The SSRI Suicides: Ode to Wookie Bear
Reflections from a Father on the Five-Year Anniversary of His Daughter’s Suicide (Guest Piece by a Reader)
The SSRI Suicides: Introduction
by Margaret Anna Alice
After I posted about losing my beloved husband and best friend, Michael, I received numerous emails from readers who shared their own experiences of grief and loss.
I have been corresponding with several of them as we process our grief together.
One reader, rolandttg, lost his thirty-six-year-old daughter, Hilary, to suicide five years ago.
He counts the toxic cocktail of SSRIs as one of the primary causes of her personality changes and eventual suicide. Long known to cause suicidal ideation, particularly in developing brains, “Antidepressants increase the risk of suicide, violence and homicide at all ages” according to this 2017 BMJ article, which states:
“We showed for the first time that SSRIs in comparison with placebo increase aggression in children and adolescents, odds ratio 2.79 (95% CI 1.62 to 4.81). This is an important finding considering the many school shootings where the killers were on SSRIs.
“In a systematic review of placebo-controlled trials in adult healthy volunteers, we showed that antidepressants double the occurrence of events that the FDA has defined as possible precursors to suicide and violence, odds ratio 1.85 (95% CI 1.11 to 3.08).”
As if experiencing the shock of suddenly losing a loved one isn’t hard enough, suicide cuts into your heart even more deeply, this time using a rusty, serrated knife so the wound never quite heals. SSRIs influencing that tragic decision is like wrapping the knife in barbed wire.
Given that multiple people I know have suffered the loss of loved ones to SSRI-induced suicide, I decided to start a new series featuring some of these stories.
Whatever the cause, suicide adds bitterness, rage, guilt, regret, and shock to grief and loss, creating a recipe for long-term anguish little can assuage.
I recently published a piece honoring Dr. Jackie Stone, who was driven to suicide despite having so much to offer humanity.
I had the privilege of watching the livestream of her funeral service and found myself sobbing throughout, especially during the speeches by her children and partner:
My heart aches for them, knowing the depth of the grief they are experiencing is compounded by the tragedy of a life taken prematurely.
The raw, brutally honest reflections by rolandttg reveal the extent to which the surviving family members suffer in the wake of such a devastating experience.
After spending weeks diligently working his way through my anniversary post featuring clips from some of Michael’s and my favorite films, rolandttg decided to write his own piece honoring his precious daughter, this one illustrated by favorite songs.
One of those songs is Don Maclean’s “Vincent” (a.k.a. “Starry Starry Night”), which was also one of Michael’s and Jackie’s favorite songs. They both related deeply to the heart-bruising lyrics, as Ahmad Malik shares of Jackie in this poignant piece:
I am publishing rolandttg’s reflections and music selections below in the hopes that they will help others heal from the tragic losses in their lives, bringing cathartic tears as we open our ravaged hearts to one another.
Please feel free to share your own stories of grief, loss, suicide, and SSRIs in the comments.
Ode to Wookie Bear
by rolandttg
Five years ago today, a Sunday like today, our lives changed forever. We had arisen at 6 am, walked our and our daughter’s dogs, surfed the Internet, and made omelets for my wife and daughter. Should have known something was amiss because our daughter’s dogs were in the spare bedroom, not hers.
After finishing her omelet at 9 am, I asked my wife to wake Hilary so I could cook her omelet. She had come home this weekend to visit as she had the previous two weekends. A minute later, I heard the words that shattered our worlds.
“Call 911. I think Hilary is dead.”
I called. Then I went into her room. She was curled up on her left side, wearing a T-shirt and panties. I touched her thigh. She was cold. Her omelet, and my breakfast, ended up in the trash.
Somewhere in the night, she had blown her brains out. Don’t believe in God? Neither of us heard a thing, and our bedroom upstairs has openings to the sun room, not closable windows. God spared us from rushing downstairs in the middle of the night to watch our already-dead child bleed out.
Blood was all over the sheets. That’s an image you can never unsee. She was thirty-six. Neither one of us hugged her or touched her again because we knew her soul had long ago left her corporeal body. This was no longer our Wookie Bear. So began The Longest Day.
I apologize for the length of this, but like Margaret Anna Alice’s ode to her husband, which she did with film clips, brevity is not the prime concern when you are saying goodbye for the last time to someone so near and dear. I know she, like me, wrote this more for herself than for anyone else who chose to see and listen.
What is different is that my ode is done with songs, not film. It is something I live every Sunday morning, regardless of where I am. For instance, I am in Maine now, and when we travel, I take selected photos, her suicide note, and her manta teddy. Since we are gone for a while, I also brought the blanket bunny she carried since she was two. I always drape it over my shoulder during those Sunday mornings in her room.
After cleaning up her room, we turned it into a shrine. I remember seeing that in numerous films, wondering how that must feel. It always happens to somebody else. Until it doesn’t. I keep fresh flowers there and one to three helium balloons I keep having refilled—a shark, a dolphin, and a bunny (her middle name).
Her bed is covered with photos of her, teddies, little-girl dresses I bought all over the world, Bowie things (all three of us loved Bowie), hand-carved sharks from the Solomon Islands I had given her, and, in the center, her ashes in a box her husband chose. The ashes of her beloved dog, Brenna, are in there, too, as well as Queenie’s, a dog she rescued from a kill shelter whom we adopted.
There is a custom neon light on the wall I gave her in high school. It says “She Shark” inside a shark. That was her first AOL ID. Her life’s work was saving sharks, then rays, too, and rescuing mainly black (they don’t adopt easily) dogs in kill shelters. She even rescued several stray dogs in Guam and sent them back to the US to adoptive parents.
Every morning, the first thing I do after getting up is go into her room and turn on her light and say good morning to her. At night, the last thing I do before going to bed is go into her room and say the magic words she used to say when we tucked her in, “I love you. I like you. Sweet dreams. Don’t forget to check on me. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” Then I say Hoʻoponopono and add different things to the basic words: “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you (for being my Wookie Bear).” (We’ve called her Wookie Bear since she was a baby.) Then I turn out her neon light.
My Sunday ritual is at 9 am. I go into Hilary’s room with my laptop. I close the door, open my laptop, and choose a song. Then I open her box while it is playing; take out the tray with some of her jewelry in it, including both their wedding rings; and get out a few of the photos her husband chose to put in the box, arranging them with the others permanently on her bed.
This ode is about the songs that I choose, songs that each and every one at some time caused tears to roll down my cheeks. Hilary loved music as much as I do and loved many of the same things as me. She said she envied me growing up when I did because the music was so much better. We had so much in common, yet we fought like cats and dogs. My wife turns the radio off in the car when she drives. Don’t get it. Never will.
The first song I just listen to and think, sometimes talk. During the second song, I take the pad where she wrote her note over to the window and recite it. I have had it memorized for several years. Then I play two to four more songs. Sometimes I take out one of her photo albums and look through it. Finally, I put everything back, take my used tissues and laptop, and leave. Sundays are now always tinged with melancholy.
What I play varies each week. The Core Four listed below are what I played every week for the months following her loss because together they perfectly captured that final day. Then I started to substitute other songs that moved me, and they evolve still. Here is what I play, with a short explanation why for each. The list is up to thirty. In most cases, the version and the singer matter. Ray Price, Johnny Cash, and Janice Joplin all had bigger hits with songs Kris Kristofferson wrote, but Kris is the one who really captures my pain.
If most of these songs don’t get to you, move you to tears, you are one seriously stoic individual. I encourage you to look at the individual song comments, too, somewhere down the line. I have spent as much as an hour reading the comments to one song.
The Core Four
“Into the Mystic,” by Van Morrison
This amazing song always makes me think of her soul leaving her body at the moment of impact. It also evokes the ocean, my happy place, and where she often shows to me as a dolphin.
“Make the World Go Away,” by Ray Price
And it has to be this version.
She used to implore her mother to make it (her anxiety, fear, dread, and major depression, as written in her note) all go away, just come back to live at home, and do I don’t know what. She had just landed her dream job with the Coast Guard, G-14, after years of paying her dues and was already looking for a new job. When I said she completely went off the rails, I was not exaggerating.
“I Will Always Love You,” by Dolly Parton
“If I should stay, I would only be in the way.” For the past three years, there was not a single time, except her last day, when I did not feel worse after seeing or talking to her.
Twice that day, she had asked me things about my life (“Did you get straight with Sirius Radio?” and the other about a problem I was having). She had not so much as asked how we were in three years. I told my wife that afternoon, “I think Hilary is getting better.”
My wife replied, “No, she’s not.” She talked to her far, far more than I did.
“I hope that life treats you kind, and that you have all that you dreamed of. And I wish you joy and happiness.” She would naively tell her mother, “You and Dad will be okay. You have each other.” Like losing your only child would not leave an irreplaceable void in our lives.
“Somewhere over the Rainbow”
Two versions. Love them both. The original Judy Garland version from the Wizard of Oz:
And the incomparable Izzy Kamakawiwoʻole’s version because we founded and owned a restaurant in Hanalei on Kauai and took her there several times. Wonderful memories. Great video, too, including scattering his ashes.
The day she died, it rained a bit an hour after we found her, and then later again. Her husband arrived about 1 pm. He is a Navy nurse and was in DC rehearsing for the Marine Marathon when I called him. The sun then came out, and a full double rainbow appeared. The tail end of it lasted longer than any rainbow we have ever seen.
She still sends me rainbows to let me know she is with me. I was alone with my dog on Reid Island State Park Mile Beach, Maine, on a dawn walk on the three-year anniversary of her death. It had been raining when I left the house, but I still went for our dawn beach walk. Dawn had come with no sunrise (still cloudy). The sun came out at 7 am. I turned away from the water to walk back out, and there was a rainbow. Who has ever seen a rainbow at 7 am? I had tears in my eyes.
“Tiny Dancer,” by Elton John
The one song she sent to me from the beyond. This song chose me, not the other way around. It quickly became part of the Core Four, now Five. When she sends this song to me in the car or at home, it is her way of telling me she is riding with me, she is there. Everything else is a pick-me-up. Strange because she never showed any special interest in Elton John or this song when she was alive, but it is clearly her signature song now. How this came to be when she came to me and I have forever been in contact with her soul is a story unto itself for another day. Suffice it to say the person who helped connect me to her soul told me to look up the words after hearing it on the beach from a passerby boombox because it came from Hilary. After reading the lyrics, I knew it was from my Wookie Bear. Lots more, but “She is in me. Always with me” are the most compelling.
So this is THE special song for me.
Additional Songs
“Whiskey Lullaby,” by Brad Paisley
After some months, I started adding or substituting songs. I learned from her husband that two weeks before she did it, she sent him this song. She had left him two years earlier and hopped from uniformed man to man but kept him on the hook all that time. He loved her dearly and still does, even though he remarried and has two young kids. This was her way of saying she was sorry for her behavior. She never ever said she was sorry in person. I can count on one hand the times she wrote she was sorry to me, and two of those “sorries” were in her note.
This is the saddest country song I know, and she never liked country until she left him. Gut-wrenching video, too.
“Wild Is the Wind,” by David Bowie
One week before she did it, she sent this video to him. I got how much this song moved me. I played it on a loop when I was in the car coming and going for twenty-four-hour shifts alternating with my sister for two weeks while my mother died in the hospital, then hospice the last two days. I played it all the way home from hospice after she breathed her last. But I never figured out why Hilary sent this to her estranged husband. About six months after we lost her, it came to me in the car. First, “With your kiss my life begins,” then the reprise, “Don’t you know you are life and life itself?” She was telling her husband that if they did not reunite, her life was over, but she did not have the resolve to do the heavy lifting to win back his trust.
“That Just About Does It,” by Vern Gosdin
Although it applies to me and Hilary, I think more about our beloved former son-in-law when I hear this. He deserved better, far better, and the poor fool has married someone who takes advantage of him more than our daughter ever did. He put up with far more crap from our daughter than I ever would, and he is the best proof I know that nice guys finish last. God bless his soul for all he did for our Wookie Bear.
“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” by Roberta Flack
I look at the photo of Wookie Bear the first time my wife held her in intensive care. She was two months premature, four-and-a-half pounds at birth, no lungs functioning, and purple. Wife spent nine days total in a different hospital, so I was the one who went to intensive care every day to see her. I remember being terrified when they plopped her down in my arms, tubes all over the place in her. After my wife cried for not being able to see her after six days, the hospital gave her a pass to go to the intensive care unit. I took that photo.
The first time ever I kissed your mouth
I close my eyes and remember being in the funeral home, my Wookie Bear in a casket, her beautiful hair swaddled in a bandage. I had intended to kiss her, but I got cold feet. Finally, I mustered the courage, and I kissed her, because it was the last chance I would ever have. I was shocked to find her lips were still soft, but cold. Her husband came in after I left because he had not seen her before the funeral home took her away, kept having visions of her, and had to know she was really dead.
The first time ever I lay with you
There is a photo on her bed with me asleep with her in my arms on the sofa. Better days.
“For the Good Times,” by Kris Kristofferson
My favorite song of his. Lost him recently. RIP. I love you, man. Ray Price has a far better voice, but this is Kris’s song.
I can’t add anything to his words. They say it all. Tears again right now.
“Sunday Morning Coming Down,” by Kris Kristofferson
Never found a song that captures a melancholy Sunday like this one.
Ironically, Kris gave this song to Johnny Cash first. He had taken a part-time job as a janitor at the Grand Ole Opry, hoping to break into music. He was a Rhodes Scholar. He flew a helicopter onto Johnny’s lawn to give him this song. Cash recorded it and had a hit with it. Kristofferson was an army helicopter pilot in Vietnam.
“I’m Not Lisa,” by Jessi Colter
The second-saddest country song ever? I just change “one winter day” to “one autumn day” and “Lisa” to “Wookie.”
“The Wurlitzer Prize (I Don’t Want to Get Over You),” by Waylon Jennings (Jessi Colter’s deceased husband)
I heard this for the first time several years after losing Hilary. I knew immediately it was a Sunday song.
“Be My Baby,” The Ronettes.
(We miss you, too, Ronnie.)
Just makes me think of all the happy times we had when she was my Baby Bear.
“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?,” by The Shirelles
When I play them, I always play these two as a set. I think of my last kiss and hug at 9 pm before I went to bed, never to see her alive again.
“Photograph,” by Ringo Starr
No explanations needed as I look back and forth at the two dozen photographs I have laid out on her bed.
“Vincent,” by Don McLean
About Vincent Van Gogh’s suicide. It makes me think of how I never accepted how totally broken she was, destroyed by the five toxic “anti-depressants” cocktail her Frankenstein shrink poisoned her with. I should have been the bigger man. I was the father. “And when no hope was left in that starry starry night. You took your life, as lovers often do. I could have told you, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.”
“I’ll Be Seeing You,” by Jo Stafford
Vera Lynn’s version is better-known, but this is the best. My father’s favorite song. He was a navigator/pilot in RAF bomber command in WWII. It made him think of all his buddies who didn’t return.
“Amazing Grace,” 200 Bagpipes in Berlin
A true classic. Never found a more powerful version.
“Suzanne,” by Leonard Cohen
Nobody, and I mean nobody, did soul-searing introspection like Leonard Cohen. What a balladeer. It is my favorite Pandora Station. I heard this song shortly after he wrote it. His first album is a masterpiece. My beloved Wookie Bear loved his music, too.
“Heroes,” by David Bowie
My daughter got it in her head that I was not the father she thought I was when she was fifteen, and from that point on, our relationship oscillated between adversarial and very adversarial. She loved to tell me, “You can’t learn anything from your father,” so she learned everything the hard way. She did not just make bad choices. She made the Worst choice. She was the most stubborn person I knew, and the only one I ever knew who cut off her nose to spite her face. Hence the suicide rather than “I’m sorry, Mom and Dad. Please help me.” I daydreamed incessantly that it could be different, that I could be a hero in her eyes. Alas, it was not to be.
The line “I wish I could swim, like a dolphin can swim”—after I connected with her soul, she started showing to me as a dolphin when I was at the beach, so this resonates so much with me.
“It’s Only Make Believe,” by Conway Twitty
As I just said, I had an adverserial relationship with Hilary for the last twenty years of her life. This is my “I wish it could be so” song.
After I had connected with her soul seven months after losing her (another very long saga for another day), we were driving ten hours to Hilton Head for some colonic ozone treatments for my wife’s breast cancer. Hilary had been sending me song after song on my Sirius radio. I had asked her to ride with me. It was uncanny. Every time I changed the channel, she sent another song I knew was from her. Finally, I said out loud, “This has got to be a coincidence. I mean, sure, it’s ‘It’s Only Make Believe,’ but it’s not like it’s Conway Twitty. It’s a cover from Glenn Campbell I never heard before. Next song up. Double play. “It’s Only Make Believe”—Conway Twitty. I smiled and said, “I’m sorry, Honey. I’ll never doubt you again.”
“I Hope You Dance,” by Lee Ann Womack
Because you have to never your lose your sense of wonder and hope. For getting past the thought that perhaps it would have been better to have never loved and lost. Beautiful video, too.
“We’ll Meet Again,” by Vera Lynn
Oh that it were so, but neither of us believe that will happen. We are very spiritual, not religious, and while we certainly believe in the permanence of the soul and reincarnation, it isn’t going to happen that we will ever see her again. It’s a nice thought to dream, though.
“Cold Little Heart,” by Michael Kiwanuka
Perhaps several times a decade, not more than that, I hear a song for the first time that I know will be a part of me forever. An absolute gem. This is one of those. I first heard it driving up to Maine in 2016. I had been there once, when I was eight, but not since. My wife had never been. I was struck by this song and sought it out whenever I could. This is my favorite version, twice the length of the standard version, but the comments bear out just how special this version is. Consider it my gift to you. It is truly a masterpiece. Yes, it is a song about suicide, but our daughter did not go off the rails until after I heard it for the first time, so that wasn’t what moved me.
“Word on a Wing,” by David Bowie
I cried when I found out Bowie had died. We were in St. Barts. No musician ever touched my wife, my daughter, or me more. I once gave my wife all of his albums for her birthday. There is a photo of him in our master bathroom. Hilary had cups, magnets, and other things with him on it in her room. I took my wife to see him on Broadway for his last performance as The Elephant Man on Christmas Eve. One-man performance. All he wore was a diaper. Took her to see him during his “China Girl” tour.
If it is not clear why this song is on this list, read the comments.
“Loving Her Was Easier Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again,” by Kris Kristoferson
Self-explantory. Even when she could no longer be civil, had run off all her friends, and was almost impossible to like, I never stopped loving her. “Dreaming was as easy as believing it was never going to end.” Man, does that line break my heart.
“I Think of You,” by Renaissance
The haunting melody and the words never fail to send goosebumps up my spine and arms. Often multiple times, like now. What an amazing song. Too many great lines to chose one or two. Just listen to it. I used to copy the words and write them carefully and neatly in condolence cards. Death always seemed to come in threes. I came to play this song only for an appropriate time after losing someone(s) because I become paranoid someone else would die. That only changed after losing Wookie Bear because that loss is one I think about every day without fail.
I was going to end on this, the song I would choose to end my services for any funeral I organized. But I wanted to end on a clearly upbeat note.
“Beginning Tomorrow,” by Joy of Cooking
“Beginning tomorrow, I’m going to forget about today.”
Clif High sagely says we must live in the ever-present now if we ever want to be free and happy. Latinos have long been mocked by Westerners for doing exactly that. Seems they are a lot smarter than we are. The cabal knows this, which is why they are always getting us to dwell on the past or the future. The former makes us consumed with guilt, shame, and regret. I’m a notorious past loiterer, as James Dines warned against. I’m forever working on it. The latter makes us consumed with anxiety, fear, and dread. That was Wookie Bear. And it killed her. For the past loiterer, nothing personifies it better than the last line of Kris Kristofferson’s most famous song he wrote, “Me and Bobby McGee.” I think it is the most powerful line ever written, and I shed tears almost every time I hear it. “And I’d trade all of my tomorrows, for one single yesterday, to be holding [Wookie’s] body next to mine.”
The past is gone forever, and the future is not here. Bollocks to that. The cabal loses all control over us if we stay in the present. Let’s take back our lives and live for today.
“Live for Today,” by The Grassroots
This is NOT one of my Sunday “Ode to Wookie Bear” songs, but felt I had to finish with this after saying what I just did.
Why Did Hilary (“Wookie Bear”) Commit Suicide?
There were three clear factors in Hilary’s decision to take her own life.
The first was all on her. She was never satisfied. I remember well a daily cartoon “For Better or Worse” post. The main character is walking through a mall with her girlfriend. She has this dazed look on her face. The mother asks her, “What do you get for someone who has everything?” The friend’s one-word answer was, “More.” That was Wookie Bear in a nutshell.
She had it all. Parents and a husband who loved her. Clearly a good inheritance one day. Finally achieved her dream job after pursuing it for fifteen years. Had amazing vacations all over the world, every year, beginning as a little girl. Two wonderful dogs. And yet, it was not enough.
She was never grateful for what she had. She no sooner came back from a vacation than she was planning the next one. No motels for her. B&B’s. When she was four, she stayed at a motel in Williamsburg, where my parents had stayed when they visited me while I was in college. She thought it was grungy and asked if they could move to a better place. When my parents took her to London, she wanted taxis, not the bus. She was born that way and sure did not get it from my parents, my wife’s parents, or us. Dad used to walk a mile to save a penny bus fare, and he had to leave school at fourteen to go to work. My wife never had running water until she went to college.
Wookie Bear did not celebrate the dogs she saved from kill shelters. She lamented all those left behind. Her big drive was to be happy, but it was an impossibility when nothing you do or get satisfies you.
The second thing that killed her were the SSRIs. She started taking them in Guam but did not go full out until a year before she did it. She started seeing a Frankenstein quack in North Virginia. She had been uncivil to us and her husband for two years by then, but the poisons made her nasty.
How nasty? The last Christmas we celebrated, she jacked us around about coming out to see us for four days in a row. All the while, we just waited for her imminent arrival. She finally showed up at 5 pm Christmas Day as we were walking out the door for the family dinner at my wife’s older sister’s. She said she had to wrap the presents for her relatives. And she had a foster in tow she had gotten and spayed two days earlier.
I lost it and said I was not going. I went to bed before they got back. After my wife and she left, Hilary screamed at her the entire half-hour drive. And the drive back. Furthermore, she made a complete ass of herself at dinner, to the point I heard later that her cousin’s husband asked, “Why is your cousin so rude?” After a perfunctory gift-opening the next day, she left at noon to go see her shrink for more poisons. She had only been up since 10 am.
We have not celebrated Christmas since. We had always gotten a live tree and decorated the house and had traditions, but no more. Two days later, I gave away her present to me, not wanting any reminder of that Christmas. A week later, we booked trips out of state for the following Thanksgiving and Christmas because I could not envision being with her for another holiday like that. When Father’s Day rolled around (the worst day of the year for me), I told my wife if she gave me anything, I did not want it. My wife still has whatever it is because I have not been able to make myself open the last thing she ever gave me.
The Cocktail
1) Effexor
Nasty drug. I’ve known several other people who have taken it. Our hairdresser said she took it for a few weeks. It made her angry when she had sex. All SSRIs I believe say not to go cold turkey if you want to stop. Hilary couldn’t sleep after taking it, so she just stopped. She said it was horrible.
2) Viibryd
Her Navy nurse husband looked up the cocktail. He sent something that said it is very dangerous to take Viibryd with Effexor, and the patient must be closely monitored. She went on a walkabout to Florida, Guam, and Hawaii for four months when the government shut down in January 2019. Closely monitored?? Onus is on the patient, not the quack.
3) Clonazepam
I read an article on RT written by an American who tried everything to get off it after two attempted suicides. No US quack is trained to get anyone off SSRIs. There are no criteria that must be met to prescribe them, either. After a year of frustration, he went to Russia to seek help, and he was able to get off it there.
Hilary also went cold turkey on this poison, and again, her experience was horrible.
4) Lorazepam
From Wikipedia: “Among those who are depressed, there may be an increased risk of suicide.” Just included that here, but that is true for each and every one of these drugs. All of them have depression and suicide listed as possible side effects.
5) Gabapentin
At the gym a year ago, we saw a short on the explosion of prescriptions for it. Ten percent of drug OD victims have Gabapentin in their system. It is usually prescribed for pain, including animals, but lately, it has been used widely because it acts as a synergistic drug that boosts the efficacy of other drugs. My wife’s mother took it fifty years ago, and I remember hating that drug even then.
The quack claimed he had not seen Wookie Bear nor prescribed anything for months before her suicide. Scrips we found in her purse, and the autopsy proved otherwise. The autopsy is how we know she had all of these toxins in her system.
After the coroner contacted the quack shrink, he called her, thinking it was her husband’s/her number. I cussed him out like I have never cussed anyone in my life, and I am no shrinking violet. To his credit, he took it, and did not hang up. He even called back in a week with some information I requested. The bottom line is that I realized these shrinks have carefully worded everything so the patient—and the survivors—have no legal recourse against them.
It took six months to finally get a copy of the autopsy report. Ironic because I still have not been able to bring myself to look at it.
“My brain is broken.”
Near the end, she used to tell her mother, “My brain is broken.”
I spoke to her former husband this morning. We got around to talking about Wookie Bear as often happens. He said Hilary also used to frequently tell him the same thing, “My brain is broken.”
And it was. She used to be very skilled with computers. Months before her death, we asked her to transfer our e-books from one iPad to another. She couldn’t do it. The toxic cocktail and two cold-turkey horror shows had indeed broken her brain. And I was too angry with her wretched behavior to realize it was not her anymore and that my baby had been stolen from me.
The third thing that killed her was that her faith in her mother’s good intentions to help her had been destroyed. Mom was the last chance she had to grab onto a helping lifeline. As I said earlier, my relationship with her had been at odds since she was a teen. But Mom and her had been close. That started to change the last three years after she chose friends poorly. She projected onto us her failings, her bad decisions, calling us a toxic influence on her.
So reason #3 was four women using Wookie Bear as their torpedo to further their own—each different—agendas. Two “friends” she met in Guam, my sister, and—as I found out this past Easter—my wife’s older sister. She has TDS, is a communist, is six-times jabbed, loves doctors, and will not listen to “my” facts. I have written about her on C&C comments. The fool had blurted out something at dinner that sent chills down my spine and made the hair on my arms stand on end. When she attacked my wife (she was losing a debate as usual; she had no facts to support her scripted talking points), I thought my daughter had been reincarnated. It was verbatim what Wookie Bear used to hurl at her mother, essentially saying she was just a pawn of mine devoid of original thought who said and did whatever I told her. It took me a week to realize those were not Wookie Bear’s words but her aunt’s. There is NO way she could have remembered word for word what Wookie Bear had said unless they were really something she had said to her. They fit the projection agenda, and Wookie Bear ran with them.
During the What could we have done differently to save her? phase, my wife extensively researched measures to try to help depression. She found she had tried every single one with Wookie Bear. Our daughter tried not one single one of them.
Were these four satanic women the main reason Wookie Bear took her own life? No. Did they destroy our daughter’s last chance to live? Yes. Do they have her blood on their hands? Yes.
If you watched Tucker’s interview with Dan Bongino, at around the twenty-minute mark after Dan talks about the transgender transition of states like Washington who take away children from parents who won’t consent, Tucker chimed in, “Anyone who would try to break up a family is a criminal, a monster. Not just a criminal, but the worst kind of criminal.”
All four of those satanic monsters are dead to me. I have not seen or talked to any of them since, including my sister-in-law. While my wife is done with the other three, she is more forgiving than me with her sister. As a result of finding out what she did, we mutually agreed it would be best that I never again attend any holiday family dinners, and I haven’t. She goes alone. It has not come up yet as to why I am not there, but I imagine it eventually will.
The worst thing about losing Wookie Bear for me is that I never had a chance to repair our relationship. It haunts me that I was not the bigger man. I was the father, and that was my job. It was difficult enough without those four making an already strained relationship worse and ruining my wife’s credibility with Wookie Bear to boot.
We never held a service for her, nor did we post an obit. We had thought about doing a celebration of life, but it never happened. She had alienated almost all of her ‘friends’ after becoming unhinged from taking the toxic Big Pharma SSRI cocktail.
After taking her first SSRIs in Guam, she started to go off the rails with the help of her “friends.” She ended up coming home after two years, abandoning her dogs with her husband. Did the same thing for four months when she went on her walkabout. I should have known she was a totally different person, and it was the SSRIs that did it.
The Suicide Note
The following note was single-spaced on a plain 8-1/2 x 11" notepad. No paragraphs. Exactly as it is here. Unsigned, not addressed, though she knew we would be the ones who found it.
“I have been battling depression for 3 years now, and it has only gotten worse back in DC. In Guam, I thought coming home would help, but you cannot outrun your brain. I wish I had made better choices in my life, but instead, I threw away my marriage. You are wonderful parents who have given me the best in life, and I am truly grateful for the upbringing I had. I love you both very much, and I am sorry for the anxiety I caused you. I cannot describe what it is like to live with constant anxiety, fear, dread, and major depression. I cannot go on like this, and I know I have lost my chance at a happy marriage and family. I do not want to go on like this anymore, and I do not want to exist anymore not being able to take care of myself. I do not know another way out. Please take care of Jer. I’m sorry, I know it is mean and selfish to give up, but the thought of continuing on like this is more horrifying to me. Please forgive me.”
When did she write this? Here, or did she bring it with her? Why did she shower right before she did it? Why did she do it in total darkness and with the shades pulled? As a former smoker, my wife puzzled, Who does this before finishing your pack of cigarettes? If I had stayed with her and watched the Toronto Maple Leafs game with her that I put on just for her, would it have made a difference? Would it made a difference if her beloved Leafs had not choked a 4-1 going into the third period and lost in OT? Did she send this rerun game (they did this during the plandemic since the season was cancelled) to me exactly six months later on another Saturday night, with me tuning in at 9 pm again and immediately recognizing the game and at the same stage I’d tuned in originally?
These are the kinds of questions—and a thousand more—I have wrestled with for five years.
Another bit of life happening. Our last living tie to Hilary is fading fast. We inherited her two dogs. One died two years ago. The other is over sixteen and a half, a border collie. Lived the first year of her life in a no-kill shelter and was maladapted as a result. I nicknamed her Psycho, and she answers to it. She is a true Omega dog, a lone wolf. She once got spooked and was gone for three days, confined somewhere on the 3,000-acre naval base on Guam before Hilary finally found her. My wife has always had a way with her, to the point Hilary was envious. She would not even come to me until she was about ten. Both were black dog rescues. Her ALT liver enzyme is 4,895. Normal is 10–25. She has lost her appetite and has no energy as her liver is failing fast. My wife spent the morning at the vet. Needless to say, she is heartbroken.
During the two years preceding her suicide, Wookie Bear had had a number of half-assed suicide attempts, usually with pills. The last one was a month before the real deal. It was the most bizarre, but I don’t want to go into details.
And if you believe the widely accepted saying, “Callers don’t jump. Jumpers don’t call,” I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you.
Dearest Wookie Bear,
Thank you for being my guardian angel. It is bittersweet irony that we have reconciled and I have a great relationship with you now—far better than we ever did while you walked this earth.
God bless you, Wookie Bear.
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Another gut wrenching comment I have received upon posting this article. ~25 % of the people in Alexandria VA are on anti depressants. An amazing success story for Big Pharma, and a total collapse of society on the other hand. We have been conditioned since TV arrived to think all women should look like Playboy centerfolds, all men should be star athletes, and social media has made all this logarithmically worse. Not to seem simplistic, but it really is, almost all disease, and mental issues, are lifestyle, specifically diet related. I know. My wife was diagnosed with stage 2B breast cancer in July . 2021. Through the grace of God, and some amazing light warriors, self discipline, and gaining real knowledge, we cured it holistically, with no oncologist, no slash burn poison. I am confident you can help your, and your daughter's depression with some of the things I listed in a series of posts on Coffee and Covid. Mark G. has complied them into a single post, which I will give you the link to here. Please read the books, so you will know it is not just me saying this. Knowledge is power. I have Zero fear of cancer now. Know anyone else who can say that?
Good luck, and God bless you for your heartfelt post.
https://markstrainofthought.substack.com/p/8c4196db-f6c8-42ae-bba0-f14d49b8aa73?postPreview=paid&updated=2024-10-15T17%3A34%3A05.203Z&audience=everyone&free_preview=false&freemail=true
My deepest sympathies to those here who have lost a loved one, in any manner but especially in the raw and violent event of suicide. My husband Peter Breggin MD, has extensively studied psychiatric drugs and their influence and causation of suicide, murder and other violence in his book: Medication Madness. The book is described here and perhaps can give some comfort to those who have lost family or a friend:
"Medication Madness reads like a medical thriller, true crime story, and courtroom drama; but it is firmly based in the latest scientific research and dozens of case studies. The lives of the children and adults in these stories, as well as the lives of their families and their victims, were thrown into turmoil and sometimes destroyed by the unanticipated effects of psychiatric drugs. In some cases our entire society was transformed by the tragic outcomes.
Many categories of psychiatric drugs can cause potentially horrendous reactions. Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Adderall, Ritalin, Concerta, Xanax, lithium, Zyprexa and other psychiatric medications may spellbind patients into believing they are improved when too often they are becoming worse. Psychiatric drugs drive some people into psychosis, mania, depression, suicide, agitation, compulsive violence and loss of self-control without the individuals realizing that their medications have deformed their way of thinking and feeling...." read more here: https://breggin.com/article-detail/post_detail/medication-madness