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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here's my theory: many overweight and obese people eat to soothe their emotional pain. Take away or diminish appetite and there's no mode of self soothing. Without that comfort, the pain emerges and the suicide ideation begins or they find something else to soothe the pain. See also: gastric surgery patients who become alcoholics.[/quote]

I skipped the rest of the thread because this is the only certain answer to be found.

I have food addiction, have used food to cope with my feelings since my toxic abusive childhood - which also included watching my mother’s abuse and enduring the abuse she dished out to her kids in her depression and anger - at the hands of alcoholic father who gave his addiction gene to all of the kids he spawned but couldn’t love. My siblings are all alcoholics and I have FA. In my case the weight didn’t come until my early 40s and has only been on me a few years so I hold out hope I can get it off and manage my FA.

My doctors sent me for bariatric consultation which I completed including all the pre-op testing. My therapist would not clear me at that time for surgery because my depression was acute at the time. While we worked on that, I did a lot of hours reading in the Reddit and Facebook support pages for bariatric patients. I then did some deep dive research in the medical journals on long term followup of bariatric patients.

The ugly truth that bariatric surgeons don’t address in pre operative conversations with patients is that there is an extraordinarily high rate of transfer addiction in bariatric patients. Many become alcoholics or abuse other substances. Beyond the five year success rate that most medical professionals utilize in selling treatments, there is a fairly high rate of failure and return of the weight as well. And the potential for complications of these surgeries, including a host of health issues related to nutrient deficiencies that can occur if people supplement imperfectly following surgery (you have to supplement daily the rest of your life after bariatric surgery) is just huge. Lisa Marie’s death is not a common incidence for bariatric patients but the adhesions/blockage is, they just usually get treated/fixed which can include you ending up with even worse conditions like a colostomy bag, etc.

People shouldn’t be criticizing these drugs if they can help people get healthier without such serious complications as bariatric surgery presents. An increased incidence in suicidality in a large population of patients with overweight/obesity using the drug is entirely to be expected- it isn’t likely a side effect of the biochemical effects of the drug, it’s a side effect of the food addicted person not having the ability to use their preferred substance to medicate their emotional trauma.

It would be interesting to do some research on increased suicidality in alcoholics using Antabuse or opiod addicts using methadone or suboxone. I would guess there is some incidence. Addicts suffer from emotional distress, and recovery is a struggle because most addicts don’t get enough effective psycho therapy or other treatments for their trauma and depression, they just get sober and have to suffer the onslaught of their trauma with no coping mechanisms in place and they have to build those. For addicts it’s more comfortable to transfer to another addiction and most don’t choose meditation or exercise as the addiction.[/quote]

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