What's so wrong with suicide?

Suicide isn’t objectively wrong. But it can be selfish. You’ve already mentioned the reasons why.

But there are definitely times where it may be the best option…and it may actually be done so that the family can end their relationship with the person committing suicide in a dignified and loving way.

It isn’t weak. I do think it is a bit selfish. I’ve lost entirely too many people to suicide over the years. One of them very recently.
It is devastating. It leaves your loved ones full of regret, anguish, searching for something else they could have said or done to make you see that our lives are better with you in them. It is an agonizing way to lose someone.

However, I do support suicide or assisted suicide for those with terminal illnesses.

My thoughts are that if an individuals pain is so great that they choose to die instead of face it, who the hell am I to judge? I do not find it selfish in the least. I think that to say it is a selfish act is selfish to say.

The biggest problem with suicide, in my opinion, is that you can’t change your mind once you’ve done it, you can’t do any of the things you might be able to do to try and recover from a bad choice or the wrong choice. You don’t have any of the options you might have when you make any of the other bad judgments or wrong decisions that we all make in the course of our lives. Suicide. Game over. The End.

@mustve_misplaced_lifes_map Welcome to Fluther.

I’d read somewhere in the past that many people who had failed to suicide had said they had changed their minds at the-point-of-no-return. Even the thought of suicide in these cases was a sign of mental illness, where if the mental problems (whatever they may’ve been) were addressed the suicidal thoughts would likely have gone away.

I used to have suicidal thoughts from time to time as my stress levels were often beyond what I thought I could handle. In every case, though, I always thought about those who would be left behind and the effect my suicide would’ve had on them. That was enough for me to ditch the idea. It’s at these times that I should’ve screamed a big, “Help!” but didn’t.

Suicide really does exist in people’s heads, in that, if they would only open up and say how they feel about things, then they might get relief.

But, for men especially, this can be difficult due to society’s stereotypes.

Today, I am way past these black thoughts, and in no small way due to my new wife. We will celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary on Jan 20,2001, or as I say, 2001,2011!

The problem is that it is irreversible and based on survivor-interviews quite often (over 20%) a result of very poor contemplation under influence of a psychological / psychiatric illness.

From an objective point of view, though, I cannot promise anyone that their live will be overall better off, if they continue to live.

My opinion: live beats death anytime, any way. For that one needs to value live positively, though.

@mustve_misplaced_lifes_map wouldn’t it be horrible if you braved all your fears about dying, pushed yourself into something irreversible, and——

1. almost died but instead damaged yourself so badly you would spend the rest of your life in a back ward somewhere with others who have done the same thing with the same results, a gork, or unable to speak, or every bone in your body crushed, and you would be alive to be repudiated by your hurt and angry and revolted former loved ones to spend the rest of your life with others who have done the same thing?

or, 2. You die but you do not lose consciousness, or leave this place, but instead continue on as a helpless, voiceless, actionless ghost who can see everyone else you knew trying to get something out of life, and forgetting about you.

@Andreas

Today, I am way past these black thoughts, and in no small way due to my new wife. We will celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary on Jan 20,2001, or as I say, 2001,2011!

There’s a reason to live right there, a reason why it’s “really always better to be living,” because you never know what’s coming up around the next corner, you never know when it’s all going to take a turn for the better. I’ve been through a whole lot of crap in my life too but I’ve never completely given up hope, why, even if I’ve thought about it, I’ve known suicide isn’t the right choice. Because suicide ends any and every chance you might have for a better life. It closes off all hope and possibility; it closes off any chance of love and redemption. And hope, possibility, love and redemption are some of the greatest things life has to offer any of us.

@whitenoise If you live your whole life being horribly depressed, no amount of medical terms makes that anything but your normal. And “very poor contemplation” doesn’t sound quite like a study, I feel like you’re leaving something out. Kinda like this by the time it gets to local news.

Its the most horrible you can do! Its not your choice whether its the end of your life or not. Its gods. Life is the best gift you can ever recieve. By killing yourself you will never expearience it again! If you are being bullied or abused ALOT just call the police!

@LuvToRite I get the feeling you’ve never been abused. And that you think bullying is against the law. And that you think everyone believes in God in exactly the same way.

I am so glad you asked this. You and I exchanged a couple of PMs a while ago during a low point and frankly, I was worried about you. (Hey look at my name – It’s my job!) The advice we shared then is still true now. Take a look.

I’ll let others answer your question. You made my day brighter just by showing up. Thanks! GQ!
I hope yours is a tad brighter too.

I was truly touched by the honesty and openness of your question, and the way you expressed your thoughts and feelings about this topic. Thank you for sharing.

In addition to the devastation suicide leaves in its wake, the premature termination of a life eliminates the potential for vast amounts of pleasure to be experienced and good to be accomplished. Someone once said, ‘A ship is safe in a harbor, but ships were made to sail.’ We, also, were made to sail; to experience the multiple pleasures that life has to offer in their full range of width and depth. And with the time we have in this life, we can also make a profound difference in the lives of others through the most simple of actions. ‘Life’ allows us that potential.

May your ship sail in all its glory, with masts unfurled, dancing joyfully on the sea of life!

The predisposition for suicide can be, in part genetic. This would seem to explain why the idea is unfathomable to some, but unreasonable to others.

I have had periods where I thought about killing myself every day. My father was chronically ill, with no hope of recovery or improvement, and shot himself. His father had cancer and drowned himself. My great-grandfather hung himself in the barn for some reason unbeknownst to me.

We could perhaps set some conditions: Don’t commit suicide for a stupid reason such as not liking math or being upset because Johnny left you. Any old person can tell you that those little hurts don’t mean a thing in the long run, in fact one comes to treasure them. They help to punctuate our best moments.
Don’t commit suicide unless you’re of sound mind, at peace with yourself, your family, and your friends. Don’t commit suicide unless you’ve really taken the time to know the world. Have your debts paid off, and know in your heart that you have met your life’s objectives. Don’t commit suicide unless you’ve cleaned up all your mistakes, and left the world a better place than you found it. Don’t commit suicide unless you’ve taken the time to say goodbye to everyone.
And if you’re going to go, go with some grace. Don’t leave a mess when you go, no blood on the tracks, and don’t take someone else’s medicines that they may desperately need in order for you to commit your suicide.
Now the big problem with suicide is that most people don’t follow these sensible rules. They take their lives for stupid reasons, and try to avoid troubles that their loved ones end up having to face anyway. When my grandmother was terminally ill and unable to eat, suicide crossed her mind, and I would have supported it if that were her decision, for she met all of these criteria. But when that day came, she decided that it was not hers to take; her day came soon after, and she died peacefully.

I was raised in a household that believed that suicide was the coward’s way out. I still believe that.

It causes an incredible amount of pain for their loved ones as I found out when two of my friends killed themselves.

You got some good advice here. It’s transfering the pain from you to all the people you have touched. Do you want to do that?
Somethings not quite right with that answer is it?

There is no need for suicide to be painful for the person’s loved ones…regardless of the reason. The problem is always, of course, that if the reasons are emotional, I can’t myself find a way to justify it.

However, the documentary Right to Die? is a moving portrayal of physician-assisted suicide. It’s My Party is a moving fictional bit along the same lines. The point is that it is possible to make a reasoned decision that it’s your time to die. However, it should never be done alone – and the problem, of course, is that people leave without giving their loved ones the chance to tell them what it will do to them, or to try to help them out of it.

@lillycoyote Agreed.

@GeorgeGee Valid points. Logic and suicidal thoughts/attempts are never good friends.

How can it not be painful for the “loved ones”?

Being suicidal is not a normal state of mind. We have a strong will to survive.

If you are skating through life and not feeling the joy of living, you are probably clinically depressed. You don’t have to feel that way (although often when one is depressed it feels like you do).

Take the depression self-test. If you are depressed, that is no point at which to take your life. it is the depression talking.

See your physician and get some anti-depressant medication. Then get out and walk, exercise, engage with life. You can feel better.

@Adirondackwannabe – I was trying to phrase that correctly and it was coming out awkward. Of course, it would be painful…but there’s a way to alleviate a lot of the pain associated with death if you have time to plan, etc.

@iamthemob It is a tough one to address. For someone terminally ill, at some point I don’t see why it’s worth prolonging the pain and suffering. It’s still painful to the other loved ones. My word skills are failing me as well.

I don’t see a problem with it, although it causes emotional pain for some people, it’s still essentially your body and your life.

@papayalily

You objected to my earlier post “The problem is that it is irreversible and based on survivor-interviews quite often (over 20%) a result of very poor contemplation under influence of a psychological / psychiatric illness.”

It seemed to you like I left something out and my statement was not very scientific. Well… you’re right, it is my interpretation of research I read about last year.

If you check up on it, however, you may find that there is ample reason to think that I was right. i could have stated a number that was a lot higher (>85%). I used a low number for my percentage, though, since I didn’t want to exaggerate and was too lazy/busy to verify.

Quote:
:“RESULTS: Nearly half of the patients (47.6%; N = 39) reported that the period between the first current thought of suicide and the actual attempt had lasted 10 minutes or less. Those patients in which this process had taken longer showed a higher suicidal intent (p < .001). Impulsivity was not associated with the duration of the suicidal process. Although the majority of the patients were alone during the suicidal process, 76.8% (N = 63) reported having had any kind of interpersonal contact. source: European research 2009

Quote:
Of the suicide subjects, 28.0% had at least two of the following disorders: major depression, borderline personality disorder, and alcohol or drug dependence; the rate was 0.0% among the comparison subjects. CONCLUSIONS: In young men, completed suicide is linked to specific mental disorders, namely, major depression, borderline personality disorder, and substance abuse. Comorbidity involving any of these disorders is frequently associated with completed suicide. source: Suicide and mental disorders: a case-control study of young men

@Adirondackwannabe – It’s never going to be easy. What it comes down to is how you all really want to say goodbye to each other…and how you want to remember the person dying, and how they want to be remembered. It’s morbid, but planning your death in such a situation just seems like it gives everyone a chance to say goodbye and settle everything before the person dies.

Of course, I say that objectively…and admit that I would fight anyone I loved that wanted to do it tooth and nail.

@whitenoise That is very interesting research. Real data! We all learned something today. Thanks!

Although I am as opposed to suicide as I can be (at least for myself and anyone I know, and considering my state of mind and health, and as far as I know the state of mind and health of those that I know), I think a person definitely has that right.

But as Voltaire said, “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” And when you think about it, all of our problems are ‘temporary’, because we are, ourselves.

The reason that I start out in opposition to suicide is that I have seen face-to-face what depression can do to an intelligent and otherwise rational person who can use reason and logic… to persuade oneself that “there is no point to living, so I may as well kill myself.”

I don’t believe in arguments touching on “selfishness”, because each breath we take, every mouthful of food that we consume, every time we take a seat in public… or a walk, for that matter… we are being “selfish”. Life itself is selfish, and should be. There is nothing at all wrong with being selfish.

Suicide is a way of doing away with the self. It’s the ultimate act of selflessness, to obliterate the “self”. It’s a repudiation of the most valuable gift we get in our lives—life itself.

I think if one wants to commit suicide then they ought to—for their own sakes—“argue” the point with someone well trained and equipped to argue back. If you win the argument, your pain is so great, your sense of isolation so overwhelming, your guilt so horrible that you can “win” this argument, then we should stand aside and at least assure you a painless—and successful—exit. But I would never condone it as a quiet way to go “because no one cares, anyway”. That’s just depression talking, and I’ve seen how that can make otherwise rational and intelligent people “argue” (at least with themselves) into acceptance of that.

Argue with someone who gives a damn, and see how far you get with that argument.

@CyanoticWasp

I think if one wants to commit suicide then they ought to—for their own sakes—“argue” the point with someone well trained and equipped to argue back.

I’m totally with you on this one. If you say that it’s your right to do it, I totally agree. But considering the severity of the action, if you can’t man up for a debate and prove why your decision is the right one, you’re cheating everyone.

It is what it is. Wrong can be see (and really is) subjective. What makes it wrong is… usually, you needed help and did not get it. In the process other people got/will get hurt.

No one likes to get hurt. We right it off as selfish because, being compassionate beings, and all that empathy, messes us up emotionally. We are human after all.

So you don’t do it! ;-)
Part of life is suffering get use to it.. But, it is also about fellowship. No man is an island.

Note: I didn’t read the above responses so I’m sorry if I am repeating someone.
Suicide is devastating to those you leave behind and is the ultimate selfish act. I know for a fact.

What’s so wrong? It is performed on the mistaken premise that there is no way that the pain will ever end.

I don’t believe anyone wants to die. I think they just want the pain to stop. Sometimes it seems like the pain will never end and it is so deep that suicide calls to you. Every pill you see, every upper floor window, every gun, every car is begging to be used. Unless, of course, you haven’t suffered enough to be worthy of suicide. Then you have to drive yourself into as intense a hell as you can find.

Nobody cares about me, really. They say they do, but they don’t mean it. It doesn’t matter anyway, I’m no good. Nothing I do is any good. I don’t have any friends. Nobody loves me. I’d be doing them all a favor. They say think of your children, but I’m no good to them either. They’ll be better off without me. There’s just no point in staying on. I hope I’m not a failure at suicide, too. Wouldn’t that be ironic? That guy who jumped off the tenth floor and survived.

Even if I go off the Golden Gate bridge, I might survive. If you go in at the right angle, you can arc through the water and still have enough air to make it to the surface. I don’t think I’d like to drown—that seems like it would be too painful. I just want it to be quick. No guns, though. I can’t stand guns. Pills are too wimpy. Too easy to survive. A car crash is uncertain…. I don’t know. I’m not very creative at this.

Maybe I should just find a gutter somewhere. Just lie there and suffer. Maybe someone will hit me. I could go to jail. Get raped and beaten up. Maybe I could make someone angry enough to kill me. I could go out in the woods in the winter and take off all my clothes and die of exposure. No one would be there to stop me. Maybe my body wouldn’t even be found for a long time.

You see? It’s pain, and it’s relentless and you can only imagine one thing to get rid of it. And the weird thing is that if someone offers you an alternative, it’s so easy to disbelieve it, or even to fight it. Maybe I even want to be rescued, but knowing I’m not worthy of it, and knowing I’m manipulating people into doing that, I don’t deserve to be rescued. I don’t deserve to live once I’ve considered giving up the most precious thing there is.

If I die, there will be nothing else, ever. I won’t even know there is nothing. But I’ll have no hopes and no consciousness, and so it won’t matter anymore. But on the other hand, I won’t get to see anything that life has to offer, and I want to see those things except it hurts too damn much. And it’ll never end. I know that. They are lying if they say they can fix it.

But maybe they are right—about my kids and my wife. Hurting them. Maybe I’ll try it. I’m sure that I’m responsible for my own depression. I made myself this way. Brain chemistry is a bunch of crap. Everyone tells you to just pull yourself out of it, and I tried and I couldn’t do it, so I’m a failure. But they all want me to take the pills. They must believe it works. That it’s not my fault.

Whoa. Not my fault? I didn’t just think myself into this? I feel like I can pull myself out any time I want. I just don’t want. Still…. I think I’m lying to myself a bit. I could be. Maybe there could be a future. Maybe this headach and this pressure on my shoulders and my heart, and this constant anxiety that at any moment someone is going to figure it out, and stop caring at all, even those who are paid for it (which means they don’t really care, anyway).

There’s only one thing that can fix this, and that is love. But there isn’t enough love in the world to fix me. Woman after woman could fall in love and absolutely adore me and want me and fuck me and it would still fall into this endless pit in my stomach which is never full.

Fuck! My head hurts. And I’m only trying to describe it. If I write much more, I’ll start to believe it, I think. No I won’t. That’s just a kind of affectation.

************************
I truly believe that no one wants to die, and that’s what’s wrong with suicide. All we want is for the pain to go and to feel loved. Truly, truly loved.

@wundayatta you sound like you’re channeling Dorothy Parker:

Résumé

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

- Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker has the answer to everything.

@CyanoticWasp Damn! I’m completely unoriginal, too.

Maybe Sepuku…...

Suicide IS selfish. Peroid.

Do you know how many people have died without a say in the matter? Life is precious. Taking your own is like spitting in the face of everyone who wanted to live but didn’t get the option.

I’ve never felt sympathy toward a suicide “victim” if you can even call them that. I ALWAYS feel for their family and loved ones though. That’s got to be one of the hardest things to go through.

I understand that things can get hard and that mindsets can easily get skewed. But here’s the thing, there is nothing that a person can go through that someone else hasn’t already. With the amount of help there is these days, suicide should never be an option.

So you don’t believe in physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill?

@Randy Peroid? Don’t you mean period?

The trouble with your argument is you are thinking as a sane and balanced person, and not as a depressed one. Sanity and depression are not good friends, but mortal enemies.

This whole subject is a very misunderstood one, where emotions run high, and unless you’ve been there, it IS hard to understand. Many sufferers get mocked by well-meaning others, who, by their actions, make matters worse.

I agree with that, @Andreas. Depression is like having the Devil as one’s advocate, and convincing the victim (and the person surely is a victim) of the worthlessness of the rest of the world… and one’s own. I’ve seen it and argued with it on behalf of another, and thankfully won that argument.

That’s why I continue to say that it’s not at all an act of selfishness. It’s a total denial and negation of one’s self.

So, here’s the problem with calling suicide selfish: It implies that a person owes someone else their life. The idea that it is selfish is, in itself, a co-dependent thought. Yes, it will hurt everyone around them; so will moving to a primitive village on another continent and never having any contact with any of them again. But we wouldn’t say to someone that they shouldn’t move because it’s selfish, we would say that they should do what’s right for them and that they don’t owe anyone else their life.
There are other issues, like that the people who often claim that it’s selfish have a tendency to not want to be there for the person when they’re struggling, or fulfill any part of their end of a co-dependent relationship. They simply want the person to live for them, instead of for themselves.
Since people who kill themselves often feel that the world and their loved ones would be better off without them, it can actually be a very selfless act, however misguided it may or may not be.
I suspect that many times, at least in PSAs, it’s not so much that people think it’s really selfish, but they’ll say anything to make sure someone doesn’t kill themselves since it is so permanent.
To sum up: No one owes you their life. The only person they owe their life to is themselves. To say that by killing themselves they are being selfish is to say that it’s more important that they be there for you than for themselves. Which actually sounds really selfish to me. Projection, much?

I think it is because most of the time the reason for wanting to commit suicide is temporary crisis. So, it is a waste.

@Andreas Yes, period. You’ll have to excuse my mix up in key strokes. And I understand getting in the mindset where it seems like a good option but there is still an almost indefinite amount of help out there for any problem that one can face. If you think that suicide is the only way out then it’s easy to realize that it’s time to seek help. A person can be too prideful to do so and that in it’s self is sad. That, in my opinion, is why many people go through with the suicide.

@papayalily A family (and friendship, for that matter) is two or more people leaning on one another. Take a side out and the it’s hard for others to hold up the rest of the relationship, at times. Therefore, it’s easy to say that suicide is a selfish act. Love is a strange thing and when people choose to kill themselves it can hurt some people beyond repair. If you call that selfish, then you have to at least consider the suicide as a selfish act. If someone could go through something that other people couldn’t understand, then my opinion might be a little different. Life is full of hardships and sometimes, opting out of it seems like a good idea, but it never is. There are strangers who devote their whole lives to trying to show people that. Life is too precious for people to kill themselves. Life is one of the few things that can’t be bought or bargained for.

@Randy If you’re hurting right now because someone killed themselves, I am so sorry for your loss. But just because it hurts doesn’t mean it’s selfish.

@papayalily, @Randy

I feel there are definitely selfish aspects to suicide, but that in itself doesn’t make the act a selfish act. I have a hard time viewing people that take their own life as selfish persons that label is just not fitting.

In general, there are no winners when it comes to suicide and @Randy, you’re right: the hurt remains with the survivors and these surely are the true victims of a suicide.

@Randy

The problem with your absolute judgment of suicide is that you are neglecting the fact that families can come to the decision as a group – much as what happens with the terminally ill. The hurt remains with the survivors…but the grieving process is so much easier than in cases where they watch a person decline, become angry, turn against them, become a person they never knew, lapse into a painful vegetative state, etc….things that may erase everything good that you remember about them.

You need to think about the times where the decision is not made by the person committing suicide alone. Personally, I don’t ever see it as a proper decision when the reasons are emotional (note: this is different than severe clinical depression, of course – something like that where the results are emotional, extreme, but based on physiology becomes a reasonable basis – not saying a reason for but understandable). But it doesn’t, by necessity, have to be something the person does while completely disregarding his or her family and friends.

When one feels suicidal, suicide may seem the truly logical right choice, but except for terminal illness and extreme situations of “honor” [you have murdered someone in cold blood, been accused, been left with a gun as a gentleman’s way out, and the police are coming], it isn’t.

Wow, I can see some of the logic in not attempting suicide, but in making suicide available to people that are facing terminal illness, that seems slightly illogical. Why should the only people who are allowed to take their own life be people whom are already going to die from something unnatural?

A lot of people abuse the thought of suicide, and sometimes it is a cry for help, but what about the actual hopeless cases? What is worse, dying and leaving a lot of ‘what-if’s’, or living, and eventually going insane and/or going onto a murderous rampage?

I wouldn’t be surprised if the main reason most families don’t want their relatives to die, is because their life insurance might not cover suicide.

I think it’s always about stopping the pain, which is a cry for help, but I think it’s a different kind of cry for help. I think, and I may be wrong, that people use “cry for help” pejoratively—as if people are weaklings or lazy when the use suicide as a cry for help. I think most people considering suicide due to mental pain aren’t being disingenuous. They hurt, and they have no idea that the pain can be taken care of any other way.

People with terminal illnesses… the issue is to make them comfortable. This can be done with a combination of drugs and mental therapeutic techniques. We want to be calm and accepting when it comes time to die. But many people aren’t, and for them death is a horrible thing. I’ve heard friends and family get into this fatalistic state of mind, where they start saying, “If I’m going to die soon, why not die now and get it over with?”

They still have more days, and could possibly have even more with the right attitude. Should we just give up and let them die now? Or is it worth working with them—meditating and discussing (if possible)—so they can have the rest of their days go with calmness and a sense of connection with the all?

It might mean shirking responsibility.

But severe depression sometimes gives people no other choice. None of the therapies for

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Enke

worked and I think he had the right to kill himself to end the suffering.

@mattbrowne Children are never meant to die before parents. This is a hard experience to deal with.

@Andreas – Does this apply to Robert Enke? His parents are still alive. An interview with his father was shown on German television.

@mattbrowne In a word: Yes. I presume Herr and Frau Enke are in their 60’s or thereabouts, so Robert would still have been their “baby”, so to speak. No parent wants to bury their children, no matter the ages of all involved.

@Andreas – The father knew about his son’s severe depression for many years and in the interview he said that he could understand why his son did this. There was also an interview with his doctor who treated him for many years. All forms of therapies and medication had been tried and none of them really helped. Robert Enke also had a daughter who died at the age of 2.

As long as it wont hurt or upset anybody else. Go for it.

@mattbrowne Another sad tale in the annals of life. It’s not the first, and sadly it won’t be the last. The really sad thing about Robert’s situation was that his father was unable to do anything for him, even though, no doubt, he wanted to. My heart goes out to all who have to deal with these matters as they are truly tragic. None of us are never really too distant from the scourge of mental ill-health.

The other sad thing, of course, is the two train drivers who had to participate unwillingly. That’s wrong.

@Andreas – The Enke case was major news in Germany for weeks. Something good came out of it too: more prominent people admit publicly that they suffer from depression. More and more people realize that depression is NOT craziness. The stigma might go away over time.

@mattbrowne That is a positive result from this sad tale. The stigma of depression is a sad fact of life all over the world, but hopefully it won’t always be so.

All the best to you and yours, Matt.

Suicide is most of the time somebody escaping there troubles that have been built up and feel like there’s nothing left to live for but they don’t realize the loved ones there hurting like my grandpa committed suicide and left my grandma in a horrible state moms to tears me I was only 10 and this still wil never leave my mind