The hippy has a wild & dark tale to share with you. This is the uncensored story of his breakdown

I know this sounds crazy, but back in 2019, The Avengers saved my life. Yes, the actual Avengers. You know who I mean, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and all the rest. Yes, them. 

I know it nuts, but trust me, so was I at the time. And I promise you, by the end of reading this piece, you will see that I am telling the absolute truth. The Avengers really did save my life.

This is the mainly the story of my massive breakdown, that went on for the around six months in 2019. And it’s also the story of how The Avengers saved me from death. These two things are not unrelated. 

It is also my confession. I’ve not shared these intimate details with many people, let alone the entire world. I’m going to take you deep inside my breakdown, in vivid, lurid, explicit, painful detail. I’m going to be brutally honest, and I’m not going to hold anything back.  

This is probably the first written piece in the world to contain both a spoiler alert, and a trigger warning. Sorry about that.

I’m going to talk about suicide. A lot. Suicidal thoughts, suicidal planning, and suicide methods, I’m going to run the gamut. It is about a depressive breakdown, after all. So consider this a hardcore trigger warning. If reading about that sort of thing is going to upset you, bring you down, or worse, please stop reading now. 

Oh, and I nearly forgot the spoiler warning. I am going to drop some major spoilers from the Infinity Saga. It comprises the first three phases of films set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which for brevity’s sake from here, I will refer to as the MCU.

If the trigger warning, or spoiler alert haven’t put you off, let’s get this party started. And by party, I actually mean the fairly sad, dark story of one of the worst times in my life. We’ll get there soon enough.

MCU Phase One

Growing up, I didn’t read comic books. I don’t know why. They never grabbed me like novels, films, and television programmes did. 

For me, the superheroes of my childhood were Adam West’s Batman, and George Reeves’s Superman. Both were American TV programmes, that were constantly rebroadcast, and in syndication when I was a child. 

I can just about remember Batman being on it’s first network run in the mid 60s. I was really young back then, but I loved it. It was over the top, and really funny. I remember singing along to the theme tune, “Na na na na na na na Batman!” I was 4 or 5 years old, so the lyrics were perfect for me at that age. And they are still fun to sing as an adult. Go on, do a chorus or two, I don’t mind. 

Both Batman, and Superman are DC Superheroes. I know that much, to know the difference between DC, and Marvel.

Marvel had some animated cartoons on TV in the 60s, and 70s, but my memories of them are more vague. I remember watching Spider-Man, and I think there was an Iron Man show too. The point is, I wasn’t even a ‘casual’, I was fairly in the dark about real comics.

I enjoyed Michael Keaton’s Batman, and Christopher Reeve’s Superman films as well, but again I was still in the land of DC, even in the 70s, and 80s. And I had seen the Sam Rami Spider-Man trilogy with Toby Maguire in the early oughts. The Bryan Singer X-Men films too. I enjoyed them all, but wouldn’t have classified myself as a superhero, super fan. I just like being entertained. 

I remember it being a big deal when the first Iron Man film came out in 2008. Besides it being Robert Downey Junior’s big, blockbuster comeback role, I caught there was a general buzz surrounding the film.

When it debuted on satellite TV here in the UK, I went into it with very little knowledge of the character, or the film. I had low expectations. I thought that it would just be some generic action/sci-fi comic book thing. 

It was a sci-fi/comic book thing, but there was absolutely nothing generic about it. It was extremely well made, engaging, and funny, largely due to RDJ’s performance. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

There was a secret post-credit scene, at the very end of Iron Man. I don’t think it is a secret now, Marvel often tag scenes onto the end of their films, hinting at future developments, but at the time, this first one was a big deal. 

Nick Fury, played by the great Samuel L. Jackson, recruited RDJ’s Tony Stark, into the Avenger’s Initiative. I hit the internet to find out what all this meant. I loved the film, and if it implied a sequel, I was so there. 

It wasn’t just a sequel that first post credit scene hinted at, but a much larger universe. Marvel had an ambitious plan to make a series of films, all connected, that would culminate in the teaming up of several heroes introduced in their own solo films. No one had ever attempted anything this ambitious. 

You might argue that Star Wars was a fictional universe of connected stories, and that’s true. But what the SW universe has lacked until recently, was an over-arching vision. That means there are continuity issues all over the place. 

The MCU started with a singular vision, that for the most part, they have been adhering to in a very connected way. And that continues to this day, as the MCU is currently well into Phase 4, with Phases 5, and 6 already planned, and ready to follow. It’s become a behemoth, and a successful one too. 

I saw all the films in the first phase, on TV. There weren’t that many of them. After the first Iron Man, they made The Incredible Hulk, a second Iron Man film, then Thor, and Captain America.

Fun fact: Sir Kenneth Branagh directed the very first Thor film. I didn’t find that out until I actually screened it on TV, and his name came up in the opening credits. It made me realise that Marvel were taking their filmmaking very seriously.   

I knew even less about Captain America when I finally watched it. It was mostly a traditional World War Two action film, with a bit of science fiction thrown into the mix. I didn’t expect that, at all,. It surprised me. What surprised me even more, was how much I enjoyed it. It was incredibly entertaining, and well-made. 

In 2012, Marvel released their first Avengers film. It was called “The Avengers” all over the world, but called “Avenger’s Assemble” in the UK, to avoid confusion with the old 60s espionage TV show. 

This first team-up film was amazing. I enjoyed it so much. They made it work, and brought all the heroes together to fight a common enemy that alone, none of them could have faced. 

It was a huge action, sci-fi extravaganza, filled with humour, and extremely likeable characters. It was wildly entertaining, pretty close to perfect, and a five star film. It left me wanting more.

My mental health history

I have a long history of chronic depression, and anxiety, I had my first suicidal thought at age 13, when the first girl I ever properly kissed, broke up with me. Drama much? 

At my parents insistence, I saw a psychologist for a year, when I was 17, and a psychiatrist for a year, after that. Since then, I haven’t had any therapy, or medication other than cannabis to deal with my anxiety, and depression. 

I discovered cannabis at age 18, and it has kept me level for decades, I have been mostly steady, and stable for many years.

Cannabis made it possible for me to attend university classes, and to have a 35+ year long career in the media. Without it, I know I wouldn’t have done as well. 

Full disclosure, I also used to drink, socially. I used to drink like I meant it, too. It’s a great treatment for social anxiety, but it has too many side effects, like hangovers, and cirrhosis of the liver. 

I don’t need to tell you that it is a social lubricant. I’m sure you’ve seen some quiet, reserved person dance naked atop a table, after too many Tequilas. Come on, we’ve all done that. 

I started drinking socially at age 13, and got more serious about it around age 16, as that’s what teenagers did back in New Jersey in the late 1970s. They drank beer. 

When I hit 19, which was the legal drinking age back then, I started going out to bars, and moved onto spirits. I finally gave up drinking completely in 2002, and have solely relied on cannabis to deal with my anxiety, and depression ever since. 

People self medicate in all sorts of ways, but booze is by far the most common, and the worst for your health. Weed’s better, in every possible way. 

I had a brief mental health blip in the early oughts. I was suffering from the slow onset of a thyroid disorder, called Hashimoto’s Disease. This went on over a period of around six years, but I didn’t know it at the time. Out of the blue, I began to have dramatic mood swings. 

I experienced various undiagnosed, and seemingly unrelated symptoms due to my failing thyroid, including this brief period of mood swings early on. The mood swings came out of nowhere, stuck around for a couple of months, then disappeared as mysteriously as they came.

I mention this, because my mental health has always been reasonably stable, even if it wasn’t great. I managed it with cannabis, I got by, and had a fairly normal, unremarkable life until those mood swings. 

The mood swings lasted for a couple of months, in 2002-2003, and they were just a short term occurrence. They never returned. Once I was put on thyroid meds in 2008, all of the other symptoms vanished too. Turns out, mood swings are a really common symptom of untreated thyroid issues, often the very first one. 

After this, my mental health returned to baseline. My baseline is functional, self managed, chronic depression.

MCU Phase Two

In my last job, I used to work nights, exclusively. I’m not working at all at the moment. Well, except for writing stuff like this. 

Nights were a way to manage my depression too, as there were fewer people around, and no bosses at all. It was a mostly quiet life. I worked on news desks back then, I am a journalist. Or I was. The jury is still out, on whether or not I will be, again. 

Working overnights, you have a certain amount of downtime, it comes with the territory. I would often explore the internet, to pass the time.

I started looking into the MCU during my nightshift downtime, and I discovered the Marvel Studios subreddit, called r/MarvelStudios. 

It’s a very active discussion board, on all things MCU. When I first signed up for it, it was a lot smaller. It’s massively popular now. I spent hours on it. 

The subreddit stayed across all the rumours, and announcements, for upcoming MCU projects. By the time I stumbled into the subreddit, the second phase of production was well under way.

The first films in Phase 2 were Iron Man 3, followed by Thor 2, both of which, I saw on television. The third film was Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I saw that on TV too, but it was the last debut I would watch on the small screen.

The Winter Soldier was released in 2014, and it took the MCU to a new level. This was more a 1970s conspiracy thriller, in the vain of ‘Three Days of the Condor’, than a superhero movie. It’s a good comparison because Robert Redford appears in both films.  

Sure, Cap is enhanced, thanks to the super solider serum, but his power set was incidental to the plot. Cap, that’s what we call him. If you know, you know. 

It’s my favourite solo film in the entire series, though calling it a solo film, is not completely accurate. Nick Fury, and Natasha Romanoff, otherwise known as Black Widow, and played by Scarlett Johansson were also along for the ride. Crossovers have become a constant feature in all MCU projects now. They do say, “it’s all connected”, and it really, truly is.

For me, the best part of seeing the film, is that I had no idea what would happen. As I mentioned, I never read the comics. Those who did, had one of the biggest reveals of the film (and the series), spoiled for them. 

I know I said there would be spoilers, and there will be, I promise. That said, I am not going to reveal this one. It’s just too good. This is the film that really hooked me into the series.

The next film released was Guardians of the Galaxy, and the pre-release hype online was massive. It was the first Marvel film that I saw in the cinema. I hadn’t been to the cinema in ages, but I wanted to see this film, unspoiled, and on a big screen. I knew if I didn’t see it on opening day, the internet would ruin it for me. 

Come on, you must know that’s true. Every major film, and TV show, is spoiled within hours of its release. You don’t even have to go looking for them, sometimes all it takes is a thumbnail image on YouTube, or a single tweet to ruin a big reveal, or revelation. 

At my local multiplex, the first showing can be 10 or 11am, and they are usually pretty empty. For Guardians, it was only me, and two other people in the entire cinema. 

From this point on, and all the way through the end of Phase 3, I saw every film at my local cinema on opening day, and at the first screening of the day. I was a proper fan of the MCU now. 

Nightshifts, so many nightshifts 

As I mentioned, I worked nights for years. 

I had a job in the mid 80s as a computer graphic artist, making tedious text-based overhead transparencies for corporate presentations. I doubt that sort of work exists now, thanks to PowerPoint, but back then, many companies outsourced that type of work to my firm.

The computer kit that ran this software back in the mid 80s, was the size of a small truck, and cost a moderate fortune. So my bosses brought in enough work, to keep the machines running, 24 hours day, across three 8-hour shifts. 

For about three months over an entire summer, I worked midnight to 8am, five nights a week. This was the first time that I ever worked overnights. 

It was a hard slog, but there were pluses, like no bosses. There was a shift supervisor, but he tended to snooze in a boss’s office for most of the night after doling out the assignments. 

It was an hour drive in the morning to get to my office, but getting there for a midnight start cut that down to 35 minutes. Same for my drives home, as I was going against the direction of most of the  other traffic. 

There were benefits to nights, but this was my first real taste, and I liked it. When I got my first jobs in news, they involved working various shifts, some with unsociable hours too. Nightshifts quickly became my favourite, even early on, mainly for the reasons I’ve mentioned. Since the mid-1990s, I have worked mostly nights, and from 2004, I worked them exclusively. 

In my last job, I was sort of a ghost. In sixteen years, i never worked a dayshift. People would see my name on emails, and handovers, but the majority of the staff, and bosses, didn’t even know I existed. I only haunted the place at night. Boo! Did I scare you?

I’ve been with my partner for 25 years, and six years ago, she became very ill. I’m not going to go into great detail about her illness here, though she has said I can write about it. One day, I will. 

She has a complex chronic medical condition, that impacts her physical, and mental health, and she required a lot of care, especially for the first few years that it took over her life. It wasn’t easy, especially while working nights, but I managed to hold it all together.

Earlier that same year, some dramatic changes were being brought into my job. I’d been in the same role for around 12 years at that point, just quietly getting on with it. 

They were changing the definition of my job, and I was suddenly being forced onto a different desk, with different responsibilities, but that wasn’t the worst of it. They were also increasing the hours, by 90 minutes a shift. 

Even though the hours increased, one of my new roles involved even more downtime. That meant I was left to my own devices for many hours, every night. 

That’s how I ended up writing my book, “Personal Use by the northlondonhippy”. I wrote it during my downtime, on a laptop I brought in every single night I worked. True story. 

Personal Use is available as a digital download, or from your favourite website, or bookshop. Ask for it by name… or they won’t know what you’re talking about. Asking for “that book by that sad hippy from the internet” isn’t going to cut it. 

The biggest issue was the increased hours. Where do you think that extra hour and a half of work came from? It came from my sleep, and I started getting a lot less rest during the day from this point.

Sleep matters. It matters for good mental health, and I was to discover, much, much later, it matters for physical health too.

MCU Phase Three

I kept going to the cinema a couple of times a year, to keep up with the latest MCU releases. I’d swap my shifts around, to make sure I wasn’t working the night before, or the night of a release. That way I could easily attended that early first screening of the day. They were events for me.

The first film of Phase 3 was Captain America: Civil War. This time, it was an international political thriller. They like to play with genres in the MCU, which is one reason why the films are so successful. The films stand on their own, as well as being part of the larger series. 

Captain America is by far my favourite character. He’s got a great backstory, and a pure heart. He is the very definition of what it means to be a good person, and a hero. He also goes against the government a lot, so please don’t think he is just some flag-waving symbol for American patriotism. Watch the films. And even though I was born in America, I am nothing like him. I wish I was, I wish I had his strength of character, but I can only meekly aspire. 

Phase 3 is fantastic, there isn’t a weak film in the bunch. Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok, Doctor Strange, the second Guardians film, the first Tom Holland Spider-Man film, Homecoming, all of them were just so good. I looked forward to each premiere, more, and more, and that was especially true for Avengers: Infinity War. 

Avengers: Infinity War, was the third major team-up film, released in 2018. It was the first of two Avengers films to be released a year apart, as well as being the first part of the conclusion of the entire Infinity Saga. It was hugely ambitious, and they juggled nearly all of their major characters in it.

The protagonist of the film, who was also the villain, is called Thanos. He is a big purple bad guy from outer space. Thanos had already popped up in a few of the previous films. 

Thanos’s goal was to gather all the Infinity Stones, which would give him the power to snap his fingers, and make half of all life in the universe, vanish, and instantly turn to dust. He had his reasons.

And that’s how Infinity War ends, with half the universe being turned to dust, including many of the main MCU heroes, who are also some of its biggest stars. The bad guy was victorious. That’s not supposed to happen.

I told you there would be spoilers. Don’t say you weren’t warned. It was the biggest cliffhanger, in the history of cliffhangers! And the sequel was still a year away from release.

I had quite a year during that long wait, as you will soon see. 

Bent till I broke

As I basked in the afterglow of Infinity War, my mini-obsession with the MCU continued. I spent hours on the subreddit, reading everything I could find on what might be coming next. 

Marvel run a pretty tight ship, and plot leaks are thankfully rare, but I still kept an eye out for clues. Those Marvel snipers are effective, and the cast, and crew kept their mouthes shut tight. 

They hadn’t even announced the proper title for the Infinity War sequel. They kept that under wraps for ages too. People referred to it as Infinity War Part 2, as that was what they called it when originally announced it back in 2014. Marvel then said they changed their minds, and would keep the new title a secret, and not announce it for years. 

The pressure on me from my partner’s illness, and the huge changes at work, only increased. So did my suicidal thoughts. I resisted them at first, as best I could, as I had for most of my life.

This was different, I struggled to keep myself in check. In fact, I more than struggled, I failed. At some point towards the end of 2018, I gave into my depression, and surrendered to my suicidal thoughts. I knew the world would be better off without me. I thought I’d be better off that way too. 

I saw no way out of my predicament. Nothing I did seemed to help my partner recover, and the changes at work, especially the reduction in my sleep, were doing my head in. 

The biggest tangible issue by far was my decreased sleep hours. The six hours a day that I used to sleep, became four and a half. It wasn’t nearly enough. I didn’t understand that at the time, just how much this messed me up. I just knew I was ready to catch the bus. 

Whenever I’ve imagined euthanasia, I’ve always pictured it happening at some sort of outside facility. Maybe it was the film, “Soylent Green”, from the 1970s, that first planted this idea in my head. 

The film, which is a great dystopian look at the future, is set in 2022. Yes, this year, the one that we are still in the middle of right now, as I write this. 

Charlton Heston is the star of the film, his best friend is named Sol, and played by Edward G. Robinson. 

Sol goes to one of these euthanasia facilities to die. They administer the drugs, as soft music plays, and peaceful scenes of the natural, pre-collapse world are projected on a screen. As deaths go, it looked pretty good to me, even as a kid.

Oh, and whatever you do, don’t eat Soylent Green.

Euthanasia is not legal in the United Kingdom. Anyone who lives here, has to travel to another country like Switzerland, for an elective death. This, along with Soylent Green, are most likely, why I always pictured euthanasia as happening at a place, like a hospice, or hospital.

As my depression, and despair spiralled, I sought a way out, a permanent one. And the method I decided to pursue, was suggested to me by a TV show. That’s where I got this idea. 

Ray Donovan. Maybe you’ve heard of it, or seen it? It was a drama series, shown on Showtime in America, and Sky, here in the UK. 

In one of the later seasons, Ray Donovan’s wife gets the bad cancer. After treatment fails, she opts for euthanasia, which was legal wherever this was set. California at this point I think, but it doesn’t really matter.

Ray Donovan’s fictional wife taught me otherwise. After all the treatments failed, she saw her doctor. She said she was ready to depart, and he wrote a prescription for a euthanasia drug, so she could die at home. Her brother-in-law collected this medication from the local chemist. She mixed it with fruit juice, drank it, and around 30 minutes later, drifted off into peaceful, endless, dreamless sleep. That’s exactly what I wanted.

It made sense. If a doctor could prescribe euthanasia drugs, that you would be permitted to take them at home on your own terms. This was a revelation to me. You could take them at the time, and the place of your own choosing. I can’t believe I didn’t realise this sooner. 

That’s what I wanted, I wanted self-euthanasia. That’s what I called it in my head. I rarely used the “S” word, suicide, when I thought about it. I saw it as treatment, and cure for what ailed me. 

It wasn’t difficult to find out what the drug was called. I actually knew the name already. You might know it too, especially if you’ve ever had the tragically unhappy task of taking a beloved pet to the vet, one final time. 

It’s the same drug they use to put down dogs, and cats, only a human needs a much larger dose, because we’re a whole lot bigger. 

It’s called Nembutal, or Phenobarbital, and it is a cheap, very strong sedative. In a high enough, or in other words, fatal dose, it sends you into a deep sleep, and then it causes your breathing, and heartbeat to stop. It’s sounds like the most peaceful death imaginable.

We show our pets more compassion at the end of their short lives, then we show each other. People are often forced to endure the most painful, least dignified deaths imaginable, because of our discomfort over euthanasia. Hey ho.

That’s what I wanted, I wanted a peaceful, quiet, undramatic death. I just wanted to drift off into that dreamless forever sleep, on my own terms.

I am somewhat acquainted with acquiring drugs on the black market. It comes from a lifetime of smoking weed to deal with my depression. The one thing I know about the black market is you can get just about anything, if you look hard enough. Especially pharmaceutically produced drugs, because profit. 

There are loads of websites on the open internet, that you can reach via Google, offering to sell you Nembutal, but they are all scams. They are ripping off desperate, ill, and depressed people, and sending them chalk-dust in the post, or nothing at all. I found a couple of euthanasia forums, and that was the consensus, which I heeded. 

I turned to the dark-net, and checked some markets, until I found one that sold it powdered by the gram. The vendor was well reviewed, and said to be dependable. And the product reviews all said it was the real thing. 

I had found out what the dosage was for fully grown human, so I knew what I needed. I planned on ordering an extra gram, and sending it off to Wedinos. It’s a lab that anonymously analyses samples sent in the post. They would then put those results on their website, with a numeric identifier, so you would know it was the results for sample you sent them. Why? I wanted to be absolutely certain that what I received was genuine. 

Imagine booking a hotel room, experiencing your last thoughts, drinking it all down, and thinking this was really it. Only to then unexpectedly wake up the next morning, still alive. No way I would have set an alarm, so I’d be looking at a late check-out charge. And still existing, too!

That was my plan, to book a hotel room, and do it there. Aside from wanting to spare Mrs. Hippy having to find my corpse at home, I know that sadly, hotels are often used by the suicidal exactly this way. I just wanted some privacy for my final hours, and moments. And a mini-bar, but only for the overpriced Toblerone. 

I’m sure discovering suicided corpses causes hotel staff trauma, but in my twisted state, I figured they were accustom to it, and it was just a risk of their job. I would have left a note just inside the door, telling them not to enter, and to quickly phone the police. And I would have apologised to them, which would have been worth as much as the paper it was scrawled upon.

You must be wondering how I rationalised doing something so cruel, and extreme to my very ill, long time partner, and love of my live, who was dependent upon me for care. 

I was in a very bad way. I convinced myself that not only wasn’t I helping her recover, I was making her worse, and holding back her recovery. I convinced myself that she would be better off without me, like I convinced myself the world would be better off without me. It wasn’t a hard sell, my depression made me a receptive customer

I have a saying, which applies to me, as much as it applies to anyone. That saying is this: The best lies are the ones you tell yourself. 

My thoughts were obsessed, and dominated by my plans, and they were very detailed, as you can see. These thoughts, along with my plans started ramping up around December 2018, and by the beginning of 2019, I had everything in place.

Even though I found what I thought was a genuine source for the special goodbye medication, I didn’t order it straight away. I knew if I had, a really bad day might inspire a hasty departure. I aimed to order it right around the time I needed it, to resist that early temptation. 

Why was I waiting until the beginning of May to execute my plan, and myself? 

I bet you worked it out already. Before I ended, I wanted to see how the Infinity Saga ended.

Endgame, my endgame

I starting joking about wanting to stay alive to see the end of something in the media for the first time, while referring to the TV programme, Lost.

Lost was one of the first big TV shows of the social media age, and probably when I first starting going online myself to read reactions posts on forums. It was sort of a mystery box of a TV show, and analysing, and breaking down the latest clues online, became a weekly ritual. As the the producers would answer one question, they would create half a dozen more. 

Lost wasn’t always perfect, but when it was good, it was very good. “We have to go back!” is a deep cut reference for you Lost fans out there. 

I wanted to see how Lost wrapped up, and how they tied up so many loose threads. I started joking, that if I was ever going to just  drop dead, I hoped it would happen after the Lost finale. 

As jokes go, it wasn’t one of my best, but it was meant to illustrate  how invested I was in something, like a TV series. I said it about Breaking Bad too, which turned out to be a far superior show. 

Eventually, I would start making this exact same joke about the MCU, and the end of the Infinity Saga. Only this time, the joke became real.

In December 2018, Marvel finally announced the title of the Infinity War sequel. It was right around the time I was first thinking about my final exit. The title of the film spoke to me, and made me more confident that my plan was the right one.

The title of the film was: Avengers: Endgame. It was my endgame too.

The universe, and I were in alignment. All that was keeping me alive, was my desire to see this film. Once I saw it, it was goodbye hippy time. That was my endgame. Endgame, my endgame. 

Whenever I was stressed, or felt the overwhelming desire to flee the face of the planet, that was my mantra. Endgame, my endgame. 

Whenever I saw an advert, or any media promoting the film, I said it to myself then too. It soothed me, it was a balm. It kept me focussed on the little time I believed I had left. All that was keeping me alive, was wanting to see this film. Endgame, my endgame. 

I held it together during this period, and went through the motions of my life. Because I had an end date in mind, that somehow made it easier. 

What also made it easier, was a lifetime of keeping my mental health struggles to myself. You learn how to hide those bad thoughts of suicide, even when they are shouting, and screaming inside your head. That’s what people expect you to do, so you do it. That is, until you can’t.

I made it through January at work, somehow. In the middle of February, I had a month’s pre-booked leave. I didn’t go anywhere, or do anything. I just sat around my house, letting my suicidal thoughts overwhelm me even more, while I felt sorry for myself. It’s all I thought about, all day, every day. The shouting in my head was being amplified by a bullhorn now. There was no escape, or respite. 

I didn’t see the point of anything. I was more depressed than I had ever been in my entire chronically depressed life. I had sunk about as low as someone can sink, and still be conscious. 

By the end of my leave period, I was in a spiralling state of absolutely desperate, depression, and despair. 

Want to know what I did next? I went back to work for my first shift after my leave.

How did it go? Take a wild guess.

I was on the verge of tears before I even got there. It seemed chemical, more than being due to anything external. I just knew I was in a bad way, but I tried to get on with my work. It was never, ever this bad.

I was short tempered, and gruff with everyone. I could feel myself losing it. I just wanted the earth to open up, and swallow me, and when it didn’t, I just wanted everyone to leave me alone. I had quite a quiet, yet very public meltdown that night.

Considering everything I was going through, plus things I would discover about my health in the future, it is no surprise that I had a full-on breakdown. I crumpled like a rag doll. It was my last ever shift.

Later that day, I saw my GP, and she signed me off for three months. After my meltdown, I didn’t feel like I could ever go back to work, so the sick note was exactly what I needed. Three months was more than enough time to see me through the premiere of the film, and my endgame. Endgame, my endgame.

My GP tried to help. She offered me anti-depressants, and she offered me a referral for six sessions of therapy. I declined it all. She could see how I bad I was, so she had me see her weekly, throughout this period. She was concerned for me. 

While I didn’t explicitly express my suicidal ideation, I must have seemed completely devoid of hope. It would not have been much of a stretch for her to imagine where that was taking me. 

Seeing my GP every week, was pretty much the only time I left my house, from mid March through till nearly the end of April, and the premiere of the film. Endgame, my endgame. 

I got up that morning, showered, and put on my new Avengers tee shirt. It has the “Avengers: Endgame” logo on the front of it. I bought it earlier in the month in preparation for the screening, and my upcoming brief, and final hotel stay. I still have it. 

As depressed, and despairing as I was, the only bit of light I had, my only real joy was my expectations for the film. I was not disappointed. Sure, it was packed with lots of callbacks to previous films, and it also had some rather enjoyable fan service, but the film wasn’t at all what I expected it to be.

The film premiered in the UK on Thursday, the 25th of April 2019. That morning, I walked up to my local multiplex, it was a sunny day, the temperature was mild. 

I had pre-booked my ticket online ages before, and I had my favourite seat reserved, on the isle, near the back. 

The cinema wasn’t full, but there were 15-20 other people in the audience for that very first early morning screening. It was the same screen where I saw the first Guardians film too. 

I don’t recall the trailers, I was too excited. The moment I’d been waiting for, for an entire year, that I’d been keeping myself alive for, had finally arrived, and the film began.  

For starters, they killed off Thanos, quickly. Thor chops off his head in the first 15 minutes of the film. Well, the version of Thanos from Infinity War, anyway. I didn’t see that coming. 

Spoilers, spoilers everywhere! 

And then the title card, and time jump: Five years later. So it’s 2023 in-universe now? WTF? Right from the start, the film messed with my expectations. 

Scott Lang, better known as Ant-Man, returns from being trapped in the Quantum Realm with an idea to reverse Thanos’s finger snap via time travel. I could see how this might seem convoluted to you, if you haven’t seen the films, but trust me, it made sense.

The Avengers at this point, were disunited, and dispersed, after they lost to Thanos. When Tony Stark invented time travel, as you do, and Scott’s plan became viable, they had to put the band back together. Smart Hulk, and Rocket Raccoon were sent to New Asgard to recruit Thor to the mission. 

Thor’s an actual space god. For real, or for as real as things can be in a fictional cinematic universe. Hugely powerful, thousands of years old, with all the knowledge, and experience that comes along with that. And when Hulk and Rocket found Thor in New Asgard, five years after he killed Thanos, he was a wreck.

Thor was depressed, he was anxious, and he had PTSD. He hadn’t been leaving his house. He was unkempt, and he’d put on weight. Remind you of anyone?

Do I have to spell it out for you? This spoke to me, sitting in the theatre, in the dark. If it could happen to Thor, a literal space god, then it could happen to anyone. It could even happen to a schmo like me. In a film full of emotional beat, after emotional beat, this for me, was the one that beat them all. 

Even though Thor was lost, he found a way back, a way to rejoin the Avengers, and help them in their quest to fix what Thanos had broken. They were going to bring back the half of the universe that was turned to dust at the end of the previous film. It was quite a journey, especially with all the time travel, and the unintended effects it caused. 

I think it is Tony Stark who says “when you mess with time, it tends to mess back”. In this case, it was the 2014 version of Thanos, who messed back. Thanos stumbled upon the Avengers’ time travel reset plan. He then quickly worked out time travel for himself, and attacked the Avengers in present day 2023. 

Confused? Go watch all the films, they are well worth your time. Trust me, they make sense. And you will find them all available to stream right now on Disney+. This is not a paid advertisement, I’m not in touch with anyone from Disney. It’s just a friendly recommendation, because I love the films so much.

Thanos attacks the Avengers compound within seconds of Smart Hulk snapping his fingers while wearing the new gauntlet. Hulk’s finger snap is the act that brought back the disappeared half of the universe. 

The final battle is already underway as the dusted heroes reappear on the battlefield, to join the largest, most emotional fight of the entire saga. They properly defeat this version of Thanos, but at quite a high cost. I won’t spoil the battle’s end. You’re welcome. 

I loved the film. It was everything I hoped for, and so much more. They even gave my favourite character, Steve Rogers, Captain America, a happy ending. It was already hard for me to hold back the tears, but that final shot of his slow dance with Peggy Carter did me in. At least I wasn’t the only one. 

I sat through the 10 minutes of credits, to discover there was no actual post credit scene. It ends with sound effects under the credits of Tony Stark banging iron, when he built his first Iron Man suit, in cave with a box of scraps. 

The house lights came up, everyone dried their eyes, and we all filed out of the cinema into the bright daylight.

As I walked back home, I felt a sense of relief. I’d made it, I survived long enough to see the film that sustained me for months. It exceeded my expectations, and it was the perfect concluding instalment to the series. And the chosen coda to my life. 

Endgame, my endgame.

The Avengers save my life

When I got home, my mood was somewhat lifted by the film. I went online, and read fan reactions from around the world. People were pointing out easter eggs that I had missed, and reliving some of the high points of the film too. 

After being so isolated, and cut off from the world, I enjoyed sharing the experience online with so many other happy people. I don’t remember posting anything myself, but I spent days basking in the post-screening glory of the film.

It got great reviews from fans, and critics alike, and it made a fortune. For a time it was the highest grossing film ever.

I allowed the film’s afterglow to sustain me for around a week and a half, before I tried to log onto that dark-net market, to make my final purchase. My plan was still a a go for launch. 

It was the 4th of May. Considering all the geeky references in this piece, it seems appropriate, and fitting that May the fourth was with me. 

I tried to access the market site, but I was unsuccessful in my attempt. Even though I had periodically logged into that market to check the product I wanted was still available, now that I needed it, it wasn’t there.

The entire market wasn’t there. A couple days before, the whole market had been seized by German authorities, and shut down. When I visited the Onion address, I was greeted with a takedown screen. The site was gone. 

I did not see this unexpected plot twist coming. There was no foreshadowing at all. That said, a dark-net market being seized by the cops wasn’t unknown. That’s what happened to the original dark-net market, Silk Road. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

You know the old saying, timing is everything. Depending upon your perspective, my timing here was either really lucky, or really tragic. My first task, was to work out which.

I sat in front of my laptop in stunned, shocked silence. In those first moments, the enormity of my discovery sank in. My chosen method, and key ingredient to my plan had vanished, literally instantly. 

I was distraught. What was I going to do?

I suddenly had a choice to make. Would I find a new source of Phenobarbital, or choose another method? Or would I choose life?

And why was I suddenly given this unexpected choice?

Think of it this way, I could have placed that order any time between January, and the end of April, and received the instant death drugs in the post. I didn’t, I delayed ordering until after I saw the film. And only a couple of days before I went to finally place the order, the entire website was taken down. 

Was the universe looking out for me? I don’t usually put much stock in that sort of nonsense, but on this occasion, it gave me pause for thought.

I carefully weighed up my options, which were certainly somewhat more limited by my online discovery. Other methods didn’t appeal to me, they were all too messy, or too difficult, or both. I could look for another source, but the first one was already hard enough to find. And did I even want to go looking?

I made my choice. I chose life. You knew that already, or you wouldn’t have been able to read all this. Of course, I am still here. Ghosts can’t type. Their fingers just swoosh through the keyboard, like a breeze through an open window. 

I chose to try to come back from the brink. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is, but I felt like I had to give life another chance. 

What saved my life, was sticking it out to see Avengers film. If I didn’t, I would have had the means to finish myself off in my hands. And I would have done it, there’s no question, or doubt in my mind about that. 

So that’s how the Avengers saved my life. If it weren’t for my interest, and love for the film series, I would have checked out months before. If not for the Avengers, your favourite make-believe internet hippy would be long forgotten by now. 

I told you that you would believe the Avengers really saved my life by the time we got to the end.

Lacking Context

We’re nearly to the end, I promise. The story should have ended here. That was my original plan, when I outlined this tragic, yet ultimately uplifting tale. 

I planned on writing this story a couple of years ago, but I couldn’t. It was too distressing for me to write, or even think about this dark period of my life. It took a long time for be to be able to revisit it all.

Being able to address my breakdown is a sign of my recovery. I got a lot better, I’m pretty good now. What changed is the context. A couple of years ago, when I first conceived of telling this tale, I lacked context. 

I thought my breakdown was a personal failing, a weakness of will, and surrendering to my demons was my fault. And I hated myself for it. 

In time, I would connect things together, and gain a greater understanding of what I went through. I realised my breakdown was just one piece of a much larger health puzzle. 

What I left out of this story until now are some key facts that I wasn’t aware were connected when I wrote my original outline. 

At the same time I was signed off from work in March 2019, I asked my GP for a referral to a neurologist. I did that, because around the same time my depression began to increase, I noticed a new symptom that I called “brain blips”. I left them out because they aren’t really relevant for the story I’ve just told you, but they are key to understanding the context.

Brain blips were incidents I was having when my eyesight would briefly defocus, and I would lose a few moments of time. They happened frequently, and may have caused an unexplained minor accident I had with my car, around the same time. They were difficult to describe at first, mainly because I wasn’t all there when they happened. 

I suspected the blips were some sort of neurological symptom, I just didn’t know what. Google suggested MS, but the first neurologist I saw in Autumn 2019, thought it was something unrelated to my brain, and sent me on my way. He was wrong. 

In 2021, I went on to have really bad, life threatening seizures, and I was eventually diagnosed with a rare form of epilepsy. The increase in my depression, and subsequent breakdown, along with the brain blips, were caused by the onset of the epilepsy. There’s a really strong bi-lateral relationship between epilepsy and depression. That’s what I meant by context. 

The change to my chronic depression was a symptom of something even bigger, the epilepsy. Whatever was going on inside my faulty noggin, began long before my breakdown, and only worsened after it. The brain blips were an early symptom of something serious. No one realised it at the time, especially not me. I wanted to believe the first neurologist, that my brain was fine. So that’s exactly what I did. 

The fact that the brain blips, and the increased depression happened almost simultaneously was a giant clue that I missed. And I blame myself for that, more than I blame the first neurologist. I saw him 18 months before my first seizure, and 6 months after my breakdown. I don’t fault him for missing it, he didn’t have much to go on.

It took me a couple of years to connect all this together, and put my breakdown into the context of my epilepsy diagnosis. I had a big assist from my GP, and my current neurologist. They helped me understand all of this. It’s a lot to take in. 

I’ve also written an even longer piece that puts my epilepsy diagnosis into the context of practically my entire medical history, and life. I’ve had weird, poor health since I was born. If you’re interested, have a look. Think of it as a companion piece to this one, that expands on my story from a wider health perspective. 

Knowing that abnormal neurological activity was the cause of my increased depression, doesn’t take away from the seriousness of my breakdown. Nor does it lessen the impact of how close I really came to taking own life. All that I’ve described, really happened to me. I experienced every sad second of it. 

What this new understanding does do for me, is it absolves me of the guilt I’ve been carrying around for so very long. I don’t hate myself quite as much these days. I’m actually feeling pretty good, and I’m not used to it yet.

What happened to me, was out of my control. I was out of control. Depressive, suicidal thoughts took over my life, and I couldn’t stop them. It is just dumb luck that I’m still here. And don’t forget the Avengers, they really did save my life. 

_____

Thanks for reading this. If you’ve been upset by my frank, open, and detailed descriptions of my mental health, and suicidal thoughts, please reach out to someone. The Samaritans can be contacted by telephone on 116 123. 

Please don’t suffer in silence. I’ve already done enough of that for the both of us.

_____

Doug – the northlondonhippy is a writer, and journalist (lapsed), with over 35 years of experience in the media. Doug began his career at MTV in NYC in the mid 1980s. Since then, he’s worked for Reuters TV, Associated Press Television News, and BBC News. He is also the author of “Personal Use by the northlondonhippy”. Doug tweets as @nthlondonhippy.