For a period of my life, the VA had me taking several antidepressant medications in an effort to help manage my PTSD. From the perspective of the people around me, they probably seemed to be working. I was calmer. I wasn't exploding with anger. I was easier to be around.
The problem was that the anger wasn't the only thing that disappeared. So did almost everything else. I wasn't particularly sad, but I wasn't particularly happy either. Joy, excitement, anticipation, and most of the things that make life feel like life had been flattened right along with the emotions everyone wanted under control. I felt like a prisoner somewhere inside my own mind, watching somebody else operate my body while my life passed by on autopilot.
There is an Adam Sandler movie called Click that I appreciate considerably more as an adult than I probably should admit. On the surface, it is a comedy about a guy who gets a magical remote that lets him fast-forward through the unpleasant parts of life. The problem is that the remote eventually begins making those decisions for him. Before long, he is watching his own life happen on autopilot while waiting to reach the parts he thinks will finally make everything worthwhile.
Underneath the comedy, there is a lesson that the things we would happily skip are often inseparable from the things that ultimately make life meaningful. The bad days, disappointments, failures, losses, and unexpected detours are woven into the same story as the people, experiences, and moments we would never give up.
At the time, though, I wasn't contemplating the hidden philosophy of an Adam Sandler movie. I was working as an over-the-road flatbed truck driver and increasingly felt like I was watching my life through a windshield rather than actually living it.
One night, I realized that I was feeling more like myself than I had in months. My thoughts felt more like my own again. In that moment, I realized I had forgotten to take my medication earlier that morning. I was sitting in the sleeper of my truck, and right beside my bunk was the Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum I carried with me on the road.
That combination could have ended very differently.
It didn't, though, because years earlier, when I was in a different place and thinking more clearly, I had made a decision that there was one road I would never go down again.
A close friend of mine, someone I considered a brother, saved my life overseas and paid for it with his own. A few days after returning home from that deployment, I attempted suicide. A broken spring prevented that attempt from ending the way I intended.
Not long afterward, I ended up at a VFW post. There, I met a retired infantryman who had served in World War II, Korea, then completed two tours in Vietnam before becoming a chaplain.
He told me something I didn't particularly want to hear at the time. He reminded me what my friend had paid for me to still be alive.
In his own way, he forced me to consider what it meant to throw that away. My friend had given me something with his sacrifice, and yet, a few days after getting home, I had nearly decided that it wasn't worth keeping. I had lost other friends along the way too, and I began looking at my own life as one of the places where they continued to exist. I carried their stories, their jokes, their mistakes, and memories of who they had been.
For a long time, that was enough.
I don't offer that as some universal prescription for preventing suicide. Guilt is a terrible long-term treatment plan, and nobody should have to spend the rest of his life believing he is obligated to suffer because somebody else died. But, in that moment, I needed a reason to stay long enough to someday discover better reasons.
So I made a decision. No matter how bad things became, I would never go down that road again.
That decision was already in place years later when I was sitting in the sleeper of that truck.
I did not have to negotiate it with myself while my thinking was compromised.
The answer had already been decided.
After that night, I made another decision. I stopped taking the medications.
I did it cold turkey. That was my choice, and it is not something I would tell someone else to do without working with their medical provider. The next couple of months were rough, sometimes very rough, but slowly I began feeling like I was coming back online.
The emotional flat line started disappearing. I could feel anger again, which was not always particularly convenient, but I could also feel happiness. Excitement. Sadness. Love. I began experiencing the entire range of emotions again instead of watching them from somewhere behind glass.
I was coming out of zombie mode.
I have not taken another medication for mental health since, and I probably never will. That does not mean I decided I was finished taking care of my mental health. Quite the opposite. I had to find other ways to do the work.
I go to counseling. I have a small group of close friends I can talk to honestly. I open up to my wife, even when what I have to say is uncomfortable. I have learned to recognize when I am becoming angry, isolated, exhausted, or starting to fall back into old patterns. I have people in my life whom I trust to tell me when they see something I don't.
That became part of my plan.
The plan could not simply be, "Don't kill yourself." That may have been where it started, but that is a pretty low bar for life. Eventually, the plan had to include learning how to stay connected, recognizing when something was wrong before it became catastrophic, and building a life I actually wanted to remain part of.
For years, my reason for staying alive was essentially a promise to the dead. I would not dishonor my friend's sacrifice. I would carry the memories of the people I had lost and keep going because they no longer had that option.
Then, slowly, I started finding reasons that belonged to me.
I made good friends. I found a career I loved. I found a place where I wanted to live. I began finding purpose outside the uniform.
Eventually, I met the woman who became my wife.
She is wife number three, and my father likes to remind me of it whenever he gets the chance. His usual assessment is, "You couldn't have waited for THIS ONE, bub?"
Fair question.
The funny thing is, I met her because someone T-boned a brand-new truck I had just bought. I was understandably irritated about my recently redesigned pickup, so I went to a bar because I wanted to have a couple of drinks about it. I happened to sit down next to a cute girl.
Had I possessed Adam Sandler's remote, I probably would have skipped the wrecked truck.
I would have skipped a great many things. I would have skipped wars, funerals, injuries, failed marriages, bad decisions, lost friends, sleepless nights, and years when I genuinely didn't know what I was doing with my life.
But if I start removing the bad pieces, I have no idea what else disappears with them.
Today, I am not alive simply because I refuse to dishonor my friends. I am alive because I am glad to be here. I want to honor God. I want to take care of the people around me. I want to help Veterans. I want to teach. I want to hunt, spend time outside, laugh with my friends, learn new things, and find out what comes next. Most importantly, I want whatever time I have left on this earth with the woman my father correctly believes I should have waited for.
I couldn't see any of that during the worst periods of my life.
That is one of the most dangerous parts of suicidal thinking. Your field of view can become incredibly narrow. Whatever pain, grief, shame, fear, anger, or hopelessness you are experiencing can grow so large that you cannot see around it. The future still exists, but from where you are standing, it may no longer feel real.
I have been there.
That is why I believe so strongly that a plan should exist before you reach that place.
We often talk about temporary firearm storage as though it belongs at the very end of the conversation. Someone becomes suicidal, a crisis is underway, and now everybody scrambles to figure out what to do.
By then, we are already behind the problem.
If there is one piece of advice I could offer about making a plan for life, it is this: You do not have to be suicidal to make one.
A divorce can be enough reason to think ahead. So can grief, a serious medical diagnosis, a hospitalization, a medication change, severe financial problems, family conflict, heavy drinking, chronic pain, weeks without meaningful sleep, or losing a career that formed a major part of your identity.
Sometimes there is no single dramatic event. Life simply becomes unstable.
None of those things automatically means someone is going to harm himself. They do mean the conditions have changed, and responsible people account for changing conditions.
If I know alcohol affects my judgment, I can make a decision before I start drinking. If I know sleep deprivation changes my personality, I can account for that before I have gone several nights without sleep. If certain anniversaries hit me particularly hard, I can tell someone I trust before I disappear into myself. If a new medication affects my mood or thinking in a way that concerns me, I can talk to my doctor and the people around me rather than pretending nothing has changed.
And if I reach a point where I do not trust my own judgment around firearms, I can already know what comes next.
Maybe that means changing how they are secured. Maybe it means choosing not to carry for a while. Maybe it means asking someone you trust to help manage access temporarily. Maybe it means using a voluntary storage option such as Hold My Guns. The details will vary depending on the person, the situation, and the law where they live.
The important part is that you do not have to invent the plan during the worst night of your life.
There is another side to this conversation as well. Sometimes the person struggling cannot see what everyone else can.
People often imagine a suicidal person as visibly distraught, crying, withdrawn, or openly talking about wanting to die. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes it does not.
A person who has been deeply depressed may suddenly appear unusually calm or even happy. Someone may start giving away meaningful possessions, putting affairs in order, saying unusual goodbyes, or behaving in ways that simply don't fit the person you know.
Those things do not prove that someone has decided to end his life, but sudden and significant changes deserve attention. Sometimes a person who has decided on suicide experiences a sense of relief because, in his mind, he finally sees an end to the pain. From the outside, that relief can be mistaken for improvement.
That is why a good plan involves other people.
Who knows you well enough to recognize when something is wrong? Who can say, "You're not acting like yourself," and actually get your attention? Who are you willing to listen to when your own judgment may not be reliable? Have you ever told those people what you would want them to do if they became seriously concerned about you?
Those conversations are considerably easier to have on an ordinary Tuesday than at two o'clock in the morning during the worst night of your year.
For years, my plan was crude but effective. Suicide was no longer an option. I had made that decision beforehand, so when things became dark, I did not have to decide it again.
Over time, the reason behind that decision changed. First, I stayed because I owed it to a friend. Then I stayed because other people needed me. Eventually, I stayed because I wanted to.
That last one took a while.
If you are currently in a place where the only reason you are staying is somebody else, I understand that better than I wish I did. That reason does not have to be your reason forever. It may simply need to carry you long enough to reach the next one.
That is what a plan does.
It gives the version of you who cannot see beyond today's pain something decided by the version of you who could.
You don't have to be suicidal to need one. You simply have to understand that life, judgment, health, medications, relationships, circumstances, and even the way you see yourself can change, sometimes much faster than expected.
Planning for that possibility is not pessimism. It is wise preparation.
And sometimes that preparation gives the person you are on the worst day of your life enough time to meet the person you will become afterward.
I know for a fact those can be two very different people.
If this sounds familiar, talk to somebody before you convince yourself that you need to handle it alone. If you are in immediate crisis, call or text 988. Veterans can press 1 to reach the Veterans Crisis Line. If part of your plan involves temporarily creating some distance between yourself and your firearms, Hold My Guns exists to help gun owners find voluntary storage options without judgment or political theater.
Make the plan while you can still see past the problem.
Written by: Brian Dimoff, for Hold My Guns.
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