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About two years ago, TFM covered a story about the trip a suicidal man took to Tijuana, Mexico. He had every intention of getting down to Tijuana, checking into his hotel room, then purchasing a tranquilizer used to put animals to sleep and kill himself.

This, of course, didn’t happen, as the man landed in San Diego, took a bus to the border, and eventually ended up doing massive amounts of cocaine and banging hookers for a week or so. Unsurprisingly, the combination of high-grade cocaine and hookers willing to do just about anything for the right price began his incredible road to emotional recovery.

He sent us the below timeline of this trip, and while quite long, it is incredibly detailed and absolutely worth your time to read in its entirety. My words won’t do it justice, so here it is, unfettered, not edited in any way, and raw in all of its glory:

• Brother born, happiest day of my 6 year life. Scramble to tell all the other kids I’m a big brother now.

• Fast forward 6 and a half months. Mom pulls me aside, says Michael’s gone up to heaven with the angels. (Brother died of SIDS) Remember looking at myself in the mirror, confused and profoundly broken.

• Couple months later, wake up in a panic. Had a dream that my grandmother died. Insist on calling her. She soothes me and promises she isn’t going anywhere for a long, long time.

• Grandmother dies of sudden heart attack one year later, turning me into the world’s youngest nihilist. I become focused on death and loss at an early age. Everyone’s going to die. Why bother making friends? Why bother with love? Keep distant, avoid painful loss.

• With grandmother gone mom has no choice but to move us in with my dad.

• Dad is a tyrant. Extremely aggressive and verbally abusive. No telling what will set him off. I begin to close myself off from the world. Develop mild PTSD symptoms from hearing his car door slam in the driveway. Stop making friends or interacting with kids outside school.

• Anxiety and depression build over the years. Self-loathing out of control. I think I’m too ugly and too stupid to ever fit in with the world. Lots of teen angst.

• By college the anxiety is so bad can hardly stand to be in class. Getting called out in discussion sections practically triggers panic attacks. See no future. Just death.

• Become angry and resentful. Pissed off at anyone who seems happy. Fuck the world. Fuck God. Most of all, fuck anyone who tries to help.

• Begin seeing young female therapist. Way too hot to actually disclose truth. Mostly just visit her for the eye candy.

• Obsessively search the internet for suicide methods.

• Discover Exit International and Dr. Philip Nitschke, MD notorious for his support of assisted suicide for the elderly and terminally ill. Purchase a copy of the Peaceful Pill, a suicide tourism guidebook.

• Read the book cover to cover. Learn how to get to Tijuana. What to look for (barbiturates sold under the brand Pentobarbital/Nembutal used to put animals to sleep.)

• Track down a good hotel, purchase a one way ticket. Tell my friends I’m traveling to various exotic locations around the world. Majorca, for example. Tell my parents nothing.

• Continue life as usual. Go to school. See my therapist. Go to work. Therapist comments that I’m doing very well these days and maybe won’t need her services. I smile and tell her I agree.

• Visit my mom, dad, and sister separately for final goodbyes without actually disclosing suicide intent.

• Fill a giant bowl full of bird food and another full of water for my parrot – mostly as a subtle message to my parents that I wasn’t taken against my will, but left of my own choosing.

• Tell dad I’m staying with mom and mom I’m staying with dad.

• Shave head, pack bag with clothes and money, drive to airport, abandon car, hop on a flight to San Diego—but not before buying a copy of Moby Dick. Not sure why, or when I thought I’d get around to reading it.

• Arrive about 11pm, tired from jet lag. Walk to a bus stop a block away. Take the bus to the trolley and the trolley to the San Ysidro border crossing. Figure people might start looking for me, want to make them work for it so avoid taxis and credit/debit card payments.

• Never been to Mexico. Worried about being hassled at the checkpoint. There is no checkpoint getting in. Just a bridge and a fence, and on the other side a parking lot full of cabs.

• Cabbie yanks bags out of my hands and throws them in trunk before I can speak. I hop in the back and tell him where I’m going. Offers me llello (coke) and chicas. I decline.

• Arrive at hotel. Looks like a small, nice family hotel. Bellhop brings my stuff to my room. Shows me blurry photographs of women. Says he can have them here in 15 minutes. No thanks.

• Wake up bright and early. Grab my Peaceful Pill guide and hop a cab to Avenida Revolución, main tourist drag full of bars, pimps, whores, peddlers, and “zebras” (donkeys painted with stripes)

• Dozens of pharmacies along the drag and maybe half a dozen veterinarian supply shops. Stop at one of the vet stores and ask for pentobarbital. Clerk doesn’t understand. Take out my guide, flip to a page full of big color pictures. He recognizes the bottle and sells me one for $50, no questions asked.

• Hop the nearest cab and rush back to the hotel, slightly nervous to be carrying lethal drugs.

• Spend the better part of the day staring at the bottle, trying to work up the courage to off myself. Body literally shaking with fear. Decide to go back to Revolucion’s bars for liquid courage.

• Order one Corona. Bartender brings an ice bucket with two. $2.50. Buy a margarita. Two, $3.00. Feeling a bit tipsy now. Not used to drinking much. Kind of a pussy back then.

• Suddenly a hand is on my forehead, yanking me back. For one instant I think I’m about to get my throat cut by a cartel enforcer. Instead, bartender stuffs spout of tequila bottle in my mouth and pours it straight down my throat. Flail arms. Cough and sputter. “That’ll be $5.”

• Shitfaced. Stumbling down the street. Dark now. Constantly dogged by men trying to get me into their brothels. See a young couple walking down the street. Girl’s cute. Eye her. Boyfriend jumps in my face. Think he’s pissed at me for checking her out. “You wanna fuck her? $20!” Holy shit.

• Wander out of the tourist area. Streets are dark and in poor repair. People eye me funny. Get a bad vibe. Don’t really give a fuck. Someone asks if I know where I am and insists on getting me a cab.

• Tell the driver to take me back to my hotel. Figure I’m drunk enough to kill myself — or do just about anything tonight.

• Cabbie asks if I want chicas or llello. I say no to the first but cave in on the second. Reasoning why the hell not? No reason to worry about health.

• Cabbie makes a call on his cell, then drives me through even darker and creepier Tijuana streets. Pull up to a tenement. Man steps out of a dark alley and speaks to the driver in Spanish. Great place to get robbed and thrown into a gutter with a knife in my kidney.

• Driver asks how much I want. Never bought drugs before. Never had a puff of weed. No idea how coke is sold. I ask for a small amount. Eventually work it out to a gram.

• Return to hotel. Cabbie gives me a business card. Says to call him if I want anything. Drugs, women, booze. Whatever.

• Cut lines as seen in movies, using cover of Moby Dick. Roll a Benjamin. Agonize for about 20 minutes. Almost pussy out.

• SNORT! Expected pain, felt cold and numb. Horrible taste in back of throat. Drip almost triggers a gag reflex. This is it? This is what’s so great about coke? I don’t feel anything. Mind speeds up. Heart races. Pacing. Sweating.

• Anhedonia replaced with pure ecstasy. Complete shock. Forgot what bliss felt like until that moment. Take couple more lines.

• Decide to hit a brothel. Google best brothel in Tijuana. Come up with Adelita Bar and Hong Kong Club. Go with Adelita first.

• No idea how quick coke wears off. Left it in hotel. Paranoia sets in. Cop standing outside Adelita Bar with assault rifle. Try to walk past him, but sure he’s going to know I am high and coming in for sex.

• Like a strip club with raised platform and poles, only no ladies on the platform. Instead, about 40 women chasing after men. Feel like a hot chick at a club getting pinched and spanked.

• Sit down with a soda. Nervous. Woman older than mom sticks hand under table, grabs me firmly. “Come upstairs with me and I suck your balls dry.” Nope.

• Of the 40 women 20 are older and less appealing. 15 are okay to good. 5 are worth dragging my cock through a mile of broken glass just to be the last guy in line to fuck them.

• Approach the hottest of the 5. Voice cracking, ask if she wants to go upstairs. Sí. $60.

• Cut across to “hotel”, pay $10 for 20 minutes in a tiny cubicle with a bed.

• Watch her undress. Motioned over. Fun begins. Mind-blowing. Maybe worth living another few days—just for the coke and women.

• Return to hotel, mildly ashamed and embarrassed.

• FIEND for coke. No longer ashamed or embarrassed. Snort what’s left. Solo Dance party in room.

• Wake up about 2pm. Feel like shit. Need more coke! Call cabbie from night before. Ask for more than last time.

• Snort! Start thinking about women. Too early for the clubs. Back on the internet. Find a site called The Erotic Review with info on Tijuana escorts and customer reviews. Like shopping Amazon.

• Find a Tijuana escort agency run by a guy on the US side of the border. Hire cutest girl in the roster. Named Jocelyn.

• Couple hours later she arrives. High as hell on coke, but always polite. Offer her a snort off Moby Dick (the book). She says no.

• We get down to business. Equipment not operating at full capacity. First introduction to whiskey/coke-dick. Jocelyn, ever the professional, refuses to let me throw in the towel and works her magic.

• Back to Revolucion , this time to visit one of the many, many pharmacies. Ask for a bottle of Viagra and Percocet. Told I need a prescription. Panic. No prescription? No problem. Sent to a small room in the back of the pharmacy and met by a Mexican doctor. For $20 he writes me a prescription for whatever I went. Viagra and painkillers.

• Pop a Percocet and a Viagra, back to Adelita bar. Same as previous visit.

• Next day, call for coke and escorts. This time two girls.

• Call from hotel manager. He wants to speak to me. Panic!

• Find the manager and my escorts (dressed in thigh high hooker boots and not a whole lot else) in the lobby. Told it’s a fire hazard to bring this many women up to my room.

• Jump in cab with girls. Taken to “chica friendly” hotel next to Hong Kong Club. Fun times.

• Decide to move over to the Hong Kong Club. Get a suite for less than $100 a night with a Jacuzzi tub and stripper pole. Bring a couple girls up from the Hong Kong Club. Offer them coke. Snort fat rails off thighs, ass, and tits.

• Pop painkillers to fight nasty comedown from coke.

• Email from police back home asking if I’m okay. Panic. Tell them I’m fine. Remember the bottle of pentobarbital still in my bag.

• Continue with HK girls, coke, and painkillers, not really giving a damn if it kills me.

• Money getting low. Begin eyeing the bottle of pentobarbital again. Tremors return.

• Email from sister. I miss you. I need you. Please come home. I break down. Cry.

• Buy a ticket back home.

• Don’t want to give up the pentobarbital after coming so far, or what’s left of the coke and painkillers, but worried about being stopped at the border.

• Pack two bags. One with some clothes, toiletries, etc., the other with drugs. Leave drugs at hotel and head to border checkpoint.

• Border guard runs ID. Name flagged. Brought to detention area. Patted down, bag searched, prints taken. Left sitting with several other people for 4+ hours.

• One man shouts that he’s hungry and begins digging through the garbage. Stuffs half-eaten sandwich in his face as 5 cops violently wrestle him to the ground.

• Group of teenagers stopped. Apparently one was visiting from outside the US and didn’t bring passport. His cousin asks if the rest are free to go. They leave their cousin alone in Tijuana with no passport, no way home, no way into the US. Kid begins sobbing.

• San Diego cop shows up. Tells me family’s worried. Asks what happened, why I came to Mexico. Does the “you can trust me” cop routine, smiles and laughs and asks if I came for the drugs and the girls. Flat out deny. Cop continues asking same questions again and again until he finally gives up and I’m free to go.

• Walk into the US. Head to the Jack ‘n the Box for a burger. Walk back into Mexico. Spend one more night in my hotel. Bring up another pair of girls. Pay extra to watch them play with each other.

• Next day, dump a bottle of antiemetics (originally bought to prevent vomiting pentobarbital), replace with Percs. Pull label off pentobarbital bottle, place it next to shampoo, hoping it looks like cologne or something if scanned.

• Back to checkpoint with drugs this time. New guard runs my ID. Name no longer flagged. Get through the border with drugs.

• Trolley and bus back to SD airport. Hand drug bag to sweet lady at counter to be loaded in baggage compartment.

• Fly home. Pay outrageous parking fee for car.

• Tearful reunion with mom and sis. Dad still a dick.

• Show up at work. Terminated. Shrug.

• No connections. Crave coke–or the feelings (aware alert tingly) it provoked, but no clue how to get it. Haven’t touched the stuff since.

• Get into therapy for real this time. 6 long years of therapy, antidepressants. Ups and downs. Lots of struggling. Little ground.

• Dabble with psychedelics. LSD. Mind altered. Learn to love self and others.

• Get off the drugs. Start exercising. Become obsessed with adventure.

• Ride a motorcycle from Maryland to Tijuana 3~ years after first trip. Spend a night with a couple chicas for old time’s sake. Cruise on home and do the 9 – 5 career thing and pretend to be just another normal member of society.

What a life, man. Good on this guy for discovering that there was more to life than offing yourself in a seedy Tijuana hotel. If cocaine and hookers is what it takes to have that massive epiphany, then cocaine and hookers is what it takes.

You can’t fault the guy for wanting to continue living his life after a week spent like that..

[Original story via Reddit]