MY LIFE AS A WASTREL, PART 3 - MY OVERDOSE AND MY SALVATION

If you read my last two posts you'll know how I came to be squatting in a flat and barely holding down a job. I had some money coming in via benefits but not enough to pay my rent or to live off of. It was clearly an untenable situation. This is how I overcame those circumstances, but things got a lot worse before they got better. I'm not a fan of the phrase "trigger warning," but I will let you know that I will soon be talking frankly about how I tried to kill myself. If that's going to bother you, maybe skip this post! My next one will be a lot more light hearted, I promise you!

Keep your arms inside the boat, there are rough waters ahead!

I had no idea how I was going to survive and had basically given up on looking after myself or the flat. It was ludicrous. When I decided not to give any more money to my landlord I suddenly had a lot more money to spend on alcohol. My drink of choice was co-op own brand vodka; as a member I got 5% of the cost of own brand products credited to my account, so for every twenty bottles I drank I got one free! My work was meaning less to me, and when they finally got around to refurbishing they installed wet-cleaning machines instead of a dry-cleaning one, meaning my experience and expertise now counted for fuck all. I had no home, no value, no future. I couldn't see a reason to keep my life.

My only concern was my parents; obviously they would be upset. I didn't want to kill myself too close to either of their birthdays, or my brother's. Similarly, I had to avoid Mother's Day, Father's Day and, because of the year, the football World Cup. I didn't want any of those events to be linked with my death. I settled for a date in May, and for a free weeks I lived like nothing mattered. This is when I started shoplifting and stealing from work. I took out multiple payday loans I had no intention of paying back. I might have had another credit card as well? I drank like it was my job, and would call in sick to my actual job when I just couldn't be bothered with it.

I also started buying lottery scratchcards; much like the predatory loans I took out I knew they were a terrible idea fiancially, but I was planning on going out with literally no money to my name anyway; £5 would mean nothing to me if I were dead, but if that one-in-a-million shot paid off and I won enough money to pay off my debts and relocate then I wouldn't have to die at all! There was no point in folding when I had chips on the table.

I chose a Sunday, and started saving up ibuprofen for an overdose. I looked up online how much would be a fatal dose and decided to take two or three times as much as that. That night I rewatched the latest season of Silicon Valley and a bunch of all time favourite episodes of different comedy shows whilst drinking a bottle of store brand vodka, a bottle of Shackleton blended malt whiskey and 512 tablets of ibuprofen (they come in packs of sixteen). I went to bed feeling really light headed; it was different to being drunk, more spacey and dreamlike. I thought I was done.

Well, I wasn't! I woke up on Monday to my alarm clock sounding; I think I had set it because I was hoping my death could be seen as an accident rather than a suicide. I felt much the same way, like I was floating through the world on a pre-determined path. I used the loo and went in to work. I was there for about ten minutes before I went to the washroom to be violently sick. I called my boss to tell her I was going home, but stopped off at the supermarket to buy some groceries and some more ibuprofen. I also shoplifted a few packets, and was sick again just after leaving. There was a pharmacy between the supermarket and my house, so again I bought some ibuprofen and stole some more, too. I went home, emptied the tablets into a mug and took them into my bed, along with a bottle of vodka.

I don't remember much of Tuesday or Wednesday. I remember waking up on Thursday to hear my dad outside the flat shouting up to me. He had a key to my place but I had locked the kitchen door from the inside, so you could enter the flat but couldn't go any further than the top of the stairs. I ignored him, and just lay in my bed, even when he said he'd call the police. I took another mouthful of pills, hoping that would finally do me in, and just lay in bed pretending to be asleep. Eventually a policeman appeared in my room with my father in tow. They checked I was okay, my dad told me my boss had called my mum to say she couldn't get hold of me and she had sent my dad round when they couldn't either; my phone being dead.

I don't remember too much of that encounter, I know the cop talked to me a bit without my dad there; he asked me if those were mints in my mug and I told him what they were. He gave me his card, and told me there was a church run cafe in town where I could always stop by and get a meal and a chat for a couple of quid. He spoke to my Dad a bit without me. I can't remember what Dad said to me, but I promised I'd call my boss,which I did. I explained to her that I'd literally done nothing except lie in bed or use the loo since Monday, and that my phone had died and I didn't have an outlet by my bed to recharge it. I told her I'd see her at work the next day. Dad also joked that I didn't need to tell the landlord the police had damaged my door; if only he knew!

When I saw her the next day she told me she had been worried and that she'd heard I had barricaded myself into my flat and the police had to rescue me. I told her that I'd locked the internal door and that the policeman had to split the wood in order to slide the bolt across. We had a chat, and we agreed that I'd be better leaving the company; I was barely doing any hours anyway and I hadn't been myself for months. It was genuinely amicable, she said to tell the job centre that I'd quit or been fired; whichever was better for my benefits. She said I'd been a really excellent employee before I got ill, and that she hoped I'd come back if I got better.

I was already on Universal Credit, but now I had no job I could claim more. It was nowhere near the money I needed, especially now I had payday loans and credit cards to repay. I was allocated a coach to help with finding work once you're disabled, she became my death facto counsellor and hooked me up with someone from the council who worked for housing; they were adamant I couldn't become street homeless with my health beginning to fail. I was given an emergency number to call if I was physically removed from my flat; they would set me up in a hotel or B&B for a couple of nights until something suitable came along.

I did try to kill myself again, almost on a whim, a couple of months later, around the time of my birthday. I cut myself half a dozen times with a kitchen knife, long cuts up the length of my arm. I soon realised I wasn't going to kill myself this way, and just carried on drinking and hating myself. You can still see those marks on my arm in the right light.

I had an hour meeting with the local mental health team, way on the outskirts of town, my mum gave me a lift because there was no way I could have walked there with my health failing. I don't know why I never got a second appointment, maybe it's because I eventually moved.

My landlord, who I still hadn't contacted, sent a letter to my previous address shortly after I lost my job, hoping my parents still lived there saying I needed to contact her and that I owed her rent. I can't remember the figure, or whether she said I was facing eviction. I can't remember what I told my parents, only that I seriously downplayed the situation and that they told me to visit some sort of free financial aid service in town.

I went, and the people were there were nice, but ineffectual. The clinic was run by the church, and they were all church people, but religion was never brought up. They opened all my mail and it turned out I had just missed a court appointment. They phoned all the people I owed money to, explained I was suffering mentally and needed them to hold off on asking me for money back.

They told me about PIP, a benefit for people struggling with health issues. They arranged for me to meet their expert at applying for this benefit, but I didn't even get asked for an assessment interview. When I wound up in hospital the following year I was retroactively paid up until the time they applied for me, so that was something at least!

I remember I had an interview about sheltered accommodation that I missed because at the end of one of these meetings one of these guys wanted to take me to my bank to stop them charging me daily overdraft fees. It was well-intended, but to make my housing meeting I needed to leave my financial aid meeting, get a bus to the nearest city and then get a train to the city the meeting was in. It would have been a four hour journey to a city an hour away by car. This is another thing people don't consider for the poor. I never went to the local food bank was because I didn't know how it worked it now I'd get the food home. It was easier just to steal. Anyway, I went to the bank with my finance guy, we had to wait a while because there was a queue, and then again because we didn't have an appointment with someone with the power to stop the charges. That meeting saved me a couple of pounds a day, but cost me finding a new place to live.

I rearranged the housing meeting and caught the bus, and then the train, but couldn't find the right building. I didn't have a smartphone and the directions I had written down weren't helping. I asked people in the street but nobody had heard of the place. It was awful, and I was gutted. I couldn't get them on the phone, and eventually the time for my interview came and went and I had to make my way back. I had spent a relative lot of money to end up with nothing.

When I told this to my housing officer from the council she arranged for them to come and meet me. By the time I met the sheltered housing representative I had received a letter telling me that bailiffs would be coming to clear me and my stuff out of the flat on the following Monday; she told me that a place would be opening up that week and she could give me a lift there that morning, with a couple of bags of my stuff as well! I was overjoyed, it was like I had a boot lifted off my neck after months of struggling to breathe!

My heart as I when she called on the Friday to say she wouldn't be able to give me a lift. I spent the weekend selling my DVD collection and a few action figures and the like. I had a ridiculous number of DVDs, I never had a TV so I bought tons of films and box sets at University and then loads more when I was working at a charity shop. I sold literally hundreds to the local second hand DVD store for 10p a disc; he gleefully told me it was the second biggest collection he'd ever seen, that I had some really good unusual films that people would definitely be interested in, and that they would have so much stock they could run a two-for-one offer. I got more for my knick-knacks than for my movies.

I posted the keys to my flat through the door of my estate agents at 6am that Monday and set off to my new digs. I had a suitcase full of clothes, a couple of toys I hadn't sold and my laptop. My new room was a shithole, but infinitely better than living rough on the streets, and I didn't have to worry about being kicked out of my home. I could leave my flat during the day without worrying the estate agents or landlord would take the opportunity to let bailiffs in. I genuinely saw the point in carrying on living.

I was only there for about three months, until I wound up in hospital and they considered my health to be too much of a liability. I was sent to a care home and then a flat of my own. I ended up in another care home when my health got even worse. They're trying to find me somewhere wheelchair friendly, but with COVID-19 there have been very few properties available of any description. I remain hopeful. The worst is long since over.

If you're thinking of killing yourself I can genuinely empathise with you, I know that sometimes it can seem like a rational option. Just believe me when I tell you that it's a lot harder to get right then you could imagine; doctors I've told about it haven't understood why I didn't go to hospital, my best guess is I regularly took ibuprofen for my bad back and had a much, much higher tolerance than anyone realised. Today I take morphine, amitriptyline and paracetamol daily, but still get a very sore, stiff neck if I don't take ibuprofen too; my body is that dependent on it. The consequences of surviving an overdose but needing medical treatment can be horrific.

More importantly, there is always more help available to you than you realise. It's not always quick, and it's not always easy, but death is never your best option.

Thanks for sticking with me whilst I get all of this down; I promise my next post will be a lot more light hearted!

Peace!

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