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Suicidal Thoughts and Addiction: Preventing Tragedy During Recovery

Many people who find themselves suffering from an addiction will find themselves experiencing suicidal thoughts. People who abuse substances are more likely to attempt suicide, particularly if they have a mental health condition.
Taking measures to prevent or treat suicidal thoughts during addiction recovery, instead of focusing solely on the addiction itself, is a wise approach to your recovery. While your treatment plan should have aspects that cover mental health, there are some things you can do to keep your spirits up and depression at bay.
Learn to Meditate
Meditation is a very powerful tool to have at your disposal. The ability to calm your mind and quiet negative thoughts can be what gets you through this difficult period of recovery. People who meditate daily have been found to be happier, less stressed, and more mentally sound than those who do not meditate or only meditate in the face of difficulty. If you can incorporate meditation into your daily routine, you may be surprised by how much better you feel.
Eat Well
Changing your diet and coping with suicidal thoughts may not seem connected. However, when people suffer from nutritional gaps, their mental health can suffer greatly. By altering your diet to include all the important nutrients, you are boosting your mood and limiting your risk of depression.
Find an Enjoyable Hobby
Hobbies are wonderful distractions that allow you to keep your hands and mind busy. By having an enjoyable activity to turn to when your mood goes south, you are cultivating a healthy coping mechanism and teaching yourself to feel better rather than spiraling into the realm of suicidal thinking.
Crafts such as crocheting, scrapbooking, quilting, and whittling are all fun ways to keep yourself feeling positive. Of course, there are many ways you can improve your mood. In fact, some therapy plans will utilize art therapy as a way to recover.
Exercise Regularly
When you’re feeling down and out, it’s often difficult to convince yourself to get up and exercise. But if exercising is a normal part of your routine, you may find it easier to reap the benefits of exercise when you need them most.
Exercise produces positive endorphins that improve mood and limit stress. It’s one of the things you can do to help yourself through recovery, and it’s even used as part of some therapy groups. Pick something you enjoy that gets you active such as yoga, hiking, or swimming.
Finding ways to improve your life go hand in hand with coping with suicidal thoughts. Positive lifestyle changes such as exercising, eating better, finding a hobby, and meditating are all excellent ways to ensure that your mental health stays strong throughout the recovery process. There are many other ways you can tackle suicidal thoughts, and you should always inform your counselor of any depression issues you are having. They should be addressed in your treatment as well as at home. However, it is never a bad idea to learn to help yourself when your recovery gets tough.
Image via Pixabay by Mittmac.

Steve Johnson has written two guest posts for this blog: 4 Key Recovery Concepts for Suicide Prevention and Combating Depression and Is Your Work Life Out of Balance?. 

Here is this week’s extra large list of comic strips, short stories, essays, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Nearly all of today’s links are about Halloween in some way because this is my favourite holiday of the year!

Must Try October Pumpkin Recipes via Remocam. These recipes are making me drool. The french toast sounds the best to me.

What 100 Calories of Your Favorite Halloween Candy Actually Looks Like. Nearly every year I buy a container of candy corn and chow down on it. What kind of Halloween candy do you like the most?

Trick or Treat.  The twist at the end was wonderful.

When Tomatoes Were Blamed for Witchcraft via atlasobscura. What will future generations shake their heads about when they read twenty-first century history? This question floated in the back of my mind as I read this article.

Deer in the Headlights via srkbear. I’d especially recommend this post to those of you who live in rural areas where there are a lot of deer.

There Are No Monsters. This made me chuckle. It’s totally what I would do if I had kids. Haha!

What’s the Origin of Jack-O’-Lanterns. While I read this article I wondered how future generations will reinterpret the things we’re creating in the twenty-first century. The meaning of something can change a lot over the course of a few hundred years.

From Gone Forever via GeoffreyDWest:

The receptionist was very nice, but she explained that there was no chance of seeing anyone. But as I walked away, I think she must have somehow sensed how I was feeling, so she said, “Look Mr Henderson, no promises, but if you’d like to wait, I’ll try and have a word with one of the doctors and see if they can fit you in.”

From The Family That Would Not Live:

In the bar the stained ­glass portraits of William Lemp, Jr., and his first wife, Lillian Lemp—the Lavender Lady—flicker to life from the lightning outside with disturbing fre­quency, the accompanying thunder coming fast afterward. It is the perfect night for a ghost hunt: the air already electric, everyone already a bit on edge.

What have you been reading?

Last night I attended a free lecture that was given by a local scientist who has dedicated a few decades of his life to studying Alzheimer’s disease.

The lecture itself was excellent. A distant relative of mine had this disease at a time when there were no treatments for it at all. We helplessly watched her fade away over the course of many years, so it was wonderful to hear that families who are dealing with this diagnosis  in 2016 actually have a few drugs and other treatments to slow down the progression of it.

There is even an experimental surgical treatment now that has reversed some of the brain damage in a few patients.

The most surprising thing about this lecture, though, was that it was interrupted every five minutes by a man who said things like:

“Well, I don’t believe that study,” when the presenter showed us a graph indicating that the percentage of people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s has been slowly dropping over the years as the general health of the population has improved.

“People get this disease because they eat too much sugary, GMO food.”

“But how do you know for sure that the plaques in the brain aren’t the body’s way of fighting off germs? Maybe Alzheimer’s is nothing but an over-reaction to bacteria!”

There were times when I had to stare at the floor and gently bite my bottom lip to avoid a fit of giggles. No, I wasn’t laughing at the man himself. He obviously wasn’t good at picking up on social cues, understanding how the scientific process works, or engaging in a logical, two-way conversation.

I had empathy for him even while wishing that he’d stop interrupting so that the speaker could go back to explaining how boosting acetylcholine levels has been shown to have a mildly positive effect on people who have this disease. It isn’t a cure, but it is a small piece of the puzzle. I would have loved to hear more about it.

Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on how you look at it –  the whole situation felt like we’d all slid into the opening scene of a bad science fiction novel where an ordinary person fiddles around in their basement on the weekends until they develop a cure for a disease that baffles scientists. Little did that person realize, though, that the cure was far worse than the disease itself.

The writerly portion of my brain was churning out ideas like a fiend. Would the scientist who was so rudely interrupted in the opening scene turn out to be the person who saved the world after the protagonist messed everything up? That would sure be a refreshing twist on how these tales usually go.

When was the last time that your imagination was sparked by something unusual around you?

I first want to thank Lydia Schoch for allowing me unleash the plague of my thoughts upon the airwaves of this blog. You should all be afraid. Today I want to talk about chasing your dreams and really going after what you want. This can be one of the most soul crushing things you can ever do. It can in time be one of the most rewarding as well.

When I first started my journey I received many of the typical reactions that you get when you chase after something that seems impossible. Many people offered words of support with the caveat that many people fail at doing the same thing. Some said outright that I would never succeed. There was not a single offer of help. It is like all of my friends and family expected me to fail. At least I would get a participation ribbon to say I tried.

When I did need help it came from strangers. The wonderful writers who had been through this torment before. Whenever I had a question about writing or story structure or outlining, it was their words that helped to inspire and improve upon what I was doing. These magical pixie dust spewing angels knew what I was going through. They were the most supportive while my friends and family would downplay the torment that is writing a work of fiction.

Nothing in life comes easy. There are always bumps in the road, but don’t let those become unpassable moats of despair filled with crocodiles that have rockets strapped to their backs. You must persevere. This is why I have written many blog posts about staying positive and being happy. It is difficult to maintain a positive attitude when it seems like everything is falling apart in front of your eyes. My first draft was a disaster. Quite possibly the worst thing I have ever written {never mind the My Little Pony superhero mashup I wrote… wait, how did YOU know about it???). I could have given up right then.

Instead I resolved to work harder. Gradually with each draft the novel improved. Then one day while working on the 3rd draft I realized that the novel wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good, but it had some parts that were enjoyable. That one moment of encouragement was like getting a drop of water in space where no one can hear you thirst. While working on my 5th draft I finally felt like my precious word-baby was almost ready to be kicked out into the world.

Every time someone says you can’t do it tell yourself you can. Every time something seems impossible tell yourself that you can. Every time someone says your dinner is burning laugh at them and tell them that you don’t have time to cook until you have slayed the demon! Actually, you might want to make sure your house isn’t burning down. The bottom line is that even if you fail to reach where you want to go on your first attempt, you can always try again. We’ve used the Contra Code. You have 30 dream chasing lives. The only people who truly fail are the ones who quit and also the ones that get stomped by Godzilla. There’s no coming back from that.

Brian Basham is an American author, blogger, and social media shenanigangster. He enjoys playing Texas Hold ’Em poker tournaments, putting together complex Lego sets, making small plastic items with his 3D printer, playing softball, and watching his beloved football team in Washington. He lives in Virginia Beach. 

His collection of prequel stories to his first novel titled Virtual Wars: Booting Up is now available for pre-order and scheduled to be released on 10/28/16.

If you would like to know more please visit his website at http://www.Brian-Basham.com.

Here is this week’s list of poems, essays, comic strips, short stories, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Wingless. This should be a full novel. Wow!

Everything Happens for a Reason. People may mean well when they use this phrase, but I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who doesn’t find it soothing.

Enigma via ‪Elspeth_Thomas‬. Remember this the next time you walk through a graveyard.

October Is a Teacher via brudberg‬. This isn’t the first time I’ve recommended one of Björn Rudberg’s poems on Suggestion Saturday. If you aren’t familiar with his work, definitely check out some of his other posts while you’re on his site. He’s fantastic.

24 Hours in Witch Country. It’s hard to tell you what this is about without giving away spoilers. It was quite the read, though.

Is Swearing Uncouth? via nzstelter‬. What a thought-provoking post.

What have you been reading?

Many people have the expectation that what they type, look at, watch, and share on a smart device is private. But privacy and the internet—especially social media platforms—has become a sticky situation for the legal profession. The belief that a tweet, a message, an email, even a visit to an internet site remains solely a personal concern isn’t a hard and fast line—and neither is it a guarantee that information on social media will be relevant and useable to a court case.

In generally, lawyers and judges are watching other court cases closely to see the results of individual questions related to social media privacy. Requests that are too broad have less of a chance of being held up than those that are very specific and also pursuant to the case.

To learn more about this ever-changing world of social media privacy, use the information in this graphic.

The Irony of Privacy Settings: Can Lawyers Use Social Media Posts in a Court of Law?

I had an unexpected moment of joy over the weekend.

My spouse and I were walking down the street. Suddenly, I noticed a little dog carrying a ball in her mouth and walking the opposite direction from us.

I grinned and quietly pointed her out to my spouse.We often point out cute dogs to each other. Luckily, Toronto is full of people who love sharing their lives with four-legged friends.

Her little body was alert and happy from nose to tail. I can’t quite remember if her tail was wagging, but she looked proud and happy to be carrying her toy around by herself.

The human walking with her paused for a moment before leading her across the street.

Were they going to the park to play fetch? Quite possibly.

She was moving with twice as much anticipation and pep as you’d expect to see in such a small body. This wasn’t at all the gait of a dog who has already burned off a lot of energy and wanted a nap.

Imagining all of the fun her and her human were about to have made me grin. I could clearly picture them running around on the grass together as a few more autumn leaves floated to the ground.

Maybe she even paused to chase a few squirrels? I’ve seen a lot of city dogs chase them, but the squirrels always seem to stay two steps ahead of the game.

I imagine that her human laughed for a minute before calling his little friend back to play some more fetch. When they were both worn out, I’d like to think that they went home for a cozy family nap.

The bond between a person and their pet can be like that sometimes.

Picturing all of these details made me smile. It’s so interesting to try to guess what other people’s (and animal’s!) lives are like after you lose sight of them. Half of it is a creative exercise for me as a writer. You can learn a lot about plotting a scene or writing about an interaction between two characters by seeing how real humans and animals behave.

The other half of the reason why I do it is because it’s just plain fun.

What small things have brought you joy lately?