AnotherLoverHolenYoHead said:

Pre-cise-lyyy. That's the point I was trying to get across.


This is true...but then there is a certain percentage of those who weren't successful in their attempts and try again at some point subsequently.


For whatever it's worth, I'm glad you're still with us, 'NotherLover.



For those that don't know, today was National Depression Screening Day.

Supernova said:

Why do I now feel like the Org Suicide/National Depression Screening Day Poster Child?!?!

AnotherLoverHolenYoHead said:

Should I not have said that?

I think you brought up a good question. Because like Diva said, the whole thing is complex for so many reasons. Many we haven't even touched upon so far.

Supernova said:

Of course, you should have said that. I was joking, probably a delayed reaction of self-consciousness for having revealed such personal information, followed by your "announcement" of what day it was...lol

I agree, many complexities exist within this topic. Hopefully the thread will continue into the night/day (depending upon where one lives) and there will continue to be good discussion! Such as...the grief/anger the surviving family members/friends go through afterwards...

Some desparate people think that is the only way to deal or get away from a problem. Suicide does not solve it. It just causes grief for those you leave on the earth plane.

If you think suicide, seek help.

jnoel said:

I was just giving my opinion. Thankfully, you are right in that I don't know much about it. However, in MY OPINION, it's not up to the individual when his/her life should end. It's just my belief on the matter- I don't speak with any semblance of authority on the issue.

Supernova said:

I also agree with that... and that's part of where I was coming from... I'm with you Supernova, suicide clinically is often seen as irrational, because often the person isn't thinking rationally..and indeed there are so many reasons why commiting this act would be seen as irrational.

It's just that you know how we all often have different frames of reference? And what I might see as irrational is rational to the person in question... a lot of their throughts at the time may very well be irrational... but the one thing that may seem all too rational is ending the pain that AnotherLoverHolenYoHead is referring to. If living life has become so crippling... ending it (by any means) can often appear all too rational at the time. That's all I meant. Didn't mean to imply that suicide itself is a rational act, just wanted to acknowledge that people who take their own life probably wouldn't do it, unless there was some rationalization behind it... however irrational it may be from another frame of reference... you know?

It definitely is complex, and so undeniably sorrowful

AnotherLoverHolenYoHead said:

... you know I'm not letting you go that easily

Moonbeam said:

I didn't want to be aggressive as I have, to use your words, "any semblance of authority on this issue" either, well I have any semblance of authority on nothing

jnoel said:

It's ok.

Diva said:

Definitely, Diva. I feel ya on this.

Moonbeam said:

So, then is it right to be kept alive by man-made means?

In using your logic, I would think it would go hand in hand that the only one who should sustain life is "the one who gave it to us". Therefore, things like vents/feeding tubes/etc MACHINES that prolong life wouldn't be okay.

Or are these means okay because they were created by people who were created by ummm the creator?

When someone is terminally ill and in immense pain/suffering and are only alive due to science/medical advances, I really feel it is their choice to speed the process and take control of their life/death. Take it back from the doctors and chemicals and radiations that have become their life.

Of course this is simply my opinion...and I love discussing things like this ('specially with Ian-cos he stays so level headed)

endorphin74 said:

Of course, Darin, I believe that God gave us the choice to do anything, including end our own lives. I just don't think it is the right choice.

To answer your other question, I believe that God also have us the ability to sustain life through science, and I have no issues with that. Sustaining life is one thing- ending life is another.

Moonbeam said:

It's just such a tough issue. I only think suicide is a justifiable option in the case of terminal illness, but then again who am I to say? Emotional Pain can sometimes be much more crippling than physical pain. You can live without legs but what is life if you have no spirit left?

My frame of reference is just from watching many people go through long, agonizing death processes. One man in paticular from about 4 years ago really drove this whole issue home for me.

He talked about suicide, he was living in the adult foster care home where I worked. We clearly (legally) couldn't "support" this and none of his friends were willing to assist. Eventually it was too late as his dementia became so severe he could no longer make a choice like that. We watched as this very dignified man disintegrated in front of us. He lingered through the dying process for months, unable to converse, in depends, eventually his last 3 weeks he was bed ridden, refusing all food and taking only minimal water.

This man lost all of his dignity and went through a horrible process when, IMO, HE was no longer even present. All of this could've been avoided had he been able to take control of his death...I see nothing wrong with that decision...

I think that is a coward act but i think that in certain cases its a deserved act. A teacher abused me when i was child and he was denounced and he suicided...He deserved it

IMO suicide is a selfish (mostly impulsive) act, it's usually done in a moment of weakness, vulnerability. I think that if u were 2 save such a person, they'd be grateful 4 it, cuz it's just a state of mind at a time and like any other thought it goes away... The pain might stay but learn 2 live with it...

What a joyous topic!

Unfortunately, people still treat mental illness in a very moralistic way, as if taking the expression "all in your head" literally. Instead of viewing suicide as selfish, people should ask themselves why someone wants to end it all despite the consequences it would have on others. Here in Toronto, there was a widely publicized case of a mental health professional living in the best neighborhood in town who jumped in front of the subway train with her baby. She had recently given birth to her first child and was suffering from an extreme case of post-birth depression. Her illness made her think that she was protecting her child from an ugly world by killing her along with herself. The baby died instantly, but the mother survived a few days. During that time, authorities considered charging her with manslaughter. She died.

Now we can all sit and say "what an awful, selfish woman". This woman had all the training required to analyze her behavior and perhaps see it as "cowardly" and "selfish", but she still killed herself and her child. Why? Obviously, something was terribly wrong with her brain chemistry after she gave birth, and she was unable to view things rationally. That happens to be a symptom of severe depression. You can either sit there and view this terrible condition in a moralistic way, or you can consider how having such a chemical imbalance completely distorts your view of the world, to the point you are willing to kill what you love most along with yourself, thinking you are doing the loved one a service.

IMO, that is not "selfish". It is in reality a measure of the severity of depression and its effects on perception and thinking. But many of us seem stuck in the 19th century when it comes to mental illness. To those who think suicide is selfish, I would like to couch the issue differently. Let's say there's a Walk Against Cancer, and everyone at work is going, except this one dude. What's his problem? Well, he doesn't have legs and is too weak to roll in his wheelchair all the way to the finish line. Are you going to say he's selfish? No, because you can plainly see he has no legs and is ill. Now, please imagine you could see the chemicals in someone's brain -- say people who are balanced glow bright green and those who have severe imbalance glow bright red. Would you go over to the person with severe imbalance and say "Oh please! Give yourself a kick in the butt and walk with us to the finish line!", even though he has the reddest glow you've ever seen and cries all day long? I don't think so, because you'd have a concrete way of assessing the severity of his difficulty.

So I say get on with the 21st century. Try to understand our most mysterious organ, the brain. Then you will be a person of your time and perhaps people with depression and other mental illnesses will be all the better for it, not having to live among people who still don't take mental health as seriously as they should.
[This message was edited Fri Oct 11 4:18:16 PDT 2002 by Aerogram]

I think it is anyone's right to take their own life. The difficulty I have is reconciling this with those people who wish to take their life but are unable to do so. It seems to me that it is very difficult to enforce that right by legitimising someone else to carry out that wish.

I think I understand why people sometimes choose the route of suicide. Faced with the circumstances some have to confront, I'd like to think I would choose not to end my own life - but I truly don't know how I would react until faced with the situation.

I think selfishness definitely motivates some people, but it is easy to argue that almost everything humans do in life is motivated by selfishness, greed, ambition etc..

Of those that attempt or succeed at suicide, only 5% were serious about it. The other 95% were screaming for help. Unfortunately within that 95% there are those that will succeed in their attempt, even though they didn't really want to die.

Let me ask this, why is it so wrong to commit suicide? For those that have said it is okay for someone who is suffering physically to take their own life, why is it not okay for someone who is suffering mentally and emotionally to take their own life? For those that say that it is wrong because it is a form of murder, then why is it okay to take someone's life during wartime but not okay for someone to take their own life when they are suffering? For those that have said it is against God's Will, has God said that suicide is wrong or was it a church that made that comment? For those that just plain believe suicide is wrong, then why is not smoking wrong? Isn't smoking just a slower version of suicide?

This excerpt is taken from CWG book 3:

On the question of ending one's life, it is the current imagining of the majority of people tht it is "not okay" to do that.

Similarly, many of you still insist that it is not okay to assist another who wishes to end his or her life.

In both cases you say this should be "against the law." You have come to this conclusion, presumably, because the ending of the life occurs relatively quickly. Actions which end a life over a somewhat longer period of time are not against the law, even though they achieve the same result.

Thus, if a person in your society kills himself with a gun, his family members lose insurance benefits. If he does so with cigarettes, they do not.

If a doctor assists you in your suicide, it is called manslaughter, while if a tobacco company does, it is called commerce.

...It is insane to think that endless suffering is what God requires, and that a quick, humane end to the suffering is "wrong".

So you poison your system by inhaling carcinogens, you poison your system by eating food treated with chemicals that over the long run kill you, and you poison your system by breathing air which you have continually polluted. You poison your system in a hundred different ways over a thousand different moments, and you do this knowing these substances are no good for you. But because it takes a longer time for them to kill you, you commit suicide with impunity.

If you poison yourself with something that works faster, you are said to have done something against moral law.

Now I tell you this: It is no more immoral to kill yourself quickly than it is to kill yourself slowly.

---

I believe that. We say suicide is wrong, but we continually do things that will damage us and we say that is okay. We contradict ourselves constantly.

LittleRedCorvette said:

Ok, now I really feel bad about smoking!

Neither.

Moonbeam said:

Very true, altho' I don't agree with the comment that those who commit it r selfish. It's a cry 4 help, and I pity the person who feels so defeated and so miserable that they feel it would b better 2 not exist than 2 exist in pain.

Y live in pain if it seems 2 u that ur very existence does not make others happy? I don't know what runs thru the mind of a person who contemplates suicide, so I cannot pass judgement and label them selfish 4 their thoughts.

Death = a deserved release? Since when was death labelled such a thing? That's really awful wording. Death should be natural.

Lilith said:

WTF?

Does any1 "deserve" suicide? Wow.

ronnie said:

%100 true, IMHO.

bkw said:

AMEN and again, I say...AMEN!

AnotherLoverHolenYoHead said:

Me for one. I took an overdose of painkillers when I was 22. I was going through a very bad time, but I think it was more a cry for help than any real desire to die, although I did contemplate suicide several times after that.

Heavenly said:

I think this is way too simplistic. To view it as selfish, you first have to assume the individual's perception of reality isn't hopelessly deformed. If you've ever felt depressed for a few days or weeks, you surely remember how everything seemed grey and unappealing. For some people, these feelings can be much more severe and prolonged. They start viewing themselves as too insignificant to be of any help to others. Many feel like a burden and some even believe that the expressions of love and support they receive are motivated by pity, etc.

It's such a common mistake. Thinking that a sick mind thinks reasonably... often it doesn't, and that's simply areality of mental illness.
[This message was edited Sat Oct 12 13:18:35 PDT 2002 by Aerogram]

Aerogram said:

Damn, you've just described me.

AnotherLoverHolenYoHead said:

We are not in the position to judge.

I'm sure that each indivdual circumstance of suicide is as unique as the person was.

My advise is if your going to jkump in front of a train, have a thought for those your holding up getting to work, selfish bastard.