Substance Abuse And Suicide

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1 min read

Every year, one million deaths occur due to suicide. That figure results in one suicide every 15 minutes. What’s worse is that many reported cases of suicide are associated with substance abuse and addiction.  Unfortunately, this is especially true among LGBT people, largely due to family, social, and religious rejection and isolation.  The pressure on LGBT teens goes way beyond normal teen angst.  LGBT teens are two to five times more likely than their peers to attempt suicide.  Add alcohol or drugs into the mix, when a person’s natural instinct for survival becomes dulled, and the risk becomes even more frightening.

Don’t Become a Statistic

It’s estimated that 24 percent of U.S. suicide victims are legally drunk when they commit suicide.

Additionally, 40 percent of treatment-seeking alcoholics report attempting suicide at one point in their lifetime. This is an unfortunate truth. Many addicts are aware of the depression that comes along with battling addiction. However, with proper care and treatment, the tragedy of suicide can be prevented.

If you or someone you know is struggling with depression and addiction, don’t hesitate to contact 12 Keys Recovery to learn more about how we can help.

If you’re being bullied at school or at work, if your family or church has kicked you out, and you just want it all “to just end” … don’t do anything drastic!  This is hope.  Things do get better.  And there is so much life ahead of you.  Talk to somebody.  Call the Trevor Project, or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, or your local LGBT Community Center or affirming church.

Learn more about addiction and substance abuse in the infographic below:

Societys Chemical Noose: A Look at Substance Abuse and Suicide [Infographic]
Infographic by 12 Keys Recovery

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IMPACT Staff

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One Response

  1. This article promotes a dialogue we need to never stop participating in. As a society, we need to be taking affirmative action to prevent suicide in all of its forms. Actions that result in the death of the actor (traditional suicides) are the tip of a vast iceberg, the visible portion of one of many icebergs floating in the cold-hearted world we’ve created as our fast paced, media-hyped, overly competitive, convenience-oriented and largely unempathetic “modern society” in which we’re “too busy” to listen to each other and show that we care. Beneath the surface, toxic emotions associated with loneliness and chronic feelings of inadequacy, insecurity and resentment undergird many forms of self-destructive behaviors that are essentially suicide by the installment plan. We volunteer to sacrifice our integrity, authenticity, wholeness, freedom, peace of mind and joy in many ways merely to get along. In the LGBTQ community sex readily becomes another drug smuggled and experienced in secrecy because shame requires that we cloak our preferences and deny the feelings we’re having when we think about sex and act upon our desires. Pride is merely the flipside of shame, not truly and antidote to shame’s ill effects. Closeted emotions destroy people’s hearts by eating them out from the inside. Coming out sexually does not automatically cure the caustic heartaches that continue to eat away at us. If we act out sexually while not yet healed, we are not addressing the underlying issues but merely converting this potentially beautiful, delightfully sensitive and sensual expression of intimacy into another addiction — a new drug of choice by which to become even more desensitized and numbed to our emotions. We need to come out as people who can admit that we’re in pain and need help to resolve the chronic pain of years of hiding and pretending to be someone we are not. Until we find the courage to be talk about everything that we’ve been through as secret agents of nonconformity in a conformist society, we’ll continue to suffer needlessly and find ways to punish ourselves for being “different” or for even admitting that we’re suffering. Claudia Black’s book “It Will Never Happen to Me” says that the rules of dysfunctional relationships are “Don’t trust, don’t feel and don’t talk about things that matter.” As a society we’ve lived by those rules far too long. To undo the harm caused by those rules we need now to learn to trust, feel and talk openly and compassionately about life as we’ve experienced it and share renewed hope that our past conformity to unhealthy expectations and practices can be transformed into new lifestyles based on beauty, justice, grace and love for all of us no matter how “unworthy” any of us may believe ourselves to be. We are all worthy of entering into the transformative process of healing our hearts and emerging beyond our egos as butterflies emerge beyond being caterpillars.

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