Is this a common method of suicide?

Last May, Erica Blasberg died in her home in the Las Vegas area. Erica was a young struggling pro-golfer trying to make it on the Ladies pro golf tour.

This week, the coroner finally came out with his official report. She died of a suicide.

Toxicology reports that she had an assortment of prescription drugs in her system but the cause was:

There was also this item in the article

Is “putting a plastic bag over the head” a common suicide method?

Yes. It’s a common planned suicide method - you take the pills first, obviously. I believe it’s actually recommended by one of those suicide societies.

That’s the last way I’d do it, I’ve had issues with my throat closing and I was unable to inhale, and those were literally the most horrible panic-inducing moments of my life. I’m sure that’s what the pills are for, but why not just OD on the pills?

The theory being that the pills knock you out but either don’t kill you or worse, cause damage to kidneys/liver/whatever leaving you alive but far worse off than you were.

But unconsious with a bag over your head, you will suffocate before waking up.

Yeah, tons of people don’t manage to get the job done with just the pills.

It’s a basically suicide insurance; if you happen to take too little (or throw up some of the pills), you’re still going to asphyxiate before you wake up.

It’d be the last way you’d do anything.

The downers and plastic bag routine got a large dose of publicity when it was used by the Heaven’s Gate cult.

From the Wikipedia link:

Compared to a lethal overdose, it doesn’t require nearly as many pills, and I imagine it would be more “reliable.”

Many do the overkill just to be positively sure they won’t fail.
Last year here there was a case of a man, put a bag over his head, tied a rope around his neck, tied the rope to a bridge railing and jumped off the side. The macabre bit (if so far it wasn’t bad enough) is that the rope nearly severed the neck on the first bounces so the body swung a few times splattering the side of the bridge with blood, finally the neck gave up and the body fell 25 or 30 meters while the rope tightened around the plastic bag closing it; so the scene to be found was a head in a plastic bag hanging from the side of a bridge sprayed with blood.

It was demonstrated in the movie House of Sand and Fog and used as a plot device in an NCIS episode, “Sub Rosa,” I believe.

They were planning to play Bunco in heaven?

Yes, what was the significance of the $5.75?

I think they were big haiku fans.

That’s how much it costs to get ferried across the River Styx (adjusted for inflation).

Apparently it was a reference to–of all things–Mark Twain.

From this article on the cult.

I had a little accident with engine exhaust gases - nitrogen, CO and CO2 mainly I guess. First you get paralyzed and if you survive, what a headache and stress afterwards.

There are suicide societies? How long do they operate before they run out of members? :wink:

Evidently they have newsletters and subscribers, which strikes me a lot like bridal and pregnancy magazines - who (who isn’t a midwife or a wedding planner) on earth subscribes to them? How many issues do you need? How long are you going to need that to keep coming in?

I imagine the editorial boards have a lot of turnover and that they make fun of their long-term subscribers as pansy-ass weaklings.

Also, who advertises in such a magazine? Probably just a lot of cigarette and alcohol ads that amount to, “hey - why not, right?”

They tend to be fairly short-lived …
ba da bomp.

Try the veal, I’ll be here til Thursday:D