Carrie in British Columbia 🇨🇦

[00:00:00] If you lose your compassion in that field, you have nothing. The foundation of medicine is compassion. And if you don't have it anymore for anybody, no matter what they do, then what are you even doing there? Hey there, my name is Sean and this is Suicide Noted.

[00:00:38] 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. We certainly don't talk about it enough.

[00:00:49] And when we do, we're not very good at it. Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but that includes me. So one of my goals with this podcast is to have more conversations and hopefully better conversations with attempt survivors. Why?

[00:01:01] Well, basically to help more people in more places feel a little less shitty and a little less alone. Now, if you are a suicide attempt survivor and you'd like to talk, please reach out. Hello at Suicide Noted dot com on Facebook or Twitter slash X at Suicide Noted.

[00:01:17] Check the show notes to learn more about the podcast, including our membership. And special thanks to Emily and Jen, two new members. Thanks very much. Appreciate your support. And I appreciate all of you, however you support for listening.

[00:01:35] Thanks. Finally, we are talking about suicide on this podcast and we don't hold back. So take that into account before you listen or as you listen. But I do hope you listen because there is so much to learn. Today, I'm talking with Carrie.

[00:01:49] Carrie lives in British Columbia and she is a suicide attempt survivor. Hey, Carrie. Hello, Sean. Good to see you. The audience should know a couple of things. I just started a conversation and it has become almost

[00:02:07] thought as a pattern, but something I do often where I don't hit record. Now, there's another element going on here that's also interesting. I want to share with our audience. Last time we talked and there was a last time and it's several months ago now.

[00:02:19] I did hit record, however, and I believe you are the only person in this category. And to this day, I cannot tell you why this happened after we talked for a good chunk of time. Really interesting conversation. The audio file was like not working or corrupt

[00:02:36] or whatever the fancy word people use. So now we're talking again and you're in your home somewhere in Western Canada. Yeah. The other thing before we dive into the stuff that I was curious about. So on the Zoom screen, you put your name or whatever you want, really.

[00:02:52] And I just have my name, which is Sean Wellington. You have your name. I won't say your last name, but it's Carrie and there's a last name. And you also included your pronouns. If I had to guess, I would have said you were she her.

[00:03:06] But I have been wrong. What do I want to ask you? Before you hit record, you said, would you consider yourself? Woke. Right. And then I said, oh, that's a that's like probably a big

[00:03:16] going to be a big part of our discussion, because I think about it a lot. Just what's happening right now politically and how it feels like we're in this massive shift. And I'm 57 and I went back to university last year and I'm in a super liberal environment.

[00:03:36] Yeah. But I come from a really, I guess you'd say conservative background. Christian sort of environment. I don't know what I am. I don't think I'm woke. I don't buy into ideologies, really. I'm a very curious person and I read and listen to a lot of things from,

[00:03:54] I guess you'd say both sides, but I even hate that term both sides. I hate that we're in this place now where people feel they're forced to choose a side politically or ideologically. Two questions around that. I think as we get older, we have a tendency.

[00:04:12] This may not apply to you, for lack of a better word, romanticizing the past. That's not quite the word that I want to. But that's all I got. Do you think what you just described was really that different?

[00:04:22] Let's say when we were teenagers or is it we're just more aware of it because we're getting bombarded with it on social media, among other places? I think there was definitely like, you know, opposing ideologies like in Canada, because that's all I know.

[00:04:36] You know, there was always the like sort of conservative side and the liberal side. But I think Canada was a lot more moderate. I think there was a place for moderation. I think things moved a lot more slowly in the days when I was a teenager.

[00:04:51] I had no awareness of opposing sides, really. So I did an interesting thing. This is why your question, it like sparked a whole tangent for me. But I did this interesting thing. I started studying Buddhism through a recovery group that I go to for

[00:05:09] recovering from all kinds of addictions. And I got interested in Buddhist philosophy about three or four years ago. And so when all this stuff erupted about it was actually during I don't know if you've heard of this in the States, but in Canada, there is this thing called

[00:05:25] the truckers rally where all these truckers drove thousands of miles across to Ottawa and like just clogged the streets of Ottawa opposing vaccine mandates. And it was a very right wing, anti-woke sort of sentiment that was being expressed at that time.

[00:05:47] I had this moment where I saw all these truckers and they're honking their horns and they've got flags waving on their trucks and everything. And I thought, isn't it cool that I live in a place where people are free to have that strong of an opinion?

[00:06:02] And I thought to myself, I don't have that strong of an opinion about one side or the other. And I am going to choose to do this experiment where I walk the middle way, which is a Buddhist principle, to walk the middle way.

[00:06:17] And I've done that because what I see like metaphorically is when you stand in the middle, you can kind of spin around and be able to see where other people are coming from. And I think it creates compassion. Maybe a better starting point. Yeah.

[00:06:32] So that's kind of where, like, that's my long winded answer to your question. Would I consider myself woke? No, but I really love a lot of people that are in that camp. Like, especially now that I'm in university, I'm around a lot of 20 something year old

[00:06:47] artists because I'm studying for a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Ooh, I love it. Yeah, it's really awesome. And there's like a high percentage of young people around me that are transitioning, they're gender fluid.

[00:07:04] They're like I have like plopped myself into a whole other world that I've never been a part of before. And I really love those people. I'm very perplexed by it all. And I don't know where I fit into all that.

[00:07:18] But I also feel like it's not my place to really have an opinion about how they choose to live their lives. And I can learn a lot from people like that. Right. I imagine so. Yeah.

[00:07:27] I want to share a couple things and then we're going to get into your life more. We're not going to try to recreate or reproduce what we originally did the magic there because this is how things were. There might be bits that people never get to hear.

[00:07:39] Oh, well, here you are now. Is there a connection? I'm going to put you on the spot. That's all this is really, isn't it? Wokeism and suicide. Is there a connection for you or in general?

[00:07:51] There's definitely a connection to my life story and the way I position myself, I guess. Yeah, for sure. I definitely think my history of struggle has informed the depth to which I feel compassion for other people's struggle, which I think is I don't know if you would

[00:08:12] agree, but I look at it from the same lens. I sort of feel like what's happening to us right now with this incredibly divisive political place we find ourselves in, to me, it's all trauma. It all comes from trauma and unwellness. You know, it's weird.

[00:08:33] This probably, I don't have the courage to maybe include this in the edited version of the podcast. And I know I'm speaking to someone who takes art very seriously. You're going to school for it.

[00:08:42] I kind of think in some ways like this podcast and the work I do is kind of an art. Oh, a thousand percent. Yeah, yeah. You are definitely an artist. I don't know about that. It just feels like that's a lens I look through.

[00:08:56] So for me, one way I look at art is one of the reasons I like it. And I don't have a particularly strong interest in art or art history. I don't. I like it, but I don't go to museums every month. No.

[00:09:08] What I like about it though, is that you, the artist does something, but for the fine art, it's usually some kind of painting. It might be some other form of expression. And then the person who was observing it, they decide what to do with it or

[00:09:23] they feel how they feel. And there's nobody, maybe if you have like those audio things going on while you're in the museum, somebody might be telling you something that's a little heavy handed, but generally it's just, you decide or you feel how you feel. And that's it.

[00:09:38] It ends there. And that's what I like about what I try to do as best I can. And I don't always get it right. Cause I do have strong opinions, for example, about everyone knows this, who listens about like certain kinds of hospitals.

[00:09:51] So I break that rule, but that's the goal is I want to create this thing where you hear it and you just decide what to do with it. That's why I don't do the ads thing. That's why I don't tell people what to do, what to think.

[00:10:01] So anyway, I'm not talking about me so much here. I don't want to, but there's a seem some overlap is my point. I totally agree. I like to look, I think the word artist has been kind of like altered to have a different meaning than it should.

[00:10:15] So kind of like the word creative. Yeah. And so if you don't resonate with the word artist, because it is, it's become a weird word, but I'm sure you could without a doubt resonate with the word creative. Sure.

[00:10:28] And you may not go to museums and look at paintings, but I bet you're into watching movies. Do you listen to other podcasts? Yeah. I mean, a big part of my life that overlaps a little bit with this podcast, but it's personal narrative story and performance.

[00:10:42] That's all creative. It's a massively creative space. So sure. I want to share with the audience something you did for me at some point in the past because you're an artist and you're a creative and you're a nice person. A lot of people can agree.

[00:10:55] My logo is not very good. I just put it together and didn't want to deal with taking nine years to finally decide on something that no one really gives a shit about. But you offered to help me or help on your own, create a logo and

[00:11:11] you made some very nice logos. Now this is telling as far as how my brain works. I still have the same fucking logo up there. You spent time. I can't explain why the logo is the same when I have all these options.

[00:11:26] And I think the main reason is I have something that makes it very hard for me to just make decisions. Well, I wanted to just thank you for making them and I'm going to, I love the

[00:11:36] mosquitoes got to be part of it and you did a really nice one. So I really liked that one. People will be seeing it soon. This is a promise. Like pink mosquito. Remember that? Yeah, I totally do.

[00:11:47] And to be like in your defense, I think I probably have a little bit of, I don't know if I want to label it ADD or whatever, but like neurodivergence in that way. Um, where I, and also my creativity can kind of like run amok.

[00:12:03] I realized that in that process, um, I was just designing and designing and going crazy. And there's just so many options that, that if you are busy doing other things, it can be like drinking out of a fire hose.

[00:12:16] So, um, we should definitely get together and narrow it down and like just decide on one. Yeah. Yeah. I want to ask you about that word you just used and this all does tie into what we're talking about here.

[00:12:30] And we'll get into more of that, like more detail. When you say the word neurodivergence, our minds let's use me and you, for example, could struggle with this sometimes in some ways, is it neurodivergence?

[00:12:42] And, or is it just simply, we're not adapting well to a particular set of norms in our culture that are not, they're just the norms of this particular culture at this point in time. They're not the right or wrong.

[00:12:56] And you can argue for the great majority of our history, civilization, our lives, our everything. It was very different than this. We're being asked to deal with stuff that is arguably not normal. I'm being very long winded here.

[00:13:12] So some people can adapt to that to some degree and they don't have this thing. Others can't. Is the lack of adaptability the problem here? It's such an interesting discussion. I really think that probably a lot more people than we realize are struggling

[00:13:28] with adapting to our current times. And I think that a lot of these terms that are kind of like in the forefront now, like ADD, ADHD, autism, any mental health kind of like pathology in the DSM.

[00:13:49] I think that we have to look at them through the lens of that. They've been kind of designed by the industrial, the industrial complex. Yeah. And we need those pathologies so that they can medicate us so that we can get back out there and run the machine.

[00:14:06] And you know, Carrie, people will hear that some of them and roll their eyes. Oh, borderline conspiracy or you're a communist. And it's like, hang on. There's almost undoubtedly a large chunk of what I think is truth in what you just said that there just is.

[00:14:22] Doesn't mean your therapist is wanting to help you just so that you can go out and make money. I don't think that's what you're suggesting, but zooming out. I mean, it's hard to argue against that. Yeah. It's becoming more like sort of in plain sight.

[00:14:36] I think like, you know, 20 years ago, if I had have said that, I think a lot of people would have been like, oh, what are you talking about? You're so fringe. And you're just creating problems where there isn't any.

[00:14:47] But I've been navigating the mental health system somewhat against my choice for most of my life. So I've been in, I've been swimming in that pool for a really long time. And then I like a few years ago, kind of started stepping outside of it.

[00:15:07] And it's like, if you're a fish in a tank and that's your life, you don't know you're in the water. I guess I must've been a tadpole because I sort of grew legs and got out of the water a couple of years ago.

[00:15:19] And I, now I'm looking back at what I went through. I would say that the medical model that I traversed has been so hugely traumatizing and really like exacerbated and made worse. The problems I was going there to try to fix really gave my power away to psychiatry,

[00:15:41] psychology, the experts so to speak. And they just made me way more sick than I needed to be. So. Another, another train of thought where some people and probably not a small number though, probably not listeners to this podcast would say, sounds like the

[00:15:58] words of someone who's not well, you don't get it. You just need to do more of that. Like, hmm, let's hold up. Maybe not. Like take more pills. Find the right psychiatrist, find the right psychologist. Find, look, search this, that do more of it, do more of it.

[00:16:15] It's like, hmm. I got so frustrated with things. I probably to my own detriment stopped it. At one point, like probably about 10 or 11 years ago, I was going to a psychiatrist

[00:16:28] that I'd been going to for a really long time and she had me on so many pills that I had to have the pharmacy do those, those packages. Yeah. And I could only go like they've, they made me go to the pharmacy once a week.

[00:16:44] Basically my whole life became going to the pharmacy and taking pills. Med management, right? That kind of med management. Right. And I couldn't, I was incapacitated at that point. I could hardly work. I couldn't do much at all anymore.

[00:16:57] And I had this like moment where I had this spark where I'm picking up this, this wad of like these big pages, like they're like eight and a half by 11 with the little pop out thingies in them. And I didn't even know what all they were.

[00:17:11] And she had been prescribing new things because now she was just communicating with the pharmacy without me knowing what was going on. I was on all these benzos and like really highly addictive things.

[00:17:22] And I was, I was so sick from the pills that I, I didn't know who I was anymore, or even if I had an illness. And so I, I just had this spark, this moment where I thought this can't be right.

[00:17:36] You know, it was like a real, I was like a real pivotal moment in my life. I can go back to, I went to my GP and I brought him these packages and I said, is this right?

[00:17:48] And he just kind of laughed at me and walked out of the room and wouldn't even like engage. So I thought, Hmm, okay, not going to get any help here. I went back to the psychiatrist, which was really terrifying.

[00:17:59] I was, I was so crippled at that point that I was really beholden to her, the power dynamic. Right. Right. And I said to her, is this right? Like this, something just, just does not seem right to me.

[00:18:13] And she said kind of like what you were alluding to a minute ago of, well, you know, this is what, what sick people say. Like, you know, they're there dear, you know, you don't know what you're talking about and I'm the expert kind of thing.

[00:18:25] But I had this really strong, like still small voice inside that was telling me this isn't right. This isn't right. I had been going to one of those, um, float tank places because I thought, well, maybe, you know, that would be, I'm just trying everything, right?

[00:18:40] Trying all the things. And I went to this float tank place and I, I was sitting there just crippled is a really good word, like just incapacitated kind of like, well, just so drugged. I was so drugged and I'm sitting in this waiting room, just kind of staring,

[00:18:53] waiting for my turn. And this friend of mine who I hadn't seen in years, like a high school friend hadn't seen in years, walked in and sat down beside me. And she, she's just was like, how are you?

[00:19:04] But it was one of those kind of, how are you? It's like, she really wanted to know. And I just looked at her and I said, I'm not good. And I told her what was happening. And she said, oh my God, that that was happening to me too.

[00:19:17] And she told me what she did. And she said, I couldn't find any doctors that I trusted anymore. But it was, it's so terrifying when you're on all those psych meds, you really are in a great deal of danger. You cannot take matters into your own hands.

[00:19:32] Like it's just, it's not safe to do that when you're on all those, all those drugs. So she said, you have to go to my pharmacist. He helped me get off a bunch of these pills, like the benzos especially. Right.

[00:19:46] So I went to that pharmacist and I never went back to the GP or the psychiatrist again, and I saw this pharmacist once a week. And there was actually a whole team of them and they were just incredible.

[00:19:57] And every once in a while I'd even have like, they'd pull me into their office because I was in such bad shape. It took me three years to get off those pills. Three years couldn't work. I was in just a dire situation. My son was finishing high school.

[00:20:14] He was a teenager. So it was trying desperately to sort of like be a mother. And that was a really difficult thing too, just knowing like how much of my kids' lives I lost because of all these pills. Yeah. Yeah. That was brutal.

[00:20:28] I have a lot of grief about that. My kids are 29 and 25 now. I was not capable of being a mother. And that is one of the worst griefs a person can experience is when you look back and I'm pretty well now as far as mental health wise.

[00:20:44] And like you were saying, the only pills I take now are I have to take a thyroid pill and I have to take a sleeping pill. Yeah. And I'd love to get off of that one too, but it's a bitch to get off of that one.

[00:20:55] So like you say, if you never learn to sleep and I never learned to sleep, it means when you're supposed to learn to sleep because my parents were a gong show. If we were going to look at this conversation as a piece of artwork, many

[00:21:09] of the conversations I have, I wouldn't say are linear, but there's a pattern in part based on the questions I send people. Although we don't always do, we rarely go in that order. It just stuff comes up, but we're more abstract. You're right.

[00:21:24] So the audience, I will ask the audience just to listen and take it in because a lot of these conversations start within the first couple of minutes of maybe how did you find the podcast or why'd you reach out?

[00:21:35] Or when was the first time you thought about suicide? But maybe because we've talked already or who knows why, maybe it's just how we are when we're talking, we're bouncing around. I like it. Yeah. And it could be the evolution of my experience about this topic has changed

[00:21:52] a lot in the last couple of years. Like had I been talking to you two, three years ago, this for the, for your podcast, specifically about suicide, this would have been such a different conversation because I really went deep, deep, deep into shadow work and have a

[00:22:09] pretty different perspective about my suicidal history, my, my mental health history, um, the way I view. Well, not just the medical system, but like the world in general and the way the world treats each other with the way humanity treats each other.

[00:22:27] I have, I like, I've totally done a 180. How would you have been back then? Five years ago, three years ago, what was the main, if there's a main difference? Um, I think the word victim is the thing that comes to my mind.

[00:22:39] First, it was very much a victim in my family dynamic growing up. I was very much the scapegoated child. It was, um, my family needed a sick person and I happily accepted the role. Uh, convene or, uh, you know, compliantly, I guess not happily, but I, I complied

[00:22:58] to take on that, that role in my family. I guess now not to be super hippie, dippy woo woo, but I think. I kind of like took on that role and then manifested that in my life.

[00:23:12] I became like a sick victim and I knew there was another way. I just didn't know what it was until I really, really had hit bottom. About three years ago, I, I, uh, was in a relationship and which was just so

[00:23:29] damaging and I had to leave that relationship and I was in the worst possible place you can imagine. As far as like, I was verging on homeless, no money, no car. My health was really, really bad. No direction. I had very little in the way of relationships.

[00:23:49] I was like bankrupt and bereft in every way. So I really, really hit, hit that bottom place. And that, and the thing that's funny to me about that is that suicidal thoughts have been for as long as I could remember till that, till that point had

[00:24:07] been like the top, like I would almost say it could be maybe even OCD was to that level that I was always, always, always thinking about how can I kill myself? That was the primary thoughts in my mind until I really hit bottom.

[00:24:25] And then it was sort of like, like, I don't know if a lot of people with suicidal ideation would experience this, but the things that kept me maybe from. Attempting would have been like the people around me, I would think, oh, I can't

[00:24:39] because you know, what would it do to these people around me? But I got to a place where there really wasn't people around me anymore. I had nobody. Like I, like I really, I really had nobody, nothing.

[00:24:51] I was in this void, this, this kind of like dark liminal tunnel of life where I had literally nothing. And what was funny was from there, I decided to live. Wow. And nobody's more shocked about that than me.

[00:25:07] Was it like a moment, like in a movie or was it just this gradual? I think I'd say it was a moment. It actually was a moment when I was in hospital from a suicide attempt. Maybe that would be a good place to jump off of.

[00:25:23] Let me do this. Somebody zoom out for a moment. When you said you were on the quote unquote sort of OCD level of thinking about suicide, was that like starting from childhood or, or, oh wow. So we're talking decades. Yeah.

[00:25:38] Like before I even have like a formed memory and I think like I attribute that to my dad's dad committed suicide when my dad was a baby. So I never met him, but he was a really huge force kind of in our life.

[00:25:55] Like there was a lot of pictures on the walls of him. He came from a prominent family in Nova Scotia that was historically relevant in Canadian political history. And he was an only child of this descendant of this kind of well-known

[00:26:15] family in Nova Scotia, and he was in the Canadian military. He got recruited into the military right before the second world war. I think because of his kind of lineage and connection with his family, he

[00:26:30] worked his way up in the Canadian military quite quickly, so he was really young. And he got, he was one of the head recruiting officers for the military for the second world war. He was responsible for all the young men that went to Normandy when the allies

[00:26:49] were just like, it's very, it's a very famous battle where a lot of Canadian soldiers and probably from other places too, I just don't know. Certainly the States. Yeah. Yeah. So there was a lot of, a lot of young men and some of them were like

[00:27:04] 15, 16 years old, like, and they were, they were being told, you know, it was very glamorized romanticized to go off to Europe to go fight this war. And then they were getting off boats and it was a literal bloodbath. Yeah.

[00:27:19] And so my grandfather's choices in that moment were, he was such a sensitive person that he was faced with the choice of a dishonorable discharge, which was basically considered treason in those days, like against the, you know, the

[00:27:37] monarch and would have been such a blight on this family history which he had shoved down his throat for his whole life or to commit suicide. And so he chose the latter. His story was really told a lot in my family.

[00:27:54] And it's funny that like, when I mentioned that to my mom a few years ago, she was like, oh, we never talked about that. And I was like, well, how would I have known as a five, six, seven year old that this was the story?

[00:28:06] And I adopted that story so wholeheartedly. And my family situation like, um, was, was so toxic that I just, I think in being a sensitive person as a child, I just kind of, I think I just absorbed that

[00:28:25] story and thought, well, that would be a way out of this mess. There's a connection with grandparents. We have, it's different than parents. I think, you know, they say about some things like skip generations.

[00:28:34] I don't know if that's true, but I feel like there might be some truth to it beyond just cancer or hair loss, like stuff like this. For sure. I really do feel that in my situation. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:46] So the idea of suicide has been there for a very, very long time. Yeah. It's been there probably since I was a toddler. I re I adopted it as a, um, almost heroic or like, um, I guess a martyr.

[00:29:02] In a way, you know, there's this, there was that sense of that for me, which evolved away from that for sure. But when I was little, that was how I saw it. He was this hero and you know, the pictures of him in these gilded frames

[00:29:16] and his uniform and looking very, you know, glamorous and very heroic. I just imagine this little girl fucked up home for lack of a better word. And you see these photographs of your grandfather. It's like, why wouldn't you want to be like him? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:32] And that sort of living in the fantasy in a way too, right? Because home is so shitty that you have to create outside fantasies to live somewhere else for there to be any meaning to this crazy thing we call life.

[00:29:46] You know, like I had to make up these fantasies about him and about that whole other world. And I, I know some people would say, had he gone the other direction, they might say that's treasonous. I wouldn't, they might.

[00:29:58] And I know some people will say no matter what you do, if you end your life, regardless of the reasons that's insert not nice negative word is another lens or at least one other lens, probably several where it's like he was in an

[00:30:10] impossible situation and he made a very bold move and that's, you know, you could argue that's, is the word heroic? Is it the word just noble? Is it something else? Yeah. I can see that for sure. Courageous.

[00:30:23] Hey, like it takes a lot of courage to do what he did. One of the hardest things in your life will be to end your life emotionally, physically, otherwise it's hard to do. It's not easy. Absolutely. I've, I've stood at that precipice many times and it is terrifying.

[00:30:40] Yeah. You're, you're erasing your existence in some ways. Do you have a number, how many suicide attempts you have in your life? It's hard for me to remember. I think if I had to pull a number, it would be around five, but it's possible

[00:30:58] that there's a lot more times than that, that just didn't kind of go anywhere. So then, you know, and there's also that fog of, um, drugness mixed in there. I have a hard time remembering. I don't really have a number, but let's just see.

[00:31:15] I tend to, I'm typically intrigued by, and I can't tell you exactly why the first one and the last one, can we talk about those and then you can add more about the others if you want to. How old were you for that first attempt?

[00:31:32] Uh, I think it was around 19 or 20. This one is actually kind of funny. Well, you know what? Suicide is just kind of funny anyway. Isn't it? Definitely. It's hysterical. Yes. I recall a boat load of laughs. Sure. Maybe funny is not the right word.

[00:31:48] Um, it's a bit more like cringe embarrassing slash maybe absurd. Yeah. Absurd. Yeah. Um, okay. So first attempt I, yeah, I was probably 19 or 20. I had been away to go to school and I had to come back home because I just, my

[00:32:05] life just kind of kept, I would, I would go out, try to be an adult and then my, I, my life would crash and burn. So I had come back home. I was working a job, but I was living with my really fucked up parents.

[00:32:16] Was working myself to the bone, like probably 10, 11 hour days on my feet. I was working as a hairstylist, but it was, it was early in my career. And in those days that job was just brutal, like just on your feet and high heels, shoes all day long.

[00:32:32] Everyone's smoking. Yeah. Everyone's smoking in the break room. So you're sucking in this secondhand smoke. You never eat. It was kind of a brutal job and my hands were like burnt from like chemicals and all, so it's just awful being a hairdresser in the, in the eighties.

[00:32:48] You know what? I never thought about this, but maybe feeling a little bit like my grandfather did where I was like, well, I can't quit my job because then I would be quitting something again and I'd be a failure again, but I can't keep going like this.

[00:33:00] Like my I'm burning out. My body's just going into the ground. So I came home and I took a massive bottle of aspirins, which I now realize was never going to kill me. It was all I had.

[00:33:15] I didn't, you know, it was pre the days of a lot of lethal medications around the house. Like that just didn't really exist. All the really hang on, hang on. When you say, what do you mean? Give me one example of those lethal medication.

[00:33:28] Oh, like, um, psychiatric medications now. Oh, so you mean the things that are supposed to help us? Yeah. Things that someone might have in their medicine cabinet. So the evolution of medicine to treat our pain definitely works for some people,

[00:33:42] but it's also the same medicine that we are more lethal. Just irony there. Just irony. That's a whole other conversation. Irony of these so-called medications. Well, you know, there's, there's a gazillion threads of future podcasts that I have in mind based on these conversations and linking it relates,

[00:34:02] but that's kind of another podcast. And I've said that so many times I should have a fucking network of. Yeah. Take, you take, you take what's available and I imagine you down it. I did. I, I downed it.

[00:34:13] Um, and I had a history of, I, I had a weird thing when I was a child. Um, I had a history with aspirins, those little pink baby aspirins, but also the white ones, they, they adult ACE, ASA. Mm.

[00:34:28] I used to eat those kind of in a, like, I think it was kind of almost the beginning of an eating disorder. Cause I really struggled with that too. Um, but I used to sneak aspirins out of the bottles and then I had them like at

[00:34:42] night when my parents were drunken fighting and stuff, I would, I would like eat aspirins because I liked the way they felt, you know, it would like, was sort of like acidically dissolve on your tongue. So I started an obsession, an obsession with aspirins when

[00:34:57] I was really, really little. So it's funny that that was the, that was the first thing I went to when I was like, I can't do this anymore. And I don't know another, any other way out. So I downed this huge bottle of aspirins.

[00:35:09] My mother discovered me in the bathroom and she flipped her lid. She was so angry that she called like the youth pastor of our church to come and deal with it. She's like, I can't deal with her anymore. And she's like freaking out on me.

[00:35:24] And so angry that I would be suicidal. I want to understand something. This is not a, this is not pointing fingers at your mom. Angry at someone being suicidal. I'm sure our listeners here and certainly our guests can relate to some degree. Angry. So angry.

[00:35:41] My mom's a zero to 60 rager. Yeah. So is mine. That's a brutal thing to live with. I, I never had a father that raged and I don't want to like make comparisons or say my trauma is worse than yours.

[00:35:54] Like it's not a trauma contest, but having a raging mother, it's brutal. It, I don't know anything much more damaging than that for a child. You know, a question that I want to get back to 19 years old.

[00:36:11] I have almost shockingly found some grace for lack of a better word in that. And I hate to pathologize. It's not my lane. I don't know what I'm talking about, but I thought, well, she wasn't well. Yeah. I should just, there's no way to behave that way.

[00:36:27] You're just not well. And so it was super fucking damaging, but it has allowed, and I'm not pushing this on you at all. But it has allowed me to be a little bit more, I don't know, a different lens a little bit with time. It took years. Yeah.

[00:36:40] Yeah. I totally agree with what you're saying. Doesn't change the fact that it sucked. Yeah. And I can get there to the, to the place of grace that you're talking about and compassion. I can get there like logically, but I think I still am working on

[00:36:59] something kind of deeper than that. Those like kind of emotional flashbacks that come from that other place that aren't so cognitive. They're more somatic, I guess you'd say. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So what happens in the aftermath?

[00:37:14] So obviously you live, this is a given in anybody I'm talking to. Yeah. Yeah. It triggered something that I think it's kind of a pivotal moment as well in my life because it triggered the psychiatric system in my life. So this youth pastor took me to emergency.

[00:37:34] They, of course, you know, they make you drink charcoal, they pump your stomach. They do all the things which is really difficult. So I was in emergency through the night, that first night where they were making

[00:37:44] sure that I hadn't like burned out my stomach lining and I live in a, in a, what was a really small town in those days. It's bigger. It's quite a bit bigger now, but in those days it was a tiny hospital with a very

[00:37:56] small, very horrendous psych ward. It was like a, kind of like a prison, a lot like a prison. And so there I was probably about 19. I'm pretty sure I was 19 and they admitted me for a week to this small, oppressive, dark, dank, smelly prison.

[00:38:19] Definitely going to help young Carrie. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. And this is like the kind of late 1980s it would be. I got introduced to the psychiatrist that was running that place. Um, they immediately drugged me with some kind of sedative.

[00:38:36] You know, they bring you the little white cup and I'm in a locked room because. Yeah. You have to take it. You have to take it. You're forced to take it. They check your, they check your mouth. Um, and then she said, you have an appointment with Dr.

[00:38:49] So-and-so, you know, in 10 minutes down the hall. So I got up off the bed cause it had been, you know, about 10 minutes since I'd taken this pill. And everything was spinning. I could hardly stand up.

[00:39:02] I started trying to walk down the hall because there's such a sense of, um, authority, you know, like if you don't go meet with this doctor, it's a big deal. So I'm like literally groping down this handlebar down the side of the wall

[00:39:16] holding on, and then I slump into the chair in front of this male, very domineering psychiatrist, and I don't remember anything after that. I actually don't even remember the week that I was there after that. One thing I remember was I didn't eat much.

[00:39:34] So I lost a whole bunch of weight at the end of the week when my mother was coming to pick me up and her mood had changed, which is a pattern and was a pattern

[00:39:44] in our relationship too, it went from rage to kind of like what we call fawning now where she was trying to make it right. So she came to get me out of the hospital and she was gushing about how thin I was and how wonderful I looked.

[00:40:02] Like, and then people wonder why we get eating disorders. Right. Sure. I was like, you know, skin and bones. And she said, let's go shopping. So I do really remember that shopping trip because she bought me all these

[00:40:18] amazing clothes, these gorgeous clothes for this very emaciated little body that I was in. It's, it's hard for some parents, I suppose. At least in my case to be okay with the hard stuff. Yeah, it is.

[00:40:31] They it's like, I sort of tried to imagine it like a toolbox and our parents just did not get a good set of tools to be able to parent. These thoughts and feelings about wanting to die have been with you for a long time.

[00:40:48] So they're not going away at 19 or you would have said that differently. Now in the name of abstract art, I love this. It was totally different lens or view of my podcast.

[00:40:59] Now let's go to the most recent one, unless you want to share more about that first one. No, yeah, that pretty much sums it up. And, and the, um, the thoughts of like the suicidal thoughts never really leave me, but

[00:41:12] they do just kind of change and morph and sometimes become quieter in the background and sometimes become really, really loud and, uh, you know, undeniable. But the most recent one, which was very life changing. Oh my God.

[00:41:25] As I'm telling you this out loud, I'm just like seeing my own patterns so clearly. So I had been in this relationship with a man that was 15 years older than me for about five years, a really, really difficult relationship where I was completely dependent on him.

[00:41:41] I had gone from being an entrepreneur and being really self-sufficient. But through that all dealing with this, with that psychiatrist and the drugs and everything, and this guy came along right at the time when I was trying to get off of

[00:41:54] all those drugs and really kind of like get my life back together and get away from the grips of psychiatry after close to 30 years of being in that world. And so he came along and he had like sort of rescuer vibes and I grabbed onto that.

[00:42:10] And of course it didn't go well at all. And I was living a very isolated life with him. I was actually living off grid in a in like a cabin that was completely like solar powered. And we pumped our own water.

[00:42:23] We heated our home with wood fire and everything. Sounds so amazing. And we spent our winters in Mexico and our summers in this off grid life on paper, you know, to the outside world. It looked like what a cool life. And it was really fun.

[00:42:37] And I was able to be really creative in all of that. And he looked after all my basic needs, but he was very manipulative and emotionally abusive. And I think purposely now looking back, isolated me in that way so that I was

[00:42:55] easily, easily manipulatable, you know, being that I have fragile self-concept and suicidal ideation. It was not a good mix. And I knew I had to get out of there, but I like I said in the beginning, I had no money and no independence, no vehicle.

[00:43:13] And just like was a shell of a human. And so I called my mom. I said, I don't know what to do. I need to get out of here. And she said, oh, come here, come here. You can come stay with us for a little while.

[00:43:28] My dad was still alive. My dad just died in June of Alzheimer's. And but he was still alive at that point and kind of in and out of cognitive awareness. And my mom was nursing him at home, which was a very horrible whole other thing.

[00:43:44] But anyway, ended up in my parents basement again at 54, 55 years old. Yeah, it was not good. Within about a week of being there, her just a few days of being there, her raging started at me again.

[00:44:00] Within a week of being there, I took a huge wad of those quetiapine pills that I use for sleep. It was all it was the only thing I had left. And circling back, one of my motivations for getting those pills out of my life is just

[00:44:17] that I didn't have access to them because it created such obsession coupled with my suicidal ideation, knowing that I had a lethal amount of pills in my keep at all times that I could easily just take them. It was so difficult. It was like living with a monster.

[00:44:38] Like I almost didn't associate that suicidal part of myself with me. It was like this weird monster that was like inhabiting me that would shove pills in my face and say, die, die, die kind of thing all the time.

[00:44:53] So that was one of the reasons why I got rid of all those pills. So all I had at that moment was this quetiapine and I had quite a lot of it. And I took a whole bunch.

[00:45:02] I took a whole a whole bottle, probably like three months worth. I wrote a note that said, do not resuscitate. But they didn't take the note seriously. They're never going to take that note seriously. Well, you mean your parents or the hospital? Both.

[00:45:18] So my mom called my mom found me hours later. Like it was quite late at night. You know, I just I hadn't come for dinner and I hadn't we had a dog as well that I think probably alerted her.

[00:45:31] I'm pretty sure probably alerted my mom that something was going on. By the way, is this if my math is correct around COVID? Yes, it was during COVID. So we were again, I was isolated.

[00:45:42] I was either isolated with this man who was not good to me or I was isolated with my parents, you know, my dad with Alzheimer's, my mom and her own. It would be interesting to know.

[00:45:53] You may have a finger on the pulse of this, of how many people that had a history of suicidal depression and difficulty in that way actually pulled the trigger during COVID. Oh, yeah. I don't know. I don't have my pulse now. I don't know.

[00:46:08] Because I know for some people, including me, it was good, weirdly. And I know one there's two big reasons. One, whether it was a perceived thing or not, I felt like I was in a better space to create stuff like this podcast. Yeah, I could see that.

[00:46:23] And an entirely other group that's dealing with personal narrative story stuff. I don't know if that happens without COVID. And it wasn't that I didn't have the time, it just something shifted. There was another part. Everything slowed down. I love that part too. Everything slowed down.

[00:46:40] Nobody wants to admit they have FOMO. We all have FOMO to some degree, I imagine. There's just, oh my God. And I just felt like and you know, one last thing. Sorry, I'm doing the thing where I'm hijacking the conversation. I'm sorry.

[00:46:52] You know how people come together during a hurricane or tornado or a tragedy? It didn't feel quite like that, but in a little bit it did. Like we're all going through this thing. And despite the fucking, you know, all the divisiveness around the masks and the

[00:47:09] mandates and the politics, it just felt like people were a little nicer. So I, but I wasn't in my parents' basement. Yeah. So yeah, I don't know if the numbers went up. Well, in your case it did because you tried. Yeah.

[00:47:23] I wouldn't, definitely wouldn't blame COVID for it. It may have been a factor. It's hard to say. I think there was just way too many other aspects and I agree with you. I really loved that the outside noise of expectation and all that really did die

[00:47:39] down and gave people a moment to breathe and recalibrate for sure. I liked that part of the isolation. Oh, one thing though was COVID definitely influenced my hospital stay. For the better in a lot of ways, I got to say, because there just were no beds.

[00:47:57] There was, you know, there was such a focus in hospitals. There was a whole other focus. If you weren't sick related to COVID, you really were not given that much attention, which in this case was kind of a good thing.

[00:48:09] I was in this really small town, a little ways away from where I actually live now, where my parents live in a smaller town. So again, a really small hospital and I got taken to Emerge.

[00:48:21] I had to stay in this tiny little emergency room for a week on basically one of those cots like you see they put in and out of ambulances. So it's like a metal, it's like a big metal folding frame on wheels

[00:48:38] with a thin foam thing on top of it. I laid on that for a week. Right. I couldn't move because it was COVID. So you can't kind of like leave your bubble. There was no other beds, nowhere for me.

[00:48:54] It took me a few days to kind of sober up from the pills. I had some very interesting experiences with the nurses. There is biases about people that try to take their own life, which I hope in my lifetime I get to see that change.

[00:49:11] But I was treated like absolute dirt by some of the nurses in that emergency room. I think bias is not a strong enough word, but maybe it's the right word. I don't know how to communicate that. It's quite defeating. Astounding.

[00:49:25] Like almost to the point where they wish you had died. Oh, totally. It's amazing. It's like, how are you a nurse? How are you a doctor? Yeah. How? Tell me, how are you not a criminal? All right.

[00:49:35] I'm going to get into the whole, you're a criminal thing, which they're not. Okay. Yeah, there was one, it was actually a male nurse. And I was kind of in a stupor. It was probably about 24 hours after I'd been there.

[00:49:46] So it was still very, very druggy and foggy and I didn't have any water. And they weren't really checking on me and I couldn't get up to get my own water. I think I still even had an IV at that point. Couldn't eat or anything.

[00:49:59] And I just said, could I have some water? And I think I probably didn't even fully form the sentence because I was not with it yet, you know? And I remember just like in this with blurred vision even.

[00:50:13] And he pulled this little tiny like paper cup closer to me that had been sitting on that table since I'd gotten there, but I couldn't reach it. And so, you know, it wasn't even like a fresh cup of water.

[00:50:27] It was this old half drunk, little tiny, like I think they call them Dixie cups. He shoved it closer to me and then kind of went click on the on the table with it so that it was closer to me.

[00:50:39] And that was it. And that was all the water I got for. I don't even know how much how long after that, because nobody was checking on me. I was kind of like in a corner. Maybe fairly people will say it was covid. They were over.

[00:50:51] Ba ba ba ba ba. Sure. In any other context, that has got to be criminal behavior. I mean, maybe not criminal, but it's just so wrong. It is so wrong. It's so no, I cannot find an ounce of latitude. Just can't. I want to. I just can't.

[00:51:11] Doctor out there. I imagine you got into the field of medicine for good reasons and the right reasons, but you shouldn't be doing it anymore. You should leave or someone should make you leave.

[00:51:22] Take your head and take your little bonus, whatever the fuck they give, and go do accounting or go be a salesman. You shouldn't be in the medical field. Yeah. Yeah. If you lose your compassion in that field, you have nothing because it is a feel like

[00:51:39] that's what it is. That's the foundation of that of medicine is compassion. And if you don't have it anymore for anybody, no matter what they do, then what are you even doing there? I mean, technology in some ways is an amazing thing in the medical field, right?

[00:51:53] In a variety of ways. But one of the things I noticed with my primary care is that the majority of time we're talking and you don't have a lot of time anymore, which is a massive problem, is that she's actually not looking at me.

[00:52:05] She's looking at her computer. Yeah. And I'm like, OK, I get it. You're inputting information and that can be very helpful and that streamlines things, all that stuff. But look at me. Maybe I'm asking too much.

[00:52:15] Well, I'm grappling with that right now, like in such a big existential way. I'm like, do I even need a doctor? Like, do I even? I'm really questioning the whole thing so much. I'm so outside of that.

[00:52:29] I actually don't have a primary care physician right now because in and I'm sure it's very similar where you are, but where we are, there are no doctors. And if you find one, that's usually the type of treatment you get is this like impatient staring at my computer.

[00:52:47] If you don't have tumor that needs to be removed or something like that, you really aren't that important. Yeah. If you don't have a broken limb that we can set, then you're not important. You're just taking up my time.

[00:53:01] I've just been really questioning the whole thing and I get my prescriptions refilled however I can. We just they just passed a law here where pharmacists can even refill if it's something you've been on for a long time and you don't need any changes.

[00:53:14] They will allow pharmacists now to refill your meds. I'm just questioning the whole thing. And because I'm going to university, I've had access to the clinic. There's a nurse practitioner that is in the clinic at the university and she just

[00:53:29] referred me to a psychiatrist, yet another psychiatrist in my area. And I'm supposed to go in a couple of weeks and meet this psychiatrist. But honestly, I'm really centering myself about this and I'm going, is this what you need in your life?

[00:53:45] Is this actually help or is this more of the same? Because if it's more of the same, I'm out. Yeah. How long do you stay in the hospital? A few years. I was there almost a week.

[00:53:56] And I think in typical situations, because I've been to this rodeo many times, they would have tried to find a bed in a hospital somewhere within like I live in a valley that's like along some lakes and there's all these small towns that kind of like dot

[00:54:14] along the edges of these lakes. So when one small hospital doesn't have a bed for you, they try to find one within like 100 kilometers or whatever where you live. You can get put in different, you can get placed in different cities and you have to

[00:54:29] be transported by ambulance. It's so sick. It's so brutal. It's just so ridiculous. So but in this case, and I have had that happen before where I got transported to another town. In this case, there was no beds anywhere.

[00:54:41] There was no free psychiatrist that could take me on. And so they basically let me go. And my daughter picked me up from the hospital that day and I was I was free to go.

[00:54:53] And I was like probably about an hour and a half drive for me to get a friend took me in because I didn't have anywhere to go. And I slept on her air mattress for a night. And the next morning I called a shelter.

[00:55:05] And I think that like, I don't know that it was getting back to that what you were like asking me about. Was it a moment that I decided to live? I think it was that was the unconscious moment where I was like, OK, this overdosing

[00:55:19] myself for years on end is not working. It's that was that was the way you did it. The other suicide attempts as well. I always that's always the way I've done it is taking those.

[00:55:30] And I've had some times where the doctors have said, we don't know why you're alive. So there was that, too, that was sort of like, am I just flogging a dead horse here? Like, am I not? I'm not going to die.

[00:55:42] It doesn't matter what I'm going to do. So maybe I better just decide to live and figure out what that looks like. Ended up in a shelter, which because it was during covid ended up being they had taken over a whole hotel, which was kind of neat.

[00:55:57] Yeah, but I didn't have to stay like in a dorm with a bunch of other troubled women. I got my own hotel room. There was a pool. It was nearby, you know, a mall and restaurants and stuff like that.

[00:56:09] So I kind of like and I stayed there for a month. We have a question. Two questions. Did your mom not want to get back or you just didn't want to go there? Both. Yeah, actually, I texted my mom from the hospital bed because the hospital is

[00:56:24] like, what are we going to do with you? Like, we have no beds for you. We have no doctors for you. We don't know what we're going to do with you, but we can't just sort of let you go out into the world.

[00:56:33] So they asked me to check with my mom and she refused to take me in again. It was that same that same kind of like anger, rejection thing that I'd always dealt with in these situations, just like where she's so angry with me that she pretends I'm

[00:56:52] not alive. Yeah, that wasn't an option to go back there. And the hotel was a functioning hotel, but because of covid, they had no one there. Right. Well, it's all this experience has informed every decision I've made in the last two and a half years.

[00:57:07] The reason I went back to university is because I I've been an artist for 35 years and I've taught a lot of workshops and my workshops always end up being more kind of like art therapy than let's paint a pretty picture.

[00:57:21] You know, like I'm not one of those people that teaches wine and art. You know, let's get drunk and. I mean, those are fun, but OK. Yeah, I'm just not one. It's not my thing. Like I operate like with a level of depth for me.

[00:57:34] That's very not satisfying to teach those kind of classes. So I've taught workshops a lot where it ends up being kind of therapeutic for people. So I decided I want to be an art therapist because I want to I want to change the narrative about suicidality.

[00:57:50] I want to change the narrative about so-called mental health. Hate that term, but it's all we have right now because we're operating in an industrialized medical model. I want to celebrate failed suicide attempts rather than making people feel like a pariah of humanity where I live right now.

[00:58:10] It's a it's kind of like I guess you'd call it a resort town. It's like I don't know if people have heard of the Okanagan Valley if you've traveled in this part of the world at all.

[00:58:20] But it's like in the winter people ski and the summer people are on the lake. And it's very it's become very like opulent. And there's a lot of wealth here. There's a huge gap. And we have a street population fueled by, you know, the fentanyl crisis and the

[00:58:36] opioid crisis. I see those people on the street. If I was an addict in that way, I could have been one of those people. You have a huge tent city. I think our street population right now in a city of one hundred thousand people, our

[00:58:52] street population is about two thousand people. They're living in tents on a concrete like bike path. It's a huge it's a part of the culture I live in is this wealth gap. This makes me so emotional to talk about it because I hate that there are people, there

[00:59:12] are people's children. There are people that matter and are invisible. And I want to do something about that. I still have suicidal thoughts a lot, but because of the intense work I've done on myself and my I don't know, I hate the word.

[00:59:30] I just I'll just say words because I don't necessarily love these words, but it's sort of sometimes feel like it's all we have. But I feel like I went through a waking up from that last suicide attempt where I was

[00:59:45] in the hospital and just because of covid and the way things worked and I ended up plugging into a lot of resources for people that don't have if you want the resources there there. And I I milked the system like crazy the last two years.

[01:00:00] And I I never did that before. Like in my family, my people used to say really derogatory things about people on welfare. They used to say I have used the system in the last two years to get me out of a really bad situation.

[01:00:16] I know how to navigate the Canadian social services system now because I needed it for myself. And I'm so lucky that I'm not a drug addict or an alcoholic. I have other addictions, don't get me wrong, but those ones are so incapacitating and

[01:00:34] can end you up in a tent on the street with no help. But I just I wanted to say I still have suicidal thoughts on the daily, but they don't have a grip on me anymore.

[01:00:45] They're just habitual thoughts that have had a lot of practice in my head. I've made friends with them. I allow them to be there because I know I can't make them go away. They've always been there. They're always going to be there.

[01:01:00] I sort of look at them like they're my babies. If I visualize these thoughts of self-harm and like I shouldn't be here anymore and things like that, I just try to cradle them and just say, oh, there you are again, you little shit. I love you.

[01:01:21] You've propelled me a lot. You've had a real place in my life. I'm not going to chase you away or put you in the closet anymore. You're here. You have a voice. I hear you. So Buddhist sounding, Karen.

[01:01:38] And then I move on and I say that we have homework to do and we have a life to live. So you can be here and I'm just going to be living on over here while you shout at me about how I should kill myself.

[01:01:55] Right. Well, at least there's no shouting here. Not usually. I feel like what you're doing is so groundbreaking and radical, and I'm so grateful for it because you are allowing space for us to talk about suicide differently.

[01:02:10] Like in this just in this conversation, I've said suicide is funny. I've said I want to change the way we talk about it. I've said I allow my suicidal thoughts to be there. I want to celebrate failed suicide attempts.

[01:02:24] And you have created a space for that to happen. It's so important. We have never had this before. You think that it doesn't exist? I haven't found it in very many places. Like people just cringe and you can't talk, you can't say anything like say on social

[01:02:42] media or YouTube or whatever, you get shadow banned if you mention the S word. And suicidality has been so in the shadows culturally and societally. We haven't talked about it. We haven't allowed people to talk about it.

[01:02:56] What happens to you when you go into the hospital after a suicide attempt is you get shoved into a very dark section of the hospital. Nobody wants to talk to you. They don't want to bring you water. They don't want to say, hey, we're glad you're alive.

[01:03:10] It's kind of like the tent people that live in those tents. Yeah. Even though I struggle to do or be the thing I'm about to say, or not be this way, I

[01:03:19] should say like you seeing some one seeing somebody in that way, in a way is like the ultimate sign of not being a human. Like way more, a way better metric than how much money you've earned. Yeah. I'm so judgy right now and I hate it, but.

[01:03:35] I agree. Judge away. I think it's the greatest way to measure a society. Yeah. Far more than the industrial output or GDP or all these other quasi fucked up statistics, whatever. How are you doing? How do you treat people who are just struggling?

[01:03:52] Maybe they live in a tent on the street. Maybe they're in the hospital for a suicide attempt, maybe whatever. Yeah. You treat them. And I'm very drawn to places and maybe there aren't many of them, but just put a

[01:04:07] different kind of importance on even how we treat people who are older. Yeah, totally. Our bodies are breaking down. We're organic material. We break down. So what do we tend to do is isolate and put them in a home and that those homes might be fun.

[01:04:26] I mean, you have people around, I don't know exactly, but. No, they're gross. My dad was just in one for a year with at the end of his illness and that wouldn't Helen. No way to like, you know, I'm not going to get super romantic about other cultures

[01:04:39] because some sorts of other cultures, many are not doing it well either, but there are some places in the world, specifically around aging, where it's completely different narrative that we will take care of you. We will come for you. We will learn from you. Yeah.

[01:04:54] We will learn from you. You've been on the earth. You may have some wisdom. Yeah. And the trajectory is not sustainable, right? Like some people might say, oh, what do you mean it's not healthy or whatever.

[01:05:06] If somebody's, you know, somebody has, you know, wealth and they're living in their bubble, they might think, oh, I like this. I don't want this to change or whatever. But my question is, is it sustainable in the longterm?

[01:05:17] And it's proving not to be like another thing about the area that I live as we have horrific forest fires that are just, you know, there was, there was just one in August right near where I had to evacuate from where I, where I'm living because

[01:05:30] some, it was just powering through like hundreds of houses burned down. People are displaced. Like we have a major housing crisis anyway. And now there's all these rich people that their houses burnt down because they

[01:05:42] live kind of like on the edge of the forest where it's beautiful, but they're susceptible to these massive fires. So it's just, it's not sustainable the way we're living. Wealthy people. And there's a larger and larger gap. We know that for sure. They're insulated.

[01:05:58] Maybe those, that example, they weren't, they can rebuild. They have insurance. They're rich. I don't know if that's the case for each of them. Of course not. And I think you're, you're making a different point about sustainability environment. Yeah.

[01:06:09] And I'm not using the word sustainable and like we, we hear that word ad nauseam now about the environment. What I mean is if you look at the trajectory of, you know, the wealth gap, the way we're over consuming everything, the way we're over consuming the land,

[01:06:26] can we sustain this way of life long-term? We can't. We just like, there's an end. There is an end to the way we are culturally right now. And I think we're seeing the end of it. Actually, I guess it's happening, right? We don't see it.

[01:06:41] It's happening, but it's happening. Yeah. I think it's crumbled. Things are crumbling. You do. Oh, for sure. They are there where I am anyway. And I mean, you don't have to look too far on the world news to see how everything's breaking down and falling apart.

[01:06:59] So one thing I, one thing I questioned that question, but I think about this came up a little bit earlier. Is it, well, did it? Maybe it didn't. Is it just in part because of, let's say, let's start with social media. We're just seeing it more.

[01:07:13] It may not be happening more. We're seeing it more. And then the nature of news coverage and cycle coverage and clickbait coverage. It's just, we are bombarded with it in a way that historically we never have been, or is it actually changing or probably both?

[01:07:29] I heard this guy talking about 80 year cycles of, um, kind of order and chaos. And he was going back to the second world war and how that changed society. So fundamentally where we went from like a previous 80 year cycle that ended at

[01:07:52] the second world war with absolute chaos and reshuffling of, of people and whole cultures, you know, moving from geographically from one area to another, things like that. And then we had the 1950s, which could be called in our era, like the

[01:08:09] quintessential orderly kind of way of forming society. Right. Um, but the world works in 80 year cycles and it's been exactly 80 years since that happened. And here we are again in absolute chaos. We're in chaos environmentally. We're in chaos politically. Um, it's looking like war is inevitable.

[01:08:31] And so there's a new thing going to come out of this. We don't know exactly when this it's, you know, 80, it's not exactly 80 years. It's probably like a little bit fluid. I think there's a lot of merit to that philosophy and you could probably, if

[01:08:46] someone was into history, they could probably look back at it and see some truth in that and gauge the way we live our lives. I'm seeing a lot around me of, um, people really interested in more communal off-grid living again.

[01:09:06] And like, um, there's like a tiny house movement and I personally would love to live like that. The people around me seem to be really desirous of peace watching out for each other again. And in that kind of model, money wouldn't be so important.

[01:09:23] I think, you know, pooling resources is more important and not just pooling financial resources, but pooling. Yeah. People. It's a weird thing. This cyclical thing, because it almost goes back to the way we lived a while ago

[01:09:38] where like when you say pooling resources, you're an artist, you can contribute that. I'm a plumber. I can contribute that like stuff that actually helps people live. It's not a new concept. Yeah. And it makes so much sense. Doesn't it? Yeah. But now we've changed it so much.

[01:09:54] Everything is, I'm not, I'm not intelligent enough or learned enough to discuss this well, but everything is transactional. It's all revolving around currency, that specific kind of currency. Yeah. So if you have more of it, you can do more of that.

[01:10:11] If you have less of that, you can do less of that. And if you have even less than that, you're homeless or you're, you know, it's like a weird. Yeah. And in that model, somebody is always going to be powerful and, and somebody

[01:10:22] else is always going to be powerless. So I think what's happening because of like, just going back to why I even started that whole thing about 80 year cycles. And you were saying, is it that we have more information now?

[01:10:35] We've been to this place before humanities, you know, the cycle through this many times, we do have way more access to communicating with each other. Six months from about now, seven months from about now, you know what that is? No. 80 years since your grandfather. Oh wow. Holy shit.

[01:11:00] Isn't that crazy? That is crazy. I mean, I'm not sure of the 80 years connection, but when you said 80 years, I thought what's the middle of world war II. I actually started to do this. I Googled it while you were talking, but I was listening.

[01:11:13] I was like, oh, it's June 6th, 1944. I thought it was earlier. I don't know what. That's amazing. Thanks for looking that up. That is super interesting to me. I have these, the following questions are going to be challenging because they're short answers. Okay.

[01:11:26] Uh, do you remember how you actually found the podcast? I'm not sure if I Googled, I, I did a search because I had been kind of thinking about how there needed to be a podcast about suicide. I was, I'm frustrated with how the mainstream channels, uh,

[01:11:43] ban you from using the S word. I really think we need to talk about it and bring it out of the shadows. And so I was looking cause I thought maybe I'll start a podcast. I wasn't, I hadn't thought about going back to school yet.

[01:11:56] And I was kind of like, what am I going to do with this next part of my life? And then I discovered your podcast and binge listened for a while and loved it so much. Um, and I thought I would really love to chat with you. Hmm.

[01:12:09] Um, how many people know about either of our conversations? Nobody. Kids don't know. Nope. Do you have a relationship with your children today? With my son, my younger, my younger son, I do. Um, my daughter hasn't spoken to me in over a year.

[01:12:25] When was the last time you considered ending your life? And let's say that's a little bit beyond ideating, but you decide what that means. Um, I had a really intense bout not long ago. Like I'm going to say weeks where it came up again for me really intensely.

[01:12:42] And I thanked it for being an opportunity to practice this new way of looking at it. And I was, I was kind of able to use that. One of the practices I've been trying to implement lately is when something is very

[01:12:57] triggering for me instead of turning away from it or having a negative feeling toward the trigger, I actually kind of like go into the trigger and like, um, journal about it, really explore it because it's an opportunity to show me a part of me that needs attention.

[01:13:16] Five suicide attempts. Mm-hmm. At least. At least. Outside of the people who know, because they found you or medical staff, did you ever talk with other people about it? Very rarely. Do I? I re I have a really hard time just general relationships.

[01:13:35] I have a really hard time with either, either like oversharing or undersharing. And then I kind of like recoil from, oh my God, I did it again where I said too much. And I really, I've always had this trouble.

[01:13:49] It kind of ties in what we were talking about earlier about neurodivergence. I do struggle quite a bit socially and I don't know if it's early trauma and not learning how to communicate properly as a child, or if I actually have like an anomaly with my brain.

[01:14:07] But, um, I have talked to people about suicidality and my, my personal experience before, but it always feels. Icky. Like, am I saying too much? Am I not saying enough? Should I say this at all? Like I really struggle with communication in that way.

[01:14:23] But you're communicating well with me. Well, you know what? That's why this is such an important platform you have, because I have felt like this is a space where I could communicate. Yeah. You know, there's not a lot of places in the world like that.

[01:14:39] There don't seem to be no, at least in the English speaking world, I have no idea what's happening in, you know, Myanmar. Yeah. That would be interesting to know about how other cultures, I wonder about indigenous cultures, like, you know, say some Mexican areas, indigenous North American people.

[01:14:56] I wonder if there's more openness. Just a little bit, I've learned about indigenous cultures from the past. They were much more open to gender fluidity, highly sensitive people. You know, they were the shaman, like everyone had a place in society.

[01:15:13] If you open space for that to be okay. And because we, we, we rather quickly, I think often just say that doesn't work. That doesn't fit. You shouldn't do that. That's not good for you. I mean, and so what do you do?

[01:15:26] Well, you try to fix that thing. Yeah. It's like, I used to ask this is, this probably won't come as a surprise. I remember I used to ask a ton of questions. Shocker. I have a podcast where I ask a ton of questions, but I don't remember like

[01:15:42] rewarded for that. Like it could have easily been like, that's kind of cool. You're a curious guy. And I'm sure some people do or would have thought that maybe I was a little unlucky and didn't cross their paths.

[01:15:55] But it was either ignored or a little bit like, give it a rest. Okay. I get it. It can be annoying when you're seven and you don't shut up. Sure. But it's kind of like, it didn't quite fit with the way you're supposed to.

[01:16:10] And I can imagine for a lot of people, it becomes like, I'm not, I don't fit. Got to change. Got to be more like this or that much. Right. That, that whole idea of being too much, like, that's just so crazy to me.

[01:16:22] How can somebody be too much? People just are, they just are what they are. You might be too much for a classroom, but who's wrong? It goes, it gets back to the water discussion. Who's who's who's wrong is the, is the water sick poison or is this person

[01:16:41] who's trying to survive and swim in the water, the problem we've been treating. I mean, it's tricky because like, if you have somebody who's going around killing people, we got to do something about that, right? So certain actions we do need to address in a certain way.

[01:16:54] I think most people would agree with that. Maybe not everybody, but. Well, if somebody is so traumatized and so altered that they're murderous. Yeah. They, they do need to be separated from the general masses, but do they need to be incarcerated into a metal cage?

[01:17:14] Well, how is that helpful? Well, people don't want to help them. They want to punish them and real the isolation or the separating isn't enough of a punishment. It's we have to make you in these inhumane conditions too. Maybe I'd think differently if a loved one was murdered.

[01:17:31] I don't know. Right. I don't know, but. I don't think you would. Cause I think it's fundamental. Like you know that someone doesn't go and kill another human being because they're, you know, in a good place.

[01:17:44] It's like what you were saying even about your mom to not, I'm not comparing your mom to a murder, but you know what I mean? Like if you can have compassion for one person, you can have compassion for all people. Couple more questions of the five attempts.

[01:17:57] Do you ever remember thinking after them, fuck, I wish that had worked. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. There's one. I especially when my kids were young, I was in a really tenuous marriage. I did not know who I was anymore, which I think has a lot to

[01:18:17] do with suicidality actually. It's a identity. Identity. Have you heard the term masking? You're, you're throwing out a lot of terms. I'm not familiar with today. It's used a lot in autism circles because there's a lot of people that

[01:18:32] we're learning now have really high functioning autism or some kind of neurodivergence that use this masking to go out in the world and it's like where you learn how to behave basically. And then you perform, you're performing when you're out in the world at work

[01:18:53] or socializing or whatever, in all your relationships, you're performing, you're wearing a mask and it is so flipping exhausting that you burn out. So there's, there's a high rate of masking and then a high rate of burnout in these circles of people.

[01:19:08] And burnout can look like a lot of things. It can look like just, you know, emotional exhaustion or whatever, but it can also translate into like illnesses and auto, a lot of autoimmune conditions come from that. So it's a big deal.

[01:19:24] And I discovered that I had been basically masking my whole life. I would, I had been living in this performance. I'd been wearing a suit to be who I thought the people around me needed me to be.

[01:19:37] Like in my family, I needed to be that scapegoat that absorbed all the negativity. I needed to be the sick person. So everyone else could point their finger and say, well, she's the problem in the family. Right? So I wore that, I wore that mask and that suit.

[01:19:52] And I discovered a couple of years ago in this like really quintessential moment of overdosing and surviving that I didn't want to die, but I wanted to kill the performance that I was living in. Yeah. It's tricky though.

[01:20:09] It's hard to, it's, it takes a lot of awareness to start to realize that that's what's going on. Like to separate yourself from the performance. People like aspects of themselves when they're performing in that way.

[01:20:22] I think I understand like one of the things I do over the top sometimes it's like, I'm always on not, not less so in this podcast, but I have different versions of myself, like everyone.

[01:20:32] So I go out and I'm like over the top and I'm a little bit loud and I'm sometimes pretty funny. I mean, blah, blah, blah. I like that. But is that part of the mass that's ultimately harming? I don't know. It depends if it's exhausting you. Yeah.

[01:20:44] Like, can you recover from that or is it damaging? It feels like both kind of like a drug, I guess. Like I love the drug, but then, but then, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, and I'm so used to it.

[01:20:56] So you were able to work, you've been able to begin that work. Yeah. Well, I just was like, okay, so if that's not me, if this thing that's exhausting me and it's not serving me and all of that, and it makes me feel

[01:21:09] suicidal and I feel like I have a death wish and all that, if that's not serving me, how do I find out what's real? Like what's even real. So I started on that quest and it's been scary in a lot of ways.

[01:21:23] I think I knew that I had those choices from really, really young. Like I had this weird sense of awareness, but it's quite terrifying because it means that you were, well, you're exposed when you're out in public. I'm not this performance I've been doing anymore. What am I?

[01:21:39] So now you've got to go out and feel kind of like an idiot because you're just like trying things out who you're, what your real identity is and you're going to screw up because it's not rehearsed yet.

[01:21:51] So I think I had to lose everything to even get to the place where that was a possibility that authenticity was the only goal. I have been going to a therapist, which is really cool because I finally, after 57 years found somebody who I resonate with.

[01:22:10] She uses a methodology called internal family systems and a lot of the stuff that's been working for me as far as getting to the bottom of all of this has been through that modality. It's really, really fabulous.

[01:22:23] And there's quite a few, they're not all psychologists, but you know, experts, I guess you'd say who've been developing this way of looking at the traumatized brain and how you can recover, like use neuroplasticity to recover from the shit of our past.

[01:22:40] I'm going to make a few assumptions here, right? You don't have a lot of people to talk to. No. At one point agreed or somewhat agreed with the diagnoses you were given and now you're probably not agreeing with them. Yeah.

[01:22:52] I don't know if I ever agreed, but I was compliant because somebody has to help me. That was my thought process was I can't do this for myself. Other than art, I think it's a safe assumption to make that that helps you in

[01:23:06] some ways just improves your life in some ways. Is there anything else that helps, especially when you're feeling not so good? Yeah. I've been using food and nutrition a lot to kind of help me feel better. So I gave up sugar grains and a bunch of other alcohol.

[01:23:26] I quit smoking. This all kind of started about seven years. It's been seven years since I've had sugar or any grains at all. Grains? Grains like wheat, rice. Why? For a multitude of reasons. One is I have autoimmune conditions that are exacerbated by gluten.

[01:23:45] So I had to give up gluten and then I realized that grains are all extremely high carbohydrate. They basically convert to sugar in your, in your bloodstream anyway. So if you're giving up sugar, you kind of have to give up them also because

[01:23:57] they just function the same way sugar does in your system. So it's been hugely life changing. I started that when I, at the same time I was giving up all those pills, the medication, I just decided I'm going to go super clean and I had been smoking

[01:24:14] for a few years at that point. I was a mess. I was full on into my eating disorder, which was really made a lot worse by the pills. So it was kind of like, I think when you, when you make a change, like I'm going to

[01:24:27] get off all these pharmaceuticals, it's such a ripple effect that it rippled out into, into my life. Like no caffeine, no sugar, no, no gluten, very, very low carbohydrate. I try to eat as healthy sourced meat as I can find. Limited diet. Yes. Also kills your social life.

[01:24:47] Yeah. I don't really go out to eat anymore or anything. And I don't, I don't drink. I do partake in a tiny bit of cannabis now and then, but other than that, I'm pretty clean. When was the last time you had a cup of coffee?

[01:24:59] I drink coffee every day, but I only drink decaf. Okay. That's not coffee. Right. It just tastes like coffee. Right. We can just say it's not coffee though. But if it works for you, great. When was the last time you had booze?

[01:25:10] When we were going to Mexico every once in a while, I would have a shot glass of really, really, really, really good tequila. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Like with a soda and lime on the side and like a tiny little, and just sip the tequila.

[01:25:23] But that's been, I haven't been to Mexico for four years. So yeah, it's probably about four years. I don't know if you've heard the podcast in the last few months, I started to ask this question around the pink and purple pill, which is, I gave you a pill.

[01:25:38] Would you take this pill? It will end your life. You will feel absolutely no pain and people will think you died naturally. I'm going to like to see to the core of this. Do you want to be alive or not? Because those are two reasons.

[01:25:49] Sometimes people are like, I don't want to be in pain. I don't want it to not work and deal with the consequences of that. And I don't want all the shit that comes with people thinking I ended my life.

[01:25:58] It doesn't sound like you would take that pill tonight. Whoa, that's a good question. So there's two parts for you based on our conversations. One, sure. We'll start with tonight, but then the other one is, would you just keep it around or just flush it down the toilet?

[01:26:13] Just say no thanks. I don't want it. I'm going to give you my very first gut reaction was that I would take it. Is there a why behind that? Can I ask that? Why?

[01:26:24] I am ready to go at any time, but I don't want it to be violent like it used to be for me. I don't want to leave my kids with that feeling of there was something they could have done differently because I think that's the classic universal

[01:26:42] thing people say when someone takes their own life is what could I have done? And I don't want to leave that behind. So if I could take the pill that people didn't think that I did it to myself,

[01:26:53] that they thought it was natural causes, I would take it. Okay. And that's not to say that I'm not like, you know, seizing every day right now, because I am like, I'm pouring myself into university.

[01:27:05] I have a 3.0 grade average making a ton of art and I have a line of greeting cards that I've designed around talking about mental health. Like I'm doing, I'm doing stuff. I'm living, living, living my life. And I live in a really cute subsidized apartment now.

[01:27:21] It's a gorgeous day out. And like, I'm not, I'm not saying that I would take that pill because feeling suicidal, but if I could go peacefully without anyone wondering why I took my own life, yeah, I'd go. It's like those two things can coexist. Right. I agree.

[01:27:37] Very hard one for people to wrap their heads around. That's another huge narrative would be amazing to smash. Is that just because somebody is ready to not be in a body anymore, doesn't mean they're like a murderous, hateful person. It's just, they're just done.

[01:27:52] You know, for a couple of years now I've had this idea. What you said about your greeting cards made me think of this. I don't know if there's a space for this to exist, but I would love to play with the idea of satire around suicide.

[01:28:03] I love that. It's a tough one. It's a tough one. That could be a really cool project. Cause I'd be really interested in trying to explore that. I'd be really interested in what people say about it.

[01:28:14] If I was a funny person, I would love to be able to talk about suicide in a funny way, like on stage and actually make people laugh about it because I've had so many ludicrous things happen, like calling the suicide hotline and being on hold

[01:28:29] and the, the music they play on the, while you're sitting there on hold, waiting to talk to someone about how you're about, you want to take your own life. I actually burst out laughing in that moment.

[01:28:40] Cause I was like in absolute despair, ready to do it, like just hang on by a thread and I thought, well, maybe I'll call this suicide hotline and see, you know, if there's anybody to talk to or whatever, and then I'm on hold for a

[01:28:54] long, long time listening to this horrendously annoying music, like Muzak. And I thought, okay, this is just really funny. Somebody needs to do a bit. I've heard bits around mental health stuff a fair amount, and especially like the last 10 years, man, that the whole premise of the entire

[01:29:15] show could be you call the hotline and the whole show is what's happening when you're waiting and it just ends with the woman finally comes back. You're like, nah, I'm good. Cause I don't know. Yeah, exactly. Whatever.

[01:29:29] So satire aside, it is another, it has been another really interesting conversation we're having here. I thought it was so crazy that the file was corrupt because I woke up the next

[01:29:41] morning after I talked to you and I was like, I didn't say what I wanted to say. And I felt like even some of the stuff I said wasn't even true. Really? Yeah. I had like a real visceral reaction the next morning after we'd talked

[01:29:55] thinking I wasn't being authentic. That was the mask. Yeah, that was the mask that was talking. I didn't catch that. Yeah. Funny. Hey, well, why would I, I mean, I assume people are just, yeah. I don't know. Yeah.

[01:30:07] We only just met, so you wouldn't know that I was, but it actually kind of seemed right to me that the file didn't work, that you weren't able to publish it and I feel way better about this conversation. It's really good that we got to talk again.

[01:30:22] Very good. Yeah. And I thank you also. I'm wondering, like I actually had a couple of conversations sort of like updates. So second conversations, I've already talked to them once. People can hear that some time goes by, but I think that'll be a part of this

[01:30:35] conversation and part of this podcast and a larger, a larger part is now, now that you haven't heard from this person for a year or two, do they think where are you at now, including your thoughts on feelings about the S word?

[01:30:49] That's a really good idea too, because I think it gets people engaging with older episodes and then your, your whole listenership is a bit more rounded. Yeah. Oh, so that final question was around myths or misconceptions.

[01:31:03] I love that question and I'm going to answer it the same way I did last time. I think the biggest myth is the one of ask for help. You know, that it's, it's just such a trope now you see in the media where

[01:31:16] they're like, if you're having even at the end of a movie or a TV show that deals with this topic, it'll say, if you're having trouble, call 1-800-HELP, blah, blah, blah. Like in Canada, we have it's Bell Let's Talk. It's the phone company Bell.

[01:31:32] They hijacked the whole mental health thing and made this huge campaign and they hired all these like Olympian athletes to be there. Of course. Of course. You know all that. Bell Let's Talk. You can call this number if you're having trouble and believe me, I've tried

[01:31:48] calling a lot of those things and they are so ineffectual and they're so steeped in the old medical model we've been talking about. I honestly think that it's an inside job. If you can't go deep into your own demons, there is nothing any 1-800 number

[01:32:08] is going to do for you. I used to do that for 741-741, which is in the, no, it's North America and even beyond text trying to reach a younger generation, but I had to leave it. I volunteered there for a while. I don't remember how long.

[01:32:23] I just, it felt like bullshit and the whole thing of having to flag people who are considered a risk, just not my jam, man. Anything regulated like that? I'm suspect of. Yeah. I don't think you can regulate what we're talking about. And profit from pay what? Big time.

[01:32:44] Likely a fucking cup of water that you, I don't know how it is in Canada. It might be very different, but I know here that couple of water, that little used cup with that old water was probably like $80. Yeah.

[01:32:55] And getting back to the, just this thing about the myth and what I think is the biggest myth of asking for help is the low hanging fruit on the help world is the most unhelpful, like when I say the low hanging fruit, I mean, doctors,

[01:33:12] psychiatrists, the place that you would think first to go for help is the place that is like responsible for the opioid crisis and stuff like that. So. How'd they get such a pass? Don't go there for help. No, it's not helpful.

[01:33:30] I think what's interesting when you say about essentially what you were saying with the demon stuff is there's nobody coming to help. There's nobody coming to help. Which is very scary. Well, it's, it is scary if your mind is still in that old way of thinking of that.

[01:33:46] I am incapacitated and I can't take care of myself and these other authority figures know more than me about myself. It's scary that if you believe that. If you just have like a shred, just like a spark of courage in you to say, they

[01:34:02] don't know me better than me. I know me and I'm going to just stand outside that system for a little while and see what happens and see if I can do it, then it's not scary anymore. Empowering yourself. There's nothing like it.

[01:34:18] But you lose, you lose relationships when you do that. You do. You definitely like, like they just are not going to be by your side and that's not hyperbole. I mean, I can just think of my own life and some of the fallout.

[01:34:30] And you know, there's just certain people I talked to him. Like you, I hate this. I hate this. And I think it's tied into what you're saying in part. I love what you just said too. It's not about, I don't hate the person I'm talking to.

[01:34:42] I hate who I am when I'm talking to them. I love that. That's everything. Yeah. I feel not good. Yeah. And I I'm alone a lot in my life now, but I am not lonely anymore. But when I was in those relationships with the people, I didn't like

[01:34:59] myself when I was with them, I was so lonely and empty. Who would rate way rather be what I am now knowing that I've let go of people that I not that, not that I don't like them, but people that aren't good for

[01:35:13] me and be alone right now, because I just cling to the belief that if I'm really truly finding this authentic self now there'll be new people. Yeah. Just people that want to be engaged with. And it's reciprocal too. Right? Like, yeah. Yeah, for sure.

[01:35:29] It's a, it's that human need for community, but aren't you just in a place now where it's like the community has to be real? Definitely a hundred percent. This is, I wonder, this is a kind of community. No.

[01:35:45] I wonder if you had told me in 2020 released three episodes. Now it's July or whatever. You're still going to be going in November of 2023. Really? That's cool. It's been interesting. Anything else we want to include in this? I don't think so.

[01:36:04] Just yeah, just really grateful to be able to speak to your listenership and talk to you. And yeah, it's been great. You think this is the wrong time for me to remind the listeners? I usually do it in the in-show and the out-show.

[01:36:19] I don't think Carrie, they understand the effect that rating and reviewing the podcast has, I'm doing like a fucking public, the public service announcement, but that would be cool. Cause I don't think everybody, I don't think you have to be suicidal or have

[01:36:34] attempted to get some value out of the conversation hearing it. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And this really ties in with what we were talking about earlier too, about how there's just been such a ban on talking about this issue at all.

[01:36:49] So yeah, you have to remember that you are pretty cutting edge in that way. And I think that you're really onto something like it's going to grow. I absolutely think it will, but you might just be one of those like first in

[01:37:02] people where you're like, you're like the icebreaker you're starting to like plow through this hard mass of icebergs in front, you know, and it's coming though. It's good. There's so many people. It feels like that just quite can't understand a concept that I just can't

[01:37:24] understand why they can't understand it to talk with somebody without filling the blank. Yeah. And that's the part that's like simple, but just cutting edge. I don't get it though. Yeah, I get it. But I'm like, how? Well, it's because it's outside of it's outside the system, right?

[01:37:42] It's outside the system of, um, defaulting to a regulatory body where you're only, you can only talk about suicide if you're part of the suicide prevention team or your, it's such a strange thing. How taboo it is to talk about such a real human function.

[01:38:06] Like I wonder what the percentage of people in the world at a suicidal thought. Yeah. It's a part of our, our makeup. It's a part of who we are as a species. Fucking shame the shit out of you or just squash you hard. Yeah.

[01:38:23] Of course you're not going to talk about it. That's why I love people come on here and talk about it. It's not easy. Like there's pressure against, and I'm sure a lot of people, they take a long time to finally reach out. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:38:35] Well, fear drives the bus, right? Fear, fear of what other people are going to think. Fear of somebody is going to hear it. Well, how about fear of the wrong person hearing it and you're getting locked up

[01:38:44] just by talking about it because someone decides that's suicidal enough when you might be just talking about it. But you said you answered that question about the pill. That's a problem. It's risk. We got to put you there. Yeah. So why would you talk about it? Yeah.

[01:39:01] I had a couple of those really bad experiences like that. And I can see why people don't want to talk about it. You could even say, I'm not suicidal. I'm not suicidal. I'm thinking about onstage doing satire.

[01:39:14] I want to be very clear because I have to say this. I'm not, but, but even that people could look at your words and your behavior and say, you know what you are. And now you don't really, it's like, I don't know what it is like there.

[01:39:26] And I don't know a lot about what it's like in all States, but there are some States, not only can they lock you up against your will, which is really fucking scary. There's no real objective way to do that. Right.

[01:39:39] We can't say, Oh, they did this or that. It's just, it's a judgment call. It's a, it's maybe they are right. Yeah. But also other people can, and I mean like maybe your ex-boyfriend. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now we're getting into like some crazy fucking shit.

[01:39:54] My ex-husband tried to have me committed because I had inherited some money. I mean, exactly. And I have been locked up against my will too. So I know what happens to like, if it can happen to me.

[01:40:05] I'm the most docile, quiet sort of introspective person you probably ever meet. And so if I can get locked up, I can't imagine what's going on out there in the world. Like it's like, I've been put in the back of a cop car before because a friend of

[01:40:21] mine suspected that I was in trouble and I was in my car and they traced me to my phone. And which is another whole thing, which is scaring the fuck out of me.

[01:40:31] I had to leave my car in a parking spot and the cops put me in the back of their car and took me to the hospital. And then I got put in one of those concrete like tank rooms in the, in

[01:40:42] emergency, they have these rooms where, where there's, there's just like a blanket and a pillow and like a metal toilet hanging out off the wall. And you're in this concrete, like no, no corners room, which is like a little cell. I've had that happen many times. Yeah.

[01:41:00] Talk about trauma. That's why I say this whole myth around just ask for help. Oh, you mean I'm going to like say to somebody, Hey, I'm in trouble so that the cops come in the ambulance and they're going to carry, don't be, don't be so dramatic.

[01:41:15] It's like, she's not being dramatic. It's not revolutionary. It's not new. I think this is just, we've undone it so much that the norm is that you have to talk about things in certain ways. You can't possibly talk, for example, about suicide without offering some

[01:41:30] resources or some possible solutions. I'm like, I think you can. Yeah. But it's just weird for people. Did I share this with you last time? Like this idea of, I call it outsourcing empathy, which rings true for me.

[01:41:43] Like, I'm not going to offer that because I don't know how, or I don't have not qualify more and more. That's the thing. So, but the, the, that person over there who might have an appointment next week, they can do it. You know what I'm saying?

[01:41:56] Like that idea. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of comment. I can outsourcing feels like a strong, bold, good choice of a word because it's perfectly with like industrialized bullshit. Yeah. So maybe just some people get it and some don't. Yeah.

[01:42:13] And giving a voice to, to the, just like the average person, you could listen to a thousand podcast episodes with so-called experts and authors and people like that. But it's not very often that you get to hear from just everyday people having life experiences.

[01:42:33] On anything we consider challenging or difficult or hard. I wonder how many podcasts are out there that are conducted in a similar way to this one where there is no, nothing other than just an open conversation without the other bullshit. Yeah.

[01:42:47] I haven't, I haven't found any, I listened to a lot of podcasts, but I haven't found And like you say, you have to know like the proper search words, right? They're not going to rise to the top of the algorithm. But can we talk about depression?

[01:43:01] Like we talk about, like, just, just talk about it openly, honestly. It's never entirely objectively. It's almost impossible to do that, but that's the goal. Can we do that with other things? I'm sure. And I know people are doing it and they are. Yeah.

[01:43:16] Well, I see like at the fundamental level, it's about changing the way we talk about this topic. You cannot talk about it the way you are talking about it as a human experience when it's shrouded in all of that old ideology. Exactly.

[01:43:35] Like it literally undoes all of it. It does. What is your, what is your day like? Oh, today's a day off. I'm just kind of probably going to do some homework, just get caught up on a few things because I have Fridays off of classes. So. Oh, perfect.

[01:43:51] Yeah. It was a perfect day to reconnect. I'm really glad we had another chance to do this. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. My last question, and then I'm going to go take a bath. Yeah. Don't visualize it, but that is, I was invited tonight to a costume

[01:44:07] party that's based on national holidays. I think that's extended to any holiday and there's all kinds of holiday. If you were going to go to a holiday party like that, and you chose to wear a costume, what would you do? What holiday might you represent?

[01:44:23] That's a tough one. You probably have different holidays than. It might spark me regardless of what your holiday is. I might get an idea. I'm not a good costume person. All right. I'm not either. In fact, I had a real aversion to Halloween most of my life.

[01:44:38] I used to hide, hide out when it was Halloween and everyone was dressing up. I don't know. I'm the wrong person to ask if I ever had to dress up for anything. I just would always go as Frida. Yeah.

[01:44:49] Well, that was my go-to costume, but that doesn't help for holidays. Well, you can make it work. I actually just texted the person who invited me. What if my costume really sucks ass? I wrote, she said, I think everyone's my emoji.

[01:45:06] And then I thought if we extend the idea of national, like United States, there's so many silly holidays. Yeah. There's national bald is beautiful day. There you go. You just go as yourself. But then it's like, is that in the spirit of things that you're not dressing?

[01:45:19] You're like the anti-costume. Isn't that like a little sophomoric? No, it's like, dude, put... So I have to, so last question for real. National bald is beautiful day. I need one accessory. You just have to have one accessory. I've already got the bald. Bow tie.

[01:45:38] You need a really awesome bow tie. I don't have one. I just feel like when you have to tell somebody what your costume is, it's not a great costume. Well, probably everyone's costume is going to be hard to identify though. I bet. Right? Yeah.

[01:45:53] I'm just not a costume guy either. I'm not a costume person at all. My friend said, Hey, why don't you, why don't you add national something like national smile day to it? And I'm like, that's too much of a stretch to smile for two hours.

[01:46:09] Oh, some people it's fine. I just, it's not going to happen. My default face is not smiling. But you could get like a happy face sticker, put it on here or something. Just one little thing. Yeah. All right. I'll go to a store.

[01:46:26] Nothing like taking up a nice part of my day with these kinds of conversations though. It's awesome. Yeah. I really appreciate it. It was really good to kind of revisit some stuff, but I felt like I was able to do it in a more authentic way. Good.

[01:46:41] You real. Wait a second. I remember you were planning a trip to East Africa. No, I did. I went to Tanzania. That's where I was. Where'd you go? We went to Arusha near Kilimanjaro. Yes. Yeah. I was close to the Moshi, which is not too far away either.

[01:47:00] Oh, I remember seeing that. I went with them a class. It was a, um, it was a third year English class for university. We went with this female teacher, lots of seniority at the university and everything. She ended up being drunk and, and like on pills.

[01:47:19] I think the entire time are the place we were staying. We were the first big group to stay there since COVID and they had really gotten into disrepair. And we all got terrible food poisoning. Some people were hospitalized. It was a fiasco from beginning to end.

[01:47:39] And I did get to go on safari, which was amazing. And I'll never forget it. I loved it. And I got to meet some people in a Masai village that was really cool. And I wrote kind of like a book for my final project, which was pictures,

[01:47:54] art and poetry and stories. And amazing. I did meet a really nice guide who grew up around Kilimanjaro. So if I ever go back, I do know somebody now that I could get to take me around. I was really sick the day that my cohort went to Kili.

[01:48:10] So I missed the hike, which was a bummer. And how long was the whole trip? It was almost a month. Wow. And then because my, the teacher really let us down after about 10 days, a bunch of us said, let's go to Zanzibar. Oh, I never went there.

[01:48:28] Was it good? It was beautiful. I'm so glad I wasn't going to go to Zanzibar because it was a whole other expense, but yeah, because the trip was such a letdown. One of my friends said, you know, I really think you should come with us

[01:48:40] because you're going to be so disappointed. And I would have been if you just go home now without any, you know, having done anything. So Zanzibar was amazing. I cried the entire time. I was so moved by seeing the animals and being on safari, but you know what?

[01:48:59] For me, my trip was so much about revisiting. Cause I was born in Zambia. My dad was a geologist there and he talked about Africa my whole life. It was kind of like probably the only really good part about my childhood.

[01:49:16] It was listening to these stories about Africa and how passionate my parents were about the time they had there. Very cool. But I always wanted to go back and also that it was the end of my dad's life. Like he died three days after I got home.

[01:49:30] So there was a lot of symbolic nature to that trip for me and seeing these animals, the way he had described them to me, it was like, it kind of made my dad young and real and vibrant again. It was very emotional. We learn. Yeah.

[01:49:46] Or we go off the grid. Yeah. Seems to be a good option. More and more I'm finding. Decaf fucking coffee and call it coffee. It's not coffee. Yeah. Do your youngie and shadow work. You do the shadow work. Hopefully you don't get shadow banned.

[01:50:04] All the stuff, all the work, all the words, all the stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Off to the bath for me. Thank you very, very much. Yeah. Okay. We'll chat soon. I hope you have fun tonight. Thanks. Talk soon.

[01:50:21] As always, thanks so much for listening and all of your support and special. Thanks to Carrie up in British Columbia. Thanks Carrie. If you are a suicide attempt survivor and you'd like to talk, please reach out.

[01:50:32] Hello at suicide noted.com on Facebook or Twitter, or should I call it X at suicide noted, check out the show notes to learn more about the podcast. And of course we would love a rating and or review on Apple or Spotify.

[01:50:47] I think you can do it on Spotify. Give it a shot. And that is all for episode number one, nine, nine. Stay strong. Do the best you can. I'll talk to you soon.