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
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