Trust me, cutting won't help for long. Everytime you cut yourself that sensation you get is a type of chemical compound produced in the brain that is taken in by a certain cell receptor, every time that cell grabs that chemical its receptor gets smaller and smaller, thus making you need more (aka addiction). /lol look im longlivelife. . . bad time?
Very close! Addiction is due to the internalization of receptors (i.e. the cell sucking the receptor back in), rather than receptors decreasing in size, per se.
Because Marly has more or less covered the neurochemical aspects of cutting -- I could throw in a prolix exposition on the endorphin and serotonin pathways implicated, but I doubt it will change your perspective on the matter -- I'm going to talk about hypovolemic shock. This is when your organs cease to be perfused because your blood volume is depleted. It only takes a loss of 20% (about 1 liter) for you to experience the symptoms, which, in addition to the risk of multiple organ failure, includes severe anxiety from all the adrenaline pumping out of your adrenals and your sympathetic nervous system kicking into high gear. Not going to help your emotional pain now, is it?
Now I assume, save for cutting yourself, you're an intelligent person, and you won't sit there watching 1 liter of blood drain from your wrist and do nothing about it. So let's say you control how much you bleed. You're still losing blood. And what happens when you have chronic bleeding? You lose more red blood cells than your body can replace, and you develop lethargy, fatigue and breathlessness -- symptoms of anemia. Kinda makes the situation worse than before. Not only do you have all the shit that made you cut yourself in the first place, you now also have to deal with this overwhelming sense of perpetual tiredness.
Sooner or later the tiredness compounds and the cutting doesn't quite distract you from your emotional pain like it did when you first started. So you'll decide to go all the way. This time you will enter hypovolemic shock, this time you will severely bonk up every system in your body, maybe even permanently, and this time you might actually cross the threshold and lose consciousness.
Except you won't die. By some stroke of a miracle, someone notices that you've been in the bathroom for over an hour without the sound of running water. They break in to find you sitting in a pool of your own blood, they dial 911, and they'll rush you into an ambulance. When you reach the hospital, you'll be given saline to bump your blood pressure, oxygen to aid your anemia, continuous arterial blood gas monitoring to make sure you don't enter a respiratory acidosis or alkalosis, a blood transfusion once you're found a tissue match, and piles of medical attention. All of which you could have done without. All in all, you've made a doctor's job one patient more difficult than it has to be; diverted medical attention away from where it should have been given -- to people who have genuine, nonself-induced emergencies; and stressed your family and everyone who loves and cares for you beyond all reconciliation.
The worst part is that you'll likely do it again.
Stop the cycle early, face whatever problems you have, and move on. Talk to someone. Anyone. Tell them how you feel. Tell them how you want to feel. Tell them everything. Sometimes just vocalizing your problems is the way to fix them, but more often, the person you tell will say something that resonates with you on such a level that you look at your problems in a new light, with new insight, and you'll leave the past in the past. And move on.
I recommend that you watch this. It's an all-round interesting video about happiness and how we
create it, which I feel might benefit you.
YouTube - Dan Gilbert: Why are we happy? Why aren't we happy?