there wasn't a need for this kind of podcast, but there is. One of the questions that I like to ask people who join me here is that there are a lot of people that try to end their lives and that most of them, most of them are not comfortable talking about it, certainly not publicly, you know, maybe with a friend or a therapist, understandable. But then I find people like you who seem more comfortable and I'm wondering why that is, how you came to be comfortable sharing it with people?
DN: I wish that when I was a kid, I heard people talking about it because I felt like a freak. You know, I used to make a joke that, you know, there must be a suicide gene in my family. But you know what? If one person in a family commits suicide, it is more likely that other people in the family will commit suicide. And there were some self-destruction, some drug addiction, and one shot, my uncle shot himself in the heart. We didn't talk about any of this. And someone very close to me cut her wrists very badly. And she still has very pronounced scars. And even her children don't know. Don’t understand why you wouldn't talk to people when depression and anxiety run in your family. I felt so isolated, you know? Feeling isolated, I felt like when I told people that I wanted to die, I thought everybody wanted to die. And why would anybody want to be here? Like the world is so screwed up, you know, even years ago. I mean, my, well, and I would tell people and they would treat me as if I were a leper. They would panic and try to get away, so I learned very quickly not to talk about it. And it made me freak because nobody else was talking about it either. And I really wish my family had been able to. Now, my parents loved me very much, but we were a great fit. I think I was intense. Wouldn't have been the easiest to raise, but that's what it was.
SW: How do you think that talking would have helped you?
DN: I felt so isolated. I really felt like a freak of nature, you know? I mean, my first suicide, like, I say attempt, but I was five. And my mother had lost her temper with me and I felt it was, you know, unfair. It was like suddenly. And I decided that's it. I'm going to kill myself. And I was five. And I went into the, and I remember it very vividly. I went into the dining room. We had these tall chairs that had wicker seats and wood backs. The wood was painted black. I checked this with family members and it's true. And I pulled it over to the mantle. And I knew that my father's Nazi dagger was up there. My father was an army captain in World War II. We're Jewish, Jewish atheists, three generations of Jewish atheists. My grandfather was a Zionist, but anyway. So I knew that because I was an eavesdropper and my father was a great storyteller and they'd have company a lot. And they'd often think I, you know, wasn't around or whatever. I would sneak listening because it was fascinating. And he would talk about war stories and he talked about that dagger. I saw him take it out and show it. So I knew it was there. And then when I went to open it, my little hands, like I had to reach up and get it and my little hands couldn't open the snap. You know, there was a sheath with a snap and I couldn't get it open and I was so mad and I tried and tried and then I stomped off to my bed and probably took a nap. When my father died in 2009, very suddenly, he was two months shy of 89. We went through his things and we found the Nazi dagger and I want out of curiosity as an adult. You know, this was 2009. I tried to open it and I couldn't open it. It really was tough. Yeah.
SW: You could never get that thing open. So it wasn't meant to be open, at least not by you.
DN: And it looks exactly like I remember.
SW: You don't hear, I think, very often, children of that age trying. That is really interesting. That's the word. It is interesting. For some, they might not use that word, but it is to me. Like, wow, okay.
DN: I know that's how I know that there's something wrong with my brain chemistry. I'm also very, I'm an artistic type, overly sensitive, I suppose. not overly. I mean, I was told I was too sensitive when I was annoying. Yeah. You stop it, you're too sensitive. Or people would joke in a mean way, not necessarily like that. Anyone would joke and hurt my feelings. And they say, I was just kidding. But you know when it's not kidding.
SW: Something you said that I wanted to ask about is that when you would tell people, I assume this was as you got older, however it came about in the conversation, the way they would respond to you typically, and that you just, it sounded like to me a very clear message of let us not talk about this.
DN: It was like, well, I don't know if I was interpreting it wrong, but it always felt like I was a freak. Like they were really like, like as if I had just said I had leprosy and I'm highly contagious. People would just be like, what is wrong with you?
SW: What did you want for them to say?
DN: I think about it all the time. I spent many years drinking and drugging. had story after story, I was really depraved. And at one point I got into AA and I found an AA sponsor and she never told me what to do because I'm very rebellious, so luckily, but I think she was too. So she just said, this is my experience, this is what I think. Would you like to know my opinion? And it was easy not to rebel. And so I listened to her and one day she said, look, you know, I've never told you to do anything you didn't want to do. And she said, but you have to play sober softball. The only friends you have are drug dealers and drinking partners. Your whole life has been getting high with people. So I want you to meet fun people. I said, I don't know softball, I don't know sports. She said, I'll go with you. So we joined and the group would go out for breakfast after we'd go in the early morning to the East River, chip in five bucks for the whole season, place [inaudible] over people and then go out to eat and make friends. And there was this big guy, big muscular, tough looking guy who turned out to be a teddy bear, very sweet, but you know, he was big and I'm 5’2”. So he said, how are you? And I said, how am I? How am I? I want to kill myself. How are you? He said, yeah, me too. Could you pass the salt? And I was just like, I found my people.
SW: Your tribe.
DN: He and I became good friends. Yeah, he helped me a lot.
SW: That's awesome. I used to play some ball in a Central Park softball, not sober softball, but softball. You had shared with me about your five year old self and trying to snag that dagger. So I'm curious, moving through time, how many times have you tried?
DN: In one sense, I was doing like a leaving Las Vegas kind of thing where I just, you know, it just kept going, there were distinct attempts. So I'd say about five. So, you know, including that little five year old attempt, it's not, it's just odd, you know, I mean, I couldn't do it. I don't know if I had gotten the dagger free, would I have been able to, I doubt it. But just that I had that determination, like, I'm going to do this because I'm out of here. It's not normal.
SW: Probably not.
DN: Where was my survival instinct that you're born with? I just wanted to die, you know?
SW: And is that, then you felt similarly for the other ones or did they look and feel different?
DN: I think I had a hard time. I was a very cute kid. Everybody told me how adorable I was and I was like a ham and I was the youngest. And I think as that changes, I've seen it, you know, with other people whose kids are adorable and then grow into eight years old, 10 years old, you don't get the fuss anymore. It's not as cute anymore. You do that sort of like, I don't know if you know it, there was Betty Davis in whatever happened to Baby Jane. She was a child star, but she's still wearing makeup, but I just didn't really, I was great at being a teacher's pet.I was very smart. I skipped a grade. I don't think people should do that. And I think the older kids resented it. And then I was in with people who knew each other. And I think that set me off. But as I got to be a teen, I think I was maybe, I was 11 when I smoked a joint with people. Like, it was a bunch of kids in a circle. It's funny, it was my parents' friends' kid we were visiting. And then dabbling with cigarettes, you know, and then becoming like a steady smoker once I get used to coughing and the headaches, you know. I mean, I just wanted to be bad. I saw these kids, we had three elementary schools in Port Washington and they all merged into one junior high. So I met kids I hadn't known and they were tough kids. Like they talked back, they smoked, they drank and I was like, it was sparkly to me. I was like, ooh, cool.
SW: So You smoked and drank and you got into a little trouble.
DN: Exactly. And one of the times I stepped on the third rail because I heard you would die instantly. And nothing happened. So I stepped on it again because I wanted to die instantly. The train worker said ‘hey, kid, what are you crazy? Get away from there. Get out of here, kid.’ And so you know he said you could get yourself killed. And I'm thinking, well, why didn't I? There was almost jumping in front of a train and I wanted to do it. I was hesitating, wanting to do it and kids were high and somebody saw me. Did I make sure he saw me? I don't know. But he was one of the guys who had, I got gang raped at 13 from these tough kids that I thought were so cool. And one of them I thought was my friend. And I wrote an essay about that for the New York Times. It got published. This is before ‘Me Too’ 2012, January. So the Cosby, Bill Cosby scandal was 2014, just to give you some, you know, a time thing. So, in January 2012, it got published. He was one of the guys. So, who knows? I don't really, I can't say that particular time. I can't say for sure, because I was hesitating. I wanted to, but I was scared. And he saw me. So I don't know, I don't have any memory of trying to get his attention, but he's the one who knocked me onto the ground like, what are you nuts? And that's what I would, what are you nuts? But the others were very intentional. When I was 17, I'd been in a terrible car accident. Three people died. I almost died. My boyfriend at the time, lost his hearing in one ear and his face was kind of paralyzed, but not permanently, but the hearing loss was permanent. It was traumatic. I've been through a lot of traumas, three big ones. I heard that if you mix alcohol and downs, you die. I wanted to go quickly. And I knew my uncle, when I was right around that age, I think when my uncle died. So I collected downs, what I thought were downs, taking from medicine chests and stuff, with parties. So I had eight, you know, and I thought that was plenty, and I drank a quart of vodka, and I slept for two days, and I didn't change positions, and I was subletting that summer for my sister, my older sister. I didn't think it through, like, she's gonna find my body. That didn't even occur to me. I just wanted out. Always wanted out. I just didn't, I felt like I didn't ask for all this. Like it's not worth it. How much work to get what you want and how much heartbreak and disappointment and tragedy all over the world. So she noticed that I hadn't moved. She'd go to work, come back, so she called my parents and I went to the hospital. I think they pumped my stomach. And then it was like, you know, we never talked about it again. I was very serious that time for sure. Let's see, I did jump in front of a train. That's when I was 15. Again, I didn't think about my sister's, I didn't think about how my suicide would affect anyone else. I was in pain. Suicide is like, I wasn't a beacon of mental health, shall we say. I was also on a lot of drugs then. I had, you know, your frontal lobe, as soon as you have drugs in you, your frontal lobe, like your judgment that says, you should go home now, or this might hurt your sister. That's like in a coma, you know? And it was me, me, me. And just, you know, I just was unwell. And so I ran away when she was watching us. And it was the first time my parents went away and left her in charge, I think and a friend had run away, a friend from camp. We both got kicked out for smoking cigarettes, even though we'd been doing drugs and sleeping with the counselors and like, it was crazy summer. So she ran away and I asked if I could come with her. You know, she just told me, she called me and said, hey, I ran away. And she was in Greenwich Village and what was then the Hotel Earl, now it's the Washington Square Hotel. And I have fond memories of that time, even though I OD'd in the park, people had to like wake me and I had depression and anxiety and no desire to live, I guess. I don't know.
SW: Did you ever in this time, and this is so we're still kind in your teen years, it sounds like, did you ever have any period of time where you wanted to be alive and you didn't have these strong ideations of death or suicide?
DN: Good question. Maybe now because I feel like I'm a really good aunt. I have nieces that I'm really close to and they lean on me and they tell me the things that nobody told me and you know they have questions about life and I'm very open and I have been since they were fairly young because I didn't want them to go down that road and they haven't. None of them are drug addicts. I'm so glad about that. They're not even heavy drinkers. It's great you know.
SW: When did you get clean? I shouldn't assume you're clean, but maybe I should ask that question first.
DN: Okay, so it was March 21st, 1988. had a terrible, terrible blackout. I had had blackouts since I was about 13, where you're walking, you're talking, people don't know you're not there, and you don't know how you got home. It's like stuff is erased. I woke up out of this blackout after a three-day cocaine and alcohol binge, which was common and not eating, smoking a lot of cigarettes. And I woke up in my art portfolio. I had graduated on the Dean's List. I had won competitions with my art. I'd had some of my writing published even before that. And I ripped apart my portfolio, my art portfolio that I put so I was taking it around to get a job. I wanted to be like an illustrator for record albums. We're talking about the 70s. That was just around the time when it all went to photos mostly. But in the 60s and maybe early 70s, there were still a lot of cool illustrations. And that's what I wanted to do. And I would draw stars. And yeah, it was pretty good. And I woke up and it was like I ripped these expensive eight by 10 photos apart. I gouged. I mean, I probably held it like a pen, but it looked like I had gouged these song lyrics into…indented in the, like with rage or something. And it was all Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix lyrics, like ‘I don't live today’ ‘dazed and confused’ you know, it was really weird. And my cousin, my first cousin, she had always said, you're lucky, you know, you can handle drugs and alcohol and …But you know, it gets progressive and if you ever need help, I'm the one to call. So I remembered that and I called her. She lived in New Jersey and it would take her at least an hour to get there. So it must have been an hour, but it felt faster than that. And she said, you know, do you still have any drugs and alcohol? I said, yeah. She said, well, why don't you do those and I'll be there soon. And nobody ever told me to do… everybody was like, stop, stop. So I was like okay, you know, so I finished what I had. I thought she used psychology, but she said later, said, no, I just thought you should have your last hurrah, get it out of your system and I'd take you to a rehab. So she took me to a rehab. She said I was like walking, talking, whatever. And I have no memory of leaving my street, MacDougal Street between Blakeburn Third was where my apartment was. That's the last thing I remember is sitting in her car. I wake up in a rehab in a detox area. Door was locked. was, you know, I woke up and I like rapped on the window plexiglass or whatever glass. I knocked on it trying to get somebody and I didn't know where I was. So it's so corny. It's like an after school special. Like, where am I? You know, like what happened? But that's what it was.
SW: It's the truth. And that place worked for you? It helped?
DN: Yeah. I mean, I was very miserable, I tried every which way to quit drinking and drugging.
SW: Yeah, sure. So you were drinking and doing drugs for many years, 15. And then that place…
DN: By 13, I was like a stone cold addict. I was very enamored with all the dead rock stars, you know? And I had, Jimi Hendrix was like an angel to me. And I really thought we had some kind of connection. 20 years into recovery, I said to my sponsor, I said, you know, I just realized Jimi Hendrix never even knew I existed. There's no angel. And she said it's called an imaginary friend. I said, right, like God.
SW: From a young age, it's kind of interesting for many years doing that, right? But then you got clean and that was effective for you for how long or is that until today?
DN: I wish. I had one slip. So now I have 16 years back and I've had 16 and a half years. That half matters.
SW: Nice. Now, I know all this gets sort of blurry or mucked up because you've got addiction stuff and then you have, I don't know if this is the right word, but like the mental health stuff. And they're obviously all swirly together. Did you get, I assume, and you'll tell me if I'm off base here, if you are regularly ideating and you've had several attempts in your life, a few that when you were in your teens. Does that mean you think that you have a mental illness? Did you try to get diagnosed or have you been diagnosed?
DN: Yeah I have been to a ton of therapists. Well, first of all, I spoke to a doctor yesterday and we were talking and I was asking, it was like an interview type situation where I was asking him questions and he said that he had, you know, drug addiction and depression and anxiety. He was very shy. And so the anxiety, you know made it hard for him to relate to others and he was troubled. And I said something about, you know, we both had mental illness. He said wait a minute, what do you mean? I said, well, depression, anxiety that is severe and drug addiction. It's, you're, you've got mental illness.
SW: So what was your diagnosis? So did you ever get formally diagnosed?
DN: I did, I did get diagnosed, but it wasn't anything like I was, I thought maybe manic depression, because I really just knew two moods, you know, euphoria and I want to die. But I learned about, uh, how the cycles work with bipolar and you know, you, where you can't sleep. I've never had sleeping... So it's not that, um, the only diagnosis I ever got was a mood disorder. A general mood disorder.
SW: Makes sense, yeah. You sort of fall between the cracks in some ways. You've got some of this, but not that. Some of that, but not this. So you're not quite this, but maybe this or right. So we get that. And I've got that too. Right. They can't place me. So I get maybe it's a mood disorder. Maybe it's maybe personality disorder, some anxiety. Like, what the fuck do I have and how do you treat me? Give me some help. I have not ever tried to attempt my life. I've ideated and I don't mean to compare, but it doesn't seem like the sort of depth or breadth of your ideation, it seems like it's been a massive part of your life.
DN: It still happens. When Trump was elected, I thought, I just thought, my God, I have a dog and I had a dog before him and I have nieces and my mother's still alive and I have enough adulthood, I guess, that I know what it does to people. Cause I've seen people who, family, I've been to funerals, services. You see what it does to the kids in the family and the siblings, the parents. It's just awful. And in my family, there was a lot. I had one uncle who was a really talented painter. He supported his family by being a portrait artist in a hotel. They lived in Florence, but he smoked a lot of cigarettes. He smoked four packs a day. Now that's a little nuts, right? And he had a heart attack. And the doctor said, if you don't stop right now, you're gonna die. And he loved his wife, he loved his kids, he had three kids. His son and then the youngest daughter Angela, and son Brad, they both helped me get clean. So he smoked four packs of cigarettes a day and then he had a second heart attack because he never even tried to quit. Not even cut down, he just kept smoking. And so, you know, to me that's suicidal behavior. That's like not...healthy, not good, but people are like, well, it's an addiction. So why do people have such a feeling about lung cancer and cigarette smoking, but opioid addiction? I don't really get the difference.
SW: It's semantical in part, but I think for me, there just feel like a little bit of a difference of somebody jumped off a bridge. I'm gonna call that suicide. As opposed to somebody who's drinking and drugging. Yeah, sure, you're going to die, because it feels, they might not, it's hard to know that you're really gonna die, even when a doctor tells you. So I'm not disagreeing, I'm just, we're limited by words sometimes.
DN: I mean, the surgeon general probably by that time he was 46. So I should look it up. I'm not really sure yet if they had the warnings on the cigarette labels, but I think most people would know four packs or packs a lot.
SW: You're, definitely yeah, and he got the warning but anyway…
DN: Yeah, and it was his brother who shot himself, but the family looked at it like, he'd had a stroke and he was, you know, he had problems, but he also had two sons. Like you leave a lot of wreckage and I'm, you know, that's the only reason I guess I'm glad it never worked. Sometimes I wish it had just worked because it'd be easier. My mind would be quiet. Like that's, I think what appealed to me about drugs and alcohol is all that noise in my head would shut up.
SW: Yeah. It sounds like from what you shared, your reason to live or stay alive is a little bit less of I want to be alive. I want to do this, achieve that and whatever and more. I don't want to cause pain on these people I care about.
DN: Yeah, that's right. If you have lemons, you make lemonade. It's kind of like that. Like I'm here for the duration. I'm not going to kill myself anymore. I can't. I really know that. People love me a lot. I feel very loved and needed and wanted. And I know from seeing other people's families go through it, I wouldn't do it. But that doesn't mean I sometimes don't feel trapped here.
SW: You had said that people in your life when you were younger, but maybe throughout, they just responded in ways that weren't helpful. They weren't useful. They weren't whatever you maybe needed. So I want you to imagine you're talking to those people who are going to engage with someone in pain, that kind of pain. Could you say anything where they might be like, okay, that makes sense. I'll try that.
DN: Well, now there's like the internet and there's, you know, live through this, which is great. Glenn Close, she co-founded Bring Change to Mind. And that is because her sister is bipolar and her sister's son, Glenn Close's nephew, is schizophrenic and the stigma makes people not come out of the, you know, closet of like to say, you know, I'm sick. And so she's trying to do away with the stigma by having people talk about it. And then you go on these websites, you find all these people who are talking about it. And it's so different from when I was young. I mean, even addiction, even rape people, like there was no Olivia Benson, you know, from law and order SVU. So nobody talks about rape and the victim's rights and the survivor don't think of yourself as a victim. like, there's so much in the world now that is like literally at your fingertips. But I would say is the most important thing to know is it's not your fault. There's something happening in your brain and it doesn't even matter if it's nature or nurture. It doesn't really matter. What matters is you can get treatment. Even if you don't see the point of life or want to be here, I do encourage people to try to find enough in life to be okay, maybe. I tried for years to be the one person. I'm smart, right? I mean, I'm sure there's people smarter, but I got through school easily. I've been told I'm smart my whole life. It's just a thing. So I figured I was going to be the one person who figured out how to be euphoric all the time, but even in sobriety it just doesn't happen. It's not possible. So it's like when you bounce a ball, what goes up comes down. And the harder you bounce it, the higher you go, the harder you fall. And it's, there's no way around that. And when I was a kid, I thought I had a lot of internal life where I felt smarter than everybody, kind of because I was skipped and that, you know, when people would call me something pants and stuff and I got easy A's. So it made me it gave me delusions of grandeur and alcohol and drugs can do that to people anyway. So that didn't help. Yeah. I really thought I was going to figure out how to be euphoric all the time. And I thought that I was smarter than adults, so I didn't take advice. They didn't understand. Nobody understood me. I was like special. So the best thing that's happened to me is letting people in, talking, talking like I'm doing now. Tell people what goes on. And even if your head's like nutty. Like mine, you can still have tons of friends, a lot of love, and repair your family relationships. You know, there's a lot and you can actually have some fun. I still, when things don't go well, when things don't go my way, you know, heartbreak, when my dog died, my previous dog, you know, that's the first place I go. It's like, I'm out of here. And I started thinking like Okay, what's, you know, I started thinking of all the methods. It's an ideology. I mean, is that how, what you mean when you say suicidal…
SW: Yeah. When I say ideation, I don't know if I have the exact definition correct. Thinking about it a lot. Maybe planning it's there. And like you said, sometimes it is that way for me sometimes, like I've always got that as an option. I'm out now. I've never followed through with it, but there must be some little mechanism in my brain like, hey, you know, I'm over here. You don't have to be in pain. So.
DN: Yeah, it's an escape, that's why I think a lot of people with depression, they medicate themselves, anxiety and depression, because when you're drinking and drugging , you know, it's like a light, you just flip the switch, change the channel and become some, you know, more fun.
SW: Yeah, I say that to people all the time. I still to this day, I don't think I'm an alcoholic. I drink, I don't drink a lot, but I think I'm borderline. So I was out last night with a couple of friends and I have a, a dance class I go to, which is great. And I'm friends with a few people there. go out. I don't want to drink. I want to have a very productive day the next day. Right. And then I just don't want to drink. I don't want to spend money on it. I don't want to drink. I don't want to have to drink, but I'm sitting there and I know if I have I'd probably get like a double vodka and soda with a little lime. I just know I'd feel better in that moment, right? It just chemically and I ended up doing it. Whatever. It's not the end of the world. But I remember talking to the guy across from me who's my teacher and I said, man, I don't know how to explain this, but I just feel so much better when I drink. I just do. And I'm like, I sort of beat myself up for it and I didn't, I didn't chase it. Just okay, I feel fine today. You know, I spent eight bucks, whatever it is, fine. But it makes me think, yeah, this is my long answer. Just, it's, a of this is chemical. A lot of this is just chemical combos and you just try to get it right most of the time.
DN: I mean my sisters, they can have a glass of wine and like, you know what happens with me is if I'm out with people and I see my sister's wine glass and it's half full and we're like leaving, I'm like, cause that makes no sense. Cause I finish like more, more, more.
SW: Right? More and more or you go to an event and it's free booze. Isn't that a tough one too?
DN: Yeah, well not now because I haven't, so with the slip at 16 years, it was, I was prescribed a month of Vicodin for gum surgery. And that's before this opioid crisis. And so that's way too much. They should have given me like two for the pain, you know? But it became like, and I don't even like downs. It's funny. I never took downs for fun. I took them to sleep if I had been on acocaine. But the idea of a painkiller, there's a saying like, I'll say a woman. A woman takes a drink, okay? And then the drink takes a drink, and then the drink takes the woman. Because it's like the chemistry thing where your frontal lobe is not, you're not in charge anymore. It's a chemical reaction that some people have to alcohol and drugs and others don't. So some people…You know, most people who have a drink at the end of the day, you know, it's to relax. It's to feel mellow, to have, you know, drinks with friends at dinner, you know, a couple of drinks. But I don't think they're obsessed with alcohol. And when can they have the next one? And I don't think their life becomes spiraling out of control where they can't hold down jobs. Their relationships blow up. They alienate friends. Like my… I had friends that didn't believe I was in a blackout and I would change personalities and they'd be really angry and they wouldn't believe me that I didn't remember and I would beg them to tell me what I'd done so I could apologize. And you know, so you lose friends when you're drunk, you know?
SW: Yeah. Yeah. That was a really helpful answer, what you said. So there's more opportunities for people now, more than they used to be to sort of seek resources, seek people who are going through the same thing. I'm always curious, so there's people out there who like parents or spouses or friends or maybe a coworker, whoever. And they, in these conversations we have with people, like the one that you had mentioned when you were younger, but presumably for most of your life of you're sharing with someone in your pain. Maybe the word suicide comes up, maybe it doesn't. And a lot of people just say stupid shit or are just not helpful. And I'm wondering in your experience, what do you want people to say if they're in a position to be helpful or be supportive? Like what's the thing that people say that maybe they don't realize is making things worse?
DN: People say, oh, come on, you're being dramatic or you're just bored, go do something fun, you know, or get over it, relax. I hate when people tell me to relax. If I could relax, I would relax, you know? Saying relax, it's like, just say no to drugs. doesn't work. If it worked, that'd be great, but it doesn't work. And so the best thing is like what they call mirroring. It's when the child
you know, says something and then the parent and therapist will mirror it back. They'll say, I hear you're having a hard time. I hear you're thinking about death or you are considering suicide. Do you know that you can walk into any hospital anytime and tell them and, and, you know, you will be attended to, they're trained and you can reach out to therapists. Right now with COVID, there's a lot of alcoholic relapses in the alcohol and drug community. And people with any kind of addiction, and there's a lot of spousal abuse because people are, they're just holed up in these small apartments and they're driving each other crazy. so that and just things are escalating so much because we've been in this basically our country is at war with each other, you know, with hate, hate, hate. And it's just really stressful. And yeah, so when you have thoughts like, think I might be an alcoholic. That's okay. Just the idea is to talk to people and reach out. And if you want to do it anonymously, you know, all over the web, you have the web and you can also tell people what you need. Like I have one friend who I kind of trained her to tell me if my feedback is not helpful and she'll say yeah because it's only making me feel more different. I've said what you know, how can I help? I learned that. How can I help? Is there anything I can do? I love you and I want to help.
SW: That's great!
DN: You know, and that way you're saying, I hear you, I understand this is serious. I don't know what to do, but I want to do whatever you would like a friend to help you with. You know, and I think that's the best way is to take the person seriously, to look them in the eyes and to repeat back what they said. Like you could say, am I understanding that you're sad because of a breakup or you're depressed where you can't get out of bed? Or are you thinking about suicide? Like for me, I would be, especially after breakups, that was always the worst trigger. I would be in like my old dentist's office that was in the Chrysler building and it was very high up and I would look out the window and I would wanna jump. And with Subways, and I did once, but that's another long story. It'll be in my memoir one day. And I didn't tell people because it was embarrassing. And I was so used to that look from other people. And people would actually say, what is wrong with you? Life is a gift, especially, religious people. Life is a gift. That's going against God. And I'm an atheist. So that was no help.
SW: There are very few things that there's a few, but suicide is right up there with the stuff that people really push. They're just no, not there are very few things, if any, people just say that's not OK. You are whatever.
DN: How could you even think that? And it's like, I don't know. I've always thought it. I don't know. And that didn't help me because it was there. And I was trying to connect.
SW: I'm sure some of those people weren't actually trying to be helpful I'm always more Interested in helping people better understand how to be helpful if you are wanting to help a lot of people aren't they're just gonna say a nasty comment those I'm not the person to ever engage with them because I don't know how to get it but I think it's interesting or kind of sad when people really do care about people in their life and they they're trying but it's not helping
And again, I think we can all agree, we're not necessarily asking for the fix or anything, just what are the things that you can do that might be helpful or useful with the understanding that you might not be the person that helps them find the perfect doctor or find the miracle drug or have this epiphany, just listening or the things that you just said.
DN: There are people in my family who have said like, why do you tell everybody everything? Like, God, you know? And I didn't really know, I just didn't see why. My feeling was like, why are you so secretive? How do you not tell everybody? And how do you get intimate with anybody if you're not telling them everything? You know, like how do you really have a friend you can trust if you're not telling them what you think about? There's that. And then I heard many, you know, as an adult, many, years later, after people would say that to me when I was younger, I heard ‘a pain shared is halved and a joy shared is doubled.’ I really believe that. I think that my natural instinct to tell people things, I think it's because it's like an interaction. Somebody, you know, it's a connection. It's a way to connect. Like, this is what I'm thinking. And then you find friends that go, I think that way too. Like Scott at those sober softball breakfasts where he goes, yeah, me too, pass us off. You know, like no reaction to my suicidal tendencies. It was great.
SW: What is a myth that you would like to dispel around suicide or anything related to suicide?
DN: That you're bad. You're not a bad person. You're not a bad person if you're self-destructive. You have a mental illness. You have mental challenges. If you don't want to say mental illness, then don't. Just say you're mentally a little unhealthy, maybe. You're hurting yourself. That you could find a more fulfilling life, but you're not bad. It's not on purpose. You know, people don't understand that they watch from the outside as an alcoholic or drug addict destroys themselves and destroys everyone around them. And suicides too, like you see what happens to their kids. But when somebody is in it, when they're in that kind of state, they're not, they think that everybody will be better off without them. They feel like a drain. They feel like they don't belong. They feel like they're different. It's not, you're bad. It's not a moral issue. And I wish everybody would take that away. Addiction is not a moral issue. Suicide is not a moral issue. So I would love to get the shame out of it. You know, it's not the parents fault because everyone, you know, they, have their free will. They're also, most of us are born with our personality. A lot of it is our brain chemistry. It's not our fault.
SW: We don't like to talk about that in this culture because we have this competitive winning, you can control everything in your destiny culture. And if your natural genetics aren't working for you, you can't…no, no, you can do anything you want. And I think it's bullshit. I think it's very harmful. Like there's no, you should try and, but I don't know. I just think it's kind of funny. Some people are just better at art. Some people can jump higher. Some people are good musicians. It doesn't mean you can't learn music, but this whole like you can do anything you want is such bullshit, but I know a lot of people don't like when I say that, but I don't care.
DN: I chose the artist's life. I could have made more money if I became a lawyer or something. But I'm happier this way because I wouldn't fit in that world. I get my bills paid and I worked really hard for a boss that I didn't like for eight years. And I learned a lot. I got a lot of dental bills paid for. We had a great dental plan. And I got training and I was prepared in 1994 when I went into business for myself and it's worked, you know?
SW: Was there anybody in your life outside of the sort of extended families you found, for example, with, what was it called? Sober softball. But let's say family, close friends, whomever else, that responded to you, your suicide attempts in particular, but maybe the other stuff that was all sort of swirling around. Did anybody respond to you in a way where you're like, that's what I needed. Thank you for responding to me in a way that was okay. Anyone?
DN: Yeah, I have long-term friends. I have, I would say a handful of people I've known for 40 and 35, 40 years. And they know me really well. I'm quirky. I'm not crazy, but I'm definitely eccentric and quirky, very New York. And I know I'm intense, but you know, I like to think I'm fun too. And that's, they tell me, you know, like I'm a riot. Like I say things that nobody would say because most people are like, they just wouldn't come out with it. And for me, it's like, I'd rather they know me because I don't want to feel like, oh they wouldn't like me if they really knew me. They like me because they know me. Like I said, it's more of an intimate friendship that way. They know you. They know your flaws and your good qualities.
SW: How has the lockdown been in New York City? I know you guys had the epicenter for a little while. So how's that? And how was it for you and even your mental health or your spirits?
DN: Well, challenging. I think I'm probably doing better than some and worse than others. You know, my friends and I will hug. We say ‘hey, how you doing?’ And you get a big hug. So, you know, we can't hug. So I've started to, a couple of friends and I have started to stay six feet apart with the masks on and meet outside and take a walk and it's hard to hear, you know, when you're six feet apart and it's not, it's weird, you know, but it's better than not seeing them. And, you know, we go like, hug, you know, cause normally you would hug and that, you know, I, think if I didn't have, well, I know if I didn't have a dog, I would be suicidal, but I don't know how people without a pet can manage this stay at home.
SW: I'm one of them, I don't know how I do it, but this stuff helps.
DN: You live alone?
SW: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I tell people that, you know, talking to people and them being so open and sharing their stuff, you know, in some ways it helps me. There's some common ground and you know that you're not alone in dealing with stuff and you can hear… So if someone were to say to me, well, you know, you're not the only person I'm like, I know. But when someone actually, whether it's Zoom or in real physical life, shares stuff. It feels different. You're like, OK, that's a little bit more and OK.
DN: Yeah. Well, it's helpful to meet with my friends on Zoom too. Yeah. You know, yeah, I have like writer friends and we get together and read each other what we're writing. And it's just so great to have that routine so that we don't have to stop seeing each other because we're really close.
SW: Anything else? This has been a lot and it's great. And I'm sure people that hear it will, will learn or I don't know. Hopefully just.
DN: I always try to be helpful. talk to classes. Yeah. Yeah. You know, going to colleges and I'd like to find some junior high schools and maybe even elementary schools, you know, to speak to like sixth graders maybe.
SW: Yeah, super young might be hard. I don't know how it works. Maybe they're doing that middle school I would imagine is a really, probably a great age for that to really get in for some a little before it really gets out of hand. It's all good. We're all doing it for the right reasons I hope.
DN: It was great talking to you.
SW: Alright Dorri have a great day and stay safe. As always, thanks so much for listening. Special thanks to Dorri up in New York City. Again, if you like this podcast, let folks know about it, rate it, review it, and if you are a suicide attempt survivor and you'd like to talk, please reach out. Hello@SuicideNoted.com We drop new episodes every Monday and Thursday morning, so stay tuned for those. Until we connect again, stay strong, do the very best you can.
I'll talk to you soon.
