THIS AND THAT michelle cahill If it was that easy!

THE WEEK didn’t start well at all, especially for the families who lost loved ones after they apparently committed suicide.

Now I’m no psychologist or psychiatrist, but the way I understand the concept suicide, is that things have become so bad that you just simply can’t cope any more. All you want to do is sleep and never wake up.

Trust me, that’s what I want to do a lot of the time. All I want to do is just sleep … but no matter how crappy my life is … I still want to wake up.

I just want that blissfulness of not having to think, hear the beep of a telephone, not having to think about work, just for a couple of hours.

I also had this belief that it was a very weak person who took their own life. Whenever I heard someone had committed suicide the first thoughts that came to mind was, “How can this person be so selfish? Did they not think about the people they were leaving behind? Imagine your child growing up without a mother or father? How can you do that? You probably had what you perceived was insurmountable debt problems … now you are looking for the easy way out and leaving your problems to others?”

Then I would think those who tried to commit suicide and never quite succeeded were even bigger woosies than those who actually did.

To me it wasn’t a cry for help, for me they were just looking for attention. Well they sure got it. My thoughts would be, “Well why didn’t you do a proper job?”

Although my thoughts haven’t changed much, I now comprehend it a little better.

It hasn’t been a total mindshift but after seeing a few of my friends suffer from depression, which experts tell me is one of the major causes of suicide, that and bipolar.

The experts also tell me that depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain.

It is also an illness like high blood pressure or diabetes. They then further tell me that it can be treated with a pill or a handful of pills.

If it was that easy!

Now this is the part I don’t really get.

One of the most prescribed pills is Valium or as it is more popularly known today, diazepam.

According to a newspaper report, official figures show that diazepam misuse in Scotland came second only to heroin.

It has also been reported by medical experts that these drugs are habit forming. To me, this tells me that besides what you are dealing with emotionally, you now have something else to deal with.

The experts are also saying that young people (between the ages of 15-24) are now mixing diazepam with alcohol and you get knocked out for several days. Many of these young people are not using the drugs for the intended purposes but recreationally.

Now these same experts are also telling me that in some cases when you “accidentally” take an overdose it can lead to depression and it can ultimately lead to suicide.

Also, when you mix diazepam and alcohol you can also become melancholy or brave and that can also lead to suicide.

Everybody has crap in their life but one thing I do know is that you must really be at rock bottom to even think about or even take your own life and only you know how to deal with that.