Have you ever hit absolute rock bottom?

Not financially, but mentally. I was married to a woman who was and still is incredibly petty, emotional, dishonest and all around an awful person. I developed sleep apnea, depression. I would drive around after work so as to not come home earlier than I needed to. I tried to block her out and focus my energy on my autistic son. Lost all friends as I didn't know how to talk to them about my family problems. Stopped talking to my parents and sisters because any contact with them would cause more fights with her.

I started to go on hikes and travel alone just to escape proximity with this woman. Started drinking regularly.

I compartmentalize everything in my life, but my family life started to affect my work life. I started fantasizing getting a job in a foreign country to escape. Contemplated suicide many times, but I couldn't that to my kid.

Luckily, I met an incredible woman on a hike in Norway. Came back home, filed for divorce and moved out. I am getting better slowly.

Everyone has their own personal rock bottom and you can’t know if you’ll hit a lower one later.

My first rock bottom was caused by depression and anxiety fully hitting me post-college, a tough job that wasn’t going well, then my longterm girlfriend (who I planned on marrying) cheating on me and breaking up over text message. Full on panic attacks, moving back home, suicidal ideation, the whole works. Therapy, exercise, and medication with SSRIs brought me out of the funk. I had a strong support network which made it easier.

My second rock bottom was during a period of intense professional stress, that through a strange sequence of events, almost resulted in serious legal consequences and potentially prison. Was some very dark days with similar suicidal ideation, panic attacks, etc. But I came out of it far stronger with much higher risk tolerance and knowledge of myself and capabilities.

Was I homeless? Tortured? Disabled? No. But for me, it was rock bottom, and I don’t want to be there again.

I spent nearly six years homeless. I got back into housing about 2.5 years ago. I started multiple websites while homeless and I still run multiple websites, some of which are pertinent to this problem space.

This comment seems to list all my homeless sites:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22804929

2020 is proving especially challenging for the homeless population. The pandemic has made things very hard for homeless people of late.

Libraries are currently closed in many places, as are eateries with wifi and so forth. Some shelters and soup kitchens have shut down during the pandemic. It's pretty brutal at the moment.

But things like tablets are cheaper than when I first became homeless and websites are generally optimized to work well on smartphones and tablets, which was not true when I was first on the street. So there are ways in which it is easier than ever to figure out how to problem solve and create an income from the street and get your life back.

U will throw in this piece, which I didn't write but it's about me:

Homeless to housed: Her virtual life helped her out of homelessness

http://alexandralindelof.com/story-package/

Based on my own rock-bottom experience ( a very first-world rock-bottom problem ), I'd wouldn't identify them by some kind of 'objective measure of misery' litmus test. Instead I'd identify by saying, "a problem where my existing coping mechanisms no longer enable me to cope."

That's why some of these rock-bottom experiences can be great turns in life -- it forces you to do away with now-unhelpful coping strategies and find better ones.

In 2019 I lost nearly everything I loved, in the space of a week. I shook my fist at the cobalt sky, and hoped to die.

I was a technician doing industrial microcomputer repairs with that v=ir mentality and life got impossible. Somehow I found it in myself to pray for faith and was rewarded with a satori experience. That's more than 30 years ago now. My life changed a lot.

i find im always finding new lows

There is no situation so awful that someone cannot make it worse.