Why all the suicides if everything is going so well in Murica?

[splat]

not sure why I am compelled to share this
but in high school my parents told me a family friend had a heart attack and died
I'm at school and a kid I know is telling me about how his dad went on a call and this guy had shot himself in the chest with a shot gun
but he wasn't done in, his wife and kids were at the mall and came home to find him and called the ambulance, my friend went into lots of gory detail about the whole scene
I come home from school and my mom apologizes to me and says so and so didn't die from a heart attack he killed himself, they were just telling me the lie they were told
I remember just telling her I already know

Ha.... and all this fucked up shit, it's dark, Christmas time and all that......

What better time than xmas for underperforming consumers to not want to face the ridicule of not giving enough presents to other consumers. Idiot America.

[ill-advised strategy]

Ergonomics and logistics seem to suggest it's definitely easier to pull it off more successfully with a handgun than with a rifle or shot gun. I can see how a long gun could slip out of place as you're pushing the trigger.

Just gotta start 'em practicing early!


#dark

[wyeaster]

hilarious until you hear your kid's second grade friend says he doesn't want to live anymore

[muted]

I would have expected to see Jersey higher up.

Ha, but when you think you are gods gift to the world, why would you off yourself?

[old goat]

My mother's in assisted living suffering from fairly bad vascular dementia.

She's living in the 1970s. I went to see her a couple months ago for a few days. Every time I walked in to the assisted living facility she didn't even remember that I had just been there an hour ago, totally like The Notebook. So now, mid 50s myself every senior moment has me wondering if I'm also headed down that road even sooner. I do have a good neurologist for migraines but we've also started keeping up with the stroke risk stuff that's related to my family medical history.

Here's an example.. had car trouble over the weekend and drove to the new location for the Subaru dealer service. I pulled up to the closed bay door, grabbed a night drop envelope, filled it out, and as I finished I noticed that the sign above the bay said BMW!!!!! Damn. I swear I pulled up to the Subaru side of the parking lot.. but it wasn't. Drove around to the proper building, but stuff like that seemed to only happen to me after a long safety meeting and I'm well over a decade sober. Ya, I don't want to end up like my mom, but she still has some good days. I've seen some horrible ones where she's confused and terrified with no way to calm her down by telling her what's really happening and everything is OK. I can relate to people who check out. She left town and moved across the country to try to spare us most of this.

Your story about the wrong dealership seems pretty innocent. The older we get the more we do on autopilot and anything that distracts us or takes us out of our routine can lead to mistakes. A certain amount of that is normal. One has to train oneself to be conscious of the everyday stuff we do. Rather than putting our keys down without paying attention to it we have to make a mental note of doing it. When you make that mental note and still can't find your keys it's time to worry.

(I'm always having to help my wife find stuff--she says she put it in a certain place and it's not there. I say so you must have put it somewhere else which seems obvious but for some reason she has a heard time accepting. I'm different--when I lose stuff it turns up in plain view in the first place I looked for it but didn't see it the first time I looked. Hard to figure how I didn't see it the first time--unless my wife is gaslighting me--hiding it and then putting it back LOL.)

The suicide that haunts me years later was a patient of mine. Guy was a tiny Japanese American ex jockey in his 80s I think who lived in a trailer on another guys ranch. He had an abdominal aortic aneurysm that didn't bother him but his doctor had reported him to the DMV as unsafe to drive (which was BS--if your aneurysm ruptures you should be able to pull over, stop the car and die.)The guy wasn't afraid of dying from the aneurysm but he wanted his license back so I fixed the aneurysm. He had a rough time--was in the hospital a long time, didn't want to eat, eventually spent a few months in a nursing home but was finally able to be discharged back to his trailer where he promptly shot himself. I didn't feel so bad that he died but that he went through months of suffering before he did it. I think of him a lot.

[wooley12]

Sometimes I go to a room and forget what I went there for. I'll start to worry when the room is the bathroom.

[mcski]

I have to go pee 3-4 times during the night. Should it bother me I don't wake up?

[tbssux]

There's often a pretty short window between when you learn you have Alzheimer's and when you forget you have it--seriously. I hope if it happens to me I have the guts to do the deed in time. (According to my kids it's already too late.)
I've taken care of a few unsuccessful suicides over the years--guy who blew his face and frontal lobes off with a shotgun, guy who shot himself in the gut with a shotgun, and a guy who shot himself through the C2 spine and wound up as a quadraplegic on a ventilator. The second guy did ok--he was a minister and wound up working in the hospital after he recovered. So if you are going to do yourself in, do it right, please.

Or, shoot yourself in the gut, recover, and get a job at a hospital.

[AK47bp]

Or, shoot yourself in the gut, recover, and get a job at a hospital.

https://youtu.be/cvzrewTxQPU

[californiagrown]

Had two friends in HS jump in front of trains. First one i saw as i was walking to school (tracks go right in front of the main entrance). Second one happened during the second quarter of the final football game of my sophmore year (tracks run 30' behind visitors stands next to the field). When the train stops where it did, we all knew exactly what had happened but not who. Game wasnt delayed and we played through only finding out who it was later that weekend. Per usual with suicides, there is a cluster of them in my hometown every few years where one happens and then a bunch more people see it and become inspired to do it as well.

IMO there are VERY few instances where a suicide isnt an incredibly selfish, hurtful act to friends, family, and acquaintances.

[SumJongGuy]

Ya, whenever there's a blip on the news about someone getting hit and killed by a train, and it happens a couple times a year here too, my wife or a kid asks.. "How can someone get hit by a train? Why are they walking down the middle of the tracks? Can't they hear it coming? I just shrug and say something like , "I don't know, maybe they had ear buds with loud music going?

[muted]

IMO there are VERY few instances where a suicide isnt an incredibly selfish, hurtful act to friends, family, and acquaintances.

I think this thought has been discussed over and over here, but this comment, while a very common idea on suicide, is ignorant. If you believe this, then you truly have not an inkling on why most people commit suicide. For some personalities, it's a really hard concept to understand, because they are seeing life through one person's eyes, their own. There's billions of us of course and many are wired much much much differently than you.

[uglymoney]

I think this thought has been discussed over and over here, but this comment, while a very common idea on suicide, is ignorant. If you believe this, then you truly have not an inkling on why most people commit suicide. For some personalities, it's a really hard concept to understand, because they are seeing life through one person's eyes, their own. There's billions of us of course and many are wired much much much differently than you.

+1

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[SumJongGuy]

I've interacted with countless people who survived suicide attempts. I don't believe many of them intended to cause pain or suffering to their family, friends, lover, etc. Most of them say they weren't thinking rationally and clearly weighing those kind of consequences in retrospect. It's not "selfish" unless that pain inflicted on others was intentional, something most who go there no longer have the mental capacity to properly evaluate at that point.

[californiagrown]

I've interacted with countless people who survived suicide attempts. I don't believe many of them intended to cause pain or suffering to their family, friends, lover, etc. Most of them say they weren't thinking rationally and clearly weighing those kind of consequences in retrospect. It's not "selfish" unless that pain inflicted on others was intentional, something most who go there no longer have the mental capacity to properly evaluate at that point.

I have a fair amount of experience with and have spent a lot of time thinking about this topic. I'm aware of how others view this issue.

At the end of the day a person makes a choice to put their interest ahead of others. Logic doesn't leave you.when you're depressed, it might be sent to the back, but you still know right from wrong, and you still know you have options other than suicide.

We can argue till the cows come home about this, but it won't do any good. Depression is no more shameful than cancer. Most suicide is giving up treatment before a terminal diagnosis.

[mcski]

I have a fair amount of experience with and have spent a lot of time thinking about this topic. I'm aware of how others view this issue.

At the end of the day a person makes a choice to put their interest ahead of others. Logic doesn't leave you.when you're depressed, it might be sent to the back, but you still know right from wrong, and you still know you have options other than suicide.

We can argue till the cows come home about this, but it won't do any good. Depression is no more shameful than cancer. Most suicide is giving up treatment before a terminal diagnosis.

Not even sure where to start, but I'd suggest you watch the documentary The Bridge. You may rethink some of those misconceptions

[MTT]

Dam I have been away for a long time.

Hello

No not me, never

[ACH]

We can argue till the cows come home...

Accepting that this is your point of view, it's also generalizing...
You can count me as another whose own life experience says otherwise, it's not black and white.

[east or bust]

NJ may be last on that list but i know of three young people (2 from hometown) who committed suicide before the age of 20. to me, at that point the overall number doesn’t really matter.

[ill-advised strategy]

Had two friends in HS jump in front of trains. First one i saw as i was walking to school (tracks go right in front of the main entrance). Second one happened during the second quarter of the final football game of my sophmore year (tracks run 30' behind visitors stands next to the field). When the train stops where it did, we all knew exactly what had happened but not who. Game wasnt delayed and we played through only finding out who it was later that weekend. Per usual with suicides, there is a cluster of them in my hometown every few years where one happens and then a bunch more people see it and become inspired to do it as well.

IMO there are VERY few instances where a suicide isnt an incredibly selfish, hurtful act to friends, family, and acquaintances.

And yet, friends, family and acquaintances can only do so much when your life is just an impossible, sisyphean nightmare. Anybody coming with me to work? Anybody....Bueller? So...everyone owes it to everyone else to keep slogging out the death march until nature gifts us with a long, painful, expensive decline r/t cancer or heart disease or whatever?

It's one thing when you're talking about healthy 20 year olds who can't really see they have a lot to look forward to. It's another when you're talking about fully developed middle-age-or-older adults who have an idea what life is and what's coming at them.

[iceman]

I don't think that people really have a responsibility to keep on living at all costs. I do think that fucking everybody else's shit up on the way out is poor form and you'll probably pay for it somehow if you do.

[wyeaster]

most people i know who say it's selfish haven't stared into the abyss for extended periods with no possibility for relief of overwhelming physical, emotional or psychological pain, particularly when all accessible options of treatment have long been exhausted.

everybody dies in the end. a person's ultimate responsibility is to themselves and their children if there are any. if you're going to do it, it is nice if you don't leave a bloody chunky mess for the people who love you to remember you by.

barring dropping dead at some point, i have always intended to check out on my own terms. i clung to dear life for many years before and after my attempt and the only thing that kept me going was refusing to believe that that unbearable condition was the end of my story and wanting to see it through to the end.

i'm grateful i did but i know it doesn't work out that way for everybody.

[Buster Highmen]

Having had a family member make a lifetime of bad choices and slowly and painfully kill himself leaving a long train of pain and suffering among survivors, I can't really bring myself to fault him.
One thing that comes back to me is the Hendrix lyrics:

I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life, the way I want to.

Maybe our positions on suicide are relative to the degree to which we can assign respect to other peoples right to choices about their own life?

[ill-advised strategy]

Heres's the problem unique to 'merica: All my worst choices are listed here:
1) Becoming a federal firefighter after 9/11
2) Buying a (modest, small) house that I then couldn't afford when I was layed off in 2008...and had to sell at the low market value when the only job I could find was 12 driving hours away.
3) Going to college, which leaves me with a $200/mo anchor for the rest of my life.
4) Moving back to my hometown as my mother becomes elderly.

All of those things have fucked me over. They shouldn't, they should have been the right thing to do....it's only because we have awful politics that reward selfishness and slimy scuzzy behavior that we all constantly have to choose between watching out for ourselves and doing the right thing. It's gross, and it's not changing, and the gamut of various specific ways that general trend expresses itself in peoples' individual lives is why 'merica is so collectively troubled. We're thoroughly committed to a system where, functionally, on a day-to-day, real-world level: conscientiousness is weakness, sense of duty makes one vulnerable to exploitation, conventional wisdom and public education is consumerist manipulation, and most of the people running things are, to one degree or another, on the narcissistic and/or psychopathological spectrum.

[jono]

Some strong points there, but I'm not sure you can entirely blame "politics" for the fact that conscientious decisions always require the acceptance of some personal cost. That's why they require a sense of duty in the first place, after all. Still, the perspective as it relates to reinforcing pessimism or depression makes sense.