Things got too much for me again this week. Everyone was complimenting me on how well I had handled the news that the police were dropping my case. I was split about it; on the one hand I could see that and agree with them, while on the other I wanted so badly to self-destruct.

So I went along to therapy on Wednesday having bought a bottle of vodka beforehand. I’d left the office early because I couldn’t stand pretending to be OK at work. But I couldn’t face going home, so I sat in the park and had a few mouthfuls of that warming stuff I knew I should avoid.

I wasn’t drunk in therapy. I was just a bit more mellow than usual. I cried a lot. That’s not normal for me. And I felt. That was the problem. I felt so much at once and it seemed intolerable. I was engulfed in this horrible, deep sadness, and a desperate longing for something I can never have – a better past.

I knew before I left J’s where I was heading. I knew I’d have some time before my wife started to worry, as my sessions run over every now and then. So I curled up under a bridge beside the canal and drowned the feelings. I drank until this fuzzy numbness overcame me and it felt better. I shouldn’t admit that, but it did feel better. For a short time, the pain was smaller, more distant somehow.

But then the flipside of the alcohol kicked in. The reckless, destructive side opened up. I started taking pills. I had a fair few in my work bag and I began taking them; two at a time. After I’d had maybe four or six, I started to hesitate. I thought I should try and ask for help. I sent a text to J, and another to one of my best friends. Then I timed the response. For every ten minutes that passed, I took more pills.

My friend was on a train and didn’t have a signal to call me. And J must’ve been tied up in another session because it was a little while before my phone rang. In a way I was disappointed. I thought that if neither of them called, I could just let myself fall asleep there and never wake up. I dared to hope for that. I wanted it all to be over.

J talked to me and called my wife to tell her where I was. I don’t really remember our conversations, apart from feeling a lot of guilt and making a lot of apologies to both of them. My wife got me to the hospital and they gave me an IV to detox my system. My heart was doing weird things due to the sedatives mixed with alcohol, so they monitored that for a while. And I saw their ‘psychiatric liaison’. I told her I wanted to die, but she assessed me as safe to go home.

I’m now trying really hard not to see this as ground zero again. It’s such a massive failure, and such a huge stumble in my recovery. It has implications for what I might want in the future. It’s permanently on my record that I’ve had another major ‘episode’. My wife is scared again. J probably doesn’t trust me after I lied to her about being safe after our session.

I’ve once again done an excellent job of sabotaging myself.