It was also the method that cancer patient, Megan O’Hara – mistress to Sean McNamara – used to off herself when she discovered her cancer has metastasized in Season 1 of Nip/Tuck. She also washed the pills down with milk to coat her stomach so she wouldn’t puke up the drugs on the advice of the disembodied head Sean was performing his surgical re-certification exam upon.
Great show. Creepy as all get out, though.
I like this one!
Yes, it’s common. As some have said, drugs alone can be unreliable, especially if you’re relying on over the counter ones. Plastic bags over the head are a sure thing if no one finds you, but the sensation of suffocation is very very unpleasent. When combined, often the strategy is to take a high dose of a drug which will put you to sleep, then put the bag over your head, with a rubber band securing it about the neck. The person then holds the rubber band with their thumbs, so to keep the bag open and avoid the feeling of smothering. When one nods off, the hands drop and the bag is secured. You then die “in your sleep”. The method is described in the book Final Exit, which also reccomends wearing some kind of mask over the mouth to further decreased the unpleasentness. This method is also kind to those who find the body, as the method is clean and the bag contains the vomit, often an agonal event.
You didn’t mention whether this method was successful.
ISTR a story that screamed “Urban Legend!!!” but actually turned out to be true. A fellow tried to commit suicide with multiple redundant back-up plans, and they all failed. He took a bunch of poison, tied a noose around his neck, jumped off a cliff, shot himself with a gun on the way down, etc. But through a series of tragic-comic failures, all of his redundancies failed and he lived.
Anyone remember who I’m talking about?
A couple in Canberra committed suicide by making nooses at both ends of a rope. They then, in their panel van, went somewhere isolated. Put the noose around one partner’s neck, passed it out the back of the van, around a tree, then back into the van. Put the other noose around the other partner’s neck and then he accelerated away. And tore both of their heads off.
My all time favorite suicide was the French guy who decided to gas himself in his car. He decided to have a last cigarette and in lighting it ignited the petrol fumes. He decided that burning to death was not a good plan and ran from the car to immerse himself in the nearby water tank. There he drowned.
The sounds a lot like Vigo the Carpathian, except he actually died.
It was mentioned in Darwin Awards:
According to them, it’s not a true story.
Is it possible to die by putting a plastic bag over your head and making yourself hyperventilate? Apparently there’s a thing you can do by making yourself hyperventilate standing for 20 seconds, then kneeling and hyperventilating 20 seconds, then standing and blowing on your thumb without letting out air. Can someone actually die if they have a plastic bag over their head while doing that?
It takes a lot of practice.
Beware young men offering cream tarts.
Yes it is possible. Don’t do it.
(September can’t get here soon enough.)
Burt Bacharach and Angie Dickinson’s daughter Nikki committed suicide in a similar fashion about 10 years ago. She used a bag and a helium tank she purchased at a party store. IDK if she used any drugs to hasten the process.
The pills + bag method is not on the Be Kind to the Coroner Techs List. I don’t know if it’s true in every jurisdiction, but I know that for some jurisdictions the techs have to determine which method actually caused the death. So it’s twice the work.
Why not just bring in your charcoal grill, fill it with charcoal and light it, close the windows and drink a couple glasses of wine while you watch a movie until you doze off?
IIRC there were some news articles a while back about suicide societies selling a suicide kit which was basically a plastic bag (to put over your head) and a helium tank. It wasn’t illegal in and of itself, but they got into hot water because it came with instructions on how to kill yourself with it.
Again, IIRC, what makes your body panic isn’t the lack of oxygen, but the presence of CO2, so pushing that out (along with the oxygen) and replacing it with helium keeps you from pulling the bag off your head.
There’s a wiki page on it and you can probably still find the news articles.
The Death Row inmate William Kogut was the MacGuyver of suicides, he made a pipe bomb using decks of playing cards:
Too much like calisthenics.
I had to look that up on Snopes. It says it’s true.
There was a one-person “company” selling these several years ago, run by a 91-year-old lady in San Diego. She allegedly sold 1600 kits a year for $60 each, and didn’t always bother to deposit or cash the checks. What she sold was the plastic bag and tubing, packaged with instructions (this article says, a copy of Final Exit). I think you had to find your own helium.
The 91-Year-Old Woman Selling $60 Suicide Kits
ETA:
There was (and for all I know, maybe still is) a web site (I think it was on Cult of the Dead Cow) with a lot of discussion on ways to off oneself. There was a guy there who was a habitual self-offer, who apparently had committed suicide numerous times, and discussed all his experiences. Apparently he didn’t exactly commit suicide to completion all that often :dubious:
He wrote of how non-un-pleasant the bag and helium method was.
Always heartening to find people doing stuff purely because they love it.
Maybe people who need organ transplants? When I knew someone on the list for a heart transplant I suggested that a good use of his money would be a series of advertisements in high school yearbooks. “None of the cool kids wear seat belts”