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“I don’t want to exist,” is so much different from “I want to die,” and actually being suicidal, but normal people… well, they’ll just never get it.
Here’s a video where I talk about how hard depression can be, especially combined with addiction.
Depression is a bitch, and I’ve suffered from it my whole life.
It’s hard to explain to someone who’s never suffered from it. It’s hard to explain the difference between being depressed and being suicidal.

It’s even harder to explain clinical depression (major depressive disorder) to someone who has experienced situational depression (like how you feel after losing a loved one or a job).
This can be even more difficult when you’re dealing with someone who has been depressed while drinking or getting high, only to suddenly have the depression lifted once they get sober.
There’s a huge difference between wanting to die, wanting to kill myself, and just wanting to not exist. In my experience, these are different levels of depression.
Thankfully, I’ve found freedom from depression through medication. The 12 Steps are nice and all, and they keep me sober, but I suffered from deep depression and suicidal thoughts since I was a child—this is clinical depression that only medication can address (usually).
The lowest level (which is still a completely miserable way to feel) is not wanting to exist.
Download my “7 Critical Actions I Take Weekly to Deal with My Depression” free here.
I Just Don’t Want to Exist
The first level of depression has nothing to do with actually dying. It’s not wishing for death.
It’s wishing for the pain to stop.
And every day, the pain goes away for a short amount of time—when we’re asleep.
Unconsciousness is bliss to someone who finds the waking world miserable. It’s a lack of existence, especially if you don’t dream.
Just because I don’t want to exist doesn’t mean I actually want to die. It usually means (even if I don’t know it) that I just don’t want to exist the way I’m existing right now.
For someone with clinical depression, life can look good or bad on the outside, but it doesn’t matter what life looks like—inside, we are deeply sad.
There’s no reason for it other than some dumbass neurotransmitters in our skulls doing shit they shouldn’t be doing.
This is why you see many successful people commit suicide despite having lives most of us dream of.
People like Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Williams, and Chester Bennington had lives many people would literally kill for, and yet they killed themselves.
Why?
Because exterior circumstances cannot fix the little molecules in my brain that won’t act right.
To fix this, many of us will self-medicate, which rarely actually fixes the problem.
Incidentally, drinking to blackout or shooting opiates until you pass out is another form of non-existence that has nothing to do with death.
That’s one reason drugs like these can be so enticing to someone with clinical depression, though often that just makes things worse.
When you feel this way, it doesn’t matter what your life actually looks like, but death doesn’t necessarily seem like the answer, or even something you’d want.
I’ve talked to many people who just didn’t want to exist because the pain was too intense, but who would never kill themselves for a variety of reasons.
For many, they loved their family and friends, and they would never want to leave them. They would never want to actually die.
They really didn’t want to feel the way they were feeling right now. They wanted to escape existence. They wanted to feel better, and since that wasn’t happening, they wanted to escape the pain.
This is part of the reason I would sleep for 12+ hours a day in my depression. I just didn’t want to be in the world, just like someone with chronic pain only wants the pain to go away.
They might commit suicide because the pain won’t go away, but if the pain actually stopped, they’d be happy to live.
I’ve been deeply depressed in sobriety and still very much wanted to live, but I’d lose myself in activities that let me escape the world, whether that be work, hobbies, writing, TV, or videogames—all forms of escape, which is to say, forms of getting out of my head and forgetting my own existence.
What’s much different is actually wanting to die.
Download my “7 Critical Actions I Take Weekly to Deal with My Depression” free here.
I Want to Die
Wanting to die is a lot different from wanting to not exist.
The difference is that I don’t care if the pain stops or not—I still don’t want to be alive.
This is a deeper level of despair where I see nothing good in my life, and I don’t see any way for things to ever get better except through death.
Now this is different from actually being suicidal. Being suicidal means I want to cause my death.
Wanting to die usually means I’m just praying for death to happen to me through no fault of my own.
Remember when I said many people who don’t want to exist still love their families and friends? This is often one of the reasons people who want to die haven’t gotten to the stage of being suicidal yet.
When I wanted to die but wasn’t yet suicidal, I would pray for things like plane crashes that happened to hit my house. I would hope a drunk driver would hit me. I would wish for death to come to me somehow so that I could leave this world without hurting those I love.
Now what if the depression were lifted? Would I still want to die? The answer is probably yes—life was shitty for me for a long time, and I didn’t see any point in trying to stay alive.
I was convinced by 25 that my life was permanently ruined. It wouldn’t matter if I was happy because I had no job, lots of legal issues, lived with my parents, and generally had a life that looked permanently bad.
Did I want to actually take my own life? Not at that time.
But I did a year before that.
Download my “7 Critical Actions I Take Weekly to Deal with My Depression” free here.
I Want to Kill Myself
This is what most people think of as depression—they think the person wants to kill themself, and that’s rarely the case.
However, this is (obviously) common. Around 40,000 people kill themselves each year in the US alone.
When I was 24, I had just gotten raided by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, I had gotten a DUI a month or two before, and life not only seemed hopeless, but it seemed like something I needed to get out of ASAP.
I was suicidal, which means I was actively seeking ways to kill myself.
I’m a coward, which means I was trying to find the easiest way out that I could. I figured I could overdose on opiates and benzodiazepines and then shoot myself in the head to ensure it was painless.
At the last minute I decided not to go through with it, mostly because my girlfriend at the time knew what I was up to and wouldn’t leave until all the drugs were gone because she knew I wouldn’t just shoot myself.
I was too scared of surviving and having an even worse life than I thought I already had.
I still loved my parents at this time. I loved my friends. I loved my girlfriend probably more than anyone because I had become so codependent on her.
But none of this mattered because the mental anguish of depression had combined with circumstance to become overwhelming. I was beyond wishing for death—I was seeking it.
On my second suicide attempt, I ate a handful of oxy that I knew would be enough to kill me. At this point, I didn’t even care if I failed—It was time to go.
Fortunately I failed. I’ve always wondered if there’s a version of me in a parallel universe who succeeded. It makes me hope that theory is wrong.
The difference between the time when I just wanted to die and my two suicide attempts is that I had a plan for the attempts.
I knew how I was going to do it, when I was going to do it, and where I was going to do it.
That’s the big difference between wanting to die and being suicidal—the plan.
It Gets Better
I’m so glad I failed because life eventually did get better, but only through therapy, medication, and not giving up on treatment.
With therapy and treatment, depression can be lifted, but there are definitely people for whom it takes significant work. Treatment-resistant depression is very much a thing, so you shouldn’t feel bad about yourself if you’ve tried a bunch of antidepressants, and they haven’t worked.
It took me 20 years to find the right medication for me. The fact that I survived that long is a miracle. Not everyone makes it.
It’s worth sticking it out though. I’m sure you can remember a time when life was good, when you were happy. I always wanted to return to my childhood, even though I was rarely happy then, there were moments where things were good.
Remember those moments. You can get there again.
I know it sounds exhausting. I know it sounds awful and impossible.
I know it hurts.
Keep trying. Change medications. Change doses. Change doctors. Try whatever it takes to get back to those times.
Because life can feel like that again.
I promise.
It’s worth it.
Here’s what I do every week to survive. It helps me stay sane and not want to kill myself.
Wow, this describes exactly what I’m going through right now (not wanting to exist/wanting to die). I just reached out to my doctor today for antidepressant therapy. Thanks for making me not feel so alone with these thoughts/feelings.
You’re welcome! So glad to hear you’re getting the help you need.
hi so i think about wanting to not exist everyday but i cant talk to anyone about it and my counselor will tell my mom about my suicidal thoughts and it will be a mess. how do i get help without my mom knowing?
Can you talk to your primary doctor about it? They can often prescribe medication for depression. Email me at [email protected] and we can talk more.
Thank you for writing this. I’m clumsy with my words, but you aptly described the range of thoughts I’ve been thinking. I just wanted to express my gratitude for this piece, because it soothed some of the shame I feel about these thoughts.
You’re welcome! So glad you found it helpful. I hope you get the help you need to get past these thoughts.
Hi. I have no one to tell this to. And I don’t know how to get help. But this is now even affecting my focus on my studies and I have exams next week.
Have you considered calling a help hotline, like this one: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org ? It can be great for just finding someone to talk to who can give you some help. Another option is to talk to your parents about it. Is that an option?
I have never been to therapy so idk whether im depressed but as far as i know i’ve felt like idw to exist every single day and it sucks.
I REALLY love therapy and psychiatric meds as a solution to this. I’ve never found anything that works better than those two in combination. You should definitely check them out.
Hi!
My name is Alexandra and I have truly loved your post. There is so many people who cannot understand what am I going through. I don’t want to die, I just don’t want to exist.
I’m cursing a Psychology degree. This is my first year and I am so, so sleepy and without any motivation, I cannot concentrate nor stop crying.
I called my doctor and I am taking medication. I have started 2 days ago.
I don’t know if I should quit and wait for the treatment to do its job or keep on going even though I’d probably fail the exams.
Hi Alexandra, thank you for commenting. I’m so sorry you have to go through this while trying to get through school. I totally get it and had a very similar experience when I was in school.
I can’t tell you what to do, but I can say that my medication took a while to kick in. Maybe you can talk to your teachers and see if you can get an extension on your exams? I’m sure they’d be understanding, and it wouldn’t hurt to ask. Talking to a school counselor would also be a good idea I would think. They might be able to help you get extensions on your classes or allow you to withdraw without hurting your grades since it would be for medical reasons.
Let me know how it turns out. I hope things get better for you.
Sad, I’m just a kid. I’m experiencing emotional abuse/neglect. I’ve been reading suicidal books to find a peaceful way out. The problem is, I still want to live. I hate my life.
I assume it’s your parents that are abusing you. Can you get help? Have you tried this? https://www.childhelp.org/childhelp-hotline/ They exist to help people just like you. You don’t have to go through this alone. Get help. Suicide is a permanent solution to what is often a temporary problem.
I played the medication game for 25 years – on one med, adding another, switching to something brand new, adding a combo med…and on and on and on. I actually believed in the possibility that someday, I’ll find the right medication(s) and will TRULY (sans the placebo effect that our minds produce out of desperation, hope & blind belief) feel better as a result. That never really happened and the meds often made things even worse. I’ve sworn off ALL head meds for the last four years. I still probably spend more of my breathing moments in a general state of depression – often to the point of unending and unrelenting thoughts of suicide, like I am having at this very moment.
But that’s just my life, which is mostly joyless, with an occasional glimmer of true positive energy (rather than me just faking it as I do so well – I’m one of those “smiling depressives” that preaches the power of positive thinking) Head meds don’t work. They’re nothing more than the result of creative marketing schemes between head doctors and greedy pharmaceutical companies. Aside from that placebo effect, which is a wave of relief that you may be able to ride for a while, head meds are useless. There’s no effective cure or treatment for chronic depression. About all that I’ve found that’s useful in pushing away the dark moods is change of habit. And that only lasts for so long…before that dark cloud comes seeping in again. Effective treatment for this condition is hopelessly absent.
Thank you for commenting and sharing your experience. I’m sorry that you’ve struggled with medication—it’s very common. Have you ever tried other methods for treatment-resistant depression, like ketamine therapy?
I don’t know if it’s necessarily, that I don’t want to exist, it’s more like I just don’t care if I were to die tomorrow??
Yeah I hear that. I felt like I had nothing to live for for so long, it was like, okay, so I die, so what? It’s a bit different than not wanting to exist or wanting to die. It’s somewhere before that I think, like a “lighter” level of depression, if that makes sense.