Exactly the reason I used to self harm. I don't do it anymore, but I now have a growing collection of tattoos, and I'd be interested to know if others with collections of tattoos consider it a decorative form of the same. The pain wipes out the nihilism, like a strong light through a murky room. It pierces that endless bleak grey desert where I know for sure I am worth nothing to nodoby and nobody will ever want me or be there. In the really black moments I hear shouting voices saying that over and over just out of the range of hearing - I can just hear a tone of voice but I know what it's saying. Although you can logically argue them down, when they are there 24-7, it becomes impossible to deal with, and things get very lonely. Enough tennents super makes me unconscious so I get away from it for a while. Although Tom, I do that at home, not in the street. A kitchen knife dragged down the back of my arm from elbow to wrist is quite amazing. As the blood buds like a flower, so does the pain, and the voices and the desert can't be heard over it, they start to disappear. My body's imperative then becomes self-protection and somehow shuts out the mind's wanderings. Then I get dressings, bandage myself up, make sure it's clean, and I can even snap into cheerful mode remarkably quickly. I haven't done this in about 8 years, since I had a full time job actually, although I do drink too much and as said, I tattoo these days. I have no intention of committing suicide, but need 'out' sometimes, for it all to go away. Physical pain can be cathartic as a means of getting your head back into real life again, not having the abyss stare back at you in your head. Cutting worked for me, I'm sure other people have other methods. I don't regret the scars, because they helped in a strange way, although when I roll my sleeves up to have blood taken or something, I'm always looked at in that *special* way which makes me want to make light of them so I just say I was a goth kid or a parasuicidal teenager. I did it to the age of 30 though, and I've never been stylish enough to be a goth!