Suicide?

might be a little deep or taboo subject to talk about, but a recent event makes me post this.

i work casino security in Vegas, last week i was dispatched to a room about a possible suicide attempt.

my partner and i enter the room and find this beautiful 20 year old girl who had taken 2 boxes of sleeping pills. i had our security roll paramedics right away and she was rushed to the hospital.

this girl was a beautiful latin girl and only 20, seemingly with her whole life ahead of her. i couldn’t imagine what would lead her to this point.

but… that leads me to this question. who here has ever thought about suicide? what stopped you from attempting? who here has ever attempted suicide?

i don’t know if this is too taboo or too private for anyone to respond. i am just curious about this since that incident. thanks

Definitely thought about it. Wanted to do it, but then I was too much of a pussy to go through with it. I prayed for death. But then, since I was such a pussy, I hated myself even more. Not a very healthy cycle.

From what i have heard, taking pills is a cry for help. If somebody really wants to kill themselves they wont do something where there is a chance they might live.

Never thought about wacking myself, but I’ve lost a few friends/classmates. Probably the saddest thing in life. Maybe this is insensitive, but I think you’d have to be a pretty weak person to just call it quits at such a young age.

I work in a hospital and last week there was a code blue called outside in front of the parking deck. Basically every resident, intern, and med student ran outside only to find some guy who jumped 6 stories and landed on his head. His brains were splattered all over the sidewalk for all to see. I guess he was a grad student who was shizophrenic and thought he could fly.

I’ve never really thought about it seriously, but I’ve gone through a couple of periods where I didn’t care if I lived or died. I just got through a bout of this recently and am just now getting my shit together.

Also, a few months ago my best friend all through grade school and junior high was killed. They still aren’t sure whether it was suicide or an accident. He had tried to kill himself once before. They initially said he jumped in front of a train and then they thought he may have been trying to hop a freight car and slipped. He had been suffering from schizophrenia for a few years, which I didn’t know about until the funeral as I had lost contact with him the last few years.

What kept me from doing it was thinking about what it would do to my family. This is something that many people who either commit the act or are considering it don’t even think about. They get so wrapped up in their own problems that they don’t consider how it would affect others. It’s the most selfish thing that someone could do.

at a young age of about fourteen. i was a good kid though. my family life was bad and i thought that i was the cause of it all. suffered in school a bit too. just hated life. i tried three times. twice by hanging outside of my window. couldnt do it. i lived three stories up and planned on taking a dive head first. once with a nuece. the only thing that kept me from doing it was the thought of my younger brother who looks up to me so dearly. i love that little shit brick to death. bad choice of words. after failing to have the balls to do it with a nuece, i stopped caring so much about all the things that were bothering me. i just let it all go and figured “this too will pass.” a year later i was kicked out of my house to live with my real father. i have only told one person about this. my life is amazing now, and will only get better day by day because of my burning desire to become the best person that i can. most people hang frilly dice or beeds from their rear view mirror. from mine resides a tied and dyed red nuece. it was a turning point in my life and also reprsents another less friendly attitude of mine when provoked. scares people a bit too when i point to it refering to what im going to do to them after they have cut me off or something. provided that they kindly pull over and alow me to do it, but you get the point :slight_smile: , rob h

thanks guys for your honest responses. really interesting and moving to read.

Thought about when I was young. I was the odd man out in grammer school and High school. Never, had any friends so I did think about wacking myself. How to do it ect.

But, I was always afraid to do it. Thank you God for putting that fear in me when I was a child.

I have now know since I am going through cancer that life is presious and there is so much to live for then to die for. God only gave you one live to live so. You better live the right way and enjoy it at the same time.

Along the lines of Karma’s post and my previous depression… funny thing is no matter how deep I went into it I never considered suicide. I always thought “pain is something more than nothing, at least I’d have that.” Sounds pretty stupid now that I think about it but at least I never wanted to kill myself. I did on the other hand want to get fucked up out of my mind off of drugs and just go to sleep for days, so I mise well have wanted to kill myself at that point. Then, I remembered I was happy when I was young and active and tried to reclaim that. I did, and then some. Now it’s all good.

Many people from my home town are now dead from suiside or dangerous behaviour. Same thing. My boxing trainer was the most recent. He shot himself in the head with a 303, loaded it then finished the job.
With all the safety nets in our society we still self destruct. I wonder how some of those third world people survive. Perhaps its because we expect more and often are surrounded by it.

Desperation is the key term. Thinking way too much is the other. Sometimes people, I included, feel like the deck is stacked against them and ending it is a hell of alot better than sitting there and being screwed by life over and over again.

Religion kept me alive. Not in the nice way that people think, you know pondering the beauty of life then making a choice to live. For me it was the fear of hell. I kept thinking, “Man, if I do this I’m going to hell”

It just catches you at a very weak moment. It is like a huge wave of anger, rage and despare washes over you and the only way out is to screw it all. The important thing to remember is that it passes.

I guess you have to be there.

They get so wrapped up in their own problems that they don't consider how it would affect others. It's the most selfish thing that someone could do.

Sorry to bust your balloon, but in some cases, it is an option.

Start debunking hijack

Did you ever really think about this before repeating just what everybody says? (Perpetuating the status quo).

Did it ever ponder on you that everybody is always selfish?

Take Mother Theresa. Apparently, what she does is for others. And I would bet big that if somewhere she did not get a kick from doing it (pleasure) out of acting out her beliefs, she would not have done it a lifetime. Yet, she is absolutely selfish in her pursuit of pleasure, even if on the looks of it, she is not.

(And for even more fun, read Richard Dawkins` Selfish Gene. You could be surprised to find out that apparent altruism is a very selfish and economically viable selfish gene propagation scheme. Appearances can be deceiving, specially without large scale + consequences analysis)

Also consider that, when terminally ill (in the sense of absolutely no-chance of getting out of some situation or disease), suicide is incompatible with dignity.

Even the fact that people choose to have children is selfish. I know everyone hopes to give a chance for the best to someone else, based on what he likes of life, but bottom line, nobody asks you to. You do it in your own selfish choice. The child never demanded it. You acted selfish, whether good intended or not (in the sense that dirt poor people on welfare start mass breeding lifestyles - a child will be the only thing nothing can ever take away from them, even after death, what have they to lose, specially when governement funds it through welfare here - a sort of attempt at immortality of a nation through subsizided breeding, whatever income level, so to say).

When you make choices (career, food, clothing, car, whatever), do you think beyond the classic I need it? Nope. You will probably make better bad choices, but you still act as a consumer. Again, no sacrifice and selfishness (Who`s gonna tell me what I can and cannot buy, eh?…Selfishness again). You still buy. And given more means, most people would buy even more.

Another good example you can test without a chance of being mistaken. Ask someone who says Having less people on the globe would help the crops or whatever to volunteer his own children for the sacrifice. Look at that impenetrable wall of self-interest appear. No cooperation on this one. Selfishness again. Guess what? Everybody thinks like that. It goes against humanity, instincts, evolutionary law and common sense. Nice in principle. But never applied in reality. Again, selfishness.

Bottom line:

Everybody, whether conscious of it or not, is selfish. We only change in the degree that it appears to be altruist. Let`s be honest and call things by their real name, will we? Personal survival (selfishness) comes far before altruism. It is built in the genes.

(By the way, this is not attempt to insult public servants like soldiers and police officers. They have my uttermost respect for putting even more on the line each day than the average joe. This thread was more in the sense that finger pointing/blame shifting, when you truly look at it, has no sense. If you come from a principles point of view, you probably will never see it. If you look at it from what people do whatever they say, it gives a whole different story. When you look at it this way, its like a magic trick explained, you cant see it otherwise from now on.).

End debunking hijack

Also consider this, who says others will think of you before they commit suicide? Maybe this will stop them, and it defuses a suicide, but then you cannot call it a suicide. Like Goldberg said, a cry for help thing.

But a successful suicide is always selfish. It separates us in a non-negociable way from all the others, just like death. By definition, a suicide is incompatible with the notion of others. If you put others in the equation, it automatically becomes a sacrifice or defuses the suicide. Therefore, a successful suicide is, by definition, always selfish. A failed one is a cry for help.

Since the person committing it willfully chose it, he willfully put others out of the equation. The person made a calculated choice. Therefore, nobody in the family should feel guilty (even if in reality they do), unless they in some way they influenced the process (like rape, incest, etc.).

But familial and emotional bonds are not that simple to sort out when things of this type do happen, granted.

I think (but what the hell do I know) that most people will think about suicide at an early point in their life (high school / college) because they may be faced with problems, but may not know how to deal with them. Or they may feel that their problem will last forever…

i’ve personally thought about it several different times through my life. when i was younger like in middle school i had kids making fun of me sooo much that when i was in the locker room they made me wait till they were done to change. and if i didn’t they would continue to make fun of me and mess with my locker…i had to change lockers several times. at that time i always let people pick on me and not do anything or say anything but in my mind i saw my self slamming there heads into the mirror and locks time after time…you know its the quiet kids that you realy have to worry about…at that time i realy thought about it and almost tried but i began to think of all the people and lives that i would be affecting if i did…all my friends, family members, even people that i didn’t realy know but made a good inpression on. i also knew that even if i thought this was sooo bad that once its done, i will go to hell and it will only get worse, far worse. so i didn’t do it…just like it was stated above, by killing your self you are being the most selfish person not thinking of what it will do to the ones that you love and care about…the sad thing is when my mom stated buying me nicer clothes it got better!! so no matter what happends it will pass and you will get through it.
the last time i wanted to kill my self is when my finance and i broke up. we were together for like 15 months. yes i know that realy isn’t that long. but it was for me, it seemed a lot longer then that…i realy thought that she was the one. not to mention after that i lost my cat which was my baby. i loved that cat dearly and soo many other things went wrong…so again i thought about it and then thought of how i would effect everyone and decided that its not worth it…again it is hard to get through a day knowing that more then likely i’ll never get back with her even though i thought she was the one…someday i know i will find the one and i will be happy that way again…so now i just live my life and try to better it in every way that i can…ok sorry this was sooo long…and thank you for listening to me…this subject is very emotional to me cause of what i said before and that a lot of my friends have eather thought of it or tried it and failed, thankfuly…again thanks for listening. :smiley:

I was incredibly self-destructive from pre-teen through my teen years. I did an ungodly amount of drugs/alcohol/rash behaviour. I vacillated between simply not caring if I lived or died, to actively seeking death, to putting myself as much in harm’s way as I could - sort of tempting fate.

I became an alcoholic at age 10, a smoker at age 11 and daily pot smoker at age 11.5. Home and school lives were living hell. I tried slitting my wrists when I was 11; it didn’t work. I didn’t know that when you stretch your wrist back you bring your tendons forward and while the tiny, superficial veins are available, your major veins sink further into your forearm. Several weeks after I did this, I asked my dad (a paramedic/firefighter at the time) if he’d ever seen a successfully slit wrist. You know what he did? He didn’t notice my self-bandaged wrists, but he did take the time to explain that the best way to slit your wrists is to bend your wrist forward, toward you inner elbow instead of away from it, and then slice from the base of your thumb to the inside corner of the elbow. Bleed out time for that is less than one quarter bleed out time for just going across the narrow part of the wrist. Lovely. Very attentive father I had, eh? Oh, he also told me that if someone took a vasodilator, like the sublingual nitro that my grandmother had on her nightstand, and was in a warm bath it’d work even faster.

When I was 12, life wasn’t much peachier. I lived with a 42 year old drug dealer and ran his product to his customers. I’ve been held at gunpoint more times than I can recall (I was the psycho chick who would walk straight up to the gun and position it center chest, center forehead or suck on the barrel). I’ve been pistol whipped, had dogs sic’d on me, been jumped and cut.

I could have left that lifestyle in the beginning but I didn’t value myself enough to do so. I routinely drank the entire high school football team under the table - consecutively, not concurrently. I watched as 4 “friends” in 3 years convulsed and died in front of me after snorting less coke than I had had right alongside them. I’ve passed out, been mistaken for dead and been left in a dumpster in a city over an hour and a half away from where I’d passed out.

The taking of ridiculous chances continued, and when I got my first car - I had a new avenue to express self-destruction. I worked 30 some miles from my home and there was nothing but a dense National Forest and a two lane, winding road between. I would bury the needle and drive without headlights. More often than not I’d make it home in 11-13 minutes. The only thing indicating where the road was, was it’s slightly paler shade of gray compared to the darker gray of the forest. I routinely sped up to triple the speed limit for taking corners (and this part of the country is where you have massive trees lining the roads and zero room for error). I wrapped my first car around a telephone pole at 85mph yet emerged completely unscathed. The only time I’ve ever seen my dad cry was while he was looking at the car. He’d seen too many accidents not to realize the probability of a DOA in a wreck like that.

When I finally realized that if I was supposed to be dead, I would have been dead many times over, I kind of snapped out of it. I realized all I had put myself through and that there must be some reason for my still being here… This could be a very nice segue into my spiritual beliefs but that’s not what this thread is about.

The point of these example is that when you believe that you have no intrinsic worth, no one to turn to, no one who gives a rat’s ass about whether you live or die, and no belief in any sort of future - you truly believe you have no reason to remain alive.

When I was in the academy I learned that 90% of all suicides attempts are a cry for help and they don’t want to die.After all,have you ever wonder why there are people out there that tried several times and failed?

I was thinking about this the other day.Not suicide..but when my friends back in high school did self mutilation for attention.I never understood that either.I cry like a girl when I get a paper cut and couldn't imagine doing that to myself.

 Then again..I had a loving family that gave me plenty of attention.My friends were not as lucky so that might have something to do with it too.

damn melissa you beat me to the punch!! i’m sorry that you had such a bad time…i’m glad thing are getting better for you. :smiley:

wow, thank you all for your stories. really enlightening to me.

hey johny law i know exactly where you’r comming from with the cutting. i have 2 friends that cut themselves to make them feel better. they tell me that it feels good. i know its just like being an addict, its like drug…but i just don’t understand how it makes them feel good…if i got cut like i’ve seen the scars that they have i would be crying like a little baby. not be happy about it…the good news is that since i’ve talked to them they both said that they are getting help…i hope this is true.

One of my son’s friends died on Friday night. He was 16. It was ruled a suicide, but that’s not what really happened. He got talked into trying mushrooms and started hallucinating so badly let that he drove his car to a freeway overpass, took off his belt and shoes, and jumped into traffic. The real story didn’t come out right away and everyone (including his parents) one wondered how they missed the signs. Tragic as it is, it was easier for people to accept once they knew that he didn’t mean to do what he did.

In general, I think a lot of people struggle with suicidal thoughts at various times in their lives. I know I have. But I think that it’s often a desire to stop living life the way it is and not a real desire to die.