Alcoholism. Was in a very very dark place for a while. I think a lot of people don't understand what it's like. Been sober 14 years.

Thanks for asking, but there is no way I'm sharing that with anyone. Some things are meant to be kept private.

I don't know about "darkest", but my most difficult experience(s) was (and still is) beign marginalized after I started to lose vision and became partially (but legally) blind.

It is a challenge when your vision loss is pregoressive, and you disvoer one thign after another that you really can no longer do well or do at all.

The most difficult thing is that people make assumptions about my abilities, or rather wht they think are my lack of abilities. They never ask if I can do something but just assume I can't. So, I find myself excluded from employment as well as many recreational and social activities, because someone else had limited views and perceptions of me.

Probably my darkest experience was when I was livign in Los Angeles and a guy forcefully entered my apartment with a gun to rob me. I wasn't hurt, and the robber only took stuff that belonged to my roommate. However, I think that was more because i had a huge gay flag on the wall hanging over my bed and I think he just didn't want to go into the bedroom of a gay man. My wallet was sittign in plain site on my nightstand, but he didn't bother going in to get it.

Watching my husband breathe his last after an 89 day cancer battle. It was a Sunday night. Cancer in his spine had spread to the level of paralyzing his diaphragm. He could not breathe, felt like he was suffocating. The hospice nurse refused to come, thinking we were being hysterical. My mom, an RN with prior paralysis nursing experience, got to call that hospice nurse back with the announcrment when the battle was over. The nurse panicked and said we had to revive him (to cover HER ass, it seemed). I refused.

Horrid as that was, it was NOTHING compared to walking to my kids' (ages 6 and 9) bedrooms at wake up time to tell them that he had passed. I would kill anyone who hurt my children so horribly. That I had to deliver such heartbreak broke a part of me that day. I had to be the one to do it as no one loves them more, but will be forever haunted by the memory.

Losing my 3 yrs old daughter to a brain tumor...and no it was not what made me become an Agnostic...that started more less when I was 12...

A thirty year marriage fall apart in front of my kids.. Losing a century farm because of it. Skills and community ties no longer relevant … while left to raise preteen daughters alone. Deadly dark ~

I have to say my darkest and most difficult experience was when I donated my stem cells to my brother with AML and he died anyway.

It doesn't happen too often, but sometimes I can get extremely depressed to the point I think there just isn't a way out.
That is a very dangerous place to be.

I had two small children, I was married to an abusive man. I was pregnant, again. I woke up having a miscarriage. He left me there alone with the kids. Just went on to work like no big deal. That was the day I left forever. I had been pregnant by him 7 times and only have two children. I was sick mentally and physically. Terrified that he would catch me before I could get us out. Afraid if I did get away he would find us fast. It was dark and scary time. But, I would not be the person I am now had I not fought through the darkness. This is not a sad story for sympathy, it is just part of my narrative.

When I was 24, I hurt my back at work. Fast forward to 39, it had acted up off and on, but started getting worse. Get to 40, it’s really bad, have to go to part time part time work.

January of 2013, I’m homeless, jobless, and in the worst pain of my life. For six months, I cannot get out of bed—I eat (if you can call it that at that point—because eating means pooping, and that is beyond hell), sleep (when you’re sleeping, there is no pain), go to the bathroom (I had to wear diapers), and cry/scream from the same place. Getting me to the Drs was complete hell.

I had lost sixty pounds, three inches of muscle on my left leg (all my symptoms are on the left), and my dignity.

I wrote an email to social services and my doctor, I told them I wanted to killl myself, but literally could not. I’m on state medical, so social services made them do the mri that proved I was not lying.

My l5/s1 disk had exploded. I had a piece of disk the size of an average pinky first joint disrupting my nerve column.

Look at your pinky. Now imagine what that little piece of appendage could do to your nerves, after six months.

I was put on Fentanyl, and had my surgery a month later. My neuro surgeon told me it was the worst blowout he had worked on. My now pain doctor is a retired neuro surgeon specialist, he says it was REALLY bad.

I can walk now! I can shit now! I can kinda live now!

I had both my kids, natural, and very young. I thought with all the other crap I’ve hurt/been through (complete knee reconstruction, cervical cancer, and 28 hours of tattoos) so much, I never imagined there would be this kind of pain for me.

My leg will always be atrophied, my nerves and reflexes will never come back, and I will always be in pain and have to use a cane.

Funny thing, my mom had to have the same surgery five years before I did. She has private insurance, had her mri and surgery within the first month. Had I gotten that kind of treatment, I’d be back doing what I love—taking care of people, and not stuck on Disability. Wonder how those asshats at Medicare feel now about being financially stingy (didn’t want to pay for the mri), cause I’m (unfortunately) stuck receiving their dime (a quarter of what I earned on my own) for life.

The suicide of my brother. May will be14 years. I still miss him so much, it took years me to feel like i was functioning "normally" again.

Some of the experiences mentioned are pretty Dark... and I appreciate all thoughts, to everyone... stay strong. My wife was 8 month pregnant with second child I was car jacked and somehow I convinced the 4 thugs that murdering me was not such a good idea because it was not going to be the local police investigating the murder it will be the FBI because I was active military with security clearance (they found my TS badge that clearly stated in case of found returned to the FBI)... not long after letting me go they murdered somebody else. Over 30 yrs ago... I am sure I am alive today and they are not. There was a period of my life I didn't talked about it for many years. But everytime I see how well is doing my 3rd child I comeback to remember how close he was from never being born. Still not in the front of my mind.

I was raped by two female coworkers of mine when I worked at an amusement park. They drugged me and spent the night thinking they were showing me a good time when in reality I had no idea what was going on. One of them might have only been about 15 or 16. I was terrified I would get in trouble or that one of them would be pregnant or passed me a vd.

When my older sister ( who was extremely beautiful long think locks of naturally blonde hair, blue eyes, the figure of a goddess and to whom I worshiped) Decided to hang out with the wrong crowd, become addicted to Heroin, and then P as we call it here (Crack)

My mother had a mental break down when she found all the missing spoons in my sisters room, confronted my sister, who told my mother to **** off. The most difficult days and few years came after, with the break down in the New Zealand health system, Drs refusing to help due to privacy issues, and rehab facilities not helping, as she walked straight into them and straight out of them. She disappeared for years, sometimes resurfacing into different family members lives, who tried to help but due to getting zero support from the health system my sister would disappear.

One day my sister came back to my mother as she needed money, ( It was with help of a man who had horses, who my sister found, my sister loved horses and animals, and was given a puppy to take care of.This worked for her) with the help of police and a few support groups, we managed to get my sister clean again. after a while she got a job in a supermarket and my mother brought an apartment so my sister had somewhere to live. Though my sister could not deal with too many people all at once. She came up with the weirdest things in the middle of conversations that made no sense,and admitted to horrible things that had happened to her like living under a bridge and being a gangs bitch girl.

After time, we thought she was getting better, but then she couldn't cope again and began sniffing house hold cleaners (We think) And refused to have a cell phone/ computer/tv as she thought the FBI.CIA, NZ police, KGB yada yada were watching her through satellites. To the extent she would not, drive her car or have the lights on in her home because she believed she could be watched through those too. A few days later she took off on a bicycle with her dog. Never to be seen again, except the dog was found wandering round a river in the middle of nowhere.

My Mother could not cope and got Breast cancer, as my mother is the most strongest lady I have ever met or known of, she recovered from her cancer, only to get it twice more and fight it off those times too.

In regards to my sister, we tried to get private investigators to look for her to no avail, and ther has been no sightings or nothing of her since she took off on her bike. Although she has appeared to me in my dreams a fews times and woken me up, looking as beautiful and as happy as she was when she was 18. She would of just turned 41 in December. I believe she has passed.

Losing my daughter in my fifth month of pregnancy. A pedophile priest in my Roman Catholic parish who they kept moving to places with Catholic Grade Schools. Being assaulted. Developing PTSD from assaults. Disability. Chronic Intractable Pain - for which I now take nothing because "Opioids are so bad for you". My siblings telling me New Year's Eve - that they would no longer help out so that I can remain in my house. Could not bear to be near people in subsidized housing.

The three seconds the doctor took to tell me "Is cancer...but is a good cancer."

Probably the physical and mental abuse I suffered in my teens. Carrying a knife to protect myself from verbal abuse, physically flying through glass twice and getting sharp muscle spasms like someone was digging a knife in my back. Running away my senior year in high school was the best thing I could do.

Not sure if I'm anything special for "surviving" it but I experienced what is called "the dark night of the soul". It happens to people who basically are removed from their own identity and have no ground underneath them anymore. Something provokes a realization that the metaphorical infrastructure of the mind is made of cardboard instead of iron like they thought before. It's really hard to describe but it's like experiencing a mental death...sorry guys, got too real just now.

Living with my heroin addicted son. I would listen at his bedroom door to make sure he was still breathing. He overdosed and I had to bring him back from the dead. Twice. It was a nightmare.

The death of my wonderful Father in 2004....(Still suffering)

The boy who convinced me I needed to see the west coast and who I lived with for several years was killed by a drunk driver. Sent me into a tail spin but I came out the other side. that was over 30 years ago

I'm not going there - reading all the other responses is gettin' to me...

Living in an orphanage from birth to the age of 2, without medical care for a cleft lip. I was malnourished and had lice when I came to America.

It would be a contest between standing next to my daughter's hospital bed and knowing there was not one damned thing I could do to save her...except pray, which I did. Of course, it had no effect. And then there was when my ex-wife (not the mother of my daughter / many years later) was mudered by her new live-in boyfriend. Both were real bad. Still are.