Need support (may trigger)

Hi. I was very active on this forum for a long time, but left a while ago, not for any particular reason, just busy with other things and forgot to login for a while, and never came back. I used to be a very devout born again Christian, but I lost my faith and now am not sure I believe in God. But this is not what I want to talk about here.

I am bipolar, and I am struggling with thoughts of suicide. This is the part that may trigger. I think that these thought and this latest depression is brought on in part by the fact that I was trying to wean myself off a medication. it isn't a psychs med, its a steriod called Prednisone. I am taking it for rheumatoid arthritis. Having this disease is very hard- I am in a great deal of physical pain on a daily basis. The prednisone lowers inflammation but it also makes me depressed. I was in the hospital (psychs ward) five months ago when i first went on it.

Well, for two days I cut the dosage in half, and I really lost it. I had a fight with a friend in the middle of the night two nights ago, and became so depressed after it that I hurt myself. I won't say what I did, because I do not want to give anyone ideas, but I put my life in danger. I was not 100% committed to dying, in fact I think I wanted to live more than die, but I was rolling the dice.

Since then, I have been reaching out. I made up with my friend (I should have known it wasn't the end of our friendship) and signed an anti-suicide pledge with her (she used to be a therapist) I promised not to hurt myself, attempt suicide, or die by suicide.

BTW, my counselor is on vacation until Tuesday, when I see her. It was pretty foolish of me to go off the pred without medical supervision. I'm taking the full doses again now, and I think I just have to ride this out.

Here is what I am doing to keep my promise. I talked to my best friend, who had also been on vacation and got back today,and she has promised to check in throughout the day. I must be here for her when she does. I am writing to several other friends, as well as checking in with my friend I have the suicide contract with every few hours.

I have called a suicide hotline twice. I promised the people I talked to that i would call again if I felt suicidal. I really want to fight this. I'm sorry I attempted. A part of me still wants to die, quite a lot, but I mean to keep my promise because I owe it to my friends who care about me. They have been so supportive, I can't slap away the hand that tries to save me as I'm drowning, it would be ungrateful.

Anyway, I just want a little extra support. I really want to stay out of the hospital. Can a few people write back to me here? I really want to talk. Ideas for coping, encouragement, anything....I will keep checking back. Thank you.

well, I feel a little sheepish.

Apparently, I had my contact e-mail for Christian forum sent to an e-mail I no longer check. So I didn't get a notifications when people responded to my post. Therefore, I assumed that no one had responded to my post, and I didn't come back here until just now. This was a pretty stupid assumption. However, I didn't go back to the site until just now and I've been struggling day by day to get through. Today was a relatively good day, as far as days go lately. The pain was not too agonizing. The past couple days there's been a lot of snow and rain and cold, which is the time when my pain is the worst. Yesterday midday before spent most of my day in bed, too much pain to move. Today I was able to read and do a little work on the computer. The physical pain is a big part of why feel suicidal.

I talked to my doctor about going off the prednisone, and has me doing it much more slowly. Rather than cut from 10 to 5 in one day, I'm going from nine and then to eight, and then to seven, etc. Actually though, stuck on nine because of the physical pain, which I'm concerned will get worse if I go down further. Tomorrow I may try to go for eight. I'm seeing my doctor again next week I think, and I'm going to talk to him about going on and brawl, which is another medicine from rheumatoid arthritis. I'm a little freaked out about it because it has such serious side effects. But at this point, I really need something else because the methotrexate and the other medicines I'm on to start doing it.

It's hard not to be suicidal when you're in so much physical pain. Not to mention the emotional depression. I'm going to be sticking around on this form and checking in periodically. Now that I know people are responding. Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers, I definitely need those prayers. I feel funny asking for prayer, because I so completely lost my own faith that I don't pray anymore. But I still appreciate when other people pray. Is that hypocritical? I don't know

By the way, I better tell you – from now on when I'm writing on this form I'm not using my hands to type – I'm using my Dragon NaturallySpeaking software, which allows me to speak into a microphone and types the words on the screen for me. I'm telling you this because sometimes it puts in the wrong word, it puts a word that sounds like the word I want but isn't quite the right word. Usually I check and fix it, but sometimes it gets by me. So if something I type doesn't make sense, that's why