Lost your job? Put down the bottle

If you are crushed by job loss, don’t drink. If you know people who are crushed by job loss, stay with them if they are drinking. Don’t let COVID stop you. Keep them on a video call. Put on the mask and go to their home.

Chances are you know someone in a panic or despair. New unemployment claims have more than tripled in New York City from last year, and are up by 156% statewide. Some jobs won’t come back. Binge drinking has risen overall — and by 41% among women, according to a national study.

Years ago, my man died in a drinking bout after computers made his job obsolete. Howard grew up in Coney Island, the son of a postal worker, and dropped out of school to star in a blues band.

Through luck and talent, he had enough money when he died at 55, but had lost his sense of community and purpose.

Every Christmas, he watched “It’s a Wonderful Life.” If you haven’t seen the Frank Capra classic, spoiler alert: Shame drives George Bailey, a small-town banker, to get drunk on Christmas Eve and decide to jump off a bridge.

There is now an effort in psychiatry to define that pre-suicidal state. Psychiatrists see suicide as a symptom of another mental illness, usually depression — but half the people who attempt suicide don’t have a diagnosis. Informally, we talk of being about to flip, crack up, lose it, go over the edge. Job loss or any deep sense of defeat can be powerful triggers.

Alcohol often trips the wire. By one estimate, about one in three people who die from suicide are under the influence at the time.

They may not strike you as depressed — just scared. They could be making plans for the future. They may not be thinking about suicide.

Some health systems now give all patients forms with an item asking if they’ve had “thoughts that you would be better off dead or of hurting yourself in some way.”

Among those who go on to try to end their lives, up to 40% respond “not at all.” In one study, researchers interviewed 26 people in this category who survived. Alcohol was often part of the story.

Since suicidal thinking can come and go, clinicians ask patients if they have a suicide plan. In this study, none of the 26 woke up on the morning of the attempt with a plan to die that day.

The crisis can hit suddenly and people act within an hour or minutes.

That’s why at Detroit’s Henry Ford Health System, patients in danger are flagged by algorithms that look for triggers such as a job loss, chronic pain, opioid use and insomnia.

Veterans Affairs, in New York and nationally, uses similar artificial intelligence. Igor Galynker, a professor of psychiatry at Icahn School of Medicine in New York, and Thomas Joiner at Florida State University, are collaborating on a joint proposal for a new diagnosis to help clinicians identify these quick-onset suicide cases.

When Howard and I talked about “It’s A Wonderful Life,” he said it had the best advice he knew for helping anyone. I can’t ask him now to explain, but here’s what I think he meant: Guard them when they’re drinking. George Bailey had a guardian angel, Clarence. He’s there at the dangerous moment.

Think about how that person has changed your life for the better. Be specific. Say it aloud, many times.

Clarence gives Bailey a demonstration of what his hometown would be like if he’d never been born.

Maybe you can ask your friend or loved one to help you. Clarence cleverly dives into the river before George jumps. George saves him, and the dangerous moment passes.

In the last year of his life, I’m pretty sure helping me kept Howard alive. It’s probably the best thing I ever did for him, and I did plenty.

My big mistake: I left him alone.

After he died, people said to me, as comfort, “You can’t save someone.” They think that the person will just try again. It’s not true. Most never try again. Nine out of ten people who attempt suicide and survive do not go on to die by suicide.

If you’re the one at the end of your rope, don’t make any decisions. Go to sleep and see if you can live in the morning. Stick your face in ice-water — weird but there’s science to back it up. Make eye contact with anyone. Call a hotline, like the national prevention hotline, 800-273-8255.

Go find a true friend, ask her to guard you. Guard someone else. Don’t drink.

Ehrenfeld is a journalist in New York who has written extensively about suicide.