[Official Moderator Observation]While the topic of this thread is disturbing but allowable, discussions of how one may leave this mortal coil are not.[/Official Modeerator Observation]
Why should it be hard? You make it sound like a person is somehow bad or wrong to not want to live a suffering life.
Also, I’ve been witness to a couple people whose pain wasn’t bearable, even with morphine. Sometimes it’s just too much.
Dorothy, you stated in another thread that you are currently 14. I know you won’t really, really believe this, but an awful lot of us wanted very much to commit suicide when we were that age. The fact is, things change a lot. To blow your options now, unless you are in fact terminally ill and in constant pain (in which case you don’t really have any options to blow), is not a remotely smart move. Oh, christmas, I know you’ve heard this a million times before and won’t heed it any more from me than from anyone else, but the fact is, things will almost certainly change massively for you in the next even five, but certainly ten years. That sounds like a huge amount to fourteen, but compare it to the fifty to seventy years in which you have a good shot spend in a fair amount of enjoyment that are gone if you eliminate those five intervening years.
I went through suicidal times way more recently than that, and I’m fifty. I was convinced that given my innate character, there was simply no way that life could ever average out for me to better than somewhat “sub-blah.” Since I believe death to be a totally neutral state, that seemed to me to be a poor equation, but I didn’t act because I knew it would utterly devastate my parents. Oddly, I went through a change. It may have been circumstances, it may have been simple learning to deal better with the world given who and what I am as a person - I can’t say. What I can say is that I live a life these days that, while most people would hate it, suits me about as closely as is possible (given that I’m financially unable to retire), and I would describe myself as a very happy person.
To think there is no hope at fourteen is way more common than you probably realize. But you have to take the word of someone who’s been there in spades: it’s simply not true (unless you’re truly terminal and in pain). And, FWIW, you wouldn’t be viewed by most people as a tragic figure. You’d be viewed as someone too blind to see beyond the immediate difficulties to the possibilities beyond - to be brutally honest, just another idiot kid who overdramatized herself into making a stupid choice.
After watching two brothers die in microscopically small steps, I have no issues whatsoever in offing myself.
I will prepare my children somehow.
If both of my kids died, I’d be lunging toward death in any manner I found close at hand. If just one of them died, I guess I’d have to try to stick it out, though I really don’t know how it would be possible.
Ain’t that my point? It’s not hard. Offing oneself is easy if that’s the goal. And I was speaking only for myself since this is the IMHO forum. Everyone makes their own decision and I would never question anyone’s motive for leaving this mortal coil. Definitely agree that death is welcomed relief at times – one of the saddest and distressing things I’ve ever witnessed was a lung cancer victim on his deathbed.
I’ve known for years that there are times I would take my own life.
- Terminal illness with zero or near zero chance of recovery.
- Something that will cause my mind to go. alzheimers etc.
I’ve already talked to my SO about this and I would let him know it was going to happen. I wouldn’t be so cruel as to just leave my body to be found.
I had a rriend whos grandmother had alzheimers. She was old and was alone. She knew her brain was deteriorating and could plainly see where she would be next. She chose Kevorkian at a time of her own choosing. I dont feel I can say if she were right or wrong.
I helped my father die at home when he got sick. His death was MUCH easier for me than when his partner died (who had a drawn out death and died in the hospital after spending a week in a coma). With my father we got to spend the last day just talking and being together.
I got to say good bye to him.
If I get to the point where I’m dying anyway, and my life is going downhill fast, I would like to give the same to my loved ones.
My Grandfather, on my Mother’s side, did this when he was diagnosed with Early Onset Altzheimers, or something similar, in the early 1960s.
I don’t know how he accomplished it, as this was never discussed with me, & I don’t wanna cause Mom pain by raising it.
But, I realize that I’ve got Grandpa’s DNA in me, & it might happen to me as well.
I guess I’d wait until Mom & Dad were dead, if I could.
Ah, there’s the rub, isn’t it? My parents would entirely understand if I absolutely, irrefutably had a terminal and painful illness, or if I were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s while they were still alive and hung around until it was clearly I was seriously losing it. But suicide for reasons of grief or rational assessment that life was not worth living is an option I could never consider while my parents live, unless I could find a way to make it look like an accident or natural causes. Losing a child (ironic, since I’m 50) would be terrible, but I know that my mom in particular would be completely devastated if one of her children committed suicide - she would find a way to blame herself, and spend the remainder of her life in bleak unhappiness, flailing herself with it. She’s 85, but we’re a long-lived family: she could easily have another ten years.
Fortunately, I haven’t the faintest desire to kill myself at this point anyway. Odd, because there have been times in my life (and not so very long ago) that I truly felt there was no hope that things would ever improve because of my own internal flaws Iespecially ironic, because I’m a very cheerful, smiley person). But some time in the past ten years or so, life and I seem to have negotiated a peace, and I’m very happy now.
I went through all the training to become a hospice volunteer, so I later used my connections there when I had to come up with a term paper topic when I took my pharmacy tech. certificate.
What I found out was that terminally ill patients are not routinely treated for depression. Some doctors do take it into consideration and include it in with their therapy, but most don’t . The most likely reason I could find is that effective treatment for depression consists of both drug and cognitive therapy. And the most common form of cognitive therapy in our society is the support group. Although most mental health practicioners have a list of support groups in their rolodexes, and a lot of the big specialists (like the big city cancer centers) even host these groups onsite, the average terminally ill patient is in the dark.
But since Oregon allows doctor-assisted suicide, I was able to get statistics to answer my question: given the chance to openly kill themselves, would terminal patients do so if they’d also received treatment for depression. The answer: no.
Working in a state that didn’t have assisted suicide, and, sadly, offered little depression therapy to patients, my own anecdotal evidence still supported this. As a hospice worker, I’ve seen how people with extreme physical pain or diminished capacity will hang on for the sake of cherished connections with friends and family members. As a lot of you who’ve experienced both will agree: *depression is much more unbearable, and ultimately more deadly than physical pain. * Take it out of the equation and your choices enlarge. Don;t get me wrong: I agree we should have the option of suicide, but I hope you will make that choice uninfluenced by an advanced seretonin imbalance.
There was one big guy who’d always told his family that he’d end it (macho-style) with a 38 if he was ever diagnosed as terminal, but who in the actual event hung in there as long as he could. He was a pretty tough guy, after all. Some lives, upon sellf-examination, are still worth living even if you have to crap into paper pants. It seems people tend to die when the fight is actually over, not when its outcome is announced beforehand.
Yeah, I’d do it.
Hell, I’d do it right now if I had the means for a “sure thing” at my immediate disposal.
I already have a ‘living will’. I have access to a relative who has an MD in Oregon, should it get bad medically. But, blow out my brains cause I lost a job or some other sad thing? Not when I have kids who’d be in therapy for life over it.
What would I do to keep my kids from being screwed up for life? I’d suck it up and live, that’s what I’d do.
Yep. Having a suicidal parent is awful.
Don’t do it, Inigo.
Don’t.
I’d miss you.
You are Inigo Montoya. You have threatened to kill my friend. Prepare not to die.
I fully support the law in Oregon that allows doctor-assisted suicide for extreme, no cure likely diseases and injuries. I just don’t think I would ever let it apply to me. But then again, I’m young(ish) and in good health. It’s hard to imagine how I’d feel forty+ years older with some kind of terminal condition.
As for suicide in other cases (as in having short-term emotional/money/relationship problems), I could never understand why people feel the need to end their lives when it would be easier to end the life of the people actually responsible for causing the problem(s) in the first place. Guess you could say I’m more of a homicidal than suicidal bent.
You seem VERY young, or perhaps just very fortunately free of the kinds of self-reflection that can lead you to believe that you carry the source of the unhappiness around in yourself, and that it is ineradicable. At that point, you have two choices: you can find a way to change the part of you that is causing the problem(s), or you can find a way to come to terms with things so that it is no longer a problem. The reason the latter is possible is because happiness is mostly a function of expectation vs. reality. e. g. you aren’t unhappy if one person happens to sleep with another unless you expect exclusive fidelity from that person. (Yes, that’s a gross oversimplification. It’s an illustration, for Pete’s sake!)
For many, even most of us, the problems aren’t external, and there isn’t a person or persons whose life (ves) could be ended in order to restore peace and happiness to you. In these cases, homicide would provide nothing but some momentary satisfaction (I’m sure we all have our little Better Off Dead lists 
).
Goddamn if you didn’t hit the nail square on the head with that one!
When I was in college & reading the Tao Te Ching and similar things, I was perplexed by the references to releasing expectations. It seemed like giving up, which sounded like depression itself & not its cure.
Both of my particularly suicidal relatives (my Mom and MIL) suffer from a big case of Overinflated Expectations. It’s particularly difficult to forgive oneself.
A few years back, Newsweek had a big spread on happiness, and IIRC, the upshot was that most people have an approximate base level of happiness. External events such as personal loss will throw someone off the base for a period, but generally s/he will return to baseline within a year or so. That doesn’t mean the loss isn’t painful any more, just that the overall level of happiness is roughly what is normally is.
I think this tends to be quite true, but I also truly think you can help unhappiness by adusting attitude so that expectations more closely match reality. Unfortunately, some of those expectations are rooted *very * deep.