Podcast: Talking Suicide with a Bipolar and a Schizophrenic

Suicide is something that most people think they understand, but there are many misconceptions about it. We say it’s a serious problem, yet will mention it casually and insensitively in certain settings. In this episode, our hosts openly discuss suicide and their personal stories with trying to end their own lives.

 

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“I thought about suicide every day for as far back as I can remember.”
– Gabe Howard

 

Highlights From ‘Suicide’ Episode

[1:00] Frankly discussing suicide.

[3:00] Don’t belittle a person’s suicide attempt.

[7:00] Why did Michelle try to end her life?

[10:00] Discussing families and suicide.

[12:00] Why did Gabe try to end his life?

[16:30] Michelle shares her suicide story.

[23:00] Michelle can’t understand how her mom did not know she had a mental illness.

[27:00] Gabe and Michelle agree that things get better.

Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Talking Suicide with a Bipolar and a Schizophrenic’ Show

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Narrator: [00:00:05] For reasons that utterly escapes everyone involved. You’re listening to A Bipolar, A Schizophrenic and A Podcast. Here are your hosts, Gabe Howard and Michelle Hammer.

Gabe: [00:00:19] Welcome to a bipolar a schizophrenic and a podcast. My name is Gabe Howard and I am bipolar.

Michelle: [00:00:24] Hi I’m Michelle and I am schizophrenic.

Gabe: [00:00:27] And today we are going to talk about suicide specifically. How are we still alive after having been suicidal for so long. And this is kind of a tricky one for us to cover because Michelle and I you know we kind of like to be bombastic. We kind of like to be funny. We kind of like to be out there and well we like to yell at each other. And suicide is a much it’s a scary topic. It’s something that sort of lends itself not to humor but to I don’t know it’s scary.

Michelle: [00:01:00] It is a scary topic. It’s something that doesn’t really get spoken about. It’s kind of something that like is very hush hush. And if you’ve ever really attempted suicide you don’t talk about it because then people just really judge you very harshly and they would say why would you do that. Don’t you care about people around you? How is that going to affect people around you what you did was something selfish.

Gabe: [00:01:23] There’s 80 billion reasons that this show should avoid suicide. Given how we talk about living with mental illness our mental illness and mental illness advocacy. But there’s one very big reason that we should cover it and that’s that we’re not afraid and we talk about everything The Good the Bad and The Ugly. But it’s gonna be a challenge for us. The first thing that we want to say immediately right out of the gate is Trigger Warning suicide. We are going to be talking about suicide and I’m not going to tell you that an inappropriate joke may or may not come up because hey we’re Gabe and Michelle.

Michelle: [00:02:02] That’s right.

Gabe: [00:02:03] This is what we do. If you are in danger right now if you are feeling suicidal please ask for help.

Gabe: [00:02:12] Call 911 if you’re in America call the suicide hotline tell a trusted friend go to the emergency room. Most importantly Michelle and I are still alive because we got help because we talked about it openly.

Michelle: [00:02:25] And I’m really bad at suicide.

Gabe: [00:02:28] Oh and the first inappropriate joke is right out of the gate okay Michelle. We sort of we did some research we made a list of topics and stuff that we want to discuss. And the first question that I get asked a lot is it if you were suicidal why didn’t you just do it. So you must not have been suicidal because you didn’t die. So you’re a liar I have a million things I want to say to that. One of them is Fuck you. That’s not how mental illness works.

Michelle: [00:02:57] Yeah. Yeah that’s a big fuck you like don’t belittle somebody whose suicide attempt because if they want to do it again . . . If you belittle somebody suicide attempt they’re going to think oh I didn’t really try to kill myself. So maybe next time I’ll try even harder and succeed.

Gabe: [00:03:15] Well I love this whole idea of this. This if you try suicide or if you say you’re suicidal it’s just a dramatic cry for help.

Gabe: [00:03:24] You want to hear some other dramatic cries for help I’m drowning. Help. My house is on fire. How I’m falling out of a helicopter. But the difference is when people yell those things people come to help. People come to help them.

Michelle: [00:03:41] But when someone says they’re suicidal. Oh, you’re just being dramatic. What’s wrong. Did you have a bad conversation today? You’re not really suicidal. You know it’s just you’re so it’s really just stop being dramatic. You don’t actually feel that way like you don’t know what’s going on in my head. You don’t know my thoughts. You don’t know what I’m dealing with. Don’t tell me it’s all in my head. That’s not no.

Gabe: [00:04:07] It this is really little thing that we have where society acknowledges that it’s a cry for help but then also says that the best thing to do is not help. I just I cannot stress enough that if somebody says that they are suicidal. If somebody says that they want to die. That is not drama. It is not. It’s none of those things. That person needs help and you’re saying well what if the person is lying and faking then that person is a jackass.

Michelle: [00:04:37] Yeah.

Gabe: [00:04:37] But to literally ignore every single person that asks for help because they’re fighting with their own brain because they’re mentally ill because they’re having suicidal thoughts because they’re so depressed they can’t take it anymore because some dickhead out there is being dramatic. That’s literally nonsense.

Michelle: [00:04:57] Yeah after one suicide attempt my friend told me you weren’t really trying to kill yourself that time. You know what happened a month or two later. I then tried to kill myself again. Did that time count?

Gabe: [00:05:11] Michelle How many times did you attempt suicide.

Michelle: [00:05:14] Well I mean attempt. I mean like did I attempt but I attempted about attempted really it wrong. I didn’t know what I was doing but I would say maybe 7 times.

Gabe: [00:05:24] That’s a lot and you’re very lucky that you’re still alive. I do appreciate your joke. You must be really bad at suicide. I for one am glad this this statistically holds up for whatever reason women do tend to suck at suicide. There’s a lot of research into this one of these is the methods we’re not going to give methods because that just well we’re trying to be mature.

Michelle: [00:05:47] Something I did learn about women differently in women and men is that women like to be found looking like themselves.

Gabe: [00:05:54] Yeah men don’t care.

Michelle: [00:05:55] Yeah men are like you know find me find me all disgusting. I don’t care.

Gabe: [00:06:00] Aren’t you glad that vanity saved your life.

Michelle: [00:06:03] Yeah I guess so. I guess they saved my life.

Gabe: [00:06:05] Yeah the our society really messes with us but when you’re feeling suicidal at all this is an example of your brain not working properly. We as humans are our bodies our minds are. Our consciousness is set up to defend ourselves. If you walk up to a stranger and you throw a tennis ball at their face and they see it they’ll duck. They don’t have to think about it. They don’t have to consider it. They don’t have to wonder what all they know is that an object is coming at them and they immediately take evasive action. It’s biological. It’s built into our brains. And yet when we’re feeling suicidal or when we try suicide it’s we’re overriding that. And that’s the illness process. Our bodies have decided to steer into danger rather than away from it. And that’s an unnatural state of being. So that this the first way that you know that something is wrong.

Gabe: [00:07:01] Our bodies want to protect themselves. We just do.

Michelle: [00:07:05] Every time I tried to kill myself I thought I had to kill myself. I thought it was something that was better for the future. I thought everyone would be better without me and everyone would be happier if I was gone. I would be less of a burden on everybody’s life. But thinking back now that I can really do retrospective kind of thoughts it would have ruined people’s lives.

Gabe: [00:07:32] Oh yeah.

Michelle: [00:07:33] It would have really ruined people’s lives. So, the thoughts I have of oh I’m a burden. You know I should be gone.

Michelle: [00:07:39] I would have put horrible burdens on all of my friends and my family and they might still be thinking about me every day about what I did and how maybe they could have helped me and they couldn’t. And they might not be okay now because of what I did.

Gabe: [00:07:57] There’s a quote out there and I really like it and I don’t know who to credit it to it is not ours but it says that suicide does not end the pain, it just transfers it to somebody else. And I believe that that is so true.

Michelle: [00:08:09] Yes.

Gabe: [00:08:10] When I was suicidal I convinced myself that my granny didn’t love me. And as everybody knows I am granny’s favorite.

Michelle: [00:08:16] Yes.

Gabe: [00:08:16] I convinced myself that my friends my family just even strangers would be happy if I were dead. And this is nonsense because it looks like strangers don’t give a shit if I’m alive or dead. So, to have convinced myself that strangers would be happy that I was dead. It literally they don’t care. That’s why they’re strangers. I’m not. I’m not saying this to be mean to strangers I’m just they wouldn’t be happy or sad they’d be indifferent. That’s just how life works. We’re not emotionally invested with every single person that we’d see you live in New York City. If you were emotionally invested in every single person that you laid eyes on you won’t have time to podcast.

Michelle: [00:08:55] I wouldn’t I wouldn’t. I’m just kind of bringing at one thing this is about my mother that she is she of course she’s not going to like that I’m saying this but what I was in college you know her my grandparents were alive and my mom would call me and she would say “you know Michelle my mother’s sick my father’s crazy, can you just be OK, So I don’t have to worry about you.” What does that make me feel like? A huge burden.

Gabe: [00:09:21] Yeah it does. And let’s take this from your mother’s perspective because you know we want to be fair our parents. Mine too. I don’t know how my mom and dad and grandma and grandpa and brother and sister and friends and family escape my anger these days because they did all of those things too. They said that I was being dramatic. They didn’t get me the help that I needed as long-term listeners of the show know a complete stranger took me to the hospital my friends and family were not absent. My parents are good parents but they didn’t know they didn’t do anything. Your mother was just like hey get a grip and don’t cause me problems because I have other things to worry about. If your mom would have understood that you were sick, she never would have told you hey don’t be sick from cancer. she never would have told you. Like if you’ve gotten like a traumatic accident and you were like you know like learning to walk again, she never would have said hey can you just like walk today so this doesn’t cause a problem. Your mom’s not an idiot. She was just ignorant about what was going on and that’s an extra burden to people like us because now their ignorance becomes our problem and we’re already sick.

Michelle: [00:10:29] Yeah. How was I supposed to feel in that situation?

Gabe: [00:10:32] You were supposed to feel shitty.

Michelle: [00:10:34] What was her logic there like of her telling me. Can you just be better so I don’t have to worry about you?

Gabe: [00:10:41] Her logic is that you had control because she hadn’t yet understood that you didn’t have control as so many people. I did the same thing as your mother to myself. I thought that I was just an asshole and I can’t say it any other way. My parents would sit me down and say you can’t behave this way you can’t skip school you can’t stay up all night you can’t talk to people like that you can’t behave this way. And then when I became an adult and started well, we all know what I did as an adult. These were not the values that my parents taught me. I thought that I had control. I didn’t realize I was sick. I thought that I was just making really shitty decisions and I kept doing it over and over and over again.

Michelle: [00:11:22] Let’s pause and hear from our sponsor.

Narrator: [00:11:24] This episode is sponsored by betterhelp.com secure convenient and affordable online counselling. All counselors are licensed accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to betterhelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counselling is right for you. Betterhelp.com/PsychCentral.

Gabe: [00:11:55] And we’re back.

Michelle: [00:11:56] Do you think that the world would have just been better off if you weren’t gone?

Gabe: [00:12:01] No. No. I thought it at the time I really did think it at the time. I thought that everybody would be relieved. I thought that they would be like oh we don’t have to worry about Gabe anymore. We don’t have to be concerned that Gabe is going to get fired or cause a problem or divorce his wife for cheat on his wife or yell at his wife or yell at us or we’ve all heard.

Michelle: [00:12:20] The wrath of Gabe.

Gabe: [00:12:22] Yeah. These things didn’t come out of nowhere. I kind of wish that I could escape that label because the wrath of Gabe hasn’t existed since you know treatment but I was a person with untreated bipolar disorder and you know bipolar rage is a thing as much as I hate the reminder that I used to be so out of control that I would just start screaming at people uncontrollably and non-stop like I was some sort of like Supreme Court justice candidate just bothers me.

Michelle: [00:12:50] Did you always believe that you were in there right when you were screaming?

Gabe: [00:12:55] Yeah.

Gabe: [00:12:56] Who starts screaming because they think they’re wrong. I had no ability to consider another point of view. None whatsoever. And the more they wanted me to consider their point of view the angrier I became and the angrier I became the more I would yell and the more that I would I just sort of built on itself so you can see where when you’ve got that kind of emotion just railing at somebody they’re going to look at you like you’re just insane they’re going to look at you like you’re an asshole and those would be the faces that I would think about when I would be contemplating whether or not I want to live or die.

Michelle: [00:13:33] So you 100% are glad you’re alive right now?

Gabe: [00:13:37] Unequipped I have achieved it more than I ever thought possible. I don’t know I mean for like a dude with bipolar disorder I mean like just for a dude.

Gabe: [00:13:48] I never thought I could get here. I had so many problems so many and I still have a lot of problems.

Michelle: [00:13:56] I have a question.

Michelle: [00:13:57] So how old were you when you first thought of suicide attempts and tried to almost make a suicide attempt.

Gabe: [00:14:07] Zero. I was 0 years old. I thought about suicide every single day as far back as I can remember. 4 years old 5 years old 6 years. I thought that everybody was thinking about suicide. I really did and nobody ever knew. Nobody dissuaded me of this.

Michelle: [00:14:26] Did you tell people?

Gabe: [00:14:28] No. Why would I. I thought it was normal. I did. And listen you know I have never seen my mother go to the bathroom.

Gabe: [00:14:37] I just I want to put that right out there for the general public. I have never seen my mother go to the bathroom but I do assume that she does.

Michelle: [00:14:45] Yeah.

Gabe: [00:14:45] It’s just an assumption. So, if my mother is the one person on the planet that never has to use the restroom she should tell me because there’s no way that I would know this. I thought about suicide every day but nobody walked up to me and said hey thinking about suicide is abnormal and I didn’t tell them because I thought they were all thinking about it too. This is just how it was. I just assumed that they were thinking about it and they just assumed that I wasn’t.

Michelle: [00:15:11] Was anyone berating me with insults?

Gabe: [00:15:14] I mean I wouldn’t say berating me with insults because that sounds like they were calling me like jerk face but there was a lot of negativity in my life that people didn’t realize was negative. Kind of like the example that you used of your mother like where she said look, I’ve just got way too much going on I need you to be okay because she’s going through the illness of her of her parents which is a real big deal to her.

Michelle: [00:15:36] It is.

Gabe: [00:15:37] But that put a lot of burden on you.

Gabe: [00:15:40] So nobody was berating me with insults but my family was not understanding of what I was going through and I really thought that I was an asshole. I thought I was a bad kid.

Gabe: [00:15:50] I thought that they didn’t love me and I carried this very day because I I cannot stress this enough. Michelle, my parents are good parents. They’re good parents.

Gabe: [00:16:03] They’re fantastic parents. I don’t have a story about how my parents were awful or beat me or called me names or treated me like shit.

Gabe: [00:16:12] They were good parents and they made all kinds of mistakes like tons of mistakes like every mistake they made just compounded and made my life even worse and worse and worse. But this isn’t because they were malicious or bad it’s because they were human and nobody taught them about mental illness either.

Michelle: [00:16:29] Well I have a story in 11th grade, I walked out of my physics class.

Gabe: [00:16:36] Your 11th grade was much different from my 11th grade.

Michelle: [00:16:39] Yeah I walked in our home. I took the keys to the car when I had a permit and I drove to a drugstore. I found some like you know it was sleeping pills but obviously they were not like prescriptions sleeping pills. Went home took all the pills went to bed didn’t die but my eyes were all dilated. Couldn’t read a book. I was sitting next to my mom. And the day just went on. I tried to kill myself that day. It didn’t work. And the day we just went on like a regular day.

Gabe: [00:17:16] And nobody noticed.

Michelle: [00:17:18] Well I got in trouble because I was the teacher said that I just walked out of my physics class. But that was it.

Gabe: [00:17:25] Yeah.

Michelle: [00:17:25] Nothing nobody said. What did you do. Did you do anything after. Nobody questioned anything after. Nobody said why did you walk out of your physics class? Where did you go? What did you do?

Michelle: [00:17:37] I remember I was home. My mom goes “Why are you home right now?”

Michelle: [00:17:41] Because she came home from work and I go “Oh I wasn’t feeling good so I came home,” but really maybe I should have been honest and what I did.

Gabe: [00:17:49] Right.

Michelle: [00:17:50] But I didn’t.

Michelle: [00:17:52] And there’s like so many things I would have wished I would have said to my younger self that like this. This is not the answer because just because you think you’re stupid and this physics class is so hard and you hate your life already this is not a reason to kill yourself.

Gabe: [00:18:09] You know it’s an interesting thing that you brought up there like what would you tell your younger self.

Gabe: [00:18:13] Like if today’s Michelle could call 20 year ago you know.

Michelle: [00:18:17] Like physics was like not a reason, but I mean things I would have told to my younger self was, why would killing yourself now, what would that do for anyone?

Michelle: [00:18:31] You’re in high school. Everyone’s going to like Oh that that’s the girl that killed herself. I don’t think anyone would have been like “Oh I’m so devastated.” I honestly didn’t wouldn’t even think that anyone would have even cared at that point in my life. I didn’t think anyone really liked me at that point in my life and I was definitely having schizophrenia symptoms. I remember sitting in the back of that physics class having a delusion cracking up laughing at nothing and a girl two seats ahead turns around and goes. “Are you okay.” And I’m like “Oh what.”

Michelle: [00:19:04] She goes “You’re laughing it’s something.” I go “oh sorry” I didn’t even know. So, I was having schizophrenia hallucinations delusions in that class and had no idea I was schizophrenic but I obviously was.

Gabe: [00:19:19] And nobody noticed.

Michelle: [00:19:19] And that girl who sees ahead notice something was wrong. But I didn’t know what it was.

Gabe: [00:19:27] It’s interesting to consider like what our families would have felt or what they would have done or how they would have reacted had we been successful at ending our lives. And as our listeners know we work as a speakers and writers and in addition to podcasting and we go to a lot of mental health conferences and I hear people’s stories all the time.

Gabe: [00:19:53] I interview people about their stories and I mean no disrespect when I say this but when you hear a story from a thousand different people you sort of build up a thick skin to it and they don’t really affect me like they did in the beginning and this is good. This is this is I’m not saying this in any bad way I love hearing stories and I want people to tell their stories and I’m glad that we play a role in getting stories out to the greater public. But myself you know I tend to remain kind of emotionless by them one time I got hired to give a speech and the keynote speaker was a gentleman running for judge. He was going to be a judge. So, I went on before him because he was the keynote. So, I was like I was like the opening act. And I just had low 15-minute thing and I came up and I gave my speech it’s you know it’s condensed and beautiful and I talked about it.

Michelle: [00:20:48] And I’m sure it was the greatest speech. The greatest speech Gabe Howard gives the greatest speeches.

Gabe: [00:20:55] Yes I did get a standing ovation while you’re mocking me.

Michelle: [00:20:58] Oh wow.

Gabe: [00:21:01] Yeah yeah.

Gabe: [00:21:02] I’ve only gotten 4 in my life but that’s not the point of the story. The point of the story is after I was done, I sat down.

Gabe: [00:21:09] I plopped my ass and my seat and the next person got introduced. This was this gentleman running for judge he was about my parent’s age and he was very very dapper African-American gentleman. He was wearing a suit and his wife. You know same age and beautiful and when they called him up, he walked up with his wife and you know I don’t really think anything of this like I said I’m kind of bored like I have to say the next hour you know whatever. It’s not even my town.

Gabe: [00:21:33] Like I can’t even vote for him for Judge if I wanted to. But he said we’re changing things up a little bit. And my wife wants to talk for a moment about why we’re mental health advocates and she talked for just like 5 minutes.

Gabe: [00:21:48] And she told the story of their perfect beautiful son who died by suicide in his first or second year of college.

Gabe: [00:22:00] And she said, “We did everything right. We lived in the best neighborhoods we sentence in the most expensive private school we could find. You know he went to Europe. He. He got into the finest college. We were so proud. You know my husband’s a judge were upper middle class. We both hold advanced degrees. We gave everything to our children.”

Michelle: [00:22:22] That means nothing.

Gabe: [00:22:23] Yeah. And that’s what she said. Except we did not understand mental illness. We did not understand that he was struggling we did not make a way for him to ask for help. He could not get out of whatever it was that made him do this. And now for the rest of our lives we don’t have a son. And I started to cry because as I was looking at them all I could think of as if I was successful would be my parents. These two, they did not set out to be mental health advocates. They didn’t want to be at a mental health conference. They didn’t know this guy was a lawyer that became a judge. I mean just they became mental health advocates because they missed it and because they were too late and because they don’t want this to happen to other people it could be my parents I’d be gone and my parents would just be standing there saying we don’t know what happened and we don’t want it to happen to other people. And that’s why we need to talk about this more. That’s why we need more mental health education.

Gabe: [00:23:24] That’s why we need to understand suicidality and mental illness because me and you Michelle we’re lucky it’s not our parents.

Michelle: [00:23:33] Yeah I believe in high school. My mom. Well when I was not doing my homework in high school it was more because I believed I would never graduate. I mean I believed I was going to die. But my thought. My mom. She believed it was a learning disability.

Gabe: [00:23:49] Sure.

Michelle: [00:23:49] Because she was really unaware of what mental mental health and mental illness was. So when she found out years later when I was in college that it was a mental illness.

Michelle: [00:23:59] She was like “Oh I never even thought of that.”

Michelle: [00:24:04] How could you not think of that?

Gabe: [00:24:05] Because we didn’t think about it either Michelle.

Michelle: [00:24:09] It’s just education and it’s just different because I think generations ago they didn’t do that. And even considering my mom never thought about mental illness when my mother’s grandmother lived in a psychiatric center from the moment my grandmother was born until she died and my mom has memories of going to visit her in the center where she spoke like a baby and was just just for lack of a better word she was looney tunes so to have that in our family and to not see anything like that in me.

Michelle: [00:24:50] How could it have been such a shock if it runs in our family?

Gabe: [00:24:54] Because nobody everybody thought that it was a one off that it was a one in a million that it was never going to happen. And just it’s like getting struck by lightning. You do. I have a family member that was struck by lightning. You know I don’t look up at the sky and try to avoid it right. I still go out in the rain. I just think here is a one in a million thing.

Michelle: [00:25:11] There’s my dad’s first cousin Lori. She’s schizophrenic as well.

Gabe: [00:25:15] Well there you go.

Michelle: [00:25:16] My mom’s sister takes anti-depressants. Was it denial?

Gabe: [00:25:22] Yeah probably. It was denial it was lack of understanding and it was ignorance and it was the ostrich.

Michelle: [00:25:28] I mean I don’t know I don’t hold it against her. I don’t hold it against her. That she didn’t see it.

Michelle: [00:25:35] I think maybe it was a denial thing. She didn’t look into it. She really thought it was a learning disability because she always said that I don’t read and if you don’t read, you’re not smart. Well I read some books but what was hard for me about reading is that I was so busy in my head all the time. It’s hard to read a book when your mind’s racing back and forth.

Gabe: [00:25:56] It’s all over the place.

Gabe: [00:25:57] Michelle what do we want to leave our listeners with. I mean because we’ve covered a lot. I mean this is this is you know this is not our normal. I hate Michelle, Michelle hates Gabe and then we start screaming at each other show and that’s for the best. But really is for the best.

Michelle: [00:26:11] I mean just to leave listeners with…suicide is not an answer. And like I said I tried that 7 times and I failed 7 times. It’s not even an easy thing to do. And most likely you’ll end up in a psych ward where that’s not fun to be in. So really weigh your options and then just don’t do it.

Michelle: [00:26:37] It’s not a good idea. You’re going to hurt more than just yourself. You’re going to hurt the people around you instead of the people that love you. And if you keep on going with your life things do get better. My life has just gone leaps and bounds better than I ever thought would ever happen in my life. I never thought I’d be recording a podcast with Mr. Gabe Howard and talking about mental health like I do now. I thought I’d be pathetic my entire life. I couldn’t I would never will.

Gabe: [00:27:10] Oh well the two are not mutually exclusive.

Gabe: [00:27:12] That’s going to be recording a podcast with me and still be pathetic.

Michelle: [00:27:17] I guess but I never really envisioned a future because I never thought I would get there. I mean at that point I’m still it’s still hard for me to envision a future but that’s almost my own insecurity thinking nothing will ever really work out.

Gabe: [00:27:29] Of course of course Michelle there’s. I want to leave our listeners with just a couple of quick things one.

Gabe: [00:27:36] As we said before suicide it doesn’t end the pain. It just transfers it to somebody else. There’s another quote that I really like that is suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Michelle: [00:27:48] Yes.

Gabe: [00:27:48] But the thing that I keep in my head probably fourth most of all after where I can find Diet Coke at 2:00 a.m. is at looking back now I realize that I didn’t want to die.

Gabe: [00:28:03] I never wanted to die. I wanted the pain to stop and I didn’t know how to make the pain stop. I just didn’t. And the only thing that my battered bewildered disease the brain could come up with was suicide. That is not a good option and it’s far from the only option. And once I got treatment, I found all of these better ways to make the pain stop. And that’s all I ever wanted. I never wanted to die. I just didn’t want to suffer anymore. And I would say to anybody who’s thinking about contemplating it has in the past or maybe in the future you don’t want to die. You want the pain to stop. There are much better ways to make the pain stop. Please invest in yourself and look into them. Ask everybody that you know for help. Go to the emergency room call the suicide hotline. Talk to your general practitioner.

Gabe: [00:28:58] Go to the local urgent care. I hear that you can go to the drugstore and Wal-Mart and see a doctor now do whatever it takes.

Michelle: [00:29:07] Your life is valuable and we want you in the world.

Gabe: [00:29:12] Completely agree. Thank you everybody for listening to this week’s episode of a bipolar, a schizophrenic and a podcast. Please review rank. Share us everywhere Facebook algorithm has gone I don’t know schizophrenic. Can we say that?

Michelle: [00:29:26] Sure.

Gabe: [00:29:26] Because it just it just pushes everything down. So at this point I think you’re gonna have to like share our Website via a smoke signal maybe like tattoo it on your arm and show people. I don’t know but whatever you do it for Michelle and I to maintain our high luxury standard of living. We’re just we’re gonna need you to be there.

Gabe: [00:29:47] We’ll see everybody next week.

Michelle: [00:29:49] We love you!

Narrator: [00:29:51] You’ve been listening to a bipolar a schizophrenic and a podcast. If you love this episode don’t keep it to yourself head over to iTunes or your preferred podcast app to subscribe rate and review to work with Gabe go to GabeHoward.com. To work with Michelle, go to Schizophrenic.NYC. For free mental health resources and online support groups. Head over to PsychCentral.com Show’s official Web site PsychCentrald.com/bsp you can e-mail us at show@PsychCentral.com. Thank you for listening and share widely.

 

Meet Your Bipolar and Schizophrenic Hosts

GABE HOWARD was formally diagnosed with bipolar and anxiety disorders after being committed to a psychiatric hospital in 2003. Now in recovery, Gabe is a prominent mental health activist and host of the award-winning Psych Central Show podcast. He is also an award-winning writer and speaker, traveling nationally to share the humorous, yet educational, story of his bipolar life. To work with Gabe, visit gabehoward.com.

 

MICHELLE HAMMER was officially diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 22, but incorrectly diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 18. Michelle is an award-winning mental health advocate who has been featured in press all over the world. In May 2015, Michelle founded the company Schizophrenic.NYC, a mental health clothing line, with the mission of reducing stigma by starting conversations about mental health. She is a firm believer that confidence can get you anywhere. To work with Michelle, visit Schizophrenic.NYC.

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/podcast-talking-suicide-with-a-bipolar-and-a-schizophrenic/