Comment by Razengan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Razengan | Hacker News Reader

I believe suicide should be seen as a beautiful release for some people.

It's twisted and bizarre that this is such a taboo in human society, almost globally (I appreciate exceptions like Dignitas [0] in Switzerland.)

Why do we endorse "My Body, My Choice" when it comes to decisions like abortion, but take that choice away when it comes to suicide?

Why is the termination of life support for terminal patients seen as a mercy, but vehemently denied when someone who is otherwise healthy rationally chooses to die?

What if someone is simply bored with life? Would you force someone to play a game they don't enjoy, or can't ever win at?

I'm afraid suicide may never be universally accepted as a human right, for primarily these two reasons:

1: It acknowledges the possibility that life is pointless, which threatens many of our entrenched belief systems.

2: Money. If people could cleanly (without pain, guilt, taboo etc.) end their life anytime they want, it could seriously disrupt the economy. When people are no longer forced to live, many industries would make less money than they do (finance, healthcare, therapy, anything that relies on cheap labor, and so on.)

[0] http://www.dignitas.ch

If we ever get past the roadblock of social acceptance, I’d propose assisted suicide clinics, where one might submit a formal application stating their frame of mind and what they tried to improve their situation before they arrived at their decision.

If it's approved, they could be placed on a waiting period of 1-2 years, where they have to reaffirm their decision at regular intervals (every 3 months?)

At the end of the waiting period, if they have no outstanding debts, let them leave whatever they want to whomever they want (messages, heirlooms), set their affairs in order, make peace with close family and friends, and help them pass on with dignity.

If they ever changed their minds during the waiting period, they would not be allowed to apply again for say 3-5 years.

Even simply knowing that they have the option of a clean, socially-accepted and assisted suicide, would tremendously help a lot of people who might otherwise take their lives in uglier ways.

I suppose there are so many moral barriers (we try to make societal decisions democratically after all) that this will never fly.

Most non-terminally ill people who attempt suicide aren't making a rational choice to die at the time they attempt it.

Anecdotally in my experience there are three categories of people who wish to suicide:

1. People with a terminal illness. Enough said.

2. People acting on impulse and/or not getting proper help. Sure they need some crisis intervention to offer a chance for them to receive proper help.

3. People who have been getting proper help for a long time. They simply lose hope. They view the long time they have been getting proper help as seeming proof they will never feel life is worth living. They dispassionately read coronial reports and suicide methods, carefully put their affairs into an orderly state (in particular financial arrangements for dependents), acquire the required resources to execute a painless while assured lethal plan that imposes no safety risks to others, then go off and do it.

I was in the latter group, but I messed up by saying goodbye to my wife after a little wine (combined with Effexor) and that resulted in the full force of the law whack the shit out of me (and the fact it's obvious you're in this latter group means they take it far more seriously than if it seemed a fleeting impulse).

Anyway by any objective measure the third group are making a rational choice to die. It should not be the community's right to dictate they should indefinitely live in pain.

It sounds like you still want to die. Is that the case?

I am currently hopeful given a new treatment that's care-focused.

I'd also add that discontinuing antidepressants (with the associated emotional blunting, at least in my case) means I am more empathetic to the impact on my wife and kids.

It's when there's no hope you want to leave the world. Especially when you have means that are painless, assured and safe to everyone around you. Plus you can use logic like financially your kids are better off with you dead due to testamentary trusts and the lack of your resource consumption (I had a startup exit, so retired long ago).

While I still hate living, I'm not actively planning to die at present.

This is purely for my own curiosity but did you try electroshock? It seems to have no effect on some people but work wonders for others.

I submit that people are far too willing to judge the choices of others as irrational.

Oh yeah? How many people have you spoken to about what was going through their minds when they attempted suicide? Did it sound mostly rational to you?

Why would it? I lack the context to understand their problems. I may feel like I understand, since I've been suicidal myself, but that's from a perspective of not currently being suicidal.

Regarding this particular question, my opinion is that context, in the form of problems that suicidal people face, is often a separate issue from the suicidal impulse itself. Lots of people face problems that might make them consider killing themselves, and perhaps rightly so. But in the moment of attempting it, the thoughts that go through most people's minds-- the thoughts that either permit or motivate them to actually carry it out-- tend to be "irrational." Suicide as anger/punishment, for example, is "irrational," as is (usually) the belief that people who love you would be better off without you.

and also 3: The fear of death is extremely difficult to overcome for most people, even when it's objectively their best option.

on this topic, there's an excellent blog post called 'Who by very slow decay' which I think would change most people's minds if they read it. https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay...

suicide, if done right, is one of the best ways to die.

Maybe some people have a deep-rooted fear dying might not be a final act of suffering?

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