Well, 43, but young at heart. And like I said, I’m glad this is an option available to people, but I’ve never been the suicidal type myself. And I know that people feel enough emotional pain to think that suicide is the answer, but I’ve never understood that impulse. But they have nothing but sympathy and good wishes from me.
Abraham Lincoln, who himself wrestled with depression, said, “Most people are about as happy as they decide to be.”
I really don’t think I’m ever likely to go through with suicide, although there were times - especially in my late teens, wrestling with teenage angst and hormones all over the place - that I gave it more than a passing thought. I’m in my early 40s now and in good health, with a loving wife and three wonderful sons, so it’s hard for me to say. If I was utterly disabled or in constant pain which could not be managed through meds, I’d take another look at suicide. Until then, no.
I’ve read (UL?) that freezing to death is one of the more pleasant ways to go… you feel very cold, then warm, and then you just drift off to a neverending sleep. Don’t know if it’s true.
IIRC, during the Cold War, CIA operatives like U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers were issued “suicide pills” to prevent capture or to escape torture. Don’t know why those pills aren’t used nowadays for capital punishment and/or legal, doctor-assisted suicide.
As far as methods go, this old article is engaging: How NOT to commit suicide.
See…I’m very conflicted about this issue. While I think it should absolutely be people’s right to do whatever they want with themselves and I know that no one is advocating killing all the people who are a “burden” against their will, quotes like this:
…make me very sad, because I have a disease that’s “treatable but not curable” (fairly bad ulcerative colitis). It’s at a pretty good point of being controlled at the moment, but there have been many days in the past 2 and a half years when I was absolutely at the mercy of the disease, because I couldn’t be more than a few feet from the bathroom for more than 10 minutes at a time, making it very hard to do even ordinary things like going to the corner store, driving to work, etc. But still, even on the worst days, I never thought my life wasn’t worth living, and it makes me very sad to think that someone else might think it was. I completely realize that this issue is about a personal decision, and that someone else in my shoes might not have been so willing to trudge through and seek the light at the end of the tunnel, but I hope you can understand my feeling of dismay that people looking in at that one aspect of my life might think “wow, that’s unbearable!”
(I also realize that i don’t have any holy right to never be saddened by other people’s comments and opinions. Just throwing my two cents in here, no offense is meant to anyone.)
Bear in mind, meenie, that in a situation like that - what you might call a rational suicide, people will wait to see how bad a given situation is before they decide to call it a life. NinjaChick isn’t talking about offing herself the moment she gets a diagnosis. She said she’d start considering it. That’s a lot of miles away from actually deciding it’s the way to go.
A cousin of a cousin of mine found his mother hanging in the attic when he was 12. That was about 45 years ago, and that poor guy has been in a mental institution all these years.
Bah. You have any number of means at your disposal. However:
Seriously, dude, don’t be an eejit. You ain’t settled accounts with the six-fingered man yet.
Oh, what a topic.
I truly believe that a society that allows animals/pets to be “put to sleep” so they do not suffer yet does not allow the same right to people is wrong. Why is it right to kill “pussy” because she is in pain yet “Grandma” HAS to live out her pain?
I also KNOW first hand the effect that depressive suicde has on a family. Major Hint…NOT Good.
It seems like we should seem far more time saving people who could live and far more support on people who are going to die (that support meaning helping them to die) then we do on talking about others decisions.
Why do we want to watch someone die of cancer if they are in pain and miserable? Why not help them die?
Dude don’t you have children? If so even joking about such things is a bit mean.
I hope it becomes legal to increase the amount of pain relief above the dangerous level when safe levels of morphine no longer provide adiquate relief. I wouldn’t even see that as suicide. I also don’t see removal of life support as suicide, or anything other than a natural death.
Once again, it’s down to Republicans vs. Democrats.
It is wrong that I laughed so hard at this.
I did try suicide in my early 20s. Took a bunch of pills and lay down in my bed to die. Then I got scared and drove myself to the hospital, and I survived. I never knew the value of life until I learned the value of not having to swallow a tube of charcoal. Blech!
Your username is making me a tad confused…
Zombie!!!
I intend to be a burden. It’s the job of the young to take care of the old. That old people feel at all guilty about that is part of what makes our society f*cked up. I’m never going to send the message to anyone that it’s ok to expect old people to kill themselves just because they can’t get help or they feel guilty about being old. If that means driving everyone crazy at the nursing home, so be it.
But, pain. Unmanageable pain would do it. But I’d want to know for sure that I was adequately medicated first.
I’ve jokingly told my kids that if I were unable to function and unable to remember who they were, they are to take me outta this life with a ‘hotshot’.
Now this thread has reminded me, I will write it down so that I can MAKE SURE they do it. I don’t want to have my kids wipe my drool or my bum or be responsible for keeping me alive when the only ‘quality’ of my life is getting my bum wiped or my drool cleared, thankyou.
During the Terry Schaivo thing last year, my mother and I promised that we would hit each other over the head with bricks before we let the other get into that state. While we weren’t entirely serious about the bricks (at least, I hope it doesn’t come to that), we do agree that, if and when the time comes, we will respect the other’s wishes and be able to let go. We’re 42 and 65 right now, and both in good health at the moment, so it’s not an issue yet… but in 15 years or so, who knows what I’ll have to face as far as her health and my father’s are concerned? And I hope that whomever else I might have to deal with in the matter perhaps 40 years from now will do the same as far as respecting my decisions while I’m still able to make them.
Everyone who plans to off themselves due to disease, just try not to leave anyone off your list of people to say goodbye to. My grandmother killed herself two days before I was due to visit her for the first time in years (I was living far away). She was not in any pain yet, and in fact probably had years left to fight the cancer, but I guess she just decided it was time. And I’ve decided that she did not really love me very much. (And I’m not interested in hearing otherwise, thanks). So if you don’t mean to send that message, try not to jump, as it were, the gun.
Given what I’ve had to deal with emotionally as a result of the suicides of my grandmother and my ex, I would never kill myself unless there was no one left on earth who wanted me alive another day. (Which could very well include a situation where I was in such pain that no one who loved me would want me to go on living). I couldn’t bring myself to do it otherwise.
Yes, of course. I’m still faintly surprised that this is considered much of a taboo subject or a debateable question, let alone one supposedly fraught with deep, ethical questions. I think it’s a straightfoward issue.
If I arrive at a situation in my life where I cannot do the things I want to do and find fulfilling, either because of incapacity (mental or physical) or pain, then I will take the natural and common sense option of seeking to end my own life as efficiently as possible. I will try to do this as responsibly as I can, of course, with due regard for those I leave behind (which isn’t as much of an issue for me as it is for others… no kids for example). But yes, it’s one of the simplest decisions I could imagine making. I’m only interested in beling alive so long as being alive is interesting. I’m also not interested in being an aged fossil in a home somewhere, existing purely to exist.
I agree with you but I think that much of the population, especially in the United States, still holds on to at least the appearance of religion, and suicide is of course condemned by many of the world’s religions. I was raised in a conservative Protestant household and, while my immediate family disagree, I have some family members that do not even agree with withdrawing life support. I am probably the least religious of my immediate family and so far as I know am the only one that supports assisted suicide. If it were not for my experiences in healthcare I am not sure if I would either.
So in at least my experience it seems to be religious views that is stopping people from being allowed to end their lives with dignity. Of course religon seems to be the most common excuse for forcing your views on other people in general, but that is more suitable for discussion in GD or the Pit.