“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
Authors who end up taking their own lives often pen some of the most haunting and poignant passages on death:
"It was useless to try to do anything. One could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings; nothing, I knew had any chance against death."
She was initially admitted to hospital for low Sodium (hyponatremia) with no obvious symptoms - we actually went for something else which was benign. They corrected the low Sodium, but they corrected it quickly - possibly too quickly [1]. The next day she started to become non-responsive, and the day after was completely non-responsive - didn't react to pain stimuli, dropping her hand over her face just made her hand hit her face, couldn't open her eyes etc.
They gave her anti-depressant drugs and she seemed to snap out of it. They kept her in for another couple of days (which the insurance are now arguing over, but that's another tragedy) and then discharged her.
A few days later she stopped being able to walk, she's in constant pain, her legs are tremoring all the time now, her chest is constricted and she's frequently hyperventilating for hours at a time in order to breathe. She gets told she's "anxious", and it's in her head by her PCP. We visit ER several times because she can't breathe properly, and every time she's put on an IV, they maybe give her some sedation (Ativan) and then discharge her a few hours later once she's calmed down due to the drugs.
After 6 weeks of constant pain, next to no sleep, and being told she's fine (when she clearly isn't "fine") she starts talking about how she needs to find peace, and she can't take this any more. She's been building up to it, but I didn't take it seriously enough. Mea culpa. We don't have a gun in the house, she phones friends, asking them if they have a gun, and she'd "take care of everything".
One friend of hers calls it in. Police, Fire-brigade (EMT) and eventually an ambulance appear outside the house as she's sectioned on a 3-day hold. They actually released her the next day, and now she's terrified of "going back". I'm not saying the officials did anything wrong - they didn't - they were courteous but implacable, but they were just doing an unpleasant job. On the plus side, she's not mentioned anything about taking her life since.
A doctor mentions that there is such a thing as Osmotic Demylination Syndrome [2], which can happen when hyponatremia is "fixed" too rapidly. It would explain all the symptoms we're seeing, including the non-responsiveness. Apparently there's an MRI test to see if this has happened. Our next (7th ? I lose track) visit to ER, I get them to do this MRI. She doesn't have it, from what we can see on the data. I ask for the data to send to the neurologist.
Finally, 8 weeks since this all started, the various specialist referrals start to kick in: Endocrinologist, Cardiologist, Neurologist, Gastroenterologist, Psychiatrist... Her PCP hasn't been much help other than to give referrals, and in fact seems to be out of her depth - the last visit to the PCP we were told that the PCP refused to prescribe any more Ativan. That would be reasonable (these aren't drugs to take lightly) if she were to be weaned off them, but no - cold turkey it has to be. I ask the PCP to talk to the neurologist, who seems a bit more human, and the prescription is passed to the neurologist to fulfil.
I won't go into me finding a lump on my balls, and the subsequent worry over cancer (it was just a cyst), or the maybe-heart-attack last weekend that has me seeing the same cardiologist as my wife 'STAT'. This isn't about me. But if I'm out of the picture, well, there's just me, her and our son, the rest of family is 6000 miles away....
So here I am, still trying to sound positive to an intelligent woman who knows just how far she's fallen. Still trying to sound upbeat when she's literally crying in pain (oh yeah, the pain-specialist appointment is still to happen) throughout the night, and OTC pain-killers don't have any effect. Still trying to make it sound like we're making progress even though I can't see it myself. Still trying to answer "why won't someone help me ?" without sounding trite and jaded.
Hopelessness is an insidious poison for the mind. I don't feel the same way, but I can understand how she'd ask about the gun...
It sounds like you're going through a real-life nightmare!
This whole story sounds insane (assuming you're not leaving out essential details), with multiple overlapping failures. I am not a medical professional, so take this all with a grain of salt (no pun intended).
First off, idiopathic hyponatremia in non-elderly, non-pregnant, otherwise healthy people is unusual - why was your wife hyponatremic to begin with? This is worth investigating.
It's amazing to me that it took weeks for you to be told about the risks involved in raising sodium too quickly.
It's ludicrous that a doctor would prescribe daily Ativan for treatment of generalized anxiety in 2023 (Ativan and related benzodiazepine drugs are extremely habit forming, wreck your memory, and don't show evidence of improving anxiety endpoints in the long term. Great for infrequent occasional use, e.g. panic attacks though).
It's even more ludicrous that they would want her to quit cold-turkey if she's been taking Ativan daily for longer than a few weeks. Benzodiazepine withdrawal is unpleasant and dangerous. That said, not being on daily Ativan for anxiety is a good thing. If you want to read up on withdrawing from benzos safely, the Ashton Manual is a popular (although older) source a lot of medical and recreational users have used to get clean[1].
As for the psychological aspects of this ordeal: The only way out is through - you just have to keep going and keep advocating for yourselves. If you haven't already, I highly recommend getting set up with regular therapy for both of yourselves. Falling down happens to us all- getting back up is an difficult but essential part of life, and having a third party there to remind you of your forward progress and push/encourage you when you need it is very valuable.
Regarding leaving stuff out. I'm really not. My only concern here is getting my wife well, and she absolutely had none of these symptoms previously, or any hint of them, and whilst I haven't described every individual visit to ER in detail, they all follow the same pattern as recounted. We've just had the first round of specialists, and I don't have a very high opinion of her PCP, but now that we have the specialists, I'm more hopeful that something might get done.
None of the doctors involved told us about the dangers of raising Sodium quickly. The neurologist agreed that it might be and put my wife on Prednisone/something-to-help-her-stomach after our first visit. It was actually my boss' wife (she's a doctor) that mentioned ODS to him and hence to us. FWIW, work has been outstandingly supportive over the last couple of months, the only real shining light.
The MRI doesn't seem to support ODS though, but I personally think it's too much of a coincidence that she responded so poorly, and then symptoms very similar to it emerged later. It might not be ODS, but something happened. She had none of these symptoms before going in.
As for why she had hyponatremia, she had diarrhoea the week previously, and the hospital put it down to that. We had no idea her sodium was low - as I said we went in for something unrelated (that turned out to be benign).
The PCP put her on Ativan, right up until she said "I don't feel comfortable prescribing this any more, so I'm not going to". Cue the argument about withdrawal and the PCP saying she'd talk to the neurologist and see if the neurologist would take over. I get the feeling the PCP is very much a "fair weather" doctor - fine for when things are fine...
The neurologist has changed away from Ativan to another benzo, but has also prescribed mirtazapine as a more long-term solution. We have another visit with her scheduled at the end of the month.
> They actually released her the next day, and now she's terrified of "going back". I'm not saying the officials did anything wrong - they didn't - they were courteous but implacable, but they were just doing an unpleasant job.
I do not know your experience obviously, but this reads like more weight is put on how they handled it and less on your wife's experience. I'm glad they didn't handle it poorly (which is already too common), but being held against your will can be a seriously traumatizing experience. Regardless of if they did the "right" or "wrong" thing, the fear of losing your rights again can be severe and cause even more damage in the long term. I just want to make sure her likely terrible experience isn't overlooked because the medics followed their instructions.
In my personal experience, I had a traumatic experience after talking about suicide as well. I didn't talk to anyone about it for many years afterwords because of that experience and the fear of it happening again. Arguably, I'm worse off because of that, since I have felt significantly better after eventually opening up and (luckily) not having a second traumatizing experience. But I recognize that even though everyone followed their orders properly, it can be terrifying to the individual.
> On the plus side, she's not mentioned anything about taking her life since.
Again, I don't know your personal experience, but I would strongly suggest you talk to her about this. Not mentioning it does not mean not thinking about it, especially if there's been a traumatizing experience in the past related to openly discussing suicide. She might be on edge discussing this topic with anyone, including you, because of the experience she had. I know what helped me is knowing I had someone that I could talk to without risk of being "turned in," which I suspect you wouldn't want to subject her to again. You can fact check me on this: talking about it won't "plant the idea" back in her head or anything.
You sound like you care a lot about her. Someone like you is the reason I'm here still, so you're doing something right :)
It did come up - it's hard to avoid an elephant in a room, despite the saying... I'm not going to go into details, but we did and do talk.
I also don't want to give the impression that my concern is more for the process than my wife - while writing, I didn't want to be seen to be blaming them for enforcing the 3-day hold. Once someone's called it in, and the police making the house-call decide it's plausible, they don't deviate. They were kind, but firm, is all I was trying to say.
Good to hear! I didn't mean to imply anything; just wanted to make sure that wasn't overlooked having been on the other end of it. Good luck to both of you
What a terrible experience you are going through. I hope it makes a turn for the better, and soon. I'm curious what you mean by one of your closing comments:
>Still trying to answer "why won't someone help me ?" without sounding trite and jaded
Because I agree with her that she's not getting the help she needs, but I don't know where else to go.
- Her PCP seems useless - basically a glorified project manager for other expert opinions, and the time taken to get appointments with these experts is straining.
- Going to urgent care, or doing an 'online Dr visit' just gets the advice to go to ER instead, because of the breathing.
- Going to ER (which we have, several times) just gets her admitted to the ER beds, put on an IV for fluids, maybe a chest X-Ray taken, and then discharged after a few hours with a recommendation to go see her PCP.
- the neurologist has been the best of them so far, but she's 30 miles away and we get to see her once per month. I'm grateful for the help we've had from the neurologist, but it's not much use at 3am when she can't breath, again, is in pain, again, and feels like her chest has a bar pressing down across it, again. Going to ER because of this is covered above.
No-one wants to take ownership, everyone (with the exception so far of our neurologist) wants to try and get someone else to "manage this case". It doesn't leave one with the warm fuzzies, especially given the last couple of months.
It has actually reached the point where I've considered - not seriously yet, but it's still there - selling up, leaving the US and going back home to the UK. Myself and my son are citizens by right, I have enough cash/equivalents that getting a spousal visa wouldn't be an issue, and we'd pay the NHS surcharge for a few years - still a lot less than my insurance here. We could even be closer to family for better support. The largest factor against, in fact, is the logistics of simply getting her there, taking a plane seems like a poor option atm, and she gets very seasick even on cruise liners. Once there, having bought a house with the proceeds of the sale of this one, retirement would be pretty easy on me, and maybe a health service more focussed on making people better, over making money, might be better for her.
Can you find a new PCP? One that may not be a good family doctor but can coordinate care.
You are probably already doing it, but I have heard that it is really important to have advocate when patient can't organize themselves. If you can, go to appointments, take notes, and ask lots of questions. Push on uncertainty until get tests and answers. Try and solve separate problems, like Ativan dependency, so can focus on the big one and she feels better. One question I had is what does the treatment for raising sodium too quickly look like and is it worth doing even if the MRI was negative.
I'm in the process of looking for a new PCP - although now we actually do have access to the specialists that I think we needed to, and our interaction is more or less just "send a non-urgent message" on the web-platform, and get a referral back the next working day.
I am at every single one of these appointments - I was in a better position to recall how things went down, and I am very much her advocate. She's had many many tests - which have ruled out a lot of truly terrifying things, but there is still no affirmative diagnosis of what it is she has. The last discharge from ER listed her as having "restless leg syndrome" - which is obviously not a diagnosis. The tremors in her legs are a symptom, not a cause, and they only started after the sodium levels were raised.
The treatment was the prednisone that the neurologist put her on prior to getting the MRI data, but prednisone has its own side-effects, so we were told to stop taking it once the MRI data was obtained.
The "Undiagnosed diseases network" is a great find - thank you. I have just enrolled her case in "Teladoc" which can give 'expert medical opinions' using her release notes and visit documentation. I'm hopeful they might find something, but the UDN looks like 'House' for real. I'll definitely look into it :)
Hey, I've read a few of your replies on this thread and wanted to give a (not official advice) medical perspective. I can't imagine what you and your wife are going through at the moment. As someone working in Australia, the US healthcare system sounds even worse than the stories.
Firstly, her sodium was initially pretty drastically low for just diarrhoea - almost to the point of seizures - unless she was permanently on the toilet and vomiting, and guzzling water (without electrolytes) - suggesting there may be some other underlying cause worth looking into, if she doesn't have major organ failure normally - heart, liver, kidneys.
Secondly, it was absolutely replaced too quickly - though osmotic demyelination syndrome is typically in chronic hyponatraemics whereas if your wife is normally healthy, her sodium should be in the normal range and an acute diarrhoeal illness, whilst a unlikely but possible cause of severe hyponatraemia, would generally be a more acute process. The pathophysiology is essentially that your brain adapts to low sodium and then when electrolytes are replaced rapidly, the brain shrinks rapidly which causes damage to the cells.
Thirdly, benzodiazepine withdrawal is absolutely not pleasant and could definitely contribute/worsen symptoms so that sounds like a terrible idea stopping without a taper.
Personally, I have never seen ODS/myelinolysis but a normal MRI is reassuring and it technically means the diagnosis is no longer possible - there are cases where early MRIs haven't demonstrated any changes but the evidence states that typically by 4 weeks if there is any damage, a scan should show it.
Obviously I don't know what other investigations have been done already, but I hope you and your wife reach a satisfactory resolution, even if it doesn't result in a definite diagnosis - unfortunately there are still many aspects of human health that we don't know about and definitely things exist that we cannot explain. For example, some aspects of the story that you've described make me think of fibromyalgia, which we don't have any good clinical diagnostic test for at this stage - it's just a clinical diagnosis. I'm not saying to give up, but sometimes chasing a definitive diagnosis often ends up proving futile and worsening the whole prognosis - just think about what you and your wife's goals are.
Also, on a sidenote, restless legs syndrome is a real condition (I'm not saying she has it but yes, it is real).
I guess I didn't get across what I was trying to say about the "diagnosis" - be it restless-leg syndrome (which I totally agree is a real thing, not trying to downplay it) or one of the many other things they've come up with. The point I was failing :) to make was that they haven't come up with a diagnosis at all really - they're just throwing out there anything that might correspond to one of her symptoms, without addressing something that might be a root cause. IMNSHO :)
FWIW, she didn't have any significant diarrhoea - she had a mild instance of it. The thing is that we don't know if she had chronic or acute hyponatremia - she hadn't been for blood tests that would have picked it up in, well, forever, previously to going into hospital. It was news to us that she had it at all - we went in for an unrelated reason (which they told us was benign).
From my limited understanding having read up on it, it's possible she did have a long-term hyponatremia issue going on, and her body was just coping with it until it was discovered. They have done lots of blood-tests (metabolic panels, liver-function, urinalysis, various disease-specific tests, etc,) Her blood-work and imaging all come back fine.
Anyway, she has more CT and MRI scans over the next week or two, ordered by various specialists. Here's hoping they find something to explain it. I still come back to "9 weeks ago, she was without any of these symptoms. Rapidly fixing the hyponatremia has ruined her life". I don't believe too much in coincidence, so for her to suddenly come down with something else at the same time as a medical treatment that made her go completely non-responsive where she couldn't even say her name is stretching credulity too far for me, unless some extraordinary evidence is uncovered.
Thanks, I see now. For some reason I thought you were talking about non-medical help for yourself. I guess you are in some sense looking for non-medical help navigating the medical system itself.
I'm guessing any advice I offer you would have already thought of, but maybe you can pay over the counter for a medical consultant in the UK or anywhere for that matter
You might see if a destination medical establishment like the Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Clinic could be more responsive. These kinds of places are setup so people can fly in, see a bunch of specialists, and get a bunch of tests in a single trip.
> Still trying to answer "why won't someone help me ?" without sounding trite and jaded.
It's a combination excessive bureaucracy/control/legalization of the medical profession in addition to incompetence, apathy etc. You are unfortunately on your own, as is everyone else. A lame "I feel sorry for you", is all I can say, that you have to go through it
(for those interested in starting some kind of parallel medicine, and willing to do what it takes to learn the ropes, see my profile and get in touch with me.)
I'm so sorry your wife (and you) are going through this. When the medical system fails, it fails hard. I don't know what to say except that I hope you all get to the bottom of this quickly and she gets the help she needs.
While some people really do have to make a choice between fire and falling, many who think they're in that situation may actually be hallucinating of the fire. They don't have to fall; they can be helped.
This is pretty good considering the fact that David Foster Wallace took his own life in the end. I read the whole quote before I saw at the end it’s from him.
This is something that I have had some personal experience with. I've known quite a few suicides, and survivors of the suicides of others.
Very much a "walk a mile in a man's shoes" kind of thing. Everyone has opinions on the matter, until it hits them. Then, they have personal experience (not just an opinion).
It sucks. In some cases, I can see why someone would want to end it all. In others, like this one[0], I find it doubly tragic, as there are proven alternative solutions (I personally know many people that were once far worse off than that gentleman, and are now doing quite well).
When we are in a singularity of pain, it seems like the suffering will never stop, and we can convince ourselves there's no escape. In some cases, we're right, but other times, not so much.
It's a permanent "solution" to what is often a temporary problem.
I've always found it interesting that addictive behaviour is often seen as a virtue by our society if it's about the 'right sort of thing' (as far as society is concerned).
We end up considering people as 'dedicated' or 'committed' to some cause or other. If they are a workaholic, or pious, or a sports superstar, or a concert pianist, chances are there is an addictive personality that just happens to have gotten attached to a socially acceptable pursuit.
Meanwhile, the same people with a slight twist of fate end up in rehab.
There's a bunch of things where the morality of what you're doing will change depending on a small detail, with the main action being essentially the same.
Eg, if you dedicate yourself to exterminating rats with dedication and professionalism you'll be a hero, do the same thing using the same tools and attitude to cats and dogs and you'll be a monster.
Which is exactly how it should be IMO. We build the world we live in by enacting change in it. Praising actions in a context devoid of its consequences is a good way to end up in a world where everyone basically hacks the reward algorithm without any concerns about the results of that.
There's a constructive/destructive dimension to all behaviours, even addiction. Constructive addictions have probably created a lot of great art, innovations and achievements, where destructive addictions ruin the lives of a person and those around them. Not that addiction in any form is necessarily healthy, but it seems obvious that constructive ones are more healthy than destructive ones, for all involved.
Worth pointing out. I know of a person who was a workaholic and then died pretty young from also having been a secret alcoholic for much of their life.
No such thing as an addictive personality- it was invented by the pharmaceutical companies (the term) to play down the addictive effects of their drugs, doctors were told only people with addictive personalities will get hooked on the opioids
I can't say much about 'personalities' but it has been quite consistently demonstrated that some people are genetically predisposed and more likely to become addicted to certain substances than others regardless of social factors or even (pre-addiction) consumption patterns.
I also think there's something to it: each person is different.
I've smoked and quit a couple of times, and still get urges to go back sometimes. Meanwhile, I know people who casually smoke once in a while and don't get the habit.
I don't want to be arrogant or looks like moron, but how can you know that people that you know "went through worse"? How can you measure it? I`m really curious, because all my life I live with understanding that there no way to measure other people feeling, emotions, suffering.
I think the point is that the critical differences are on the inside, not on the outside.
People can go through worse experiences on the outside and recover and overcome.
This points to the somewhat obvious reality that how people handle and respond to their environmental conditions is a critical factor in outcomes.
Sometimes you have to fix the internal root of feelings, emotions, and suffering. You can believe the difference IS the person, without being overly judgmental. In fact, realizing that person themselves needs to be changed is often a key part of recovery.
I think you've really hit the nail on the head here. I think substance abuse is often treated as the underlying root problem when its just a symptom of a much deeper trauma or mental health problem. The lifestyle changes (often) required to deal with the underlying problem can't be forced on the person once the stint in rehab ends. They are usually right back to their old situation with their old friends in their old routines, or they stop taking their medicines or any number of things that lead to relapse.
Sure, it's possible for someone who went to war and ended up killing a family of civilians to recover, overcome and lead happy and fulfilled lives henceforth. Does it mean that another soldier struggling with constant guilt and nightmares is defective and in the need of fixing? Our justice system imposes death penalty for murder. What if someone is truly convinced, on rational bases, that they have committed a murder, but in the circumstances where justice doesn't act? Are they acting insane by taking a matter in their own hands?
Now let's take another person who NEEDS to be surrounded by love and belonging and ends up estranged from family and devoid of friends, living alone in an apartment at the age of 50? Are you suggesting that this person needs to be fixed to not intensely crave those things? Or that efforts to build these up at their age are likely to be successful in today's society? Just what physical, emotional and financial resources is anyone else willing to contribute towards this person's well-being, other than pumping them full of numbing drugs?
My point is pretty simple. It is that the critical differences are on the inside, not on the outside.
I wasn't taking a position on what people should do with this information, but I think that understanding the fact is important if you want to change anything, or simply understand how the world works.
In the context of depression, I think it is up to the individual if they want to change. In your example, the relevant question is if the lonely 50 year old wants to change. As long as they aren't hurting me, I am fine with them choosing either option. What, if anything, I am willing to do the help, would depend on if or how much I care for the individual.
What do you think about your questions? It seems like you have on opinion you aren't stating.
My opinion is that in the end I don't think really wanting a change is enough for most people in sad social circumstances. They simply do not have the stamina, the skills or the opportunities to get out of the rut.
For example, I have a much more modest desire to have a shared hobby with is common and not expensive or difficult to pursue and a group of friends (casual to start with) to go and do that in free time. I have been at it for a year, taking classes, asking classmates and coworkers to join me. Not. A. Single. Luck.
Now, I have family, successful career, financial freedom, enough health to be active, no serious character flaws that would tax friendships. Are you telling me a fat and bitter guy who have been living alone long enough to be rusty in social graces is going to suddenly have willing friend material, let alone romantic prospects?
Personally I am not going to judge him or say he should have just tried harder. You?
>My opinion is that in the end I don't think really wanting a change is enough for most people in sad social circumstances. They simply do not have the stamina, the skills or the opportunities to get out of the rut.
I would agree that it often isn't enough by itself. My thinking is more along the the lines that it is a necessary prerequisite, but not always sufficient by itself. Nothing in this life is guaranteed.
Im not interested in judging some random stranger. Maybe they should have tried harder, maybe they should have tried something else. Maybe it would have worked, maybe it wouldn't. However, I know if they dont try, then they have no chance.
My advice to a friend or someone I cared for would be different. You can't let your happiness be contingent of factors outside your control. If you can't make yourself happy, you are extremely unlikely to find someone or something else to do it for you. If you don't like who you are, then you need to start there because you cant run from yourself. The bad news is that it is your problem to fix, and the good news is that it is your problem to fix. Success is not guaranteed, but these are baseline facts you need to accept if you want to have a chance at change.
You cant force someone to be your friend, let alone a romantic partner.
Oh well, my advice to someone I cared about is tell me what I can do to help. And of course at this point, other commitments in my life as well as general ideas of what is healthy come into play. The other person will have to respect my boundaries and put in a substantial effort to be helped effectively. But, that is very different from being left on your own.
Since I obviously can't care about everyone, I would like to see a society that encourages virtuous cycles rather than downward spirals. Let there be regular public holidays with festivities that single individuals can enjoy without being awkward and that provide opportunities to reconnect with neighbors and meet strangers. Let there be a culture where if one is missing a cooking ingredient or needs to borrow a stepladder, the first impulse is to ask a neighbor for help rather than going to Instacart. This will give these neighbors a license to stop by and chat later without losing their dignity.
Collectively, majority that is doing Ok mentally is in a better position to boost someone who is not, without any single person getting overwhelmed, as opposed to someone who is down figuring it out on their own.
> Or that efforts to build these up at their age are likely to be successful in today's society?
I've seen that happen -literally- hundreds, if not thousands, of times.
It's usually difficult. Like, really difficult, but sometimes, it's well worth the effort. We can often help each other through the rough bits.
I've known a few folks that have done pretty awful things (not getting into detail), and have recovered. Many, work hard to help others to recover.
Love, charity, empathy, and generosity are very powerful.
There was a book written by Richard Adams (Watership Down), called Shardik[0]. It's about redemption. Sort of like the Ashoka myth[1]. Not a unique trope.
It's never too late to recover. In many cases, we may not climb "as high" as we once were, but are much happier. In other cases, it's the opposite.
I know a chap that wanted to put the park bench he slept on, in the garden of his mansion. He couldn't find it, though, as the city had replaced them, by that time.
Oh sure, I know people have rebuilt their lives in 50s. But there is luck and anecdotes and there is prevailing reality. When something is difficult, it requires physical and emotional stamina to overcome. At some point, one may be unable to handle hundreds of rejections after trying to make a single casual friend in a space of years. Not lazy, or insufficiently motivated, just not able to, period. And that assumes, for example, enough financial independence and free time from work to try in the first place. I am not ready to declare people who give up defective or put all the responsibility at their feet, rather than society in general or plain bad luck.
AKA the "man up" argument. You know people who survived worse, thereby somehow invalidating the people who didn't make it when they were suffering less. Because you have experience with it and can therefore judge others.
ChrisMarshallNY is sitting in judgment of the fellow in Holland who made use of the euthanasia laws there.
Specifically:
"I find it doubly tragic, as there are proven alternative solutions" (judgment)
"I personally know many people that were once far worse off than that gentleman, and are now doing quite well" (justification that invalidates the man's suffering)
"Lots of folks have opinions on it, but I have experience with it." (Pushing his opinion above others, to hammer the judgment home)
He doesn't know Mark Langedijk's mind and soul, and yet he feels comfortable desecrating the man's legacy.
Hacker News civility makes it more acceptable to use an over the top phrase like that, where normally I suspect he would have jumped to straightforward ones like “being a dick”.
From what I've seen, I have no doubt Chris means well.
People everywhere have all different things worth living for, and of course there are ups & downs that vary across time and relationships.
Regardless whether someone has the capacity to be helpful or harmful, almost always some judgement needs to be made or absolutely neither one will be forthcoming.
And there is always going to be someone else to disagree.
Whether either one is correct I wonder who is supposed to be the judge of that?
I see not a word of desecration.
Looking at the story of this particular dying Dutchman, seems to me the only thing within reach beforehand were quite temporary solutions not capable of overcoming relatively longer term problems.
Note that I said overly judgmental. Judgment itself is part of the human condition. You can judge an action or choice without demeaning or dehumanizing the person. You can even do it from a place of empathy understanding and compassion.
The idea of that people shouldn't or can't judge any choice or action another makes is absurd at face value.
Except you very rarely have enough information to make informed judgements. It’s inherently dehumanizing to assume the limited information you get from say a news article is all that’s relevant because it treats them as cardboard cutouts of actual people.
It’s easy to see a pregnant teen and think poor thoughts about them without considering if perhaps they are older than you assume and married or they got rapped etc. Read about a convict and perhaps they did something horrible or perhaps they’re wrongly convicted, you simply didn’t know.
I personally know people who have been dirty for decades. A friend of mine "inherited" the stewardship of one such person and he was a miserable bastard until he died of cancer and the only people who knew him regretted that it didn't progress faster. He was a drag on the few people willing to associate with him (neither his mother or daughter among them) both emotionally and financially. I myself helped clean up the disgusting mass of cigarette tar filled beer cans he left in my friend's house after he passed.
So your mileage may vary I suppose. And that's about all I'll say on the matter.
The good thing about interesting vs dull is that you can just filter it on the spot. No need to dismiss people before actually hearing what has been said.
This is a typical overly cynical and overly online take. I think it would be dispelled by talking to or being friends with a single person that works in rehab
there are certain places where a lot of dubious, predatory drug rehab facilities have popped up in the last decade, since health insurance now has to pay for it, yet it's not quite regulated like other healthcare. if you see a lot of these it can make you very cynical.
Rehab helps about a quarter of the people it treats - provided you accept that they'll probably need multiple rounds of treatment. It's wicked to encourage the belief that a single round of rehab, followed by lots of willpower, is likely to solve problems.
Single rounds of rehab do sometimes work, and longer sessions have better changes. Willpower is part of it, but often completely changing one’s social circle is critical.
Commenting under you on the entire subthread here....
I think this is a two part problem. If you talk to a particular therapist/counselor it would be very rare to find one that doesn't want to see you get better. In general the people at this level are empathetic and do care.
But above that there is a 'rehab system'. You start moving away from the people that want to see other people get better towards that people that want to see the system make as much as much money as possible no matter the cost.
We talk about systems like this all the time here on HN with the term 'Molochs'. Systems where the individual optimum would be X, where X is things people actually like and think are good. Instead the system optimizes towards Y, where Y is far worse outcome for individuals, and individuals are seemingly powerless to stop the system from optimizing on Y.
AA and other twelve-steps programs are not inherently "religious-based". They only ask you to believe in some power higher than yourself that you can tap into as a source of inner sternness and restraint. You can call that a spiritual outlook if you like, but it's a very mild one and quite far from any organized or established religion. And it actually works quite well as far as helping people to stop drinking and stay off alcohol for the long term.
There have been many that linked it to being cultist (e.g. [1]).
> And it actually works quite well as far as helping people to stop drinking and stay off alcohol for the long term.
In any case, that is my biggest issue with AA and a lot of other "abstinence" programs (particularly those mandated by courts): they all but mandate that complete and utter sobriety is the only acceptable way instead of helping people to moderate their consumption or to find out and fix why they are consuming substances. Someone who's in hurt because their partner died or cheated upon them or they lost their job or home (these four causes are behind a lot of addiction careers) doesn't need a sobriety program run by questionably or barely qualified random joes, they need professional counseling.
I spent decades of my life trying to pursue moderation. It doesn't work (for me). The Sinclair Method worked. I tried AA but the white knuckle approach wasn't right for me. I know people who have absolutely gotten sober using AA, others who use both, and others still who use different medications.
In my experience, moderation was the worst possible solution. It was like perpetually kicking the problem down the road to be dealt with on another day. Relapse was frequent and always right around the corner, and with relapse came shame, guilt, and other feelings of failure.
I just wrote a long reply detailing why moderation isnt an option for people like me, but as usual the best explanation of my relationship with alcohol comes from the Westwing:
> I'm an alcoholic. I don't have one drink. [pauses] I don't understand people who have one drink. I don't understand people who leave half a glass of wine on the table. I don't understand people who say they've had enough. How can you have enough of feeling like this? How can you not want to feel like this longer? [pauses, sighs] My brain works differently.
> sobriety is the only acceptable way instead of helping people to moderate their consumption
That only works for some people and not others (likely due to genetic factors amongst other reasons). Which can be quite hard to grasp for people who are actually able (or believe that they are...) to 'moderate their consumption'.
> I personally know many people that were once far worse off than that gentleman, and are now doing quite well
This sounds extremely callous unless you were the dead man’s therapist or close personal friend. Surely you’re not going to infer you understand the situation from news articles.
> proven alternate solutions
Plenty of people seek help and yet still die of alcoholism despite trying to fix the addiction. There is no 100% guaranteed solution, and unless you are intimately familiar with the dead man’s life I really don’t understand how you can assume he didn’t try to get clean.
> Surely you’re not going to infer you understand the situation from news articles.
Surely you're not presuming you understand the horrors that the OP has himself witnessed or been privy to? For all you know the OP could have been working with addicts for 50 years and literally seen it all. Maybe be a bit more charitable.
And often there is no other solution and I’m very happy that people in my country have a choice about this. I would not want to see others suffer so that I won’t suffer their loss.
>I would not want to see others suffer so that I won’t suffer their loss.
The world being what it is, it's increasingly the opposite: others left or encouraged even to commit suicide (assisted or otherwise) so people dont have to help and support them.
In Canada it's increasingly becoming a trend for poor people to commit assisted suicide, not because they have some incurable disease and pain, but because they can't get by and are depressed by it.
The Canada example is not about suicide at all but about the impact of a society without a safety net. The issue isn’t the suicides, it’s almost a logical response to a situation that is objectively terrible without a possibility or getting better.
It's connected though, when assisted suicide there, is not just legal, but increasingly accepted, nornalized, or even encouraged as an invididual solution to not having a safety net.
So, the cause of the problem isn't the suicides - but they are offered (and used) as a way-out of it. This eases the burden on the state to do something to solve the root problem (why improve their condition, when they just off themselves and they wont be bothering us with their need for help anymore?).
> a recent poll found that 27 percent of Canadians polled strongly or moderately agree that euthanasia is acceptable for suffering caused by “poverty” and 28 percent strongly or moderately agree that killing by doctors is acceptable for suffering caused by homelessness.
> And in the context of medical issues, the authors claim that this includes killing patients who would not want to die if they could access proper treatment (emphasis theirs)
> So, socialized medicine fails, and a splendid answer to the problem for patients in need is euthanasia. Do you see now why I call euthanasia/assisted suicide “abandonment?”
While this case is indeed controversial and worthy of examining... I'm sceptical of "liveaction.org" as a source because it describes itself thusly: "Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective."
Nothing wrong with that of course, but I'd hardly consider it an authoritative source.
This was a commentary piece which quoted (to comment on) other sources.
Almost everyone talking about this topic is at least biased, and generally (what's-the-word for "motivated to convince others as to their point-of-view"?).
Upon closer inspection, it's an exact reprint of from an article from "National Review" which is a famously conservative organization.
>This was a commentary piece which quoted (to comment on) other sources.
Understood. I just thought I'd point out the potential for bias because it isn't obvious at a quick read. One of the great things about HN (IMHO) is that people tend to discuss things from a more scientific perspective than a religious or ideological one.
More to the point, there is no link to this study cited in the very first paragraph. As a Canadian I've never heard of this study so was interested to take a look. Googling a bit found the results and further discussion on why the National Review interpretation of it is pretty dishonest.
>Upon closer inspection, it's an exact reprint of from an article from "National Review" which is a famously conservative organization.
Conservative? It must be wrong then! Everybody knows that only liberal sources can have correct viewpoints!
> More to the point, there is no link to this study cited in the very first paragraph. As a Canadian I've never heard of this study so was interested to take a look. Googling a bit found the results and further discussion on why the National Review interpretation of it is pretty dishonest.
"At this point, only an adult with a grievous and irremediable medical condition can seek medical assistance in dying in Canada. Do you agree or disagree with allowing adults in Canada to seek medical assistance in
dying because of the following reasons?"
>found the results and further discussion on why the National Review interpretation of it is pretty dishonest.
Dishomest "interpretation", eh? Let's focus on the shocking raw results then, with the number agreeing with those two cases being above 1%?
(Sure, one might expect a 1% of hardcore scum being OK with the poor getting assistance to off themselves to solve their poverty/homelessness in any society. Maybe 2%. But not even Thacher would expect an above 5% agreement on that).
>Conservative? It must be wrong then! Everybody knows that only liberal sources can have correct viewpoints!
That's not what I said. There's a vast difference between quoting X public figure might have a conservative viewpoint and quoting an opinion piece from an organization who's entire reason for existing is to spread conservative opinions. Spreading those opinions is literally their job. It's what pays the rent.
I hope you can see why that is important context to know.
>Dishomest "interpretation", eh?
As mentioned, I did see the question and the results already but I'm still glad you posted it. As you can see the question is about "assistance in dying". It says it twice. But that opinion piece discussing the results however never even mentions the phrase. It does use the much scarier words "euthanasia" and <gasp> "murder" repeatedly. (Just in case the distinction is unclear - assisted dying implies personal autonomy, while euthanasia and murder do not). So what we have here is not just a conservative opinion, it's literally false information. Euthanasia is not what the poll is about. Nor murder.
Note: I'm not interested in advocating for or against assisted dying or discussing the poll results. That's tangential to my point; this is terrible source to post on HN.
From my perspective the poll itself is somewhat biased in wording. Personally I'm in favor of not using these terms at all, but explicitly writing out the process in the question: "Are you in favor of allowing people to have medical practitioners inject or provide them with lethal drugs in order to die for reasons of..."
In 2021 there were 10,064 deaths by MAiD in Canada, fewer than 7 were self-administered[1]. Making greater than 99.9% of MAiD deaths euthanasia, or at least consented-to mercy killings. I personally think calling them "assistance in dying" implies an autonomy in the actual act that does not exist. The autonomy is theoretically[2] in the decision (until the exact moment of administration), but this is the case for all suicides.
"Assisted dying" also, to me, implies inevitability. That the person is already dying, and that this process is just made easier. 219 of the 10,064 MAiD deaths (2.18%) in 2021 were of people whose deaths were "not reasonably foreseeable" (not in progress)[1]. "Assisted dying" is a disingenuous term for these deaths, "assisted suicide" is better. I don't know whether the change in terms would have altered the polling results. I'd presume that most people realize that poverty is not a lethal condition, but I don't know what's going through their heads as they answer the question.
This particular issue is difficult to discuss from a scientific perspective, because basically the only non-opinion (i.e. ideological) questions that can be asked are: whether making assisted suicide legal increases or decreases total suicides, and what are the economic impacts of assisted suicide legalization. Everything else about assisted suicide is ideological or ideological driven (at minimum, the balance between antipathies of death compared to pain).
Everyone talking about this is biased. Some lie or exaggerate, and this is important to point out, but every source of information cherry-picks what they choose to highlight.
I agree that bias is unavoidable. But what we're talking about here is an organization who's entire purpose for existing is to spread conservative views. Furthermore, they blatantly misrepresented the very question asked in the poll. The poll is not about "euthanasia" or "murder", yet the piece implies otherwise.
Since it's emotionally charged and intentionally misleading, it's not really the best source to quote.
Sure. I presumed people could parse out the emotion from such an obviously biased source and focus on the claims. But yes, cherry-picked quotes have a higher likelihood from such a source.
The purpose of a source doesn't matter. Whether or not they are misrepresenting (and what they are misrepresenting) does. ProPublica exists solely "To expose abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing." Yet it does it right, earning a very highly-placed spot on the Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart.
Just take the "L" :-). You're not going to convince me that it was a worthwhile source, or that the motivations of a speaker don't deserve consideration. Thats plainly absurd. Especially when there's money AND (religious) ideology involved. Sorry.
It's true that no source is perfect - but some sources are much less perfect than others.
Anyways, thanks for the respectful dialogue. Cheers.
I was thinking of this as a discussion, not something people can win or lose. You having an opposite opinion isn't a loss to me, because we had a good discussion about it.
I enjoyed the discussion. If you gave some semblance of acknowledgment that the opinion piece wasn't so great, and those same sentiments could be expressed in a more constructive manner we could have moved on. No worries, though. Cheers.
Some people are opposed to suicide under any circumstances because it is proscribed by their religion. They have been told by an authority that it’s wrong. They hold a strong bias against it.
For people without that view, why would they be biased? Are they not free to come to their own conclusion? Having an opinion does not preclude a good faith argument. And holding an opinion contrary to someone’s dogma does not make an opinion dogmatic.
> For people without that view, why would they be biased?
- Fear of pain
- Fear of old age, or aging in general
- Fear of debility
- Fear of loss of autonomy
- Desire for liberty to do what they want without input from others who may be affected by their decisions
Most people don't opine on issues unless they feel strongly about them. A strong feeling is a bias. There are few scientific parameters on the issues of suicide/euthanasia/MAiD, but it's fraught with ideological parameters, and basically all of the discussion about it comes down to ideology-based claims (with the few fact-based claims used as singular arguments to support a position).
I'm an atheist who values life in large part because I don't believe in an afterlife. I find pain unpleasant, but don't particularly fear it (at this point in my life). I fear the social pressures that government sanctioning and assistance with suicide brings. I fear the decisions that would be made about me, if I'm incapacitated, by people with different moral standards, in a societal framework that encourages them to make those calls for me. I fear the repercussions of "me"-centric (egocentric) social policies, given the power differentials between various individuals. These are my biases.
Bias does not necessitate dogmatism. I've read at least one non-dogmatic Catholic priest on suicide.
There's just nothing "scientific" about these sorts of opinions, though, from either side.
Edit to add: I was taking the term "dogmatic" as the colloquial usage. There are ideas about freedom, suffering, and the role of government or physicians that are effectively secular dogmas pertinent to assisted suicide. And many Catholics have personal (non-dogmatic) reasons for their beliefs. Even strong believers pick and choose which parts of religious dogma they find authoritative.
To be frank, I don’t buy those stories about people being nudged to commit suicide. In NL we have euthanasia for decades and the system works well. I think those scare stories originate from politically / religiously tainted sources.
Trying not to judge this guy but to put your parents through that seems unimaginable to me. Could not comprehend gathering my family around to watch me kill myself.
people seek alcohol in pathological amounts to numb a pain they carry around. you don't know what pain that was for him and what caused it. not everybody stumbles into alcoholism out of habit, partying too much or work related stress.
I'm no doctor but I know they seldom have actual pharmaceutical cures, however they can often provide worthwhile treatments which are very effective and truly make life more worth living.
Not always through medication.
Sometimes things work out for the best without doctors involved, also with medication or not.
I just have a lifetime of working (as carefully as possible to minimize harmful exposure) with very toxic materials.
Beverage Grade alcohol is just one of them.
People widely accept that alcohol is truly a substance that can be abused, but it has never been scientifically sound to classify it as a "drug".
It is simply a toxic solvent like many others, it's primary effect is not to kill pain, more so just to kill, usually germs but depending on the amount applied, all life forms eventually.
Most will agree that one of the additional characteristics of a solvent is to accomplish dilution of some kind or another. Maybe not unlike weakening a strong pigment with paint thinner, solvents in the bloodstream seem to weaken an otherwise strong mental state. Sometimes also not so strong to begin with. I think it's also well known people like it anyway, some choose alcohol, others paint thinner, sometimes depending on availability sometimes not. Ideally whether painting or not the solvent dissipates and things end up as intended.
Toxic materials will always have dangers which sometimes accumulate more than others, and need to be carefully balanced against non-toxic approaches.
As we have seen, the overwhelming number of toxic choices can seem so encompassing and exclusive to alternatives.
How are you defining “drug”? Or, I guess maybe I should be asking “how is ‘drug’ defined in the field which is the context that your statement that it doesn’t make sense to classify alcohol as a ‘drug’?” if you are using a standard definition like that?
I think I’ve heard that the word pharmakon can be translated as any of [poison, medicine, drug, paint]? That’s I guess not really relevant, but I wanted to mention it because all 4 of those translations seem relevant to your comment, and this amused me.
I say "pharma" of any kind today implies overwhelming benefit compared to risk in making a disorder measurably better, and I expect doctors and pharmacists to know this better than me.
When it comes to solvents though, and materials much more toxic than appear in the pharmacopeia, I do have an unfair advantage in direct experience and decades of intense study for the most part.
Substance abuse or addiction is possible whether or not the substance is really a drug or even very toxic or responsible for physical dependence.
I guess my point is that people can use things, and develop a dependence of many different kinds, like they were a drug even if they are something as simple as a common solvent.
Availability may mean more than "drug seeking behavior" a lot of the time.
Sometimes it's straightforward toxicity-seeking.
Chemically, solvents are usually very simple industrial chemicals compared to the vast majority of true drugs, especially the drugs in the PDR which are mostly carefully crafted for particular patients, rather than general consuption (like beer or liquor) or non-consumption which is how I scientifically categorize the solvents overall.
When I see people treat drugs no differently than alcohol, or alcohol no differently than drugs, I just don't think that is the most realistic treatment.
Once again, I'm not the expert on metabolism but I do think the metabolic effects are far too dissimilar also.
Disclaimer: my first job was with a drug manufacturer, I got there after paying my way at the university giving chemistry lessons to pre-med students, but that's as far as I went in that field. Solvents OTOH, I've been handling and directly observing their effects for decades since.
It's about a chap in Holland that was a recidivist alcoholic, who took advantage of the Dutch Euthanasia laws, to end his life.
There's really no way to put a positive spin on it. It sucks, no matter what opinions we hold on the matter.
The laws aren't the issue. If someone really wants to end things; they will. I have seen it many times, and alternative means can be absolutely devastating to the survivors.
> who took advantage of the Dutch Euthanasia laws, to end his life ... it sucks, no matter what opinions we hold on the matter
His brother disagrees with you, explicitly answering an anti-euthanasia protester with: "I am just glad my brother did not have to jump in front of a train or live a few more years in agony before dying of his abuse"
He could have ODed on opium from the dark web. He could have networked with other suicidal people to find a humane way to kill himself (or be killed).
I hate that people steelman governmental oversight and approval of suicide by strawmanning the other options.
In countries which legalize euthanasia it becomes easier to do it for more reasons.
Just keep it illegal, but don't prosecute people who try to do it. When a person reaches a point where they really want to die, they can figure out a way.
Sure. But just as you don't have a right to material support from the state in order to live, you don't have a right to material support from the state in order to die. Unless you happen to live in a country in which you do have such a right. Regardless, these rights are limited. I'm in favor of increasing the first right such that suicides are minimized, and reducing the second right to not prosecuting you for attempting suicide.
When considering rights conferred by authorities or society, there is often litte relationship between what's available at any one time, to what is beneficial to any one individual, who most often has no significant input about ways their particular needs may be better addressed.
My right means the government can't hinder me. Making it illegal, regardless of whether it's prosecuted or not is stamping on my rights. The government has no ability to make it illegal
In the article, the family of the patient cited that his alcoholism was secondary to his depression - a symptom of the bigger thing he was suffering from. The article goes to lengths though (see: title) to put the focus on “an alcoholic was euthanized.”
The brother’s relevant quote:
> "My brother suffered from depression and anxiety and tried to 'cure' it with alcohol. He's from a normal family, he did not want this to happen. He did not take an easy way out. Just a humane one.
> "If that's troubling for Mrs Bruce that's a pity. I am just glad my brother did not have to jump in front of a train or live a few more years in agony before dying of his abuse.
I can’t tell you for sure what is fact, but I’m inclined to take the more rational explanation of the family over the irrational “this was an alcoholic choosing death over rehab.”
"...what is it we need but more life? What does the infant need but more life? What does the bosom of his mother give him but life in abundance? What does the old man need, whose limbs are weak and whose pulse is low, but more of the life which seems ebbing from him? Weary with feebleness, he calls upon death, but in reality it is life he wants. It is but the encroaching death in him that desires death. He longs for rest, but death cannot rest; death would be as much an end to rest as to weariness: even weakness cannot rest; it takes strength as well as weariness to rest. How different is the weariness of the strong man after labour unduly prolonged, from the weariness of the sick man who in the morning cries out, 'Would God it were evening!' and in the evening, 'Would God it were morning!' Low-sunk life imagines itself weary of life, but it is death, not life, it is weary of. Never a cry went out after the opposite of life from any soul that knew what life is. Why does the poor, worn, out-worn suicide seek death? Is it not in reality to escape from death?--from the death of homelessness and hunger and cold; the death of failure, disappointment, and distraction; the death of the exhaustion of passion; the death of madness--of a household he cannot rule; the death of crime and fear of discovery? He seeks the darkness because it seems a refuge from the death which possesses him. He is a creature possessed by death; what he calls his life is but a dream full of horrible phantasms." -- George Macdonald, "Unspoken Sermons: Life"
The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
Should people quote DFW as an authority given his suicide?
Using metaphors of physical reality for psychological states can make it falsely appear more immutable that it is. It is possible to escape the burning buildings of the mind and knowing that you have agency over your ideas can be an essential part of the reframing/rethinking/challenging that can free you from suffering.
Letting people believe they are in a situation like floor 100 of the WTC and their flesh is literally burning with no escape could be outright harmful and irresponsible for those experiencing suicidal ideation.
> Should people quote DFW as an authority given his suicide?
A very good writer who committed suicide is probably a great person from whose experience we might learn, especially since they expressed what might be their internal anguish so eloquently.
He may be advocating for highly dysfunctional irrational thinking patterns that leads to suicide. They might be convincing, seductive and dangerous and should only be responsibly presented with clear context and challenge.
He's trying to share what the experience is like to promote empathy, so that suicide can be better understood by those with less personal experience with it. He's not advocating for people to commit suicide, just for ways to engage with the problem that doesn't further isolate and other those who are suffering.
I don’t think he was advocating anything. I think that misses the point. He was just trying to state the matter in a form that would allow people to understand the suffering better and have empathy for those who are in that type of suffering. Personally, I think he nailed it, and for that I am thankful.
I think to portray it otherwise would be to lose the message, and the fact that Wallace commited suicide should give credibility that the thoughts he wrote beforehand were those of an eventually suicidal man.
In my opinion, without the immutability of the situation the metaphor loses its meaning. People don't kill themselves because they feel they're in a situation they can get out of. I think it does more harm for those with suicidal ideation to ignore their feelings rather than validate them.
Sorry, I never read the quote as supporting suicide as a decision. But it's possible that a person contemplating suicide might see it that way.
I always read it as being about empathy. Explaining that sometimes a person's action probably have subjectively valid reasons that we should try to understand, or at least try to accept.
I read the gp comment's quote the same way that's why I shared this one.
It isn’t seen an condoning suicide. GPs point is more that his eventual suicide makes him less of an authority here. Bit like a relapsing addict trying to justify his drug use
> The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’
Yes, they do. Out of personal experience, when things are very bad and you have lost all hope of thing being able to get better ever, that is a strong incentive for suicide. Having any hope vs. none makes a crucial difference in whether life is bearable.
i think this opinion is simply wrong. a lot of people do kill themselves out of a feeling of hopelessness. and yes, for some death seems very appealing at some point especially given a painless method. every time i read something by dfw i get the impression that he was just a little bit too infatuated with his eloquence and putting style over substance.
You are overindexing on the word "hopelessness", which isn't even defined.
Are you claiming that a lot of people are attracted to their death more than repulsed from their life, or (as DFW wrote) that they recognize death as the best option?
Outside of a religious death cult with ideas of heaven, I don't see people with painless lives attracted to death.
I think you missed Macdonald's point. He's saying that "real life" is not simply the continuance of conscious existence, but "human thriving". If the man could achieve human thriving without health and without friends, then he'd be fine; it's precisely because he cannot achieve "human thriving" without health and without friends that that he says "I'm tired of life". Health problems, pain, and loneliness aren't life, but a form of death. So, MacDonald says, he's not tired of life -- he's tired of the continuance of conscious existence without life; he is, in fact, tired of death.
"Adults aged 75 and older have one of the highest suicide rates (20.3 per 100,000). Men aged 75 and older have the highest rate (42.2 per 100,000) compared to other age groups." [1]
The article is heavily focused on how to prevent suicide.
They note that suicide is sometimes rational (they call it "existential", euphemistically). I'm all for removing the causes of people wanting to die.
But if people have any rights at all, the right to decide when and how you die seems to be the most fundamental.
It seems to be almost impossible nowadays to obtain the kinds of drugs (basically, barbiturates) that you need to ensure a quick, painless death. Doctors get struck-off for so much as giving true advice on how to do it. You can get charged for accompanying your relative to a Swiss clinic.
The idea that relatives might encourage an elderly person to kill themselves is widespread, but I think that kind of motive is pretty rare. Mostly the opposition to enabling killing yourself is ideological, and seems to be particularly prevalent among people with strong religious opinions.
I don't want to die. But I'm not very well, and I might get to the point where I do want to. So I've been trying for several years to acquire the means to do it easily. But I've failed dismally.
> Mostly the opposition to enabling killing yourself is ideological, and seems to be particularly prevalent among people with strong religious opinions.
Kevin Yuill is an atheist. If you want the non-religious argument against state-sanctioned suicide read him (though, of course, as an individual he doesn't cover every anti-euthanasia atheist's point of view).
> non-religious argument against state-sanctioned suicide
I don't like the word "suicide" at all. It has strong connotations of sin and criminality.
The phrase "state-sanctioned suicide" implies that the state has active involvement in someone taking their own life. What I'm talking about is the state not actively interfering to make it hard for someone to decide for themself how and when they die.
"My particular situation" is nothing; I'm fine, and whatever health problems I have are the result of a life of self-indulgence and dissolution.
The connotations of sin and criminality are in the eye of the beholder.
> What I'm talking about is the state not actively interfering to make it hard for someone to decide for themself how and when they die.
But it does by regulating it. By deciding which suicides, or requests for euthanasia[1] are legitimate, and which aren't. If there were no barriers or gatekeeping in place a large chunk of the populace would kill themselves as teenagers.
[1]- incidentally, the word "euthanasia" strikes terror and horror in me. I much prefer suicide, as the grammatical locus of control is on the person killing themself, not some amorphous other.
Suicide remains a sin in the eyes of the Catholic Church (the largest Christian denomination); and attempting it was a crime, at least in the UK (where I live) until 1961.
People still speak of "committing" suicide, like committing murder. I can't think of any other legal act that you can "commit".
[Edit] Wrong! Adultery, for example, is legal, and is something you commit. So I suppose that in general, you can "commit" it if it's a sin, or more generally something you shouldn't do.
Sure. People also use the phrase "committing a traffic infraction".
"Committing to each other in marriage"
"Committing to a college"
"Committing money to a cause"
"Committing to God by accepting Jesus as your lord and savior" :D
I totally understand that there's baggage to this word (suicide). Given the totality of the ending of life I feel that highlighting all of these connotations with the word "suicide" is a good thing to do, as a minor, first-line form of gatekeeping. Nature is red in tooth and claw. While there are many situations in which it is okay to look at life-and-death with rose-colored glasses, when push comes to shove it is important to view the world without blinders.
"During his life he committed many good deeds." It is a much rarer usage, and typically less specific. Possibly grammatically incorrect as you'd generally substitute "performed" for "committed" in such a case.
The expression "committing suicide" has those connotations and is considered taboo by some. Maybe that's what you're thinking of? The alternative suggestion is "death by suicide" which is both technically correct and devoid of any implication of criminality/sin.
Of course, you're free to think what you want about the word, I'm just relaying something I've read.
(I agree with the rest of your point, I just wanted to mention that specific nuance about the terminology)
I was alive when attempting suicide was still a crime (obviously, you can't be prosecuted for succeeding!). For me, the word "suicide" has connotations of wrongdoing, like "homicide" and "patricide".
Younger generations may not be so aware of those connotations.
For me, "commit" doesn't have connotations of wrongdoing, unless it's a matter of a bad commit that breaks the build. "Death by suicide" doesn't name an act; it's a verdict.
Interesting. I'm from the same era and have the opposite opinion. To me the word "commit" implies legality, "death by suicide" seems factual and without judgement.
> Ut seems to be almost impossible nowadays to obtain the kinds of drugs (basically, barbiturates) that you need to ensure a quick, painless death
There is an easy way to get quick, painless death. One can just get diving regulator (from diving shop) and nitrogen cylinder (from industrial gas shop). As feeling of suffocation is based on raising CO2 levels, scuba mask that allows breath-out CO2 while breath-in N2 leads to fast asphyxiation without feeling of suffocation.
I'm aware that N2 leads to a quick and painless death; I've been warned more than once by lab-workers of the dangers of opening liquid N2 tanks in basements, even though I've never been near a lab.
But I thought there was some downside? I can't remember. Obviously, it's difficult to dose accurately, and it's impossible to stop dosing once you've had enough. So there is a risk you'll be discovered in a space filled with an odourless, invisible toxic gas.
What does a scuba mask do, that you can't do without a scuba mask? Surely, if you can breathe in and out, you can exhale CO2? My understanding is if you breathe N2, you first become unconscious (with no preceding wooziness), then you die. So there's a huge risk of accidents. Maybe that's why I thought there was a downside.
At any rate, "being discovered" is something I'd want to avoid at all costs! I can't imagine what it would be like to discover the body of someone that had killed themself.
IMO this is correct - an implication of the inherent worthiness of each human and each of our rights to self determination is that people get to make choices about their lives (including this kind of choice).
I have always approached the morality of this question as: how should other people in the life of someone who is convinced they want to die act? It's clearly possible they are suffering from a temporary set of conditions that will pass - it's also possible that they are making a sad but accurate judgement about what they would prefer under the circumstances. The former is much more common but to ignore the later cuts you off from connecting to and helping people who are struggling. I actually quite like the disease understanding of suicidality - like other diseases we should do our best to treat it and give comfort to the afflicted, and we should work to recognize when the case is too advanced and we should switch to palliative care.
As somebody who have been in and out mental hospitals, this is very familiar.
At one point in my early twenties, I was literally thinking about killing myself every single waking second.
Finally I decided to throw in the towel, and got around to planning my end.
Sat there, ran through various scenarios in my head. All the way up to putting the gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger.
My imagination always terminated in blackness. Nothingness.
Then I realized I didn’t want to die, but didn’t want to live this way. And promised myself that I would do everything in my power to heal.
It took me about 15 years to get where I am now. Stable and mostly at peace with myself, but it was an arduous and painful journey - with many terrifying moments where I couldn’t see a way out.
I’m incredibly grateful that I managed to figure it out and I wouldn’t wish that agony on anybody.
I'm really glad to hear you made it through such a challenging time in your life. Your strength and determination are incredibly inspiring. I'm curious to know more about your healing process. Did you work on identifying and addressing the root causes of your pain, perhaps through therapy or counseling? Sometimes, personal issues can stem from our familial relationships. Did you find that to be the case in your journey? I'm interested to learn more about how you managed to overcome your struggles and achieve the peace you have today.
It was a long winding journey. Generational trauma is definitely a real thing.
I tried a lot of things, from therapy to drugs to sex clubs, was grasping at straws, trying to understand what was happening.
It was a complicated and personal journey, but my biggest breakthrough occurred when I surrendered to the healing powers of my body and spirit.
I had to just stop and do nothing, and just allow all the hurt, shame, and fear come up to be processed. My ego fought like hell to keep them suppressed.
My mind was a storm of self-abuse, thoughtforms that told me that I was worthless and to be destroyed. I had to learn how to accept them and return to my heart (my emotional center) and just practice sitting with my feelings. Over time these thoughts dissipated, and I saw that they were driven by unrecognized emotional energy and signals from my body.
I was fortunate that I managed to create a situation that allowed me to lie fallow for a long time to heal.
There were many layers, but the crux of my issues was being severed from my authentic self. This happened because I grew up in a household with a lot of emotional abuse and coercive control, to the point where I suppressed myself and created a persona to survive.
If you read accounts of cult-abuse survivors, it’s like their real self is always trying to break through but they have been trained or mislead into ignoring themselves.
My experience was very similar.
I could write more about this, but pivotal points were recognizing that I had agency, learning how to trust my body and emotions over my ego, and understanding that at our core, we are love.
Had to learn how to love myself unconditionally basically; a constant practice.
And a big part of the self-love journey was learning how to truly take care of myself. How to eat properly, how to rest, cutting out toxic people from my life, becoming clear with my boundaries, forgiving myself, accepting my pace of progress, and so on.
Once I recognized the pain in my heart, I just kept returning to it, and over time that guided me towards the truth.
The part that resonates with me is the need to see a third alternative between death and the status quo. It is easy to feel trapped and without agency, and this leads to a downward spiral. In my experience and opinion, the key to finding a way out is reclaiming agency and belief that you have the power to change. Willpower is a tricky thing. If you think you have it you do, and if you don't think you have it you don't. It is largely a mystery to me how people go from one to the other.
In my case, one thing that helped is realizing I had choices and wasn't as trapped as I felt. I could leave my family, and my job if I wanted. I could always quit it all and live in a shack somewhere reading books. Just knowing I had the power of choice and wasn't trapped gave me the strength to make progress.
I now think trained helplessness and philosophies that view humans only as a product of their environment are extremely dangerous.
As someone that has attempted suicide in the past (some with a lot of motivation to get right, obviously failed since I am not a ghost-writer <pun intended>) it kinda shocked me that this wasn't a more commonly held 'water is wet' as the reason for people to try to end their suffering.
Sure, there are some who feign their attempts for various reasons but there are those that find a way of acheiving the (at the time) welcoming bliss of quiet and silent oblivion, whatever that helds or may not hold.
To this day, I reserve the right to decide when, how or even if I ever again attempt suicide. That is my right.
I have also seen the impact that suicides have on the ones that knew and perhaps cared about the dead person so I am aware of the suffering that would echo out from my decision.
As a parent, I am also aware that the chances of a child attempting suicide following a parent doing it sky-rocket so - ouch.
But ask yourself this before judging.... just how bad would the pain in your life have to be that despite all of the above things it can still be an actual option because the suffering is so unbearable... Walk a mile in a mans Shoes as they say, YMMV.
Please note: I am not currently suicidal and am doing really well as per last shrink so High-Five etc. Just wanted to add my 0.02c to the thread.
>> Sure, there are some who feign their attempts for various reasons but there are those that find a way of acheiving the (at the time) welcoming bliss of quiet and silent oblivion, whatever that helds or may not hold.
It makes me profoundly sad that more people aren't aware of 5-MeO-DMT and the symbolic death (and the total bliss) you have during the experience.
This is dark, but it’s interesting to me that the people who jump from a burning building and the people who end themselves on their own time are performing the same calculus.
Nobody wants to die, but when your life starts to look like a burning building, sometimes the window doesn’t seem so bad.
I have generalized anxiety disorder along with the lifelong depression. My life has felt like a permanent "emergency mode" from the inside, and with how my body processes things. The funny consequence is that I've been at multiple points a helpful anchor for healthier people in actual emergency situations, from panic attacks to much scarier things. When the house is on fire I'm feeling most at peace as the world and my brain align (and I have a mental "muscle memory" to use), and I guide people fairly well right back to the gates of "being OK", but I let them pass through and stay behind.
This has helped in life or death situations a few times (including an actual building fire), as well as in professional work. Then the situation gets fixed and the world goes on as I return to illness. I'm glad there's at least some upsides to this whole thing.
Yeah sounds like you are in constant hypervigilance mode which is part of the limbic system for fight or flight. It is exhausting. It can be very hard to identify the root cause especially if it is a state that developed from childhood but its a coping mechanism to stress. It was likely adaptive for something in your past but that you likely don't need anymore... and as you say some events you've experienced so you might even have PTSD. But you can train your brain as they say...
I probably have a few things that contribute to a case of CPTSD. Some things can help me (parts of CBT/DBT, zen koans, meds..). But it's also difficult to change a thing that is a feature of you, in that it has been there for so long that everything else was built around it.
Just like maths problems, getting to the core of things often requires making your life harder for a while before coming back to the surface - and I can't always afford to do that unfortunately. The brain really is a weird and fascinating thing..
What strikes me now after reading that is how boring (my) depression really is. I'm in no way saying the author's depression is more exciting at all. He self-describes it as a total waste -- not to be confused with the fact that I find his article interesting in that it reveals how boring depression is, it is a boring life course. That is illustrative and perhaps preventative and curative for others? So in that sense he made something out of it which is great!
My depression is routed in anxiety which is based on fear of being judged. That's pretty boring in the scheme of things and being judged is something we can't control anyway unless we don't want to do anything and be boring.
That’s not the same calculus at all. The burning building is “I’m gonna be dead in 5 minutes no matter what I do. Might as well make it quick instead of excruciating.”
Your calculus is death by suicide vs worse than suicide. It is the same.
The difference is actually the opposite. Someone jumping off a window from a burning building has some small chance to survive so they pick uncertain death over certain death.
No, the window still seems awful but it’s the choice you make.
From David Foster Wallace:
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
Yeah, I mean bad by comparison. The point is that no human wants to jump out a window, ever.
It’s also worth pointing out that depression can warp your sense of reality and make you believe you’re in a burning building when you’re not, so to speak.
I love your quote and it likely inspired my comment subconsciously
It could be considered a natural instinct to do this?
I once encountered a guy who was thinking of jumping off a bridge and I said a lot of stupid but well meaning things in an attempt to dissuade him.
It got to the point where I realized everything I was saying was just making him more determined to do it. Luckily, I managed to flag down a passing ambulance and the paramedics onboard turned out to be a lot more skilled in the art of persuasion than I was.
"Why hasn’t the number of deaths by suicide decreased?"
That housing and groceries is getting more and more expensive certainly doesn't help with that...
Of course, not so many people in this world suffer anymore from hunger but in the last years additional problems came up.
I know some older people who think that Depression is just a excuse for not wanting to work but these older people had it easier to build or buy a house than my generation - so I think more that the rising Depression in many is a symptom for an live which gets more and more difficult and them not being able to deal with it.
You truly think housing and food have anything to do with it? We live in the richest society in history, and also the most suicidal. Why don't people living in true poverty around the world feel depressed and kill themselves like we do?
Why do we kill ourselves? It's because we have no communities anymore. Many of us are alone. Some call it a loneliness epidemic. And we've replaced community with social media. Our society is sick, and it has nothing to do with needing more housing or whatever your pet political issue is.
I think it is more than just loss of communities, although that is a big part of it.
It is also a hallowing out of the human experience and the inability to enjoy simple pleasures available to anyone alive.
Consumerism is so deeply entrenched in the minds of people that they usually blame their unhappiness on a lack of material goods and external factors.
Meanwhile, There are millions or billions of people who can find pleasure and satisfaction with with practically nothing. Enjoying a quiet cup of tea in hovels, reading books for pleasure, or taking in everyday beauty.
To me, this indicates that a large part of dissatisfaction on depression are about mindset, which should be obvious.
Mental illness and mental issues are systemically underdiagnoaed in the third world. I do not believe for a single second that third worlders have better mental health than first worlders. The average third worlders has seen ultra traumatic experiences that simply do not happen to the average first worlder.
I do think that third worlders have better mental health than first worlders with respect to depression.
Different people respond in wildly different ways to hardship and trauma. The difference in outcome between two people is internal, not circumstance. It is impossible that it could be otherwise when you some people have experienced the worst the world has to offer and are relatively happy, while some others have experienced the best and are suicidal.
Furthermore, know that the same people can be depressed or happy despite the same material external circumstances, depending on their outlook.
Depression especially hinges on mental perspective, perspective, and conditioning. It stands to reason that this could vary culturally and geographically for many reasons.
It would be absolutely unethical, but I think you could raise two sets of children to be more depressed or happy with the same material quality of life. Raise one group telling them they are helpless, worthless, and that the world is a terrible place. Tell them that you will give them riches and always disappoint them. Take the other and teach them to have low expectations but enjoy simple pleasures. Equip them with cognitive tools to deal with the challenges of life and disappointment in healthy ways. Do you think you would see a difference between the two groups?
Well the first group you mentioned is borderline abused so of course they would be miserable. The second group is interesting.
> enjoy simple pleasures. Equip them with cognitive tools to deal with the challenges of life and disappointment in healthy ways
is this really fully teachable? Is it something that truly can be trained or it depends on a very complicated number of external and internal factors, including genetics?
as far as this part:
> teach them to have low expectations
Sounds kind of simplistic to say that, but there is always this worry that having low expectations leads to McDonald's, where you may realize that no you actually expected much more out of life, but by that point it's kind of too late and pretty hard to dig yourself out.
I would agree that the first case could be construed as abuse, but this type of abuse is relatively common to some degree.
My point was more to illustrate the fact that cognitive development and personality impact how people experience the world, and is probably the biggest factor in what we consider depression.
The point is to show how trivial it would be to bias humans towards depression and thereby illustrate the importance of the psychological component.
I don't think that you can teach kids in a way that's 100% successful, but I still think it is a huge Factor, probably then the biggest. There's vast amount of data that backs this up.
When it comes to my statement about expectations, it is obviously more nuanced. What I meant is low expectations for how easy life will be in that they will have to overcome challenge and that a happy and successful life requires work. Also low expectations for the material necessity is to have a happy life. I look around today and see lots of peers who think they can't be happy without owning a home. Owning a home is admittedly more difficult now than in the past, but even then something like 40% of people would never be homeowners in their life. If that's a prerequisite for happiness, you have doomed 40% of the population to be unhappy
yeah, I think that is a big part of it. Or people who have friends, social groups, ect.
It can also have to do with what you focus your attention and spend your time on. Maybe watching the 40+ hours of TV a week that average Americans do doesn't actually make people happier, and sitting around a coffee shop and playing games (a cheap and common past time in some poor countries), is better for mental health.
maybe. I tried to play board games with my boys many times, but even something as simple and potentially enjoyable as Monopoly or cards quickly turns our warm relationship into a nasty pissing match. We actually turned to movies and shows for that reason (or more collaborative types of games but that's harder to come by)
> We live in the richest society in history, and also the most suicidal.
Actually, the US is not even in top 30 of countries with most suicides per capita. And of course, it's probably better than most at actually keeping records, which means that it should be even lower down the list.
> Why don't people living in true poverty around the world feel depressed and kill themselves like we do?
That actually happens. There are just not enough statistics about that because nobody cares.
I remember a documentary about a part in China with a very high suicide rate - mostly because people couldn't find a job. Another example would be the Irish Travellers - a community which has it hard to find a job and has a way higher suicide rate than the rest of the UK.
I can’t speak for everyone, but for whatever reason those things cause me (a very middle-class person) a lot of stress.
Maybe because of what I was taught or how I grew up or my experiences, which are not the same for everyone, but it’s still there. I’ve been food insecure, been temporarily homeless, had to bounce around from place to place without much money to my name when younger.
Not being able to put down roots stresses me out. Will rent go up? Will landlord sell my place (has happened before), will I need to move to the middle of nowhere in my late 40’s and start all over building a community?
I’m not looking for a nice SFH as a need, just a mediocre condo, but in a very expensive place. It’s where the jobs are, unfortunately. Relying on other people’s income (roommate/spouse) does not solve this issue for me.
While there are many different issues for many different people, not being able to carve out a space for yourself is very stressful for many people.
I’ve talked about this in therapy. Get married or look at all the poor people worse off is what I am told. Not helpful.
The suicides are mostly caused by financial obligations, most commonly by farmers who borrowed money to buy proprietary seeds. People who practice subsistence agriculture have no financial obligations.
> these older people had it easier to build or buy a house than my generation
Also easier in finding a job with an employer that would invest in your training and invest in the community and a stable economy where your wages, purchasing power and savings weren't obliterated overnight through the stroke of a pen that also pushed housing prices up by the same amount.
The fabric of society and community has degraded in the last couple of decades since the 2008 bust and it hasn't gotten any better. It's now "grab everything you can while you can, screw everyone else, or be poor".
as someone who has lost many friends and family members to suicide, articles like this feel so naive.
at their funerals, there’s always a person saying “let’s remember them how they lived, not how they suffered”
no. their suffering was a big part of their lived experience, and i will remember it forever. people who want to commit suicide do want to stop living. sometimes it’s because there is so much suffering in their life they can’t take it - sometimes it’s something else.
thousands of years ago, people knew that life _is_ suffering. it’s so disgusting to me to pretend that life and suffering aren’t intertwined.
some people can’t take it, and that’s fine. we didn’t ask to be here. but when those people go, let’s not falsify our memories of them because we don’t personally like the idea of suffering.
Edit: I re-read your comment, and I think I was responding to what I thought you said, not what you were actually saying, so I'm rewriting my response.
You're right that suffering is an essential and inevitable part of life. We shouldn't erase the suffering that informs people's identities just because it makes us uncomfortable.
The amount of suffering in life varies from person to person and moment to moment, and can be influenced to some degree. For some (but not all) suicidal people, it is possible to make changes (different life situation, therapy, better connections, removal of stressors) to reduce suffering to a bearable level so that they want to keep on living and are no longer suicidal.
Wish I could say this headline didn't hit home. Not gonna commit suicide, but I sure do fantasize about dying every waking moment. Living in constant pain for over a decade'll do that to ya… Rather be non-existent than exist in a state of such misery as to make living genuinely impossible.
Hey, fellow chronic pain guy here, though "only" 8 years and counting so far! I have CFS and Small Fibre Neuropathy, which pain-wise means I have constant neuropathic and muscular pain in my limbs.
Unless someone has lived with chronic pain, they won't be able to understand what it does to your mental health. Living in constant pain is hard - fucking hard. I've really struggled, and if I didn't have a family, without a doubt I'd be dead by now. Even with my family, I spent a lot of time fantasising about suicide, and one time I almost did it without l even thinking about it. It also turned me into a pretty horrible person, who slowly pushed away many friends, and made life difficult for my family.
Thankfully, I'm finally coming to terms with it, and I now have meds that actually help. I use an opioid and ketamine. The opioid helps a little with the pain, as does the ketamine - but really, the ketamine improves my mood, a lot.
For the past couple of years I've also been using cannabis - this has made a huge difference to my mental health, general well-being, and family life! Having the ability to be essentially pain free every evening after hitting a nice heavy indica is... amazing, in a way that only someone who'd been in constant pain for years could understand.
If you have access to legalised cannabis wherever you are, I can't recommend it highly enough. Christ, even if it's not legal, it's worth thinking about.
> Unless someone has lived with chronic pain, they won't be able to understand what it does to your mental health. Living in constant pain is hard - fucking hard.
And specifically chronic pain that will never get better and can only get worse. A lot of the platitudes and reasoning we use to get people to not commit suicide don't apply. It can get better? Bitch, I have Multiple Sclerosis. Yes, hopefully science can do something about it, but right now it's an incurable, progressive illness.
I primarily stay alive from a combination of spite and the ability to be a living cautionary/memento mori tale: I did everything 'right' and this still happened. It can happen to you. Work as hard as you like, make all the right choices... you can still fail. Have some grace or be eaten alive when you fall.
Technically correct, practically a useless distinction? It's not like "stop suffering, keep living" solutions grow on a tree. One has to contend with:
- Irreversible or hard to reverse brain damage/dysfunction. It doesn't matter if the cause is traumatic experiences, innate conditions or substance abuse, effects are equally hard to remedy
- Irreversible or hard to reverse physical health problems
- Low social capital at late stage in life. If someone wants to have loving friends and family at 50 starting from being lonely and estranged, are they really going to have same results as someone who has been building these up from childhood?
- Financial constraints and difficulty of learning new marketable skills in adulthood
- Clash between reality of surrounding society and expectations that are a deeply ingrained part of one's character
The solutions proposed seem to be drugs (either sanctioned ones like SSRIs or increasingly street ones like ecstasy and mushrooms) and talk therapy premised on one having a Freudian complex in one's head rather than experiencing genuine hardship. I am not saying any of these are totally useless. Even having a few drinks gives one a holiday from endless gloom and can spur one to form social connections or reach conclusions that are still meaningful while sober. But on the whole, I am not sold on treating people like houseplants who are considered diseased if not perfectly happy just sitting around with basic needs provided for. I would rather see more effort to improve human lives in more fundamental ways. And, as a last resort, acceptance that for some it was really not worth it at the end rather than labeling them insane to assuage our own discomfort and avoid questions of our own responsibilities
It's not a useless distinction. People downplay other's suicidal ideations all the time because they underestimate other people's pain or are unsympathetic to it. Those people need to know that this is everyone's problem.
That would be nice, but "A Man named Otto" is fiction, not a documentary. It's even more far fetched to suppose that entire society is going to change than to expect that any single person will pull themselves out of the abyss by their own shoestrings or using magic potions cooked up by Pfizer. People want all kind of things like life without suffering or drinking without hangovers, but they also come to realize that reality has limited options.
This lumps all the people who die by suicide into a single category. People commit suicide for various reasons.
Some of them do it to stop suffering, as the article says. Some do it out of sheer vengeance. Some do it as part of a pact. Some do it in such a way so that the cause is not proven to be suicide, and thus their near-and-dear get the insurance money. Some do it so that they have control over their lives till the very end. Some others like Mitchell Heisman, do it just because they can.
At the same time, some of these causes are preventable. Good faith attempts to address those causes are, of course, always laudable.
I've heard someone describe suicidal ideation as like being halfway through a multiplayer game where you are getting stomped: It's not that you want to rage quit, it's just that the outcome feels inevitable so you wish you could skip to the end. Or like turning off a ball game early when your team is down by an insurmountable points at the end of the third quarter.
For at least some people, it may not be that they want to die, rather it may be that they predict 30+ more years of an unsatisfying life and wish that they could just skip to the end.
> For at least some people, it may not be that they want to die, rather it may be that they predict 30+ more years of an unsatisfying life and wish that they could just skip to the end.
This is exactly it. It's surprising that people can't see this as obvious.
Sometimes you play a game, and you realize, shit I invested points in these attributes but upon reading strategy guides, I realize I fucked up the distribution and there's no way to reset my character. What is the solution? Abandon the character.
My religious sister is anxious to move on to Heaven. She's not suicidal but at 60 tired/bored of her dull life. Since Heaven is the end goal she doesn't have much motivation in enhancing her life.
I do this 'existential calculus' quite often. I also sometimes wonder what the point is when it just gets worse every year.
My therapist told me it's because I'm a survivor, it's what I do. But what's the point of surviving? At what point do I get to live, much less be happy?
She pointed out it would be throwing away all my battle scars, all the effort I'd put in to get this far. Just think about how much better I'd feel when it did get better and I came out the other side.
I pointed out it sounded like sunk cost fallacy to me.
He next question was whether I was an organ donor. I've not spoken to anyone since.
I was thinking about Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington yesterday. If they couldn't get past their pain, what hope have I?
It's a day to day struggle, but also one I know I'm going to lose one day. I completely see why people turn to hard drugs, I consider opioids daily almost. The only reason I don't try them is I feel I'd rather skip the addiction and even worse pain and just fast-forward to the end. Again, the existential calculus.
> He next question was whether I was an organ donor.
That's dark. I've been homeless for 5 years (including working full time and having never been an addict). I'm very healthy so for a while I felt like I could be targeted by black marketeers like organ harvesters.
> I completely see why people turn to hard drugs, I consider opioids daily almost.
I joke that if I were to give up and become an addict at least someone would help me because it'd be their job. I've always been a hard worker and hate being unemployed, I'm obviously not waiting around for handouts. The situation is just that impossible to solve, "no man is an island" except the homeless and similarly beat down people I guess including the ones who turn to suicide. It was humbling to ask for help for the first time in my life and be preyed upon or abandoned at best.
Never imagined myself here. Will never consider suicide, but the math and pressure to get rid of myself from my relatives and former friends is obvious. I always thought I had a support system but indeed what "they" say is true: everyone is in it for themselves. I constantly look for ways to be valuable to others, but on a desert island and sometimes literally starving there are few opportunities.
Helping others is the key, while not being exploited by predators.
I'm glad you're still chugging along. Until you need real help you've no idea who your real friends are, I've found. Which is why I feel like I've no true friends left.
From experience I know how hard it is being down and out and without a support system, so I really hope you're able to find a solution.
I know every single homeless resource I ever tried didn't work. They just passed my name from non-profit to non-profit, set up interviews only to be passed again. Literally not one of them was ever of any help.
Wish I could offer a hand, but I've nothing anymore.
Really hope you make it out, it's something I'd wish on no one.
My apologies if this is an inappropriate question (if you feel this is the case, please feel free to tell me so and to bugger off etc).
Mind if I ask the "how" question? Was there a particular 'event' or chain of events that led to your being homeless?
For context, I am researching / hoping to research "hospital admissions" as a precipitating event of (first) homelessness, so I am interested in people's lived experience with that topic (as well as practical pointers on how I could materialize this research in more practical terms).
> I joke that if I were to give up and become an addict at least someone would help me because it'd be their job. I've always been a hard worker and hate being unemployed.
I could totally see how that might be the case. This has "Shirky Principle" written all over it, doesn't it? It's weird how the system is wired like that... In fact, that's partly my motivation for this research, actually; the idea is that, if a first (and otherwise avoidable) episode of homelessness could be detected and avoided prior to discharge, that would be much more beneficial than allowing people into that mess in the first place and then having to prioritise who "deserves" the most help after the fact.
Not sure. I attempted it once as a young man, but my roommate found me passed out with a foamy mouth and got me to the hospital.
I will say I think a lot about that, and how much pain I'd have saved myself had I simply locked my door.
As I mentioned it's a struggle I know I will lose one day, it's just a question of when.
Days like today it's hard to breathe. Like my chest/body feel weighty. I try not to think about things but the moment my mind wanders I find myself back in the mire, doing my calculations, thinking of ways, and looking forward to not feeling anymore. But I smoke a blunt and try to make it to the next 10 minutes, hour, day.
It sounds like you're further along the path than me. I can find few reasons to continue existing, but that doesn't translate into a desire to end it all. Just a lack of motivation etc.
I guess I just assumed there was more a gap between where I am now and suicide. And this article and various comments here suggest that gap isn't as big as I'd like.
Anyway stay safe, and if it's nice out, have a good long walk.
> … "making a bold choice to complete life on their own terms."
Or making the only choice they feel they have left to them when faced with unsurmountable obstacles to ending their pain in any other way… This "fuck everyone else but me" society we currently live in isn't real conducive to even noticing or caring about the pain of another human (except maybe to blame, ridicule, or add to said pain), let alone helping them end that pain in a positive manner.
David Foster Wallace's description of a person in a burning building struck me deeply. That said most people killing themselves are not in fact in a burning building; they just think they are.
I've never considered suicide but I remember being deeply unhappy as a teenager. it's not that looking back on it I can't see why but at the time I didn't know why. I'd consider my circumstances and realize that whatever problems I had were both trivial and fixable but still feel utterly miserable. The thing that frightened me was the idea that I would lose that perspective.
Now though, now I'm an old man. I know that at some point the odds are good that I'm going to be in that burning building for real and I don't know what I'll do.
Related, is it difficult all over the US to find mental health resources? Wait times for counselors and therapists are months+. Additionally, insurance seems to not cover mental health stuff well if at all, if you're lucky to get an appointment it seems you're paying out of pocket.
I mean, your experience in the US is exactly like mine in European public care system looking for a psychiatrist or other more niche doctor: Multi month long waiting lists, doctors who are full and don't take any new patients, needing to go private out of pocket. Even the good private ones are booked weeks into the future.
But it is the private health care in US. There is no other option unlike you who can choose to go private. And I would guess that your out of pocket payment will not cause you to go to bankruptcy.
Yes, many (if not most?) providers stopped taking insurance for various reasons. The rates provided by insurers are a fraction of the rates they can get charging out of pocket. And insurers try to shorten therapy sessions, or ask why a patient still needs therapy, etc.
I don’t know why mental health specifically has these issues out of all the medical professions though.
We may have not experienced prolonged pain, but we all have experienced suffering. Life itself is synonymous with suffering, for all but those few master sages who have been successful in conquering all of their cravings and reaching the utmost of equanimity.
Suicide itself is virtually always a highly disordered act, that only demonstrates how deeply the person resorting to it is mired in her cravings. While some kinds of physical or spiritual pain might in fact be a real obstacle to attaining inner growth, this is quite rare and not what most people are dealing with.
What? No it isn't. Just because some guy wearing orange robes told you it is, doesn't mean it's true. I have been through a lot of depression and I would never accept such a statement alone: life is no more synonymous with suffering than it is with peace and joy
The Buddhist point of view on this is closer to “the default state of life is unsatisfactoriness”. The word “suffering” tends to elicit thoughts about pain and distracts from the myriad of other ways humans “suffer” daily.
> life is no more synonymous with suffering than it is with peace and joy
I’d argue that by default, life is closer to “unsatisfactoriness” than peace and joy, due largely to the evolutionary drives that make us strive for more. While you may be fortunate enough to experience the latter, it comes only through deliberate effort and a successful navigation of life’s basic survival requirements. Living in a modern society shields most people from the more persistent existential suffering of our ancestors.
Hunger, thirst and bodily breakdown are guaranteed. Peace and joy are optional, but what make life worth living. But it is seeing “suffering” for what it is - a mental state that we have the power to change - that makes living a peaceful and joyous life possible.
You are in fact agreeing with what I said, in that we do experience peace and joy whenever we manage to lessen some of our cravings (and overcoming a state of depression is an especially clear example of this). But very few people hold freeing themselves of their spiritual fetters as their fundamental goal in life, and even fewer manage to achieve this. Thus, there is clearly a way in which life is synonymous with suffering, at least as a default state that we are all mired in from birth.
> Why then say "life is synonymous with suffering", and not "life is synonymous with all the manifold experiences that comprise it"?
Because it's important to fully empathize with those who have not yet learned to view pain as merely one of "all the manifold experiences that comprise" life. It's good that you understand this more spiritually sound perspective but to most people, suffering (meaning the innumerable cravings and spiritual addictions that we are all subject to as part of living) is kind of a Big Deal. Sometimes it's so big of a deal that they make irreversible and very poorly considered decisions over it, as OP discusses.
What about someone who has conquered their craving to continue living and decides they are prepared to embrace the end? Have you seen "The Good Place"? It's really quite an interesting show in that it combines a (sometimes very funny) sitcom with a pretty thoughtful exploration into the subject of ethics.
> We may have not experienced prolonged pain, but we all have experienced suffering
Sure, but people rarely consider suicide due to momentary suffering, or even suffering for a few weeks or month. People typically consider suicide when they can't see an end to their suffering, and while this is sometimes irrational there are also many cases where it isn't.
I've already pointed out that suffering is inherent to life for most of us, so it encompasses far more than "a few weeks or month[s]". You seem to be focusing on the aversion of physical or spiritual pain, but that's merely one sort of suffering which is not different in nature from the far subtler and less obvious suffering we all experience throughout our lives.
There is suffering and there is suffering. Even Buddha differentiated between the physical needs and the spiritual pain. We now know there is also mental pain and it is disingenuous to categorize all of them into a single category.
What if I told you that you don't have to care about any kind of suffering, other than perhaps some very rare extremes of physical pain. That's the point!
I'm sure that holds for most people. However I'm not exactly attached to the idea of being alive. If I'm dead I naturally wouldn't have any thoughts on the matter. Dying however does scare me.
at lowest for me it was normal to be in bed for 16-20 hours a day in agonizing pain and horrific migraines. Dozens of doctor appointments had mostly been a waste. They all claimed it was anxiety.
Realized one morning that I had spent hours thinking how wonderful it would be to never wake up again. Have kids, and the would end up in state care without me. (No family capable of caring for them)
Started trying every suggestion I could find on the internet. Lots of wasted effort and backfires. 6 months later I was Kayaking with kids each weekend. Took about 3 years to get mostly back to normal.
Hardest part was giving up all normal food and switching to a strict plain chicken, sweet potatoes and green veggies diet.
Supplements, massages, avoiding all scents, special eye glasses, etc. eventually finding the right medications that didn’t have insane side effects.
Underlying causes. Autoimmune Sjogrens, clotting disorder that was in over drive (factor 5) high cranial pressure(IIH)
Nerve damage(probably from Sjogrens) lot Vit D
Did an elimination diet. That calmed the body down. AIP diet to maintain.
Started high doses of Vit D, E, Omega 3. Started watching bob and Brad and spent a couple hours a day on stretching and massages.
Discovered and treated TMJ. Removing smells and lights. That got migraines under control. (Slow reduction over the months)
LDN got nerve pain under control.
Diamox to get head pressure under control.
The big one was I kept having stroke symptoms, but MRIs were clean. Started blood thinners and symptoms went away.
My wife seems to have broadly the same symptoms you are mentioning.
Sharp migraines, anxiety attacks (as per doctors), rapid heartbeats, disturbed sleep, bodyache, random mood swings etc.
Her MRI is clean too. Doctors just started her with blood thinners which might be alleviating some pain but no, she is not feeling good at all. Had done multiple tests, visited bunch of doctors but still yet to figure what's exactly wrong with her body?
Rhumtologist to check for autoimmune. Avg time period for diagnosis for mine (Sjogrens) is 7 years.
Get test results and look them up. Doctors kept ignoring positive results, saying they are false flags. Like high ANA.
When I kept pushing for more tests they kept saying results didn’t matter. Or they use tests that Re 1/3 false negative.
With diet I didn’t need dr approval and lots of people say it works better than meds. I found that to be true. It is a Huge mental block on giving up comfort food when hurting.
Clotting (factor 5) food didn’t matter. But I found artificial sugar was a trigger.
Neurologist for nerve pain or head.
Neuro-ophtomoligist are often good at whole body issues.
IIH high cranial pressure may or may not have clean MRI.
Lumbar puncture is needed.
It is amazing how everyone arguments about suicide is trying to rationalize in one way or he the other the cause of suicide: what led to it? why? Is right? Honestly: who cares?
My stance is this: there need not to be any reason to die other than wanting it.
I've never asked for this life. So let me go, without much fuss, when I want to go. I don't need to motivate my decision, nor I need find meaning for myself to end it. Whether it is to escape pain or happiness it doesn't matter. Maybe I'm happy about the life I lived up until now, and I'm happy to go. It is nobody's concern but mine. And please, make laws and facilities to make it happen painlessly and reliably for all people who are able to decide it for the themselves at whatever age they wish to go.
This is a blatant false dichotomy. People can stop suffering by stopping living. If a person perceives the probability of continued suffering in life as very high with no ability to effect that then stopping living is their best chance to stop their suffering.
1/3 of Canadians support assisted suiciding homeless people or people who will lose their home. Canada finds death the most appropriate solution to suffering. Doctors and administrative staff are making the recommendation directly based on financial circumstance. It's a program the govt spends money on ad marketing and growth. Sounds more like a failure of the 'state and capital' flavor society to me than something to respect (which I have none for either, regardless of whether one of their policies at a point in time is a net utilitarian improvement or not).
I don't really buy that it is like... strictly that desire. I think something is different in their physiology or psychology. I know people who were so sick they're barely staying alive and their lives are absolute miserable nonsense and they even verbally express not wanting to deal with it but they still just have self-care habits that keep themselves stable. Maybe it is something like that's a precursor to losing those habits but I don't know I've seen the behavior for multiple years.
I have a medical condition that makes me sensitive to everyday noises. It started when a friend invited me to learn to shoot but was complacent about my hearing safety.
Lots of conditions have pain from sound but this is no ordinary condition. It is highly unstable and degenerative. Something is broken, the more broken it gets, the more easily it gets broken, and the longer it takes to heal, if at all.
Many of these patients are stuck indoors 24/7, with earmuffs and earplugs, afraid of even the slightest sounds. Even then, they still get a myriad of symptoms, different kinds of pain, autophany, visual snow, distortions. Most have tinnitus, myself included, and it can be very, very loud. One poor guy has 50 tones. Another woman hears it in her sleep.
All these people want to live but this condition is living torture and you end up living like a caged animal. We have no idea what causes it and there's little hope of improvement, given that it gets virtually no research money. No drugs exist which can mask the pain. Many of these patients end up going because they truly have no options, no hope, and living has become unendurable.
Thankfully my hole isn't so deep yet but I have decades of dental appointments and MRIs to endure. As long as I mostly stay home and avoid nearly all social interaction, I can probably hold out a long time before I get that bad. However, I also have mystery tendonitis and other pains that are getting worse so idk. My mast cell labs are all very abnormal so I'm thinking it's auto-inflammatory.
Mayo clinic is a waste of time I hear for stuff like this. I'm going to try the Metrodora institute, see if they can come up with something. Nervous that I may worsen from the flight and end up stuck there.
This headline strikes me as asinine. It wants to be profound, and certainly other people who hear or read it would consider it wise... but it offers no true insight. It can neither explain suicide nor help to prevent it or educate anyone on why they should want to try to do that.
It has a smarmy veneer of subjectivity to it.
If someone built an true general AI, and it suddenly started obsessing over suicidal ideation, would you jump to the "it's suffering!" explanation, or would you ask why it was malfunctioning?
"The subroutine that offers up solutions to perceived problems is fixated on a course of action that does result in the solution of any problem" seems more like an appropriate response. Or maybe "What errors exist in the code to cause it to constantly loop back to the wrong answer?"
Those would be the non-stupid reactions. So what about a natural intelligence doing the same thing makes you all wax poetic about suffering and being pushed beyond ordinary limits and crap like that? Natural intelligences shaped by evolution and chance have it worse off, of course, bugs and errors and bad code are just the way things are.
If anyone wants to ever be able to fix such things, this is the only way. Not wallowing around in psychology and other pseudosciences.
Suicide haunted me for years after we lost my brother. It's what spurred me to study secular buddhism which has been an end to so much of my suffering. I was never able to process my emotions and was completely unprepared for him to take his own life.
> Then, we must also realize that sometimes suicide occurs impulsively and there is no [unusual] behavior to detect. But… controlling access to drugs, places like high bridges and access to firearms [can help prevent it].
I can not re-emphasize this enough. If you have firearms in your home I would recommend getting rid of them unless you use them regularly for sport. If you do have a firearm in your home, secure it in such a way that you or your family cannot gain access to it without someone else knowing. Consider storing firearms offsite at a club or firearms locker. ESPECIALLY if you have children or anxious/depressed people in your home.
My personal experience with ideation was both because I was suffering, but also because of complete apathy. I didn't care about my life and didn't see a point to continuing it. The suffering was influential as well, but even without it, I still didn't see a point and life was effort.
To be honest, now being in a much healthier place, I still somewhat don't care about my life beyond the animal instinct of death being scary. I am still apathetic about my life and its impact on the universe. But I'm in a healthier place of being able to find joy in places, and finding a sense of satisfaction in enduring through all the effort that life requires.
Also as sad as it is, the thing that has nearly entirely alleviated my mental health issues has been adderall. It is by far the most effective drug I've ever taken for it, and I've tried a lot.
Wow, they completely left out one reason/demographic. For some people it's not about the suffering, but about their impact. The people who I know who committed suicide were diagnosed with alzhiemers or other dementia. They specifically wrote that they did not want to be a burden on their family. There's relatively little suffering due to the altered mental state (you don't really see people who want to commit suicide with these diseases once they progress, except in brief moments of clarity).
I lay in bed many a night as a young adult thinking about killing myself - and this is an accurate description of my experience. I liked life. I wanted to experience things in life. But the pain of not being able to experience all the things I wanted (social interaction, physical and emotional intimacy, meaningful career) plus the pain of many repeated failures to achieve these things meant that the reality I was forced to inhabit was extremely painful and escape felt like the only way out.
This was because I had undiagnosed severe anxiety and depression before finding medication that cured everything. Not a single though of offing myself in 12 year now.
Some psychologists say that suffering is a necessary component, but not the only one. Also important are a feeling of being burdensome to others, and overcomming the natural instinct to not harm oneself.
Many people who die by suicide wrongly believe that the world would be better without them. This not only feeds the suffering, but also puts them in a position to overcome the natural instincts against self harm. These instincts are also why repeated suicide attempts or access to more lethal methods of suicide increase the risk.
As someone who attempted more than one time, I found interesting that's not a common knowledge. Maybe that's why in my country, Brazil, it's a "common excuses" from "average people" that a person died by suicide is a "coward".
PS: This is anecdotal experience I had talking with people about this matter.
People who kill themselves do it for all kinds of different reasons.
Counterpoints: suicide bombers, murder-suicides, being under duress, wanting to maintain dignity or honour, doing it in anticipation of a drastic reduction in quality of life even if they aren't currently suffering. Plenty of others too.
I am just pulling out of this. In the moment of crisis, it's a blend of all things. When I am financially, physically, nutritionally, hygienically needs met the symptoms of dysfunction are in remission.
But I am struggling to find work so it's a vicious cycle.
Life is brutal: I'm rooting for anyone who knows the struggle.
This seems...kind of obvious? No one just wants to die for death's sake. That wouldn't make a ton of sense. People kill themselves because they view it as the best of a set of bad options.
Lol what a discovery :) I considered committing suicide because it felt like there was no way out of this mess. Suicide is more like an escape from pain rather than quitting your life.
That might be true for the subset of suicides the author has studied, but there are about as many reasons humans commit suicide as there are reasons they commit homicide, which is to say, infinite varieties.
There's religious (Heavean's Gate, that recent kenyan cult), protest (self-immolating monks), media spectacle (Yukio Mishima), honor (seppuku, the samurai ritual mishima was immitating), shame (pompei), escape (L pills) fiancial ruin (1929 brokers), and fads (90s school shooters). Then there's suicide as a way of life (downtown SF, opioid epidemic).
The idea that this is all caused by "suffering" that could be prevented through increasingly sophiaticated treatmant plans or perhaps extended social welfare programs is a peculiar modern secular idea. I wonder if people who believe this sincerely are staving off their own suicide this way.
I feel like this is pretty obvious - then again I suppose some people cannot relate to those who have fallen into the state of mind that makes one end their life.
To whoever reads this I guarantee that someone in your life (perhaps you) is suffering greatly, sometimes it may be hidden or on full display.
I've had chronic pain my whole life and have dealt with depression and many other issues so I think I am qualified to talk about this.
One thing I didn't like about this article is how they point out self harm in adolescent girls. This is such an overused stereotype. People of all ages and genders self harm--and I have plenty of experience with it.
There are many reasons why one might end their life, but often people are thrown into situations that definitely intice the idea of suicide. Some can be worse than others and are truly inescapable.
For example in my case it was mainly not being cisgender and having childhood trauma. A lot of people sadly don't have any empathy for trans and gender non-conforming people. You cannot choose fundamental parts of yourself; most wouldn't be willing to choose to be rejected by society anyway. Some trans people don't have a lot of dysphoria but it can hit others pretty hard.
For me it's this constant weight on my shoulders, and no matter how much I try to get rid of it it won't go away. Looking in the mirror and seeing someone else look back is depressing and gets old real soon. But even if you move past those issues society seems to do their best to make people who are already suffering suffer more. The constant hate, high murder and violence rates. In some cases your very existance is deemed as a crime that deserves death. It is hard to trust anyone when nearly everyone around you rejects the idea of you.
For a long time the only thing I wanted was to stop suffering--in other words die.
Hormone therapy made me feel better, but the thing that helped me the most was psychedlics. They've made me overall less depressed, and now my current ideology is that I am going to die eventually, so I may as well try to actually live before then.
I ended up writing more than I intended to :) so I'll leave it as that.
TL;DR: Some of my thoughts and experiences.
PS. Don't do psychedelics (or any drug) without proper research and preparation. Make sure to test them as well!
> Question: Can suicide be addressed as if it were a disease?
> "Answer": Suicide is not a mental disorder like depression or addiction. In a high percentage—70% to 90%—of cases, there is an underlying mental disorder but there are 10% to 20%, who are people who may reach a point where they make an existential calculation, see that their life no longer makes sense, that they do not have a life project, and they feel isolated and experience a certain tiredness of living.
I fundamentally DISAGREE with this interpretation (and what's more, I think it is a very dangerous one).
At the risk of invoking the definitional fallacy, this conflates suicide with something that it is not.
Rationality and "existential calculations" are not only irrelevant as causes in this context, but indeed manifestations of the 'condition'; human beings (and animals more generally) are pre-programmed to do certain things, that serve biological/genetic purposes in the grand scheme of things, but are completely irrational actions from a "logical" point of view. "Normal" humans primarily put dead organic matter in their mouths, not out of a logical desire to obtain nutrition, but because they 'hunger'. "Normal" humans, identify other humans to rub genitals with not because of a logical desire to practice fluid exchange or a conscious yet indifferent decision to rehearse procreational maneuvers optimizing for genetic diversification, but because they have 'sexual urges'. "Normal" humans don't rationally choose to sleep because they have a logical desire to replenish their bodies from toxins and train their neurons and memories, but because they feel 'sleepy'. And similarly, "Normal" humans do not simply choose to live or not live in the day because they feel their existence (or that of their offspring) has a specific, measurable, logical consequence that positively affects the planet (or whatever purpose the planet is here for in the first place); they go on with their lives precisely despite the hopelessness of it all, because they experience a deep biological imperative and hunger for "survival at all costs, for themselves and/or their offspring".
When anxiety or similar disease affects your ability to feel sleepy, it may "feel" like you're choosing revenge procrastination instead of sleeping, but really, your biological circuits that enable your sleepiness to override other functions are malfunctioning, allowing you the illusion of rationality and conscious choice. When you "decide" not to eat to the point that you are morbidly underweight, it may "feel" like a rational decision, but really, the biological circuits that control your brain's ability to allow hunger to override such behaviour is malfunctioning, allowing you the illusion or rationality and conscious choice. You may think you "decide" not to have sexual urges because of societal norms or whatnot, but really, if you are having no sexual urges, the part of your brain that is designed to override your social inhibitions in pursuit of procreation is malfunctioning, allowing you the illusion of rationality and conscious choice. And similarly, you may think that "I just realised life makes no logical sense" and therefore having suicidal thoughts sounds "rational", but really, the primitive part of your brain that lusts for survival is malfunctioning, leading to a perception of rationality and conscious choice in the matter of whether to live of not.
Similarly, the circuits can go wrong in the opposite direction: you might sleep too much, be bulimic, be a sex-addict, and you can make yourself crazy-hypochondriac-bipolar-whatever from an overwhelming desire to "never die" (i.e. a pathologically high survival instinct).
Feelings of depression or suffering etc may be important variables, particularly in terms of triggers and treatment, but are orthogonal to the problem. Indeed, there are countless examples of people undergoing extreme sufferring, but where that sufferring seemed to intensify their lust for survival, rather than nullify it. And there are countless examples of people who are living a comfortable life, ostensibly free of suffering, but are incredibly suicidal. We can see the same happen with other human urges. You can be not eating and be very conflicted about it, or be completely "meh" about it. Conversely, you could be stuffing yourself, and be very guilty about it, or be totally indifferent. In fact, a big feature of these conditions of 'diminishing urges', is that they feature "splitting". Once the programmable part (i.e. the 'urge') returns, the brain shifts to "it was never rational to think this". If the urge disappears again, the brain shifts to "it was always rational to think this". We know this very well from anorexia for instance; whenever the 'physical' matter is dealt with resulting in a successful restoration of the appetite function, anorexic neurosis often goes away with it. And thus the first pillar of treatment for anorexia is "treat the physical cause first".
Yes, depression and other mental disorders are often accompanied by suicide, and treatment of the former often mitigates the latter, but it would be a mistake to conflate the two as a single disease, somehow manifesting in a spectrum. Rather, suicidality should be seen as a secondary complication of the depression as a primary disease. It is a mistake to consider "yes they were depressed, but because of this suicide was a logical decision", as it robs a person who may have otherwise not "logically" wanted to commit suicide had they been 'restored to normal function', from the opportunity to make that decision in the right context and frame of mind (under the assumption that the "correct" frame of mind is the one that we have been programmed for as humans in the first place -- a deep philosophical statement in itself).
Life is not meant to be logical. The very essence of life that leads to its continuation is precisely the fact that there are things we do that ensure our survival (both individually and as a species), that make ZERO F**ING SENSE, and yet we do them anyway, because we're programmed to do them at a molecular level. If for whatever reason, life suddenly became logical, you could reliably expect the planet to blow up within a matter of weeks.
I fully intend to kill myself eventually. The idea that I should prolong my life past the point where I get dementia, a degenerative disease, or just plain old age where I can't stand up or whipe my ass is repugnant enough that I can't understand people who want me to suffer until doctors finally stop being able to put me back together. Much better to die cheaply with a wonderful cocktail of opiates while watching a sunset some on some tropical island.
As I'm getting older (mid 40s), I have a different view now than before. I've seen people die in real life, and it was horrific. Even in hospital beds with morphine drips.
I don't want to die in agony, or slowly suffocating as many do. I'll end it before it goes too far.
I think more people should actually go to hospitals and see how real people die, instead of the comforting movie version where the family is gathered around while the old person slowly falls to sleep. That's unfortunately not that common.
If I get cancer, I'll hang on for a while until there's not much hope left, and then go to a place with assisted suicide.
As helpful as it can be in some respects to project oneself into a future time and circumstance, humans are often bad a predicting how they would decide on serious matters until they actually find themselves in that situation. This is particularly true in cases where quality of life is at issue.
Usually it's the family that makes decisions at that point in a hospital for a patient, and they often make horrendous, selfish decisions and prolong the patient's enormous suffering before death.
Give people comfort care asap if they have a terminal illness, at the very least.
My mother told me over and over to pull the plug should she ever end up on life support. When I found out she was on life support after a heart attack I immediately assumed that it would be her brother's choice to pull the plug or not. Nope, that horrendous decision belongs to the kids, namely me. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do but I understood and respected her wishes.
I'm a similar age to you, and I've had up close experience of a few deaths too. One of my grandmothers literally went to sleep one evening and never woke up. (She'd been getting weaker over time so had been living with us, with my parents staying in the same room as her so we know she didn't suffer anything). My other grandmother had cancer in her 90s and opted against having chemo. She died peacefully, in hospital, with family around her - pretty close to the "movie version". She didn't need euthanasia, just a medical team who cared enough about her wishes to have a good death not to browbeat her or the family into having treatment she didn't want.
And even in the "comforting" movie version, it's still different in real life where they start gasping for breath. I at least thought the person was in pain or suffering somehow. (I did ask the Dr. that came to give us the death certificate and apparently it's because either the brain has shut down or and the body is still trying to perform it's duty or vice-versa and there's no pain or suffering just a part of passing away).
Much easier said than done. I doubt you'll feel the same way when that old age approaches, just like teenagers who think life is practically over by 40.
>just like teenagers who think life is practically over by 40
Sorry but... it kind of is, no? You've probably got a family weighing you down so you can't travel anymore. You don't have the freedom to start new exciting ventures. You can't quit your sucky job because it supports your family. You go to parties that end at 9pm and your social gatherings consist of talking about traffic and grocery prices. You're probably married to someone you love and respect, but the flame isn't the same as what you once had.
Sorry for how my comment may have come off. I genuinely don't know what happy 40 year olds live like because I had a dysfunctional household. My impressions are based on what I hear from people around me like colleagues as well as social media. And it's usually miserable stuff.
You will get a ton of denial about this but you aren't wrong.
On the other hand it is really easy to not get married and not have kids. Then the equation is quite different. 40s and 50s isn't all that different than 22. I would even say better in most ways.
Your vision of marriage is even kind of romantic still. The married guys I know it is more like depression because of separation and knowing the wife is fucking a Tinder guy while your kid is sleeping in the next room. They even know her date outfit because she posts the picture on social media.
I have two friends right now that this is their exact life. One of them I thought was the absolute perfect couple at 30. Women know their value and aren't going to waste their life with the flame having gone out.
This reads comically incel-ish. “Women know their value”, like a self-respecting man doesn’t? Why aren’t your male friends doing the same thing, then? Life doesn’t end at 40, for either sex. With/without a family, married/divorced, the choice to develop and grow as a human is always your own.
The average man on HN has had far less sex than the average man. This is simply the fate of nerdy computer touchers and is why we get "incel content" here. In coding, you trade your sexual market value for actual money. It's a sad dynamic, and I think a little bit of "life imitating art" given that the "nerd jock" dynamics seem to be uniquely an American thing.
i'm 40 and i live like a rich 16 year old with no adult supervision. peter pan syndrome is always an option.
anyway, here's your real problem. you might want to figure out which older people in your life are poisoning your mind with their bullshit. having a family, or not, can be great and is always your choice. miserable people end up that way because they're living someone else's dream, not their own.
If you've done it right, by 40 you have children. If you've raised them right, they're fun to be with. Even if you haven't, they require enough out of you that you want to go to bed by 9. Social gatherings are about spending time with other families and letting your children play. Your partner is a collaborative team member in a complex dance, and while the passion for that person is not as fiery as the lust-fueled early days before you realized they were a real person with flaws, it's no less significant in magnitude.
Travel with a family takes more planning, but millions take significant road/flight/cruise trips every year. Budgeting (of money and, if applicable, vacation time) is key.
Changing jobs or starting ventures is similar. It's easier to get a job if you already have one, it's easier to survive a job change if you have savings. Planning remains key. It's not as low-risk as it would be for a bachelor(ette), but you have the time, stability, and mindset to start slow and minimize that risk as you go.
As your kids grow you have more time to pursue your interests. Eventually, if all goes well, you get the joy of grandchildren (all the fun of having children, but you can give them back). Retirement, if you've planned well and have your health, is a return to childhood (less money, more fun, most of your playmates are children [at least relative to your age]).
There are another 40 years after 40. Plan accordingly.
It's a valid life choice, of course, and you're free to make it. I'd not call it "perfect", though (and neither is choosing to have kids). It's all a matter of which trade-offs you prefer.
I like children, desire to pass my genes to the future, value the ability to raise my children to have an impact on the world somewhat in line with my perception of it (commensurate on their natural predilection to agree with me and act on that agreement), and want somebody to look after me and my affairs in my old age. I'm willing to accept the cost (in time, money, stress, reduced flexibility...) and responsibility in return. If you make the decision not to have kids, I hope you can say the same for your trade-offs.
I'm sorry, maybe other people said the same thing. I didn't read the whole thread yet. I'm gonna pick you and the line "desire to pass my genes to the future". I'm gonna ask you some genuine questions about it, so please if you can I would appreciate your point of view.
What is this desire, how does it feel? I've never felt it.
Is it a thought process or do you feel it in your body? (like hunger, sexual attraction...).
Do you feel pain in your body (chest pain, knot in the throat..) if you think you cannot fulfill that desire?
How do you feel if you think about the fact that when you are dead, it just doesn't matter if you passed your gene or not? Isn't that desire just a rationalization/mental process vanishing in oblivion?
Where does that desire goes if you scale-up the total human species life-span? Would you feel happy that you will have grand-grand-grand children that you will never meet?
I've never felt the desire to pass my genes to anybody. I have sexual desire, does that mean I want to pass my genes? But I feel like, sexual desire is like taking a piss: I just release some build-up in my body. I cannot rationalize my peeing in: I have to pee, because that ensure my survival hence the succession of me gene. I feel the same of orgasm. It feels that thought process is forced and conditioned by society.
We made the choice not to have children, but I do feel that desire to pass on my genes. What's it like?
sexual desire is like taking a piss
I would say it's less of a basic biological desire like peeing or sneezing, and more like... esoteric/abstract concepts like "the desire to do good" or "the desire to achieve."
I realize it's not really a logical desire, and even though I do feel it, it's far from my highest priority and I've also chosen not to have kids for a variety of other reasons.
I see, thank you for your point of view. There are times I feel lonely, even though I like to be alone most of the time, and when that happens I wonder if having a child would've changed anything.
It really must be an "abstract" feeling, because I cannot get to that feeling in any way.
i guess, in addition to that, there's also the practical aspect of your children taking care of you when you are older. that can be a significant motivator.
in many (most?) parts of the world that is the norm.
however, that is of course a... highly unreliable way of making sure you are taken care of when you are older!
No apology needed! I've not previously considered this in the depth needed to answer your question. I've tried my best to think seriously about your question and represent my true opinion faithfully, which has been a valuable exercise. I regret I haven't made it shorter, but 4 hours is about all I can afford to spend.
> What is this desire, how does it feel? I've never felt it.
> Is it a thought process or do you feel it in your body? (like hunger, sexual attraction...).
I know I can't live forever (and I wouldn't want to - mortality gives us purpose), but I feel I (along with everyone else) am an important part of solving a set of problems (meaning of life, best state of humanity, etc.) that may take infinite (or all we have) time. My impact on the world can be extended (perhaps indefinitely, certainly for as long as I will be aware of it) through my offspring.
I'm not a religious man, but it's what I would consider a religious feeling. It's a feeling clearer to me, having had children, than it was before them. I'm not sure I would have appreciated it in my early 20's, but a had an inkling of it by my late 20's.
I am (half of) the link between my and my wife's ancestors and our descendants. I'm the only one who can fill that role. Acknowledging this gives me a place in a grand narrative and drives my responsibility to my children to prepare them to take their place in the chain (even if that place is a dead end), with all that entails. Ignoring it prunes my branch of the tree.
I do think sexual desire is a base-level, noisy (in the same way that not all stomach pangs are hunger), subconscious drive to reproduce. We (like all living organisms) are a tool DNA uses to reproduce, and it's good at getting us to do stuff. I'd like to think my rationalization based on ancestry isn't a post-hoc result of that drive, but I can't be sure.
> Do you feel pain in your body (chest pain, knot in the throat..) if you think you cannot fulfill that desire?
I'm usually a fairly unemotional guy, so I tend not to feel (or, at least, not to notice) such things. Considering the death of my children can evoke a physical response, but that's more concrete. I do feel joy that I have the opportunity to fulfill my desire, so it may also be my optimistic nature masking the potential of tragedy. Ultimately, if my children fail to carry on the line (due to death or lack of desire), I will have done my part as a link in the chain to the best of my ability. I can be happy with that.
> How do you feel if you think about the fact that when you are dead, it just doesn't matter if you passed your gene or not? Isn't that desire just a rationalization/mental process vanishing in oblivion?
My father died when I was a teen, leaving 4 children. It may not matter to him now, but to us and the lives we touch daily it matters a great deal that he passed his genes first.
Ultimately, I'm not passing my genes on for my benefit. I'm doing it for my progeny's benefit and for the benefit of the impact they can have on the world in my stead.
> Where does that desire goes if you scale-up the total human species life-span? Would you feel happy that you will have grand-grand-grand children that you will never meet?
Of course! I know who my great-great grandparents were, roughly what their lives were like and some of the hardships they had to overcome, and I'm glad they lived and procreated so I could too. I'm the product of an unbroken line of millions (billions, if you want to consider the full history of DNA) of years of ancestors. It's a privilege to be a link in that chain for my descendants as well, even if I never meet the vast majority of them.
> I've never felt the desire to pass my genes to anybody. I have sexual desire, does that mean I want to pass my genes? But I feel like, sexual desire is like taking a piss: I just release some build-up in my body. I cannot rationalize my peeing in: I have to pee, because that ensure my survival hence the succession of me gene. I feel the same of orgasm. It feels that thought process is forced and conditioned by society.
I've observed (and experienced) that many men need till their late 20's to be ready for a committed relationship, and that a stable relationship makes them ready for kids. YMMV. Not everyone wants kids, and that's fine. Not everyone that wants kids gets the opportunity. That's less fine, but life's a bitch sometimes.
There is undoubtedly a societal bias, but which way it pushes differs based on who you ask. I don't feel I was strongly affected either way, nor pressured by family, friends, or spouse; so I'm fairly sure I've avoided that bias in this response.
Thank you very much for taking the time. You've done more than enough.
I will take my time to think about the things you wrote. There are a lot of interesting bits you wrote.
This sounds exactly what a 13 year old would say about life being over at 20. Or a 22 saying life is over a 40. Or a 40 saying life is over at 50. Or a 50 saying life is over at 60. See a pattern?
> You've probably got a family weighing you down so you can't travel anymore.
Well...
1: Having a family is a choice people make, not everyone over the age of 40 has a family.
2: Just because someone can't travel doesn't mean per life is over.
3: It is (in many cases) entirely possible for someone over 40 to travel with per family.
4: People making the choice to have a family probably wouldn't call it "weighing down".
> You don't have the freedom to start new exciting ventures.
Define "exciting ventures" and explain why it isn't possible. There are many things that can be done as a person over the age of 40, even WITH a family.
> You can't quit your sucky job because it supports your family.
Not everyone over the age of 40 has a "sucky" job and if one has a job which is unpleasant there may very well still be the possibility of changing careers.
> You go to parties that end at 9pm and your social gatherings consist of talking about traffic and grocery prices.
Speaking from experience? It's entirely possible to engage the services of a babysitter and go spend time with friends until the night is well past the point of being young. Also "traffic and grocery prices"? Where do you even get that? People over the age of 40 can be (and usually are) interested in other things like, say, sports, cinema, even the dreaded "celebrity gossip".
> You're probably married to someone you love and respect, but the flame isn't the same as what you once had.
If a couple can't quite manage to Take Hold of the Flame, there is always the possibility of ending the marriage, which may once again open the door to those "new exciting ventures" you mentioned. And regardless even if the relationship isn't what it once was that doesn't mean life is over.
Nobody forces you to live like that. I'm 39 and not one point hits the mark for me. :D
While true that it's harder to get social connections it's far from impossible; in the end you just need to go out and meet new people doing things alone sometimes. On the other hand I have much more money, thus can actually travel when/how I want, compared to my 20s, and could probably quit my job in the next decade, if I want to.
Overall it's different to some degree, but in sum I'd say I enjoy life much more than in my 20s nowadays. Doubt that changes until I start to get sick(er) in my 50s/60s.
I'm in my 40s and felt the same way as you (more or less) at 22.
Many people do wind up as you describe. On the other hand you write as if it is inevitable rather than a specific choice.
You've probably got a family weighing you down so
you can't travel anymore. You don't have the freedom
to start new exciting ventures.
Yes, you probably do have to choose between "family" and the other stuff unless you have some unusually favorable circumstances. Either lots of money, or extended family members (grandparents) with whom you can leave the kids while you travel, etc.
Depends on your definition of "travel" though. Flying to another country on a whim? Probably not. Packing the kids and tents up and going camping? Heck yes.
You go to parties that end at 9pm and your social gatherings
consist of talking about traffic and grocery prices.
Oh hell no. I'm over 40 and still making great friends. Friends with whom I share interests, not just banal conversations. It's different than when you're young, it takes a little more work. You're not just dumped into a school with hundreds of people your age. But it's better. You can choose your social circles and meet other enthusiasts relevant to your interests.
You're probably married to someone you love and respect,
but the flame isn't the same as what you once had.
It's certainly true: those giddy early months of a relationship change into something else eventually. Can be better or worse depending on your perspective.
Again, you can just not get married! Or do some kind of poly/open/whatever relationship if that's your thing. Or be asexual. Or be so undesirable that nobody wants to nestle down with you and saddle you with a family. Or just find some sort of ethical way of getting what you need from sex workers. (That last one may be tricky)
> Again, you can just not get married! Or do some kind of poly/open/whatever relationship if that's your thing. Or be asexual. Or be so undesirable that nobody wants to nestle down with you and saddle you with a family. Or just find some sort of ethical way of getting what you need from sex workers. (That last one may be tricky)
IMO any of those can be tricky. Relationships in general are, at any part of the spectrum, including a lack of them.
Poly/open/casual/whatever isn't easy unless your partner (or potential partners) also wants to be in one of those. Leaving an existing relationship for one of those probably isn't easy (unless it's meaningless), and can be anything but if one is already married with kids. Non-exclusive relationships may also need to deal with potential feelings of jealousy etc. in a different way than exclusive ones, and again, it's not down to just oneself.
One probably doesn't really choose to be asexual either, and I'd wager that trying to make such a choice is generally unhealthy. And if you actually are asexual but want an otherwise romantic relationship, finding one (where both are satisfied) is probably harder than it would be more conventionally.
Most people (or all of us?) have mutually conflicting desires and needs for their relationships. That makes relationships tricky in general. It's probably even more so for someone who's less comfortable socially or with themselves than you would seem to be.
I don't think it's always even possible, psychologically or emotionally, for everyone to solve those conflicting needs and desires in a satisfying way.
It sounds quite cynical to see marriage or long-term relationships largely as a burden, and seeing the possibilities can be an antidote for that for some people. But trying to make it out as everything being possible and choices that you can just make feels a bit like it can trivialize the difficulty of actually doing it.
But trying to make it out as everything being
possible and choices that you can just make
feels a bit like it can trivialize the difficulty
of actually doing it.
Well, you're certainly right: no relationship options are easy.
When I listed those options I was specifically referring to the parent poster, who equated middle age with automatically being in a stifling marriage.... as if marriage is just some inevitable thing that happens to you, rather than something you choose.
Which was certainly not to imply that the alternatives to marriage are easy. I mean yeah, relationships can be hard. And the lack of one can be hard too.
Hehe, for fun you should bookmark your comment and refer back to it every 5 years.
If you're open to it, here are a few ideas to noodle on:
- A lot of what you find fun/interesting changes over time. The partying of the 20s was fun, in its way, but now seems mostly pretty silly, superficial, and (sorry for saying this) childish and dumb. I'm not saying it is, just that your notion of fun changes, and if now I had the power to do absolutely anything I wanted, "partying" would not be even in my top 100 list because there are so many things that are more fun and fulfilling. Ask a 3 year old how they'd love to spend their time.
- Many details of life are outside your control, but you still have a huge influence on things. If you end up in your 40s in a marriage where the flame has gone out, that's mostly on you and your partner - it definitely doesn't need to be that way. Just because it seems common for people to get married and stop courting/dating each other doesn't mean you have to. Ditto for things like a job. In both cases, there's an element of settling in and coasting that's easy to do but doesn't necessarily produce the long term results you really want. Gotta begin with the end in mind and course correct over time, but also have to avoid obsessing over the imperfections and less-than-ideals of life, because there will always be plenty of those.
- The number of kids you have is a pretty private choice, but if approach it with either cynicism or idealism then you'll likely be disappointed. It's a roller coaster, it's hard, kids will absolutely drive you crazy sometimes. But it can also be a source of joy and purpose to a degree that might be incomprehensible to you right now. I'm trying to be careful here because it is a sensitive topic, but compared to being single, it's hard to really explain how much depth and substance having a family has added to my life. In retrospect it feels like life didn't really begin until then. Lots of cool stuff and adventures before then, of course, but... yeah.
- Your kids eventually go away. I mean, it's obvious, right, and yet I didn't really appreciate it until it happened. That stage of life where kids are at home is actually relatively short. It's so temporary. You'll always be a parent, but suddenly you find yourself on the other side of it with a whole lot more time for hobbies and travel and whatever else and yet you don't really feel all that old yet.
Believe it or not, traveling and partying gets old. Most of us have an evolutionary desire to have kids. You may not, but it can take time to manifest. Look out for feelings of hollowness, boredom or depression. Parenting may be hard, but I've never felt hollow or bored or that life has no meaning.
You probably didn’t mean it this way, but that reasoning emphasizes bringing beings into this world to avoid your own bad emotions, and not so they can experience their own good ones.
Giving kids a happy childhood and setting them up for happiness and contentment is of course implied. Either way, I think the vast majority of people who are alive want to remain alive, so I never understood the sentiment that it's selfish to bring someone into the world. It's only selfish if you benefit while someone else suffers. Bringing kids into the world is a win-win, at least in the developed world where birthrates are plummeting way below replacement rate. In this case it's a win-win-win (third being society).
What might be considered selfish is to not have kids when we are way below replacement rate, while expecting to be taken care of by other's kids in old age. Unless we reach AGI and humanoid robots soon, the food, housing, services and healthcare has to be provided by younger people.
> Either way, I think the vast majority of people who are alive want to remain alive, so I never understood the sentiment that it's selfish to bring someone into the world.
It's not "remaining". If you had decided to not have kids, the kids wouldn't be there in the first place, so they wouldn't (couldn't) feel any regret about.
This is possibly one of the worst sentiments to look for if you intend on having kids. I've seen families before where they had children solely to fill in that feeling of boredom or hollowness and when children don't fix it, they abandon them or become nasty parents.
Your implied list of priorities -- travel, interesting parties, etc -- are about as interesting to me now that I'm in my early 40s with a family as an afternoon at a toddler's daycare center probably would be to you. What you're failing to appreciate is that, just as you no longer have toddler interests, I no longer have 22-year-old interests. I am as different from you as you are from that toddler.
And it works the other direction, too. My life probably sounds boring to you in the same way that a day in your life would be boring to a toddler. Now that you're 22, you aren't just a taller version of that toddler with all the same interests. You have new interests. (That will keep happening.)
That's what I keep telling my boy when he wants to cuddle up and read a bedtime story: "stop weighing me down, daddy has more important things to do, like vapid parties and brunch"...
my mom is 48 years old, she loves her job, no one depends on her, has a different boyfriend every month, goes to the same parties I go to (which end at 6am) and we even share some friends (im 29). definitely not over
> You can't quit your sucky job because it supports your family.
My jobs have gotten less suckier as I've gotten older. And with experience (and, rarely, more savings) I have more options. Yes, I could quit if I want.
That is a depressing view on aging. At some point kids becomes adults and can support themselves and if they were taught any form of responsibility, they will support their parents. These days my parents hang out with their friends or go once in a while on vacation which they pay or my sibling and I. To me it sounds like someone enduring a life style they dislike but accepted because they believe this is how life should be.
Maybe it is a culturally thing but as a kid I had to complain to my parents to get home and by then it was 1 am.
I think your perspectives on things and your priorities can change as you get older in ways that are very difficult to imagine as a young person. I might once have agreed with this comment, but now I live a lot of that life and it’s fantastic and I’m happier than I’ve ever been.
Also parties that end at 9 are incredible. I fought this one hard for a _long_ time, but life is honestly just better when you go to bed earlier and wake up earlier. More daylight is a great thing.
The people I know that are really old or the people I have known rather generally weren't too thrilled with living at that point. When your quality of life is really poor, living seems like more trouble than it's worth. I wonder if some of those people have a lot of agency over just letting their body stop working.
I’ve often thought the same thing, but I also wonder if my future-suicide is just a line of mental gymnastics I put myself through to pretend that I have complete control over my mortality.
i obviously haven't experienced what you described, since i'm breathing and typing right now, but weeks of going with no food were really pretty calming. The only downside was the weakness and mental fog that affects productivity but if you don't have to work at that point... Of course, all of this is super-individual.
This is something I have thought about, but recently have paid attention to stories that seem to be along these lines, such as Gordon Kaye in Great Smokies National Park.
While this may seem like a simple way, it seems like it wastes hundreds of people's time that could be spent helping people who are actually wanting help.
I don't know the Gordon Kaye story, but "those people" that get involved for search and rescue operations are usually professionals who would, in fact, spend that time working to help other people instead.
In some cases I believe you're right, tradeoffs do happen. In other cases they are just on call. This is why private rescues are so expensive. You aren't just paying for the professionals and the equipment, you're paying for them to sit around until called.
Yes. You might say that even if they are just sitting around, their presence doing so is considered to be a valuable part of their job, and it is being wasted.
> or just plain old age where I can't stand up or whipe my ass
I hope you fully intend to continue exercising, and taking precautions against accidents, as the first line of defense against such a possibility.
> I can't understand people who want me to suffer until doctors finally stop being able to put me back together.
I just don't want the state being the entity that approves or disapproves of your suicide. If you're going to have an assisted suicide I want it to be, at most, through a clandestine network of people who want to kill themselves. Not through a government process.
I for one would like to enter that mystery with clear eyes and calm heart. No soul-grinding suffering for me, thanks. I've seen it. Crawling on the floor in your own filth, hissing and snapping at the nurses.
Not to mention the feeling of sucking resources away from those who need it to stop the inevitable. I hope I can be brave enough to say no to treatments when I am near, but it’s cheap talk.
> I answer that, It is altogether unlawful to kill oneself, for three reasons. First, because everything naturally loves itself, the result being that everything naturally keeps itself in being, and resists corruptions so far as it can. Wherefore suicide is contrary to the inclination of nature, and to charity whereby every man should love himself. Hence suicide is always a mortal sin, as being contrary to the natural law and to charity. Secondly, because every part, as such, belongs to the whole. Now every man is part of the community, and so, as such, he belongs to the community. Hence by killing himself he injures the community, as the Philosopher declares (Ethic. v, 11). Thirdly, because life is God's gift to man, and is subject to His power, Who kills and makes to live. Hence whoever takes his own life, sins against God, even as he who kills another's slave, sins against that slave's master, and as he who usurps to himself judgment of a matter not entrusted to him. For it belongs to God alone to pronounce sentence of death and life, according to Deuteronomy 32:39, "I will kill and I will make to live."
~ St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae Secunda Secundae Partis. Q. 64 Art. 5
The first noble truth posits that dukkha (suffering) is a characteristic of existence in the realm of rebirth. The second, third and fourth noble truths posit that escape from dukkha (and therefore escape from the cycle of death and rebirth) is possible. "Life is suffering" is a shallow misinterpretation of Buddhist theology; Buddhists believe that all suffering has an identifiable cause and a known remedy.
All the big religions offer up some sort of escape plan as part of the sales pitch.
I don't believe one can avoid suffering. You can however choose your suffering. You can suffer in the service of something greater. Or you can suffer meaninglessly, but you'll suffer one way or the other.
Just because the Buddha said it, doesn't mean it's right. My life is many things as well as suffering. It is no more suffering than it is joy or peace. Why emphasise suffering specifically?
That is a misreading of what was said. Others have commented on it before. Life is unsatisfactory is closer to what Buddha said. He took great pains to separate physical needs from spiritual suffering. His eight fold path as a way to achieve nirvana is a solution for one of those problems. It does not put food on the table.
Not a particularly high risk so long as you get suspicious skin changes checked out. Melanoma has an incredibly good prognosis so long as it's caught early, and unlike most cancers you have a very good chance of catching it early with adequate vigilance.
Honestly, I just find it hard to care about skin cancer all that much. I gotta die from something at some point, and I feel like covering my skin in nasty oils and stuff on every nice summer day is too much a price for me just to die from "not skin cancer". Because now every nice day is a little bit less nice.
Ofc I'm a bit lucky because I can at least tan somewhat, so if I just taper up my sun exposure in the spring I don't really get burned.
There are better and worse ways of dying though. Getting cancer while you're still young enough to have fun and enjoy life and spending a lot of time in pain and going from one doctor to another isn't really how I want to go.
You say that as if there's a choice when really there isn't. It's fundamentally out of my control what kills me. Hell, the cancer could be growing already, or the clot or aneurism. And the amount of crap you get exposed to just drinking the water and breathing the air these days, not to mention the food you eat. You could try to minimise carcinogens but in the end it's basically a lost battle unless you completely isolate yourself from society and the outside world.
Also, if I do get terminal cancer I'm not doing those cycles of pointless chemo and radiation. I'll simply live on until the cancer becomes too unbearable, at which point I'll accept my fate and die.
Sun exposure is indeed harmful when it's excessive. 15 minutes of sun exposure is not considered excessive but is actually a recommended amount (of course, this amount could vary depending on the season, your skin complexion, and location).
Here are some benefits of moderate sun exposure:
1. Our bodies naturally synthesize vitamin D when our skin is exposed to sunlight. Vitamin D is essential for calcium absorption, bone health, and supporting our immune system. Getting a small amount of sun exposure, particularly during the early morning or late afternoon when the sun's rays are less intense, can help maintain adequate vitamin D levels.
2. Sunlight also has a positive impact on our mental well-being. Sun exposure stimulates the production of serotonin, a hormone that contributes to feelings of happiness and relaxation. This is why many people experience improved mood and overall well-being when they spend time outdoors in the sunlight.
3. Natural exposure to sunlight during the day helps regulate our internal body clock, known as the circadian rhythm. This promotes healthy sleep patterns, making it easier to fall asleep at night and wake up refreshed in the morning.
-David Foster Wallace