A talk about suicide and a strange experience

I went to a talk about suicide last night. It was a strange talk and a
strange experience.

I was hoping to hear someone speak who could explain the positive effect
of suicide, the change and the meaning it gives to life to go through
the process where you are ready to lose your life and everything.

Instead it was surprisingly scientific which was a shame because it was
one of the most advanced talks I'd ever heard in mental health. The
speaker was a researcher with lived experience of suicide. His talk was
about suicidology and spirituality. This is my weakest area and I wish
I'd spoken to him about it more.

What I choose to take from his talk would just be what I would use for
my own research and journey.

He spoke of the value of the first person narrative, i.e. valuing the
individual's experience of suicide. He spoke of the majority of
psychiatry research being bereft of this, instead preferring to invest
time in epidemiological studies. The qualitative research, as always,
provides the useful answers.

It was a strange experience because about an hour in I slipped into a
minor delusion state where I thought that people were communicating
through thoughts. At one point my internal dualogue or dialogue became
experienced as though I was conversing with the speaker and other people
in the audience. "tells" in physical reality, e.g. nods of the head or
other gestures, had significance to this experience rather than being
something that was dismissed as information I couldn't interpret. It was
totally real to me. I'm not sure if other people noticed or just thought
I was a bit weird but I managed to disguise the experience until I let
something slip to a friend I was with. The experience lasted half an
hour to 45 minutes and then subsided. When I returned to 'reality' I
wasn't 'normal'.

During this unusual state and in this delusional reality I made
decisions. They weren't happy ones but they were about being true to
myself I think and what I want in life. 6 months of wrangling over
decisions seemed to be summed up by the delusion I went through, and the
decisions I made. Now I guess I have to live with it.