by Hannah Leichstein

Created on: April 23, 2010

My first bout with self-harm happened when I was 15. At the time I lived with my mother, an emotionally abusive control freak, and my father, a kind but weak-willed and downtrodden man. My mother has Bipolar disorder (I use this only for descriptive purposes, as she's not diagnosed with anything) and would come into my room screaming about some random thing.

She constantly belittled me, saying my hair was greasy and I was ugly. She'd have me wash dishes and then stand over me the entire time, screaming that I wasn't doing it fast enough and didn't do a thorough job. Living out in the sticks made it impossible to have any kind of social life; although that wouldn't matter anyway, since I was alienated at school. I began to cope by holding my arm over a candle flame until it stung. The sensation gave me something to focus on and, strangely, I found that I felt much better. I'd do this for longer and longer periods until finally, my arm began to blister and bleed. I kept it covered by long sleeves but eventually my father found out, and forbade me from having candles.

By that point, however, I was addicted.

I wasn't allowed to have anything sharp, so I just scratched my leg raw. I couldn't cause myself to bleed this way, so I'd grab the salt canister and pour it in the wound. On subsequent days I'd rip the scab off and re-salt it, savoring the sweet taste of pain. But that, too, was discovered, and my father made me swear that as long as I lived under his roof, I wouldn't do it. And so I stopped, and maintained that promise for several years (save for a few isolated incidents).

My second bout will make all this look like small potatoes.

I was homeless in Houston, and went to a battered women's shelter. I was having problems getting a job due to my anxiety and panic attacks, so I asked for a therapist. I was put on Cymbalta, which caused me to have severe mania. At its peak my heart rate was found to be 250bpm. The shelter couldn't handle me in this state, so I was transferred to a psych ward. The program lasted 2 weeks and I was put on Paxil. After that, they moved me to a third shelter, which is where all the fun begins.

If you're unfamiliar with antidepressants, they take 2-6 weeks to start to work on your system (just under 2 weeks in my case). Once I was "stabilized," I stopped feeling euphoric and my anxiety came back worse. The only way to feel better was by scratching myself raw, or snapping a rubber band against my wrist repeatedly. I didn't want this to

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