People who die by suicide want to stop suffering, not to stop living

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.

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.

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!

I don’t think that this is universally true.

Sure, most of them want to stop suffering or are looking for a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

But I don’t have a shred of doubt that it’s possible to make a conscious good faith choice to stop living.

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.