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The question arises from my own son's suicide. Not all suicides are driven by the same force I should think. Some suffer depression, some suffer extreme anxiety. But is there a common driving force or are there several unrelated or perhaps related driving forces?
It has always struck me as extreme when someone jumps of a high building. What anguish did they suffer to make them take that step? Why not just take an easy and painless measure? Would someone choose to end their life simply because life sucks and they see no hope for improvement? I'm still trying to understand the enormity of it. I think I understand my son's case but not what triggered it at the critical time (not fully anyway).
I think that serious depression which leads to suicide is like being water boarded. You're feel like you're drowning. You think everyone can see you're drowning. You think you're screaming out for help but no one hears it over the noise of the water. Everyone else thinks you're just walking through a rainstorm. They're trying to lend you their umbrella and they can't see why you're not using it. What good is an umbrella when you're drowning?
Neither side can see the other and both sides are left wondering how this all happened. One before the suicide, the others after.
Despite how hard I have been on one of your threads, I am sympathetic to what you must be experiencing.
I don't think there's one answer for your question, but I hope this link helps you understand.
I don't know. If you're gonna give up on life then fair enough, but why do people always go right to killing themselves? Why not just become a smack addict or something? Might as well have some fun if you're gonna throw in the towel.
That's how I would see it -- the drugs would give you that fake euphoria at least. I could see becoming a skid row bum because they still get to see another day.
And then there are the people who have real physical pain and little hope who fight to live to the very end.
I have been all for legalized euthanasia. Perhaps a company could open a private chain of them. Having it done in a clean environment with proper disposal of the bodies would be a lot better than the current (often messy) methods people use for suicide. Of course we should try to provide mental health to such people, but I feel if someone legitimate feels that they can't handle life then this option exists.
I can understand someone who is terminally ill and in serious pain deciding to speed things up -- but not someone younger or in good health.
If life gets boring, then you have to do something to make it interesting. I think staying in the same place with the same people might weigh you down, but at least you have to try something different.
For example if you're in a small town where you just don't feel like you belong, then you have nothing to lose by just heading to somewhere else. If you're already done with life -- then at least you'd have nothing to lose by trying something very radically different.
On the plus side of suicide, is it gives others the courage to do it, when that time arrives, when all hope dissipates. I give thanks to a great friend, many years ago, who killed himself, as he will give me the courage to do it some day, when that time arrives, except in a different fashion. I'm increasingly leaning towards suicide by car at a high rate of speed into a bridge abutment, in a rental car reputed to be the worst car to survive the crash test!
Most people don't realize the potential for their own suicides some day. One-by-one setbacks one can deal with, but what happens when the setbacks come in multiples? Hasn't happened to me yet, but with a recent painful health setback, the thought was scary: What if some additional setbacks landed on top of this one, simultaneously?
When reason and logic flies out the window, which can happen to any of us, anything can happen!
And let's not forget the "straws that break the camel's back"! These suicides usually bewilder the survivor's, even bring a little laughter at times. They didn't know: the pile kept growing higher and higher and higher and that one little straw was all it took!
"I just can't believe this! He went to go to work one morning and, merely facing a flat tire, he killed himself!"
The realization that life is objectively meaningless and the (however skewed) assessment that your own subjective reality is unlikely to improve.
In my opinion it's the best way to go. Assuming you're of a certain intelligence--it'd be a bit sloppy if it became common. The average idiot should probably just live out the entirety of his or her 80-year biological prison term with the dreams of something better never fading.
Thank you all for your thoughts and for your sympathies too.
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Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two
Thanks. That is one aspect of depression that I was thinking of. But depression can be intensely painful too. I have experienced both types but not painful enough to want to give up. In the beginning I wanted to experience the fullness of life. At the end I had something to live for - those who needed me! Plus I still wanted to experience the fullness of life again - and still do. As bad as I have felt I have always sought the solution and I found one in the right medication but that put me into the "Hyperbole and a Half:" state. Then my son died. I felt depression setting in so I doubled my medication. That helped me for sure but by now I feel pretty flat. And yet, I see a light at the end of the tunnel. That's me. I'm only one in how many cases that are probably very different.
I don't know whether my son suffered depression, anxiety or bipolar or something else. Well, I know he had anxiety and was hyper sensitive. He did take the drug route - self medication is what they call it. I could not tell when he was high on cannabis. Nor could I tell when he was drunk. He seemed normal at those times. In the last moments I saw him he seemed very well but he did flip the other way after he had left me, so his mother tells me. He described it as a 'monster inside him' that he had to fight to keep down.
I accept that it was a momentary feeling of intense despair that made him do it but he had planned for that eventuality which is why he had a hose in his car. I wondered whether he thought he had lost his wallet and that tripped him over. I don't know because his wallet did turn up in his car so was probably not that. There would have been a number of factors playing out at the time and this can be seen from his Facebook comments.
And yes, there are those if only I had done this or that and so on. If only I had not been depressed I might well have been alert enough to prevent it. But I was depressed and was not alert.
This is going to lead to another question eventually and that is what can we or I do to prevent this type of tragedy? I don't mean forcing suicidal people to live against their will and in their pain but preventing the pain in the first place! But that's still to come. Right now I'm trying to understand the different motivations for suicide.
I once read that any number of suicides get very exhilarated, giddy, very happy in the days approaching their suicide, because a decision was made, and any major decision in your life generates energy, exhilaration.
How many times do hear it? I just saw him yesterday and I've never seen him so happy!
I'll be one of them! I'll fool everybody! "What a shock! I was so used to seeing him moody, depressed, and seeing him so happy, for a change, I'm puzzled, completely puzzled why he did this!!"
I can understand someone who is terminally ill and in serious pain deciding to speed things up -- but not someone younger or in good health.
If life gets boring, then you have to do something to make it interesting. I think staying in the same place with the same people might weigh you down, but at least you have to try something different.
For example if you're in a small town where you just don't feel like you belong, then you have nothing to lose by just heading to somewhere else. If you're already done with life -- then at least you'd have nothing to lose by trying something very radically different.
I see your point. The problem is how? What if you're already depressed and hardly have the strength to get through a day let alone take on a massive task like moving to a new town. You don't have a job, you don't have a car, you don't have supportive friends or family to help you move. You can't rent a place in the new town because you have no job and most landlords won't rent to unemployed people. You don't have the money for first and last months rents and security deposits.
Easy to say, just leave and start over somewhere else, but starting over somewhere else is very hard if you have few resources, little energy, and very little hope.
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