⛧
How Sweden Killed David Parland
by Noctir (Mar.2024)
David Parland’s life was torn apart under layers of pain, loneliness, and a cold, inhuman system that didn’t give a single damn. What should have been help turned into a cage, a slow suffocation where a suffering soul was trapped in a living hell. This is the story of how a state that claimed to care crushed a man in real agony, treating him like a problem to be managed, not a person to be saved.
His childhood wasn’t exactly pleasant, as his father committed suicide when he was five years old and his mother was a toxic, alcoholic source of emotional and psychological abuse. But the onset of the pain began with an accident. David slammed into an elk one cold January night, hitting it at high speed. The car was totaled and the animal died on impact. David walked away with no obvious injuries, but the effects of whiplash and back injuries took hold within days. The pain was brutal and unrelenting, dragging him into more than a decade of torment that swallowed every part of his life.
Doctors prescribed painkillers to manage the agony, but Sweden enforces some of the world’s strictest drug policies, fueled by a political obsession with a “drug-free society”. This means any such medication is tightly controlled. David was allowed only a limited dosage, which could not keep up with his body’s natural tolerance. When he asked for more, the system did not see a patient in pain, but a potential addict. Requests for help were met with suspicion, accusations, and refusal. He once said, “if not for people like me, then who the hell are they giving them to?!”, which captures the frustration of this kind of situation.
Cut off from adequate pain management, David was forced into brutal withdrawal phases, deepening both his physical suffering and his despair. At times, this led to forced admissions to psychiatric wards and detox centers, facilities which are designed for hardcore drug addicts, not chronic pain patients. Instead of help, he was punished and his legitimate pain was dismissed. He once told me, “they must really want me to suffer, well they have won”. The whole thing is utterly degrading and hopeless. He was not some addict looking for a high, he was trying to manage extreme pain that was making his very existence unbearable. That fact was that David despised street drugs and considered them “instant death”.
As the years dragged on, his isolation and torment deepened the physical suffering. He was abandoned by those he cared for. Friends who once surrounded him had vanished into their own lives, leaving him with only strained, minimal contact. Every effort only seemed to result in more suffering, like the world was at war with him. He felt chained to a hellish apartment where rest was nearly impossible due to unrelenting noise from neighbors and traffic, yet escaping it was nearly as hopeless. In Stockholm, the regular housing queue can take 5 to 20 years to get an apartment because of the shortage. This left him facing at least another five years or more of waiting before he could qualify for anything even half-decent, despite having already endured 16 years in misery. The apartment was noisy, chaotic and a place with no peace.
His days blurred into a cycle of pacing his apartment, forcing himself to pick up a guitar despite the pain or simply lying in bed unable to sleep and paralyzed by despair. He often described life as existing inside a vacuum, surviving rather than living, waiting endlessly for a break that would never come. So-called friends turned their backs on him, bandmates created so much unnecessary and childish drama that even the one thing that kept him going, music, became a source of immense stress. Despite the overwhelming misery, David pushed himself to keep creating music, to maintain some fragment of identity beyond his suffering. Yet every small step forward was quickly erased by the weight of his circumstances. He was physically deteriorating; vomiting stomach acid laced with blood, enduring hours-long muscle spasms, chronic heartburn, and flu-like weakness. His living conditions, filled with constant noise and sleepless nights, only accelerated the breakdown of his body.
After years trapped in this absolute hellhole, David gave up his apartment voluntarily and moved in with his mother, in a rental apartment. He took a tiny, bare room that he called a "cell", which was supposed to be a refuge from the chaos of his old flat. Yet even this turned into another form of hell. She needed his help due to her own health issues, but dehumanized and dismissed him on a daily basis, lacking even basic empathy and giving no support. Even the decision to let him stay there seemed more pragmatic than caring, someone to help shoulder the financial responsibilities. Her constant harassment wore on him, badly. Forced to keep a rigid schedule to avoid explosive conflicts with this abusive alcoholic, David lived in a fragile balance where every hour was a negotiation to keep the last remnants of his life intact.
Despite the chaos, he fought hard to maintain some semblance of stability amid the turmoil, but their constant conflicts and her behavior soon threatened to get the lease terminated. In Sweden, a terminated lease can leave both tenants blacklisted from renting elsewhere for years, effectively locking them out of the housing market. When the landlord began threatening eviction, social services (socialtjänsten) stepped in to prevent the eviction from going through. Though David was the victim in this situation, they decided that since it was technically her place, he would have to leave so that she could keep the apartment. They all discussed him like he was an object to be removed, not a human being.
He was sent to bleak, prison-like living facilities (akutboende or träningsboende) generally meant for utter lowlifes, only compounding the humiliation he felt. These places were supposed to be temporary but for many people they dragged on indefinitely. The rooms were small, locked and stripped of any comfort, by design. There was nothing to do, no privacy and no sense of home. David described them as feeling like Guantanamo. What made the experience even more unbearable was not just the barrenness, but the total lack of control. He had no say in where he went, how long he would stay or what he could do there. His only coping mechanism, alcohol, was often banned entirely, leaving him in withdrawal and worsening his psychological agony. Everyone there was treated as a “case” instead of a person. Already discarded by his family, his friends and most of society, David now found himself stripped of identity by the very institution meant to house him. With nothing to do but climb on the walls the emptiness magnified his mental suffering. He brought his laptop and guitar in a desperate attempt to cling to some sense of self, but even that was not enough to distract from the existential torture. When these facilities were full, he had no choice but to sleep in cars or on the streets, utterly abandoned by the very system designed to protect him.
David was forced into a situation where he really had no choice. If he refused the placement, the landlord could still proceed with eviction, putting both him and his mother on the Kronofogden registry, which would make it nearly impossible for either of them to rent another apartment for years. Refusal also meant losing his financial assistance (socialbidrag) and being labeled “voluntarily homeless”, which would release the municipality from any obligation to help him. In theory, he could refuse and sleep in the street, but he would lose welfare payments, medication subsidies and any path back into the housing queue, which was already ridiculously long. If social services marked him as non-compliant, doctors could be pressured to reduce or deny prescriptions for the controlled medications he depended on. In Sweden, if you do not follow the program, they do not stop you from surviving, but they make survival nearly impossible. Trapped in these miserable conditions, denied adequate medical care, and stripped of all agency, his mental state deteriorated even more. The “help” he received came with harsh restrictions, constant surveillance and a complete loss of freedom. He was treated like a goddamn inmate, shuffled endlessly between places, expected to endure a living death.
He wasn’t struggling with all of this for something better, but to try to avoid things becoming even worse than they had already been. He was already on the edge, having attempted to end his life several months earlier, an experience that only caused more trauma from the horrific treatment at the hospital, including choking on tubes forced down his throat. He continued to fight for his survival, despite the pain, alienation, toxic family, solitude and crushed dreams. He described his existence as a nightmare prison and it’s clear to see why. However, the dehumanizing treatment he suffered at the hands of the state and his family pushed him toward the grave. Less than a week before the end, he suffered a full nervous collapse and a panic attack that nearly ended in death. They didn’t care. The system pushed him over the edge, stripping away all possibility of relief or recovery.
From the end of 2008 until days before his passing, David and I wrote novels back and forth, often several over the course of a single day/night. Our situations were eerily similar and so we bonded not just through music but through a shared misery and status as outsiders from the world of the living. Aside from the thousands of emails, audio recordings and video messages, we met up various times and had long, in-depth conversations. We could spill our guts in raw detail and never be judged for it because we knew the other one understood fully. We very often spoke of death in a pragmatic manner but this was not something that he looked forward to, it was an absolute final option and one that he was fighting against with everything in his power. I mention all of this to emphasize this:
Despite everything, all of the brutal suffering of his existence, he wanted to live.
He didn’t have the answers, but he was defiant and pushed forward with at least some hopes for a future. He often said that he didn’t expect a long life, but wanted at least a few decent years to make it all worthwhile. He desperately wanted to create more music, to reclaim part of his identity and be remembered in spite of the endless series of roadblocks. But he was not just some "black/death metal warrior". David was human and wanted stability, relative peace, a wife and family. These were things that he mentioned for years, seemingly basic and simple things that most people need. He asked very little of this world and still it was too much. No matter how deep the misery and pain had gotten he kept fighting until the end, even if to simply endure one more day. But one can only fight for so long, alone and armed with only toothpicks while facing down a whole army. David Parland didn’t give in because of chronic pain and depression. He was slowly murdered by a system that failed to see him as a human being, crushed by the suffocating prison of so-called “help” for which there was but one exit. Death.
His childhood wasn’t exactly pleasant, as his father committed suicide when he was five years old and his mother was a toxic, alcoholic source of emotional and psychological abuse. But the onset of the pain began with an accident. David slammed into an elk one cold January night, hitting it at high speed. The car was totaled and the animal died on impact. David walked away with no obvious injuries, but the effects of whiplash and back injuries took hold within days. The pain was brutal and unrelenting, dragging him into more than a decade of torment that swallowed every part of his life.
Doctors prescribed painkillers to manage the agony, but Sweden enforces some of the world’s strictest drug policies, fueled by a political obsession with a “drug-free society”. This means any such medication is tightly controlled. David was allowed only a limited dosage, which could not keep up with his body’s natural tolerance. When he asked for more, the system did not see a patient in pain, but a potential addict. Requests for help were met with suspicion, accusations, and refusal. He once said, “if not for people like me, then who the hell are they giving them to?!”, which captures the frustration of this kind of situation.
Cut off from adequate pain management, David was forced into brutal withdrawal phases, deepening both his physical suffering and his despair. At times, this led to forced admissions to psychiatric wards and detox centers, facilities which are designed for hardcore drug addicts, not chronic pain patients. Instead of help, he was punished and his legitimate pain was dismissed. He once told me, “they must really want me to suffer, well they have won”. The whole thing is utterly degrading and hopeless. He was not some addict looking for a high, he was trying to manage extreme pain that was making his very existence unbearable. That fact was that David despised street drugs and considered them “instant death”.
As the years dragged on, his isolation and torment deepened the physical suffering. He was abandoned by those he cared for. Friends who once surrounded him had vanished into their own lives, leaving him with only strained, minimal contact. Every effort only seemed to result in more suffering, like the world was at war with him. He felt chained to a hellish apartment where rest was nearly impossible due to unrelenting noise from neighbors and traffic, yet escaping it was nearly as hopeless. In Stockholm, the regular housing queue can take 5 to 20 years to get an apartment because of the shortage. This left him facing at least another five years or more of waiting before he could qualify for anything even half-decent, despite having already endured 16 years in misery. The apartment was noisy, chaotic and a place with no peace.
His days blurred into a cycle of pacing his apartment, forcing himself to pick up a guitar despite the pain or simply lying in bed unable to sleep and paralyzed by despair. He often described life as existing inside a vacuum, surviving rather than living, waiting endlessly for a break that would never come. So-called friends turned their backs on him, bandmates created so much unnecessary and childish drama that even the one thing that kept him going, music, became a source of immense stress. Despite the overwhelming misery, David pushed himself to keep creating music, to maintain some fragment of identity beyond his suffering. Yet every small step forward was quickly erased by the weight of his circumstances. He was physically deteriorating; vomiting stomach acid laced with blood, enduring hours-long muscle spasms, chronic heartburn, and flu-like weakness. His living conditions, filled with constant noise and sleepless nights, only accelerated the breakdown of his body.
After years trapped in this absolute hellhole, David gave up his apartment voluntarily and moved in with his mother, in a rental apartment. He took a tiny, bare room that he called a "cell", which was supposed to be a refuge from the chaos of his old flat. Yet even this turned into another form of hell. She needed his help due to her own health issues, but dehumanized and dismissed him on a daily basis, lacking even basic empathy and giving no support. Even the decision to let him stay there seemed more pragmatic than caring, someone to help shoulder the financial responsibilities. Her constant harassment wore on him, badly. Forced to keep a rigid schedule to avoid explosive conflicts with this abusive alcoholic, David lived in a fragile balance where every hour was a negotiation to keep the last remnants of his life intact.
Despite the chaos, he fought hard to maintain some semblance of stability amid the turmoil, but their constant conflicts and her behavior soon threatened to get the lease terminated. In Sweden, a terminated lease can leave both tenants blacklisted from renting elsewhere for years, effectively locking them out of the housing market. When the landlord began threatening eviction, social services (socialtjänsten) stepped in to prevent the eviction from going through. Though David was the victim in this situation, they decided that since it was technically her place, he would have to leave so that she could keep the apartment. They all discussed him like he was an object to be removed, not a human being.
He was sent to bleak, prison-like living facilities (akutboende or träningsboende) generally meant for utter lowlifes, only compounding the humiliation he felt. These places were supposed to be temporary but for many people they dragged on indefinitely. The rooms were small, locked and stripped of any comfort, by design. There was nothing to do, no privacy and no sense of home. David described them as feeling like Guantanamo. What made the experience even more unbearable was not just the barrenness, but the total lack of control. He had no say in where he went, how long he would stay or what he could do there. His only coping mechanism, alcohol, was often banned entirely, leaving him in withdrawal and worsening his psychological agony. Everyone there was treated as a “case” instead of a person. Already discarded by his family, his friends and most of society, David now found himself stripped of identity by the very institution meant to house him. With nothing to do but climb on the walls the emptiness magnified his mental suffering. He brought his laptop and guitar in a desperate attempt to cling to some sense of self, but even that was not enough to distract from the existential torture. When these facilities were full, he had no choice but to sleep in cars or on the streets, utterly abandoned by the very system designed to protect him.
David was forced into a situation where he really had no choice. If he refused the placement, the landlord could still proceed with eviction, putting both him and his mother on the Kronofogden registry, which would make it nearly impossible for either of them to rent another apartment for years. Refusal also meant losing his financial assistance (socialbidrag) and being labeled “voluntarily homeless”, which would release the municipality from any obligation to help him. In theory, he could refuse and sleep in the street, but he would lose welfare payments, medication subsidies and any path back into the housing queue, which was already ridiculously long. If social services marked him as non-compliant, doctors could be pressured to reduce or deny prescriptions for the controlled medications he depended on. In Sweden, if you do not follow the program, they do not stop you from surviving, but they make survival nearly impossible. Trapped in these miserable conditions, denied adequate medical care, and stripped of all agency, his mental state deteriorated even more. The “help” he received came with harsh restrictions, constant surveillance and a complete loss of freedom. He was treated like a goddamn inmate, shuffled endlessly between places, expected to endure a living death.
He wasn’t struggling with all of this for something better, but to try to avoid things becoming even worse than they had already been. He was already on the edge, having attempted to end his life several months earlier, an experience that only caused more trauma from the horrific treatment at the hospital, including choking on tubes forced down his throat. He continued to fight for his survival, despite the pain, alienation, toxic family, solitude and crushed dreams. He described his existence as a nightmare prison and it’s clear to see why. However, the dehumanizing treatment he suffered at the hands of the state and his family pushed him toward the grave. Less than a week before the end, he suffered a full nervous collapse and a panic attack that nearly ended in death. They didn’t care. The system pushed him over the edge, stripping away all possibility of relief or recovery.
From the end of 2008 until days before his passing, David and I wrote novels back and forth, often several over the course of a single day/night. Our situations were eerily similar and so we bonded not just through music but through a shared misery and status as outsiders from the world of the living. Aside from the thousands of emails, audio recordings and video messages, we met up various times and had long, in-depth conversations. We could spill our guts in raw detail and never be judged for it because we knew the other one understood fully. We very often spoke of death in a pragmatic manner but this was not something that he looked forward to, it was an absolute final option and one that he was fighting against with everything in his power. I mention all of this to emphasize this:
Despite everything, all of the brutal suffering of his existence, he wanted to live.
He didn’t have the answers, but he was defiant and pushed forward with at least some hopes for a future. He often said that he didn’t expect a long life, but wanted at least a few decent years to make it all worthwhile. He desperately wanted to create more music, to reclaim part of his identity and be remembered in spite of the endless series of roadblocks. But he was not just some "black/death metal warrior". David was human and wanted stability, relative peace, a wife and family. These were things that he mentioned for years, seemingly basic and simple things that most people need. He asked very little of this world and still it was too much. No matter how deep the misery and pain had gotten he kept fighting until the end, even if to simply endure one more day. But one can only fight for so long, alone and armed with only toothpicks while facing down a whole army. David Parland didn’t give in because of chronic pain and depression. He was slowly murdered by a system that failed to see him as a human being, crushed by the suffocating prison of so-called “help” for which there was but one exit. Death.
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