Thank you maplekiwi. 
One day I had a mom and everything was “normal.” The next day, my entire life changed. I had to grow up very quickly to say the least.
My very good college friend who was also my roommate just after college.
I went into his room the next morning to wake him up b/c his car was still parked outside and I knew he was late for work.
He had killed himself the night before by sitting in his bed and shooting his right temple with his 9mm H&K and a hollow-point bullet.
That was 17 years ago, and that’s thankfully the only one.
Another zero here.
Now, people who threaten suicide in order to manipulate the people around them, I’ve personally known two. One a former friend, and the other a friend of that friend.
Others who threatened suicide would include my dad who considered it when he got sick with muscular dystrophy, but he only talked about it, never attempted it. We had him hospitalized, and when he got out, he never talked about it again.
My suicide threatening friend’s dad attempted to hang himself when he found out he had cancer, but my friend’s mother caught him, and he was hospitalized as well. Whether this
incident had anything to do with my friend’s later manipulation techniques is something I don’t know.
But actual completed suicides, none.
Only one that I can really remember—my brother. He jumped into the Allegheny River from an amazingly high bridge when we were both in our early twenties.
His death pretty much defines “suicide” in my mind, overshadowing any other usage of the term.
I volunteer at a crisis/suicide hotline and I have spoken with hundreds of different people with a multitude of different issues over the past several years. Very rarely do we ever have a clue if we made a real difference. Even if we help them for one evening, many will eventually succeed in their endeavor. I can think of a few who I am pretty sure are not alive anymore.
There are a couple of people who call back once every six months or so to let me know they are doing fine. That’s what makes it worth it
I can only think of one–a girl I grew up with as a teen, who committed suicide several years ago. I hadn’t seen her in 15 years by then. She left 2 kids behind. I’m not sure what her life was like by then. She was very intelligent, and easily one of the most beautiful girls in our school, but she always felt worthless unless she was dating a guy (which was most of the time). I always wished she could see what a wonderful person she was. Poor Leigh, she was never as happy as she should have been.
I can think of 2 offhand–both were people I knew in high school. One guy killed himself (shotgun to the head) while still in high school, and although I wasn’t close to the guy, I did know him personally, and he was in at least one, and probably more than one, of my classes.
The other was one of my best friends in high school. He took me to my first rock concert (Ted Nugent, 1977), introduced me to the then wonderful world of alcohol, and was just an all-around good guy to me.
I lost touch with him after high school, with the exception of the occasional letter (pre-email era), but found out he committed suicide about 1992. Later I heard the full story–he suffered from serious emotional issues, including depression, and shot himself on a friend’s front porch.
Two fellow students – one kid in high school and one guy in grad school. I wasn’t very close to either one.
Friend (not that close but same party drinking group) at uni, jumped off railings from height. We all assumed it was drunken accident whilst walking on railings. Turns out there was a note, we never really found out why and could not understand why.
Employee - he worked rotating to various locations worldwide. He was only in one place for a short while before moving on to fill the next temporary slot. Excellent technical skills, good with clients but never wanted to stay in one place for long. Hung himself, turned out according to his family (no wife or kids) that he had been suffering from depression for many years.
Well ok, but how about this guy: Shortly after being diagnosed, he decided he wanted to drinking himself to death. And that’s exactly what he did. Does that qualify as a suicide?
That reminds me of another. A very close friend of my dad’s died in a motorcycle crash on the way home from a NYE party we were all at when I was a kid. Just sometime within the last year or two, I found out there was a note.
Yeah, it is also very hard to come up with a definition of suicide that everyone agrees with. In some view points, smoking or excessive drinking or over eating could be considered suicide, although very slow. For the purpose of this poll, I am intending a single act. Choosing to stop eating seems like it fits the single act criteria though. Choosing to drink yourself to death, could work as well, depending on the circumstances. Like if you drink 1 drink a day, that’s probably not suicide, but drinking till you pass out, then waking up and drinking until you pass out again, that would be more like a suicide, imho.
A good friend of ours. She and her husband were members of our gourmet club.
She had multiple sclerosis, and could not bear to live any more. She decided to end it while she could still swallow on her own.
Regards,
Shodan
Um,…do deaths that you’ve made look like a suicide count?
Zero (that I know of). I’m 54, if it matters.
I wouldn’t count terminally seriously ill as a regular sucide. Yes, It IS killing yourself, but it’s not a Richard Cory/depressive thing. It’s more like " shit, I’m very terminally ill, the prognosis isn’t good…lots of major physical pain and suffering." There is a concrete understandable coherent reason behind the decision.
I went with Option 1 because I sense that may be closest to the truth of the ones available. I’m sure I can’t name all six of those people, but that’s a best guess.
I just recently lost one of my oldest friends (we met in 1963!) to about as borderline a definition of suicide as there is: he chose to go off dialysis and allow Nature to take its course. He had been on three-times-a-week treatments for at least three years (the last time I saw him was around this time of year 2007).
His brother alerted me by phone of his decision and I called him to spend half an hour with him that way.
There have been others I’ve known (or known about) who made a more dramatic exit. None that I can remember used the violent methods.
I’m sure that most of the people who commit suicide due to depression or other non-physical illnesses also think there’s a concrete reason behind their decision.
Anyway, I wouldn’t say ‘that’s not suicide’ just because I could understand the reasons behind the act.
None. I’m 35.
My ex-boyfriends roommate died of an overdose while overseas. A few people suspected suicide but it was ruled accidental. Other than him being my ex’s roommate, I hardly knew him.
A friend of my father’s killed his wife, and then dug his own grave and then killed himself. Yikes. But I never met the guy.
I’m 44 and I’ve known 2.
One was a friend who had an arranged suicide in the late 80’s. He was a very gifted nature photographer who travelled a lot for his work.
He had HIV (though we never knew that until afterwards…he chose not to tell most people) and when he began getting sick (in his case, renal failure) he called a mutual friend who was a nurse, came home from hiking the Apalacian trail, and took an overdose of morphine.
It came as a shock to us, when the mutual friend called to tell us (on my birthday, as it turned out). He’d never mentioned it, as I said, and always seemed so vibrantly healthy and active (which he was…he decided ahead of time he didn’t want to be “sick”, so he ended it when that began to occur).
The other was someone I knew less well but still fairly well (used to hang out now and then back in the 80’s and he briefly dated my sister-in-law). He was in special effects (did the “art direction”, meaning the overall atmosphere and look as well as things like body parts and gore, in the original Texas Chainsaw film…he had the old woman in her rocker in his attack:eek::D).
He was diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer and committed suicide by sitting in his car in the garage with the engine running. My sis-in-law told me the same thing had happened to his mother (cancer diagnosis followed by suicide).
I learned of this about 6 mths after the fact and I happened to be watching a dvd of TCM and watched the special features…thought, wonder how old Bob’s doing? Googled him and said, Hmmm, old Bob’s not doing so well after all. 