How Sex Became a Suicide Mission

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There’s an aching thought that follows me on this journey: “If I’m going to die, let it be pleasurable before the pain.” There’s a flaw in that idea – my pain has already begun, so my pleasure is racing to catch up.

I, like an unknown and countless number of people, live with suicidal ideation as one of the core symptoms of a chronic mental condition. There are very few days that I can recall where I haven’t flirted with the idea of ending my own life or hoping that something else will end it for me. In my particular case, this symptom coexists with a number of others within the condition borderline personality disorder (BPD). The illness/neurovariance is most characterized by emotional dysregulation, paranoid fear of abandonment, chronic loneliness, an unstable sense of self, impulsivity, and suicidality. 

BPD is the result of a combination of factors ranging from traumatic upbringings to neurological development but no matter the cause, I and a recorded 5.4 million Americans live daily with this condition and 540,000 (10%) of us will die by suicide. Whoever remains will continue to do our best to pretend everything is and will be okay. Depending on the severity of our condition, we will laugh with friends, we will celebrate with family, and we will show interest in our work, all while suicidality lingers in the back of our minds. Yes, that even happens during sex.

On a good day, at least, suicidality is in the back of the mind during sex and if we’re lucky, suicidal ideation is almost fully forgotten during that activity. See, during and right after sexual engagement our brains release a number of “feel good” chemicals like dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin. You can find these chemicals in antidepressants and party drugs and they are, as you know, addictive as hell. 

People with BPD are prone to addictions – spending, substance abuse, sex, etc. – due to both impulsivity and the constant desire to free ourselves from unwavering internal pain and confusion. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely drink and spend more than I should pretty consistently, but the addiction I had to learn to navigate in my early 20s was sex. Chasing dopamine in the form of a good nut. 

When I was younger and eighty pounds lighter, my sexual peers decided that I was a bottom. I knew nothing about queer sex and, even outside of my then undiagnosed symptoms, had difficulties with self-image. What they said I liked sexually is what I thought I liked sexually until I had more sex. I later learned I was versatile, and later vers-top (and even later I discovered the simple joys of being a side but that’s a rabbit hole for another article) but all that mattered, regardless of my sexual identity is that the sex itself lead to the release of those chemicals, lead to my pleasure. Top, bottom, or vers, sex was sex.

At the time, having potentially unprotected sex with several men (9 times out of 10, complete strangers) in the same week (several in the same day) was simply about the fun of it all. That’s what I told myself. And this was all before the various hookup apps, before rideshare apps, before nudes were willingly posted across social media, before queer and anonymous sex was this public. The sex I was having felt underground, mysterious, dangerous, and quite frankly it was extremely dangerous. 

A number of times, I had put myself in situations where if I had changed my mind about the arrangement, it would be impossible to say “no” without risk of physical harm for me or them; a number of situations where it is nothing short of a miracle that I was able to walk back to my dorm room unscathed and in good health. I hope you can appreciate my efforts to not be graphic with what I’m inferring. It wasn’t until years later that I realized not only was I chasing sexual activity for the high to hide away my suicidal thoughts but that I was chasing suicide itself. At the time, I didn’t realize that a part of me was hoping that once I came I would die directly afterward so that I didn’t have to know what it felt like to come off that dopamine high. 

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I wasn’t totally unaware of my fatal ambitions at the time; they were still floating loosely around in my head as I tried to pretend that I was fine. Unfortunately, when I wasn’t having sex, I was painfully aware of the fact that I did not want to exist. After my third suicide attempt, I was finally on antidepressants and was certain that I was getting the help I needed. Neither myself nor my then-psychiatrist even knew that I was battling more than depression.

Before this, as a minor, I had been diagnosed with dysthymia (a low grade chronic depression) and general anxiety disorder (GAD), so the psychiatrist determined that I was simply suffering from major depressive disorder (MDD) and I was placed on a popular medication. Unfortunately, not only was that medication not working (due to the fact that antidepressants can’t treat BPD directly), but it caused me to experience some of the very common side-effects, namely erectile dysfunction and an evaporated sex drive. Picture it: mid-twenties, suicidal and sexless, I turned to other vices to cope.

Here in my thirties and after almost a decade of therapy, I now know so much about my behaviors back then. Hindsight, am I right? I can pinpoint all the ways that I was engaging in self-harm and maladaptive habits, and all of the times that not caring about what could happen to me also meant not caring about what could happen to my sexual partners. The risks we took, we took together, and at the time, none of us knew that sex for me was a suicide mission. Looking back, my heart aches for the partners I had who genuinely just wanted to engage in healthy consensual adult sex with another person who wanted the same thing. I was risking their wellbeing with my behaviors and actions because I wanted my life to end.

There’s a deep and unfair stigma that suicidal people are selfish, so I’d prefer to avoid making that connection, but I can confidently say that my behavior with them was self-serving regardless of whether or not my partners were engaging in collaborative or individualized sex themselves. Part of my self-care, and positive habits, is that I now only engage in collaborative sex when I do have sex. In order to do that, it means having, as actor-writer Brandon Kyle Goodman calls “SAFE” sex: satisfying, affirming, freeing, and emotionally connected (present) sex. (I was almost exclusively having “S” sex before.)

The problem that I still face, now definitively out of my twenties, is that regardless of my healthier sexual practices, I am still unwell. I still live with suicidal ideation and I still desperately crave those feel good chemicals that I need in order to fight off suicidality. Oftentimes, that conflicts with my dedication to having SAFE sex. What does that mean? Well girl, it means that I’m really not having much sex right now. I’m avoidant out of fear that I’ll fall back into old habits. It also means that my life lacks sexual or romantic intimacy and that I’m constantly balancing the ways that I cope with not replacing addictive sex with other addictive habits. It means that those chronic feelings of loneliness are heightened by actual lonesomeness, resulting in an enflamed desire for suicide. A snake eating its own tail. 

I would love to end this article on a positive note, something hopeful and inspiring. “Chronic” is a word I’ve used here several times for a reason, so I’m not sure how positive I can be with this. This is something that I have to live with, navigate, and attempt to express as best I can. Sharing what it’s like to engage sexually as someone who lives with suicidal ideation is my attempt to reveal that there are many variations of me out there; Black queer people and others who are living with conditions like mine and attempting to engage with the world as best we can, even sexually. 

So here is my best effort to end this thing on a high note: I hope this small part of my story has given you something to consider as you engage with yourself and the world while aiming to have collaborative, satisfying, affirming, freeing, and emotionally present sex. Finally, if you also struggle with suicidality, I hope this shows you that your struggle is shared with at least one other.

C.E. Williams

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