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

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

#401
post #185

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…

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...

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

#402
post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Good question, and well stated.

I am the first to admit being a terminology geek.

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.

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

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 alrea…

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 do…

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

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

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 m…

Wild guess (I am not a doctor in the slightest): could it be some kind of dopamine regulation problem?

>Dopamine has been shown to facilitate anti-diuretic hormone (ADH) release, driving the dilute urine excretion which causes hyponatraemia

https://www.e-jmd.org/journal/view.php?number=194

>Previous research has shown dopamine receptors to be altered in fibromyalgia, burning mouth syndrome, and atypical facial pain

https://www.practicalpainmanagement.com/resources/news-and-r...

>We may have been looking at the wrong thing all along, or we may find that both dopamine and glutamate pathways play a role in RLS.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/restless...

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

#405
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

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...…

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.

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

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Stop spreading misinformation. This is HN not reddit.

What misinformation exactly? That everyone will die one day, and that they can't choose how no matter how hard they try?

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

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#408
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.

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

#409

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.

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.

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

#410
post #47

"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…

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 so…

Don't Google suicide by fungicide in africa.

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.

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