Suicide
 

So I had a conversation with some of my friends lately about people who commit suicide. They were saying how bad they feel for people who commit suicide and how sorry they are for them. I personally dont feel sorry for people who commit suicide and was wondering how you guys felt about it? My reasoning is that they killed themselves, its not like anyone did it to them. Dont get me wrong, I think it is a terrible thing to happen.. and would certainly try to help anyone who was contemplating suicide.... but I just dont feel sorry for them when they actually do it. My friends argument is that its not up to them, and there are other factors such as chemical inbalances etc...

What are your thoughts?

I think we covered this pretty extensively in this post about the guy who parked his truck on the tracks of a train carrying Hal's mom.
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=82032

Hal, how is she, by the way?

Personally, I feel sorry for one who is so full of anguish & feels tortured as to take their life. I have been very very close to it myself & I don't think people who commit suicide are cowards, or selfish. I think of it as more of euthenasia, where you are trying to find a way to stop the madness.
And yes, there are many diseases & chemical imbalances of the brain. At times I have no control over my 'demons' and life can be hell. And truth be known, if I succeeded in taking my life I wouldn't want anyone to feel sorry for me, but to know that I dealt with the pain the best way I could, that I stopped it. (Don't take this as that I'm suicidal, I'm under treatment & its working very well, except a tolerable side effect).
Of course the post warrrreagl is referring to is different in that the man didn't care about the other lives he was taking as he tried to take his own. I think thats a slightly different argument.

Suicide is not something you do to yourself, rather it's something you do to your family and friends as they are ones left to suffer.

Killing yourself to end your suffering just transfers your pain to those who loved you, and that is the height of selfishness.

Yes I am speaking from experience, and no I will not forgive him.

personally i've tried to kill myself twice...i think it just gets to a point where you dont feel you have anywhere to turn and noplace to express your feelings emotion...if you talk to people they act embarissed ..i think mostly because almost everyone has thought about it at some point and wont admit it and feels ashamed that someone else can speak openly about it...it might be chemical whatever but when your that depressed its not like your thinking "okay well i shoudnt cut mywrist because its just a chemical thing and itll just go away on its own" i think every person has pain limit and once you pass that limit... looking back i think its a stupid choice and i'm glad i'm here because i'm able to enjoy life and the people around me...i feel sorry for anyone going thru that much pain

I feel that demanding someone live a life that they no longer want to is the height of selfishness. If they are truly in a situation they cannot stand, have no joy and no hope why would you want them to continue suffering? If there's truly no other way out, I see no problem with it.

And yes, I am very close to someone who attempted it and know others who have probably considered it very seriously.

If they feel it is their only choice, it is their decision as far as I am concerned. I'll let them live their life (or end it) as they see fit and hope others would give me the same respect. I'd take the loss of a loved one very badly, yes, but not to the point where I would never forgive someone for determining their own fate.

Just some thoughts.

I do feel that it is an unfortunate thing, but I have never wanted to die, by my hand or anyone else's so I have a bit of trouble understanding it.

Having attempted once, a couple of years back, I sympathize with anybody who feels like they need to end their life. When there's massive amounts of pain in life and you don't know how to deal with any, much less all of them, it seems like the best way out.

That being said, if you do, you're a fool. Life, in any respect, under any circumstances, is better than death. With life one has the hope of changing their life, the ability to move away from pain, even if a path isn't readily apparent. I cannot, at the moment of writing this, concieve of a situation where it is better to die than to be alive.

In the end, why I drove myself to the hospital. Unless your purpose is to compound the pain of others around you, suicide is something you would live (if you were living) to regret. If anybody has grown to know and care for you, in any capacity, then the choice is no longer completely yours to decide.

I wish I could stress just how much I want to say it's the wrong way to go, and that by saying so, nobody would...

Acknowledging that suicide is selfish and even being angry about it doesn't preclude feeling sorry for the person who did it (or attempted it). You can hold both emotions in your head at once, you know.

i view suicide as a personal decision. sometimes i think it is selfish and cowardly, but not always. someone committing suicide rather than going through a fatal disease--i understand and am sympathetic. someone who chooses to do it because they have a pile of debt and no job or they don't want to go to jail for a crime they committed, that's cowardly imo. my emotional response depends on why they do it.

losing someone you care about is terrible, but that is a part of life. being angry at someone for dying (whatever the cause) serves no purpose in my life. i may be angry that it happened, but mostly, i think i'd be saddened that they couldn't talk to me about what they were going through--or that i couldn't help them.

but like others, i always feel sorry for someone who is suffering so much that they feel ending their life is the only way to end their pain. often suicide attempts are a cry for help but not always. a friend of mine once treated a patient that attempted suicide by putting a gun in his mouth. he blew off the top of his head, but he lived. after he was discharged from the hospital, he went home and took a claw hammer to his newly bandaged skull and hit himself repeatedly--he didn't survive that one. for whatever reasons, this man wanted to die. his initial attempt is one many people would consider relatively pain free (assuming it works) but the second? that one had to have hurt like hell. imo, that isn't a cry for help, that is a very strong desire to die.

Im quite suprised by the number of people in this thread who have attempted suicide. It makes me wonder what the percentage is of people who have tried. Anyone know? Im also interested in age percentage etc.

ps. how did you guys try to commit suicide, if its personal i understand.

hold a lot of anger over the suicide of an "friend" who killed himself a few years back, leaving a young wife and child... Asshole is what he's referred to as... but I digress)

If a person is going to commit suicide, they before doing so, they need to buy a coffin and perform their final act in the coffin, it'd be better if they have already dug a hole about 6 feet deep and put the coffin in the hole... and then they can jump in the coffin and do the deed...

It's not fair to the person who has to live with discovering the body, or who has to live with the what if's of their own actions in this person's death. Do i feel sorry for a person who commits suicide? Nope -- they are not worthy of pity... those that they leave behind are the ones deserving of the sympathy.

Who said anything about wanting them to live a life they no longer want? If that's the problem, then they have a responsibility to themselves to change their life. We all owe it to ourselves and those around us to treat our life as something valuable and worthwhile.

I completely agree with maleficent here. If you do decide to do this, be kind enough to take care of all the details beforehand. My sympathy goes to those he/she leaves behind.

I think you have a pretty close-minded view of suicide "victims". For the most part they have been pushed by the limits of their environmental factors whether it be their family, job, school, mental capacity, activities out-side of school, ect...It isn't natural for any species to really committ suicide, especially human beings, unless their is some chemical imbalance or just have been pushed to the limits.

I'm going to say this and I better not get bashed for it. I find suicide to be a very beautiful thing. Sure some will call it selfish and it makes others sad but I guess the idea of taking your life on your own terms, on your own time, being in control of destiny (sorta) makes it beautiful to me. Oh and before you bash, I've had a friend kill herself.. so spare me.

Its the most selfish thing a person can do. Yes, there obviously was something going on that thier wires were crossed, stress or chemical imbalance....yes, you can say you have control over your destiny, but that only cuts it for me when the person is unable survive whatever illness has afflicted them. Otherwise, it leaves way too much pain for those who are left to wonder why

i am reminded of a quote from a dar williams song:

i Stopped the tide, froze it up from inside, and it felt like a winter machine
That you go through and then, you catch your breath and winter starts again,
And everyone else is spring bound. and when I chose to live, there was no joy,
It’s just a line I crossed, it wasn’t worth the pain my death would cost, so i
Was not lost or found.

Suicide is changing their life. It may not be the only option, but it is one. I'd also state that one is only able to judge their own life as valuable and worthwhile, we cannot make that assumption for others as we'll never truly know.

Suicide isn't changing their life, it's ending it. That's like saying life isn't complete without death, when death is makes life incomplete.

You say you wouldn't want somebody forcing you to live a life you no longer wanted, but by killing yourself you force others to change their lives to deal with that. And, in many cases, that change is exceptionally negative, sometimes causing others to end their lives as well.

I don't think it's a necessarily valid statement to say that only the person contemplating suicide is suitable to judge their own life as valuable. There's a multitude of things that most people can't see about their own lives because they are simply too close to the subject.

I can actually see where you're coming from here. And, in a dark kind of way, it is actually fairly beautiful. But I still think that more beautiful things, light and dark, can be created in a person's life if it is lengthened by not ending it yourself.

Selfish? I have no family, poor health, no work, no money, no social life.
If I lose my apartment and am freezing on the street, I'm not going to worry about what YOU think of my life or values. I just might opt out.

It's selfish because unless you are planning on vaporizing yourself and just going up in a puff of smoke... someone has to discover your body... someone has to live with that...

I feel sorry for all the lives of the people that they seriously hurt and sometimes destroy by doing so. I have little sympathy for those who choose to take their own lives, they are giving up, and leaving a tragedy in their wake. It's pathetic, it’s selfish, it’s cowardice, it’s murder.

Somehow I feel this is going to be misinterpreted, but...

So the end does not equal change? I fail to see how that makes sense. John was alive, now he's dead. His situation has changed. For better or for worse is a value judgement, of course. But it is a change. And yes, a life isn't complete until that life is over. Otherwise it's a work in progress. I would have thought this was obvious.

What I'm trying to say about the selfish aspect is that wanting (expecting, demanding) someone to stay alive (or die, or change jobs, or whatever) for your benefit (avoidance of pain, pleasure, etc.) is selfish. Jane telling John to stay alive just because Jane doesn't want to feel bad is selfish of Jane.

If a person has no say over what happens to their own body, what then could they have any control over?

Not to be a jackass, but what exactly does "attempted suicide" mean? Does it mean you tried killing yourself and failed, or does it mean you have contemplated it but never went through with it physically (I find it hard to believe that so many people have actually physically tried ending their own life)? If the former, what is so difficult about killing oneself that one actually manages to fail? Is it because part of the person still wants to be alive and they don't necessarily go through with suicide at full force knowing they are guaranteed death, but rather use a method of suicide in which the chances of death are not certain? Maybe a cry for attention? I've always found it odd that someone actually fails at killing themselves, and if it's for attention, surely there are alternate ways of receiving it.

In short, you're right; the end does equal change. But more importantly it means the end of the ability to change and/or better one's situation. "John was alive, now he's dead" leads to "John's dead, now he's dead." It's giving up, and, while that's something I can forgive, it'll be a long and uneasy trip to get there.

And life is necessarily incomplete, nobody can experience everything. But to cut one's life short is to refuse to experience anything else, making life even more incomplete. I don't think a life should be defined by death. Rather, the death should be defined by a person's life, and thus put off for as long as possible.

Again, you're right; people do ultimately have the final say in what happens. But, in the case of somebody contemplating suicide, I don't know that they should.

I used to make jokes about that. It's really not that hard for somebody to kill themselves if they are really determined to do it. And while sometimes it is just "a cry for help," that is certainly not always the case. For example, after a short period of nearly fifteen different things happening to me at once, I decided to cut my own neck and get away from it. Laying there, bleeding profusely, I realized I didn't have a right to inflict this on other people, regardless of how I felt. Mine was only an attempted suicide because I drove to the hospital with one hand and a rag covering the wound. (Not an easy thing to do while driving a stick... :rolleyes: )

Mostly now I'm embarassed about it... I almost emotionally maimed all my loved ones. And if I had done that and somehow lived, that would be the hardest thing to live with.

I strongly believe I never would kill my self, but with the depression untreated the thoughts of it never cease. I have kids & a family & that keeps me going. I would never, never want to hurt my kids. That doesn't mean I appreciate having the thoughts of wanting to die though. It's an awful thing to go through.

I once took a handful of painkillers in an attempt to kill myself, without realising they were laced with a mild poison to prevent those kinds of suicide. So instead of massive kidney failure I threw up for a few days. That wasn't the best weekend ever.

So. Like a lot of people in this thread, I've tried to kill myself, and I'm constantly thinking about killing myself, but I'm still alive and typing. It's become more of a philosophy than something I'd actually do now. I always had The Plan, to move away from everyone and slowly lose touch so I could kill myself without hurting anyone. Because if a close friend commits suicide, it really does hurt even though it's what they wanted to do. If some asshole you haven't spoken to in a few years commits suicide, it's no biggy.

I wouldn't ever feel sorry for someone who tries to kick the bucket, if it's like the recent Hunter Thompson suicide - he did it because he'd lead a full life, he'd had his fill, he wanted to die the place and time and way he chose. That's the attitude I have to suicide - if I ever reach the point where I'm completely satisfied and wouldn't hurt people I'd top myself.

If it's someone trying to commit suicide because their life has reached rock bottom, then it's probably better they kill themselves than to stay alive in misery just to keep their friends from grief. Their friends would be constantly worrying about them, rather than being able to properly grieve, it's unfair to everyone.

Other than euthanasia I think suicide is almost always done for the wrong reasons, as a permanent solution to a temporary problem. If you think your life is so terrible as to end it I challenge you to think of people who have been through much worse and made the more than human decision to live. Think of survivors of Nazi concentration camps or of cancer survivors. No cause of we think of as suffering in our lives today can be worth yours. Having said that, I think that if you really want to kill yourself you have every right to do so. Like Coppertop said:

...and saying that his death is an inconvenience to you isn't selfish?

I can see why people say that you should think of your family and friends, etc... but if they want to hang onto your memory as though you'd not MEANT to die in the first place, and put blame on you for making them feel that way, then that's their beef, their selfish thoughts.

I'll be the first person to try and talk someone down, if only because sometimes the thoughts that preclude a suicide attempt are the result of a temporary chemical imbalance- a temporary insanity, if you will- and i'm always there to help if there's something to be helped... but in the end, it's your life- you do with it what you want.

But what about when you consider how it would affect your family and you realize they would be better off if you killed yourself?

Which is going to more negatively affect a family:

a slow, prolonged, expensive death of cancer.

a quick, painless, "accidental" death that provides your family with insurance.

I've thought about it, and how, if made to look like an accident say while driving off a cliff, could result in money for my family. Is it really selfish to want them to be taken care of?

The other option is to die slowly. Have them watch you every day as you get weaker. Have them take care of you when you can no longer clean yourself. My dad did that to us. I know he hated it, and I hated having to see it. Instead of driving his motorcycle into a tree he held on for two years. Two years that cost us a ridiculous amount of money and made my mother lose her house. Now she lives one step up from a trailer park. Do I wish my dad had killed himself? I don't know. But I do know that I'm not selfish enough to hang on while I drain my own and and my family's bank accounts. My life isn't worth that much.

It's not always selfish. Sometimes it's doing the most considerate thing for others that you can do under the circumstances.

I think it is easy to distinguish those who have felt the need/or dealt with those that felt the need to end it all and those on this board who have not. I have never tried it, but have certainly had a very real desire to and dealt with SO who attempted it several times. No it wasn't a cry for help. They truly wanted to die. At one point I had to decide to call the ambulance or go ahead and let them go. Suicide is a very complicated screw up in the brain and can not be understood by someone thinking logically. Just don't judge too harshly.

I completely agree with FloydianOne....i too would ofcourse try to help somebody out who is even thinking about it or trying to do it...i wouldn't even think twice about it....but the ones that do follow through with it....i see them as cowards....it's like they didn't even try to do anything about it even if they did....the whole suicide thing just doesn't make sense to me....if you are that messed up....that is why they have doctors for that sort of thing....it may sound harsh....but that's how i feel about it

I have no sympathy for them. I've been one of the ones left behind to many times now, and that has been beaten out of me. It is a cowards way. And it is just a nasty thing to do to the people left behind. The amount of pain left in the wake of and act like that is just amazing.

To want to actually end your life , you must be in so much pain that I dont think anyone should be angry at them.
Is it selfish? aren't we all selfish when we're in pain. When your pain's so bad that slitting your wrists feels better than staying alive then who are we to judge. Unless you've been in such a place then you can't judge them.
Nobody asked to be born, we didn't sign an agreement to stay the course no matter what!
I suffer from depression, anxiety and just a basic feeling of helplessness in coping with life. But I have 2 children so i probably will never kill myself.But I think about it constantly and some days the pain of just having to go through another day is torture.
Some days I regret having children because it means I can never give up.

I dont think people who commit suicide should be hated , I think no one can judge someone else on their life.You don't have to live their life so you have no idea if killing themselves is justified.

It hurts. It's something that a lot of people still on this earth don't and can't understand. We're not meant to. Those who can explain what kind of feelings (pain) or thoughts it takes have taken their own life; unable to explain because they are dead. Those on the other side all know why, some may even wish they hadn't...and others are satisfied that they did.

I could never go as far as to end my own life, I'm too anal to leave the details in others hands - my ghost would be standing by, bitching constantly, about the way everyone was doing things wrong or half-assed; I could never leave my ferrets, they love and depend on me so much...on a deeper note, I love the people in my life and I have less than 13 years to go before I get to see my son, again, and I've gone this far, why give up now?

My general answer is usually that I'm way too curious as to what tomorrow brings and I have a deep inner knowledge that tomorrow will be better than the present day. It's sad to think that there are others out there that aren't intuned to themselves well-enough to know this or through their "pain" have forgotten this.

Killing yourself goes against your most basic and most powerful instinct as a human bieng, that of survival. It is arguably an inhumane act, it is not a desicion that should be tolerated as a pesonal choice. Someone contemplating suicide is in need of help not validation - it is NOT selfish to want someone close to you to stay alive, although a person has the right to do what they chose with their body, the desicion to end their life is an indication of mental illness- and it is not selfish to want to help those you love.

To actually want to take their own life, someone has to be in such a bad state of mind or coping with such incredible pain that ending it can be considered an option. It can sometimes seem almost better than having to cope with something. People who consider it face a choice: end it all and risk hurting people close to them, or learn to cope with something so bad it made them consider suicide.

I don't think we should be angry with people who kill themselves, I doubt any of them have wanted to hurt the people they love, they have just made a choice to avoid something so painful. People don't kill themselves without having a good enough reason.

I have tried to kill myself before, I dont remember much of that day just little flashes. I remember how much i hurt and how much i wanted out, out of everything. Nothing seemed to go right, I was in an abusive controling relationship, everything i tried didnt get me out, he stalked me day and night, there was no escape. At least i didnt hink there was any other way out. When I woke up the next morning I was so happy I was alive, but I still wasnt free. The pain of not dieing was almost worse than the pain i was in before. i thought of my parents and my family and friends I would have left behind and i i realized that i didnt want to die. so i just dealt with everything and when the relationship finally ended he tried to kill me. That was over 5 years ago. Ever since then I have been fighting depression anxiety phobeas.here lately ive been feeling the sme trapped feeling . So many things have happened in my life in the past year. The only thing that holds me is my family and friend. I never want to hurt them, but I dont like feeling like this all the time.
I dont blame anyone who kills themself if they are in pain, but just remember that if they do survive their attempt they most likely will regret it and grab life with both hands, even for a little while. I know i did and still do kinda.

I suffer from depression on a daily basis. Yes, I'm taking medication for it. Yes, it dulls the desire to kill myself. Could I kill myself? I don't know, maybe. My depression/manic-depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in my brain..."Insane in the membrane, insane in the brain!"

I get overcome with deep sadness quite frequently and think about ending my life. I don't because it'll screw up my wife and kids. Other folks don't have that net to fall back on. Do I feel sorry for people who kill themselves? HELL YES! A lot of it is out of their control. Yes, they should seek help, yes they should talk to someone, yes they should get on meds, but, it doesn't always work. I'm a firm believer that I killed myself in my previous life. I'm here to suck it up and make it through. I don't know if I'll be able to do that, but, it's my assignment in this life, to make it through. People who kill themselves are cheating themselves and the others around them from a full life. I feel sorry for them.

I've had a family member who committed suicide and was gracious enough to take his wife with him. The irony is that 2 years prior (Thanksgiving dinner to be precise), I remember him saying that anyone who committs suicide is a selfish SOB. I forget what the discussion was about, but I am haunted by those words he spoke that day.

And I agree still agree with those word he spoke.