Suicide Not the 'Easy Way Out.'

WARNING: METHODS OF SUICIDE ARE OPENLY DISCUSSED IN THIS POST.

I've had suicidal thoughts almost everyday since I was fifteen and when I wasn't directly thinking about it, it was there in the background. I was watching BBC One last night. A program called 'Ambulance'. Paramedics have always had a bit of reputation for being unsympathetic towards people who attempt suicide, often saying it was a waste of their time and resources when others were in grater need. Paramedic's could sometimes be very blunt about this. This is changing, but last nights Ambulance, showed one paramedic, saying that she didn't understand why people would ever consider suicide and even when she was at her lowest it hadn't even entered her head. Lucky her. Her colleague then admitted that he'd considered it, when he first came out as gay.

The wider public also seem to have this attitude and this belief that suicide is an easy option and a cowards way out. Having been a member of the mentally ill community, I have known 19 people who have committed suicide. Several of these people, I have had intimate knowledge of their history. Their problems from childhood right up to their suicide and believe me none of them were cowards. None of them took an 'easy option'. This is because the human body and mind, is a very robust thing. It is designed specifically for survival. It is physically hard to kill yourself. Take cutting your wrists for example. People think that you just cut across your wrist. This is not true. You have to open up the main artery. The main artery is hard to find. I know someone who tried to kill himself this way. He was very determined to kill himself, but he was unable to find his artery, but severely cut up his arm in the process.

I knew of one woman who stabbed herself in the heart. This is no mean feat. You have to puncture the structures of the chest which are designed to protect vital organs. So the breast plate, has to be punctured to get to the heart.

Another friend of mine attempted suicide by covering himself with petrol while sat in his car. When he'd soaked himself with petrol and went to pick up a lighter he thought he had, he couldn't find it and had to return home and clean himself up. I tried to convince him that God had intervened and it was a strong sign that God didn't want him to do it. Unfortunately this didn't convince him and he threw himself under a train a couple of weeks later.

I have know four deaths from going under trains. Two from throwing themselves off tall buildings, one (explained above) from stabbing herself. Several from hanging (which is painful) and several from overdoses of various medicines. All were fraught with dangers. All were suicides where the person involved was in very serious mental distress. And not just around the time of their deaths. Constantly. Every day.

I believe that to kill yourself is hard. It is hard mentally and it's hard physically. You have to have a proper go at it and be sure that once you step over that threshold, that you will definitely die. Plus the things drawing you back from doing it, like the feelings of family that you leave behind. How will they cope? I know of two women who attempted to hang themselves and were found and rescued. One of them went on to have a happy normal life. The other was severely brain damaged and is now in a care home, where she will see out her days, with very little mental awareness of who she is and who her family is. She will never recover.

There is nothing cowardly about suicide, especially if you're in constant mental anguish. Especially if you've been like this for years, even decades, without any real prospect of recovery. And that's why doctors in Belgium and Switzerland, have no problem with euthanasia of mentally ill people. Many people have fully engaged with mental health services and treatments and still suffer every day. I am one of them. I have tried almost every medicine I was offered. I attended every appointment with psychologists, councillors, nurses and doctors. Nothing has worked. And the pain is terrible - terror being the operative part of that word. It terrorises me and people like me. And you have to decide what you want. A life long painful experience, that will never change, never get better. Or peace in death.

There is a website you can visit which sets out all the different methods of suicide, with a pain index next to each one. You will notice from this list that none of the options are pain free. Death by shotgun and the method used by Dignitas (barbiturate overdose), are the only two pain free options. But they're still fraught with dangers. What if you partially miss when shooting yourself? What if you get hold of some barbiturates and they turn out to be fake? No option is a good one.

Suicide information: http://lostallhope.com/suicide-methods

I Wish I was Dead.

If I went to sleep tonight and never woke up that would be the best things that could happen to me. I don't get a chance to talk about my suicidal thoughts. I wouldn't burden my family with it. The friends I made years ago in hospital and at group meetings with MDF (formally the Manic Depression Fellowship - now known as Bipolar UK), have all since died from suicide. Since I got ill in 1995 I have known 21 people who have killed themselves. I would like to follow them, but I never seem to feel so bad that I wanted to actually attempt it. If you're going to do it you need to be sure your method is going to work and you're not just going to end up in a wheelchair or hooked up to a machine for the rest of your life. I feel anxious and depressed every single day, day in and day out. But I feel I'd have to be at least 10% worse than that to really try hard enough to be successful. I have a bad heart and poorly managed diabetes. But hoping I will die from a heart attack while asleep isn't really much of a plan.

Everything stresses me out. Staying in, going out. A twice yearly visit from my dad. Contacts with the agent who manages my flat is a tough one. She always seems to be trying to charge me for something and I am paranoid they will turf me out so they can get someone else in here. I can be in a state for days at a time. I have three possible methods of suicide in the flat ready to go. My preferred one is supposed to be slow and painful. I have looked online to see if I can get pills that will make it pain free, but these pills are illegal in the UK and you can get arrested for ordering them if you get caught. Plus they might be fake and filled with God knows what.

I often think how brave my friends were to kill themselves. I knew first hand what they went through because I witnessed it. And I think how come they had the guts to do it and I don't? Then I think it's about whether I think I could have a future or not. I never got the career I wanted. I am a struggling author. I'm 44 years old. If there is a slither of hope I might be able to improve my life, it seems to be enough to stop me killing myself. But it's on a knife edge, on a daily basis. Maybe it will be this week? Maybe this year, next year, in ten years. Who knows?

I have suffered from an anxiety disorder since I was fifteen. But that disorder is now completely out of control. This is because of Iain Duncan-Smith and the Conservative changes to benefits. It is a constant worry. There are many scare stories on the news of people going without payments for months, having to sell all their possessions, go hungry and getting made homeless after getting into arrears on their rent. My anxiety disorder is now at a chronic level, ironically making it less likely I will be able to take on any work. It is an epic battle that I go through every single day.

And the NHS is no help at all. In my last session with a psychiatrist I told him how suicidal I was and he discharged me in that very same appointment. I got assigned a support worker and when she asked me what I wanted from the sessions with her and said I needed support. She said 'we don't offer support'. Her job title is 'support worker' and she doesn't offer support. When I was first ill you could turn up at a hospital in the middle of the night and get admitted there and then as a voluntary patient. Now you can't even get a referral to see a psychiatrist. We're being pushed further and further to the margins of society, by the benefit system, by the health system.

One of my friends begged to be taken into hospital because of feeling suicidal. They said to go for a walk or have a hot bath. He killed himself soon after. He was fifty-four, had been ill since his early twenties and had never attempted suicide before that day. The system let him down badly. And there are many like him up and down a country that doesn't care about suicidal people anymore. If I decided to do it, there would be no intervention, even though there are well established prevention strategies that can be used by the psychiatric system. The funding is just not there anymore. And I can't see that will change any time soon.