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Why you shouldn't do what Aaron did

• tbjohnston 14y ago
  Thank you for this post and helping to get the word out.
• rlambert 14y ago
  Thanks for posting this, Pitaroua. It is really well put and important stuff for people to know. == Ross ==
• rohamg 14y ago
  Thanks for posting this. I too am alarmed at the HN community's response. It is surprising how such strong talent can feel so powerless- you'd think hackers would be less susceptible to giving up given that we can change things with our bare hands. It's easy to give up, it's incrementally harder to say "this will pass", it's hardest of all to snap ourselves out- slap ourselves in the face and remind each other of the immense privilege we all were born into, and see problems in the world with a sense of duty and responsibility, not despair. Honestly- I'm a bit shocked at the sense of entitlement people have of life sometimes, expecting happiness to be delivered on a platter (or via API). Life is a startup, it is a fucking war: keep busy and fight the good fight. If we're on HN we're already in the top 1% - if we have problems we should get out there and do something about it.
  • _phred 14y ago
    >> Depression robs you of the ability to: 1. remember happiness 2. feel happiness 3. anticipate happiness 4. make considered decisions Just a friendly reminder that depressed people cannot, for the most part "snap [ourselves] out." If the solution was to double down and power through I'd have cured my own depression years ago. The shitty thing is that it's a long-living subconscious emotional drain. It's a downward slide that for me happened so slowly I didn't even notice until I'd lived at the bottom, completely burned out on life and barely functional for two years. It's not only a mental disorder, it's technically called "psychomotor depression" because it will by degrees affect mind and body in a downward spiral. I've never lost sight of the bigger issues, the disorder and opportunity for change in world-at-large, but it's impossible to make meaningful progress toward /anything/ whilst waking up every day with a gnawing emotional emptiness and pain thrusting itself into the center of my consciousness. It's care about those bigger issues and for my family that has kept me in this world. My point is this: whether you mean to or not, you suggest that people can get themselves out of depression. In general, this doesn't happen. Therapy, medication, and support of friends, combined with healthy living have begun to move me forward in my own struggle. I hope to see in my lifetime an elimination of the social stigma of depression. We're not miserable entitled bastards that need a reminder of our incredible opportunities. We're folk who feel sad and whose brains work in a way such that we can't always see the way forward. That's all there is to it.
• mherdeg 14y ago
  Just as a heads-up, his last name is spelled "Swartz".
  • Pitarou 14y ago
    Argh! Thanks. I also spelled my name wrong. I'm actually "Pitarou" rather than "Pitaroua". Post in haste, repent at leisure.
• misnome 14y ago
  It's a repeat of what others have said, but thanks again for posting this - much of the comments in the other thread seemed to be.. unhelpful, if not downright antagonistic.
• lisper 14y ago
  http://blog.rongarret.info/2011/11/it-gets-better-geek-version.html http://blog.rongarret.info/2011/11/it-gets-better-geek-versi...
  • danielweber 14y ago
    I wonder if Swartz ever had to deal with that as a kid. He was well-regarded within the tech community before he was a teenager. Maybe he skipped the awkward depressing phase most of us went through and landed straight in success. So new adversity was very uncomfortable for him. Argh. I hate this. I disagreed with him on so much but I wish he were still alive to argue with. :(
• hkmurakami 14y ago
  >Depression robs you of the ability to: 1. remember happiness 2. feel happiness 3. anticipate happiness 4. make considered decisions I've spent many hours thinking about how each of us can dig ourselves out of our dark places when we unfortunately get stuck in them from time to time; I don't think I've seen the core symptoms of depression expressed so succinctly in these few years since my own difficult times. I spent Christmas week with friends in Hawaii, and I told my friend (who has lost an older brother to suicide -- so we talk about this sort of thing from time to time) that being conscious of "happy times" like this and making an effort to remember these great moments during our difficult moments is probably a key factor in preventing suicidal thoughts in us. He agreed.
• seiji 14y ago
  Studies of suicide[1] show it's an escape from yourself (kinda obvious), but I think the insight is: it all starts with blaming yourself. If you don't blame yourself, the chain of suicide doesn't start. People don't suicide themselves because somebody else has annoying life circumstances. Circumstances are relative too. Modern society is constantly throwing other people's success, joy, accomplishment, and bravado in our faces. It can make us feel less than what we are. It can make us feel like our lives aren't good enough. Stop comparing your life to anything you've read anywhere anytime. We live in an age of magic. Be a wizard. Blaming yourself is a dangerous path to go down. Don't blame yourself. The world is big and time is long. Things will work out. [1]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2408091 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2408091 and summarized at my http://suicidescale.com/ http://suicidescale.com/ site.
  • kordless 14y ago
    > The world is big and time is long. Things will work out. The best advice and totally true!
    • sramsay 14y ago
      It is totally true. And it's very hard to understand this when you're twenty-six years old. My heart just breaks . . .
• philippeback 14y ago
  What kept (and still keeps) me running: I don't want to let the suckers win. I want to see the movie of my life for as long as possible, no matter how wrecked that could be. And record yourself when you are okay. Play the movie back to yourself when in the dumps. It helps.
  • Evbn 14y ago
    Watch out for "I used to be happy, those days are gone." you need to remember the repeatable happiness, that you can look forward to. Actually, you just need to trick yourself into committing to seeing or doing something in the future, repeatedly.
    • philippeback 14y ago
      True. I'd add: stop thinking the brain doesn't need help. It may be linked to a chemical imbalance. I have got to help my serotonin circuit or it will just get bad. Diet is really having a huge effect on emotions as far as I am involved. When I reached 40+, it went downhill and I needed serious supplementation to keep up. Aaron has serious diet related challenges. It didn't helped for sure.
• primespiral 14y ago
  I too am concerned about the Werther effect. Traffic on reddits /r/SuicideWatch has exploded. [1] [1]http://stattit.com/r/SuicideWatch/ http://stattit.com/r/SuicideWatch/
• dear 14y ago
  Why people need to feel so depressed to commit suicide? I don't understand. Programmers are supposed to be rational, non-emotional. Take it easy. It's just another day in the universe. It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
  • level09 14y ago
    depression is not rational, it's an illness, it just happens ..
    • zaphar 14y ago
      The first two parts of your sentence are correct. The last one not necessarily correct. Depression can be caused by a chemical imbalance. It can also be caused/exacerbated by your own thoughts and approaches to life. It doesn't just happen it has causes and is correctable and in many circumstances is preventable. I think the general point you were trying to make is good. Depression can crop up in the best of us. But acting like it's unavoidable and just something you have to live with is perhaps not the best way of approaching it either.
      • pfortuny 14y ago
        Oh, I guess he just wanted to point out that it 'happens' just as 'flu' happens or any other disease: it is not something that you try to get and in most cases it is hard to prevent.
  • ansible 14y ago
    I believe you are taking good mental balance for granted. Remember that 'you' are running on top of a very complex biological computer consisting of billions of neurons, with hormones and other chemicals influencing its operation. It needs to constantly be supplied with nutrients and oxygen to function at all. Sanity is actually a finely balanced thing. You need to worry about the appropriate things, but not too much, and not too little. Little tweaks to neurotransmitter levels can have enormous effects on your cognition. Edit: in addition to what the OP had said, also remember this: When you are well and truly depressed, you don't even want to get better. You don't want to feel good. Some part of you is fine with pain and suffering, and more pain and more suffering.
• buchuki 14y ago
  Thank you for this, I've been meaning to author something similar, but I'd choose the exact same words. After 20 years of depression my death was averted by the words "I'd rather see you institutionalized than dead." Two weeks on the psychiatric ward and an ongoing series of changes later, I now lead the happiest life possible. You can, too. So now, I give these words back to the community. I don't know who you are, but with all my heart: I'd rather see you institutionalized than dead.
  • tomjen3 14y ago
    I am very happy those words changed your life. But personally, I would rather be death than institutionalized.
• hekker 14y ago
  Beware, there are no respawn points in RL.
  • polarix 14y ago
    Incorrect; witness every uterus on earth.
• julienmarie 14y ago
  I just see a lot of people talking about cognitive behavioral therapies. I guess it's one of the differences in the "psy" area between the US and Europe where psychoanalysis is more widespread. I've also known some deep depressive years (after my mother committed suicide). The cure has been to read ( Nietzsche mainly), to embrace it, to listen to my brain, to little by little understand it. Understanding that depression is a pure symptom of our humanity : it's the moment you loose meaning in your life ( as Nietzsche says, the Human being is the only animal who needs meaning to live ). And then, you realize that the meaning of your life can only come from one source : yourself. We are easily trap by the need of approval, the need of existence within the eyes of the one who surrounds us. These approvals do not exist and are only projected, forecasted, approvals, it's our own devils. We are free to put whatever meaning we desire on our lives, as long as we respect others. Life is a permanent challenge to ourselves. This is the reason this is the most beautiful journey... Life is short anyway, let's make it a beautiful adventure. There is nothing to lose, everything to gain.
  • nnq 14y ago
    I also found Nietzsche uplifting when some time ago I was "loosing faith in humanity"... but I never thought it a good idea to recommend him to anyone else as it seemed quite bad for one's mental health on the whole, though it worked great for me... I'm glad there are others that found inspiration in these writings :)
  • pekk 14y ago
    Psychoanalysis has never passed muster in a randomized clinical trial. When it has even been submitted to a trial, psychoanalysts have never accepted it, and they have not cooperated in carrying out such trials. This is significant when Freud held his cures to be the primary evidence for his theories - and review of his published cases mostly found he was wrong about them. If someone I loved were depressive I would seek out therapies which provided some real reason to believe they worked, not pseudoscience. Being European shouldn't mean that you reject science in favor of something which seems more local.
• tomd3v 14y ago
  Good post, but it is much more difficult to believe in "this will pass" when you could be sentenced for 35 years.
  • Pitarou 14y ago
    Quite so. But I don't think he killed himself because he feared prison. I think the fear of prison caused the depression, and the depression led him to kill himself. It may seem like I'm hair-splitting, but it's an important difference.
• jdefr89 14y ago
  I am currently suffering from a depressive episode. I am diagnosed OCD/ADD/Motor tic disorder... I also am in recovery after an addiction to oxycontin. I must say, reading the news was very sad, but at the same time, I know why he did it. I CAN understand why someone would do that to themselves, b/c I have considered it myself. But, I always remind myself that these feelings are transient and I will have good days.. You can't take life so seriously, you need to live and laugh regardless of who you are and how smart you are. Like the force of gravity, depression knows no socioeconomic boundaries -we are all susceptible to its effects.
• vannevar 14y ago
  So why didn't I kill myself? Somewhere in my guts, there was a stubborn belief that "this will pass". This is a critical point. If you know someone who is prone to depression, it's important to understand that they may simply be incapable of generating this kind of hope within themselves. Depression is not merely the loss of happiness, but the loss of the belief that you can ever be happy again. That's why intervention is so important when someone is suicidal: http://www.save.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewpage&page_id=705f4071-99a7-f3f5-e2a64a5a8beaadd8 http://www.save.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewpage&p... .
• pfortuny 14y ago
  Yes, this is quite difficult to convey and to explain but some times it seems like you have to just stay on and believe that it will pass. Because it will pass. But the hard thing is to believe it and that is where help is needed, I would say. Thanks.
• zemanel 14y ago
  in the end, it's a good thing hope's a double-edged sword
• dave9999 14y ago
  Suicide Hotlines (USA): http://suicidehotlines.com/national.html http://suicidehotlines.com/national.html 1-800-SUICIDE 1-800-273-TALK Please if you are depressed or suicidal seek professional help.
• throwaway438904 14y ago
  Good post, don't let any news affect your judgement of what you need to do in life. At the same time, the general attitude towards suicide makes me even more uncomfortable being alive. I don't feel ill and it seems really condescending to say that I haven't been in my right mind much in years. I find it really consoling that some time I'll happen to die or get around to killing myself. To me, suicide would bring immediate advantages. I'd never feel bad again. I'd never be happy again too, but that doesn't bother me and I wish it wouldn't bother you either. It's fine to say you feel uncomfortable with others killing themselves and it's definitely important to consider that prior to committing suicide, but please don't claim that not killing myself would benefit me. Maybe you think that's an example of my inability to make considered decisions/judgements. To me it just resembles any other moral or political argument where calling either side mentally ill doesn't help. Suicide is wrong, usually. It just affects the people around you way to much. But for me and many other people it would also be really awesome.
• hajrice 14y ago
  I'd also suggest anyone that has ever faced depression or currently is facing it checks out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGp25fn25Cs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGp25fn25Cs
• pknerd 14y ago
  I think this is the stage where the religion or faith come to rescue. We in life faces things where you find no logical way out other than looking for someone who we believe is superior than us. We surrender to that force and try get calm as much as we can.
  • hilko 14y ago
    Possibly. I was deeply religious for most of my life, but that unraveled about seven years ago. I would love going back to that life. My father is a pastor, and he and the Christianity and Christians I grew up with were the 'good' kind. If I were gay, he'd be one of the first to know, for example. The problem is that being a Christian without actually believing any of it is 1) difficult, if not impossible to keep up, and 2) less effective, perhaps almost ineffective. And I can't just 'will' myself to believe it, unfortunately...
• _delirium 14y ago
  In general I would agree. But if I were facing prison, it's tougher to say what the rational course of action is. It might be the decision I'd make if I were starkly given the option of suicide or decades in prison. The biggest question would be determining whether that's really the stark decision, or if there's a possibility of finding a way out of it. If acquittal is a possibility, making a decision too early would be tragic (but I'd also be afraid that making a decision too late may be tragic in a different way). It's true that it's important to make sure that depression is not coloring your assessment of that: it's quite common for depressed people to have a view that things are hopeless when they aren't. But on the other hand, sometimes the world sucks, and not every situation has a good way out of it. For most people, things get better and what seemed like insurmountable obstacles will pass. But I don't think you can honestly tell someone that a major felony criminal case is a temporary setback, something that will pass, and only their depression is making it seem more hopeless than it is. In a large percentage of cases it doesn't pass, and the person isn't able to continue their life as a free person. A situation I hope never to be in, but I don't think the correct decision, if you're actually facing a choice of whether to go to prison for a long time or not, is obvious. I can't say whether that was Aaron's own motivation, though, or how rational his thinking on the subject was.
  • javajosh 14y ago
    Actually, I think you can do quite a lot from prison. Blaise Pascal famously stated that all of man's problems stems from the inability to sit in a room, alone, quietly. Indeed, many important actions have been taken from prison. But even if activism isn't your taste, but rather self-improvement, it seems like prison is a good opportunity to work on meditation. Indeed, meditation cells in the east are substantially smaller than a prison cell. Personally, I wish Aaron (and Lessig, and everyone) had made more of a stink. I wish he would have threatened suicide, and then not gone through with it. Maybe swallowed some pills and then rushed to the hospital. That would have gotten attention, and it would have saved a brilliant mind.
    • _delirium 14y ago
      If imprisonment just meant being confined, but in otherwise reasonably humane conditions, with decent access to reading/writing material, I could see that as a stomachable option. That's what the historical imprisonment conditions for the upper class were in many countries, and from what I've read is how Scandinavian prisons are run. But everything I've read about the conditions in American prisons does not make them sound humane. They are highly overcrowded, often have purposely punitive conditions (limited access to reading materials, forced labor, etc.), and your risk of suffering violence and rape is extraordinarily high. I don't think I would consider it an acceptable option. And the trouble is, you have to decide ahead of time: if you go to prison on a 30-year sentence and realize sometime while there that you'd rather be dead, it's difficult to do much about it at that point. Even the possibility of that feels horrible and claustrophobic: being stuck somewhere with literally no way out, not through any regular means (change of city, change of friends, restart your life), not even suicide as a way out. Just stuck there.
• zoba 14y ago
  I previously struggled with intense depression that lasted about 4 years. At the end of the four years, I had a realization that was so powerful that I haven't entered a period of depression lasting more than a week in the subsequent 4 years. My hopes are that this story, and the lesson learned by the end of it, may help others. In addition, its important to state that this is my story as it happened. I am one man, with one limited perspective on the world. I do not claim to know the details of everyone's situation and therefore do not pass judgement on their decisions regarding a very serious topic. The story goes like this... In senior year of high school I 'formalized' my atheism. I'll save those details for another day, however, it suffices to say that I was confident that I was drawing the correct conclusion about the nonexistence of god. In thinking about the implications of a godless universe I realized the vastness of time, the insignificance of myself, and how nothing actually mattered. There is (or so I thought) no reason to do anything at all because its all going to be washed away in time. My drive to carry on vanished. Everything was futile, hopeless. Nothing I did mattered so why do anything at all -- why feel happy about anything at all? I constantly thought of suicide. The ways I'd do it, the statements I'd try to make with it. It was an awful time, and it was all right in the middle of my undergraduate college experience. This continued on for a couple years as I tried as best I could with school while investigating how other people are able to cope with the magnitude of this concept. The reality I found was that most people don't cope with it, or rather, they cope with it by never even considering it. That only made things worse of course, everyone I'd talk to about this had almost nothing to say. One day I decided I'd actually go through with it. As I lay on my bed I thought to myself "Alright, its been long enough. I've felt terrible and thought of suicide for years now. Either I'm going to man up and get this over with, or I'm just going to keep dreaming of doing it every day." So I bullied myself into finally committing to finish it, and there was a sense of relief. I asked myself why I hadn't decided to do it sooner. That was when I made the most fantastic discovery of my entire life, but first, some other things you should know. During this time I was also struggling with being gay and, as a gay computer scientist myself, I found Alan Turing very interesting. It struck me as awful that he died in 1954, not long before The Beatles, free love, and the full onset of the civil rights movement. Just a few more years and he could have lived in, and possibly even helped to shape, a much more liberal society. When I asked myself why I hadn't decided to do it sooner, I realized it was because I was never sure. I always hoped that I would find some clue that would change my mind. So I thought to myself: am I sure now? Do I have conclusive evidence that killing myself is the right thing to do? Am I certain there won't be some dramatic unforeseen shift in circumstances that would improve my life and make me not want to kill myself (like Turing missed out on)? No, I was not absolutely certain that life had no meaning. We know so little of the universe and theres no way that any of us can be absolutely certain that suicide is the best choice without research that would take hundreds of years in understanding physics, the mind, and probably fields that don't even exist yet. Its possible that life does indeed have a purpose and we simply don't know it. The optimal thing to do is to continue on and do as best we can to discover this purpose -- because if there is a purpose, then actively looking for it is the smart way to find it. If there isn't a purpose, then the time we 'wasted' in search of a purpose wasn't really wasted after all because theres no way to judge whether it was time well spent without an ultimate purpose. Getting back to the discovery... Probably mere hours away from killing myself, I realized that there was no way to know if killing myself was the right thing to do. There may be something to live for that I don't know about -- some overarching infallible truth embedded in the fabric of the universe that gives life meaning. This was a powerful idea: I should not kill myself because there may be a purpose of life. Now I decided to not kill myself...but what should I do next? I had no plans; after all, I had expected to be dead later that day. Well, it was simple. Nothing mattered except the thing that had kept me alive: the potential for a purpose of life. I realized that every bit of my life should be based on discovering the purpose that may be embedded in the universe. The most important thing, the driving factor in all aspects of my life, indeed my very own reason for existence and purpose of life was to discover the purpose of life. "The purpose of life is to discover the purpose of life." It is beautiful. There are many questions and implications that come from realizing this purpose of being alive but for now this comment is long enough. If you're interested in hearing more, let me know. I've thought a lot about this and (in true HN fashion) am building some tools which use ideas that stem from this one. I hope that my story of how I walked right up to the precipice of death and decided to turn back to life helps anyone who is also struggling with such issues.
• mds_ 14y ago
  I don't know. I've been coping with chronic depression for over a decade and I'm absolutely sick of hearing "oh, you're still young. It will get better". Reading that just pushes me towards the edge. Even if I was to be "cured" somehow—is living half a life of misery worth living half an enjoyable life? Not to me. No amount of "happiness" can offset the misery. I know everyone means well but it might not have the intended effect. At least not for me.
  • javajosh 14y ago
    You don't know what will happen. That said, you're getting angry because those words are dismissive of your current situation. You are being invalidated. Personally, the thing that gets me is when people say stuff like "God doesn't give you a burden you can't bear." That's survivor bias if I've ever heard one - the people who didn't survive the burden aren't really around to quibble, are they! Instead of telling you it'll get better, I'd tell you this: learn to stop thinking. It sounds weird, but it's possible. It doesn't mean go catatonic, it just means learning to recognize the thoughts that resonate with your negativity, and moving your focus away from those. Technical detail: there are actually two layers of thoughts, those that resonate, and then a deeper layer that seeks that negative resonance. The default state of the human brain is no-thought. If you can experience that for even a moment, you will feel relief. Then you can see the old thoughts return, like an incoming tide, and you can choose to not focus on them. That's the key: those thoughts that resonate so negatively, so strongly, require your focus to have power. If you acquire control over your focus, then you have denied those thoughts power, and you are free. What you do with that freedom is a whole 'nother ball of wax. :) Check out http://dhamma.org http://dhamma.org for some donation-based intensive meditation training (called vippassana). It requires a tremendous amount of will. The fact that you're still alive probably means that you have that will.
    • mds_ 14y ago
      > You don't know what will happen. You're right. But I do know life in general will always be difficult for me. Say I knew for certain things would get better in 10 years. I don't if I could wait that long. > Instead of telling you it'll get better, I'd tell you this: learn to stop thinking. It sounds weird, but it's possible. It doesn't mean go catatonic, it just means learning to recognize the thoughts that resonate with your negativity, and moving your focus away from those. Technical detail: there are actually two layers of thoughts, those that resonate, and then a deeper layer that seeks that negative resonance. The default state of the human brain is no-thought. If you can experience that for even a moment, you will feel relief. Then you can see the old thoughts return, like an incoming tide, and you can choose to not focus on them. That's the key: those thoughts that resonate so negatively, so strongly, require your focus to have power. If you acquire control over your focus, then you have denied those thoughts power, and you are free. Huh. So, I can choose my thoughts and get out of this mess? Not sure if you really believe that or trolling.
• genwin 14y ago
  > TL;DR If Swartz's death is triggering suicidal thoughts, you must understand that this will pass, and life will be worth living. This is a common refrain but it won't always really pass. Our society is so harsh at times (mainly due to you-know-who type of people), with the damaging effects staying strong until death, that leaving can be a reasonable choice. What I wish Aaron had done is left in a different way, perhaps to a country with no extradition treaty with the US. There are few of those places left however, as the US tightens its depraved grip on the whole world.
  • Pitarou 14y ago
    You misunderstand. I didn't say that the troubles would pass. I said that the depression would pass, and that life would become worth living again.
• paupino_masano 14y ago
  The main thing to realize is that it can be a long process but it WILL pass. To be honest, I'm not sure when it disappeared from my every day life, but after one of my therapy sessions I looked back at the last six months and realized it had gone and I was actually happy. Previously, I had become convinced that it would never leave me, and that it was just a part of who I was. In fact, I was even at the time attached to it and didn't want it to leave as I was convinced that it was where all my creativity came from. Looking back I realize that it now only hindered it. Things do get better - just make sure you get help as no one should do it alone!
• waynesutton 14y ago
  Thanks for posting!
• guylhem 14y ago
  The "rationalist" approach that I use is to consider : - death is a final state - it always happens, sooner or later - there are ways to alleviate pain, whether physical or moral (drugs and such) - suicide is a capital sin Even if death seems or is a better option, it makes sense to wait for it (and even to hope for it - there are really bad moments in anyone's life). And if you do not believe in god, the first 3 items are good reason enough to wait, and a valid 4th one can be : - suicide means killing perfectly good organs, than in other situations could have save many people needing transplants. Feelings and emotions are fallible, especially during depression, a disease of our emotion-processing system.
  • javajosh 14y ago
    Here's another way for hackers to think of it: - Depression is a failing test suite. E.g. it's a signal that there are bugs, and they need fixin'. What do you do when this happens? Give up on the whole project? NO! You dig in, dig deeper, and figure it out. Yes, it is a matter of ego, at least at first. That's what meditation is for. I like http://dhamma.org http://dhamma.org but there's others. It works.
• mtowle 14y ago
  The following probably won't see the light of day-- few of my posts here seem to, for whatever reason. And it's not a lengthy diatribe on reasons for living or reasons for suicide. Much smarter men than I have written on that subject, both recently and throughout recorded history. If it's in such words you find your personal solace, please disregard what I have to say. I never found any solace in it, though; I don't believe in Epiphany Theory. Currently 24, I've dealt with depression and suicidal thoughts on and off for 4 or 5 years now. That heavy depression where you don't take care of yourself, don't shower, don't brush your teeth, you eat just enough to stay alive (I once subsisted on 2-liters of Mountain Dew and 99-cent bags of Utz cheese puffs for weeks-- dropped my deuces like a wood-chipper). You avoid going to sleep because after 31 episodes of Futurama, all you can think to do is watch a 32nd. You avoid waking up because you don't want to...be alive. You shut yourself in, you stop going to class, you don't answer anyone's phone calls, you cut yourself off from the outside. You set yourself up to make it as easy as possible. How can your parents miss you if you haven't talked to them in weeks? If anything, you tell yourself, the fact that their calls have gone from hourly to daily to weekly is a sign that they've almost let go...can't let them in now, or it'll be too hard for them when you're gone. Emotionally hard, anyway. Really, they'll be better off with me out of the picture. Everyone will. I'm doing everyone a favor--Mom, Dad, my brother and sister, my friends who obviously just pity me, everyone. That was me 3 years ago. Today I'm happy! :) I'm fine. I'm doing awesome. I don't attribute the turnaround to blog posts, I attribute it to taking my goddamn anxiety medication. Consistently. Every freaking day. If you forget, fine, but take it the next day, and the day after, and keep freaking taking it. It helps. Take your meds, everybody. Give it a shot for a couple months and see if things change. If you still feel down, go back to your psych and tell them, and they'll prescribe something else. Epiphanies always feel like the answer, and meds feel like the enemy, but do everyone who loves you a favor and give them a shot. Please.
  • Pitarou 14y ago
    I'm really glad your meds worked for you. In my case, the meds did very little for me. Prozac did nothing. Seroxat made me worse. Venlafaxine moved the needle a little but not enough to make me functional. And I quite agree that there's no such thing as a blog post epiphany. "Epiphanies" only happen after a whole lot of other preparation behind the scenes.
• Chanoch 14y ago
  If all the encouragement isn't doing it for you, this one helped me: Your death won''t stop the pain - you won't feel any (if you're lucky - there are many more failed attempts than successful ones) but your family, your friends will never recover. At least you can handle it - too many people don't understand what it's like to live with the pain, think about them before you go.
  • jrandomuser123 14y ago
    "Your death won''t stop the pain ... your family, your friends will never recover" This thought has stopped me from attempting suicide more times that I can remember. Fortunately, the one time that I did try was a failure, and the reactions of my family were enough to make me vow to tough it out, no matter what. Aaron's family and friends have my sympathy. The truly creative lead troubled lives, because they see what could be, not what is. He was truly creative, and acted on his beliefs.
• benatkin 14y ago
  Fortunately common suicide logic, which should be defeated whenever it comes up, doesn't apply here. Aaron had extenuating circumstances. Those that are shaken because you thought Aaron was too strong for this: you're probably still right. There are plenty of smart people like Lawrence Lessig and Cory Doctorow who have cited the very real threat of a long prison sentence as a factor.
• Selfcommit 14y ago
  This Kid, and he was still a kid, accomplished more and ended his life in less time than I've been alive. Both a motivator, and a tragedy. Remember Happiness.
• bestest 14y ago
  Kill oneself? Why the hell would I do THAT? Yes, humanity sucks. Yes, people are swarms of mindless creatures. Yes, the law is not fair. Yes, politics sucks. Yes, pollution is bad. Yes, children curse and get worse with each generation. Yes, everything is more or less pointless. But I don't fucking care. Life is too good to be being rid of. And there still are chances I might once again would want to live on this planet. How I feel about Aaron's (or whoever's) death? I don't fucking care. Seriously. Get over it. He accomplished as much as any other of us (don't ever underestimate yourself) -- it's just very subjective. And he was weak enough to kill himself. Don't think any person committing suicide is worth the praise Aaron is getting. The fact that HN's front page is full of links more or less related to Aaron's death makes me sad and disappointed and not want to live on this planet anymore.
  • mthoms 14y ago
    I can't tell if you're trolling or not but I'll bite. If just to say that describing mental illness as "weakness" is abhorrent. You wouldn't say someone with a malfunction of the kidneys, heart or lungs was "weak" would you? Then why is it okay to say it about someone whose brain is not functioning as it should? What's the difference?
  • olalonde 14y ago
    I don't think I ever was in a depression, but my understanding is that it is akin to a mental illness. You simply cannot understand what it feels like unless you were there yourself. Would you tell a schizophrenic person to simply get over it and ignore his hallucinations.
• amyyyyyyyyyy 14y ago
  I'm going to put my thoughts down here. The sections will be: Work Escorting and sexuality Drug and alcohol addiction Family Attention What I want The plan WORK I work as a software engineer. Well, I would, if I was able to hold a job for more than 6 months without the company getting tired of me. I'm good at what I do. My bosses love my output. I have open source projects and contributions. Even on my first programming job at a startup at 18, the CTO was shocked on my first day. Repeat that shock for every job. But the companies get tired of me because I have a reputation for coming in to work straight from nightclubs, drunk, drugged up, tired, needing to snort coke at work just to stay awake and productive. ESCORTING AND SEXUALITY As said above, I can't hold down permanent work. One nice thing I have going for me is that I'm a young, pretty good looking girl. I don't look my age. I look 15. Men love that. They get off on me being their little girl and them being my daddy who want to fuck their little hot teenage daughter. The sex is boring for me. I like girls. I went through a long period of not knowing if I'm straight, lesbian, or bisexual. I think I like men but only in the sense of having a "daddy". I have a real birth dad of course, but I want a "daddy" - that older guy who looks after me, loves me, helps me get through my early twenties, gives me advice. I suppose this is what people call "having daddy issues". Escorting can go really wrong. Sometimes clients beat the shit out of their hookers. It's only happened to me once, thankfully. I got tied up in a dark room and beaten and whipped. On the positive side, getting beat up escorting builds character. It makes you really, really strong. I can take a ton of abuse from other people (but not in my own head). DRUG AND ALCOHOL ADDICTION It's debatable whether I'm a coke addict. I don't desperately need it, but I want to use it. Thanks to being a hooker, I get lots of easy and free access to cocaine. I use 2-3 times a week. Alcohol is what will destory me. I used to be a teetotal, innocent, quiet, shy teen. Now I'm an alcoholic, confident, loud party-girl with an arrest record of "Drunk and Disorderly", "Drunk and Disorderly", "Drunk and Disorderly". I love vodka. I need vodka. I have two bottles in my fridge right now that I'm going to start pouring once I finish this letter. I'm having a quiet night in (been out 4 nights in a row now) so will drink myself to sleep. FAMILY They hate me for reasons I won't go into. Shit, this is the hardest bit to write. I've been typing non-stop for 10 minutes and now I'm unsure what to say and hesitating. My mum... she doesn't want me anymore. I know she doesn't, even if she says she loves me. She never shows appreciation to anybody for anything. My dad worked hard to provide for my sister and I (because my mum hasn't worked in decades, lazy bitch). My first memory of my dad was when he took me to a party that his workplace threw for the children. I was the shy one who was too scared to talk to anyone. He eventually dragged me out and into the car and shouted at me. I was a fucking disappointment, obviously not (yet) the outgoing loud confident child everyone would prefer. I wish they had just got a divorce instead of the constant arguing they've had since before I was born. I was desperate to move away from home because I couldn't take their arguing anymore. Now when people argue in public it still upsets me. ATTENTION It makes me happy. It didn't used to, because I was such an awkward kid and teenager. But now I fucking love being the center of the dance floor; the one up on the stage; the naked girl; the one guys talk to in clubs and pubs. I was at a gangbang last night. I was there through an escorting contact. I was the first person to get naked and fuck. And then I just didn't put my clothes back on. Walking around nude and having the men look and me and wank at me was what I wanted -- attention. I wanted to fuck the other girl, though. WHAT I WANT A secure job. A better flat (my current place is a tiny studio). Not having to suck dick to afford things. Not having alcohol withdrawal symptoms after just 48 hours sober. A family. THE PLAN Obviously, because this is a suicide note, the plan is suicide. The question is "when" and "is there anything I want to do first?". Suicide has been the plan for as long as I can remember. My first genuine suicide plan was two years ago. I was going to travel South East Asia, spend all my savings having fun and fucking hookers (haha, but I've become one! twist!!). And then die. That didn't get executed - instead I ran away to another place and just did nothing. Like I said in the "Attention" section, I enjoy that and it makes me happy. So maybe I should just seek that out. I was reading a story earlier - http://longform.org/stories/little-girl-lost http://longform.org/stories/little-girl-lost - go read it, it's good - and this story is about a girl who ran away to Los Angeles to seek out fame. She got the fame. She became one of the biggest porn stars of her era. Then she shot herself in the head at 2am. Another thing I read earlier - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/magazine/here-is-what-happens-when-you-cast-lindsay-lohan-in-your-movie.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/magazine/here-is-what-happ... - about Lindsay Lohan. She still gets acting gigs despite being a crazy bitch. If they can do it, why can't I? I could run away to LA, Hollywood, whatever. I'd have a go at trying. I would be homeless but I have enough saving to last a year. If it doesn't work out, I can end it all. Finally end it all. It would be a relief from my stress and problems and this suicidal voice in my head that's taunted me for my whole life - which is ironic because I wouldn't get to feel the relief, because I'd be dead.
• klrr 14y ago
  Somone sent me this when I asked about a programming problem, "The 0th step to solve any problem is to make sure you really understand the problem statement. If you are unable to understand what you read, seek help, you really need it." It triggered suicidal thoughts and I've had many in the past but those times a very kind person got me on better thoughts. But I don't want to waste his time anymore, and I don't want these thoughts either. Is there anyway to stop them?
  • krenoten 14y ago
    It takes work. It's about listening to your pain and guiding your life away from it. I can't emphasize that enough - pain is a profound teacher. It tells you when you need to fix something. It takes work to understand pain, and then to pursue its solution.
    • klrr 14y ago
      Well, the problem is that I don't have anything to be proud of. All things I've really worked hard with I do without progression. I've tried to learn programming, failed. I've tried to get abs, failed. I've tried to get girlfriend, failed. And I still trying but now after years and years I feel so worthless...
      • krenoten 14y ago
        Language is stronger than you imagine. When you tell yourself "I have failed at X," you are telling yourself that it is no longer possible. You stop trying, and your lower mind stops presenting you with ideas for how to proceed or potential opportunities to pursue and learn from. Reframing is a powerful technique, both when dealing with bad thoughts and with other people. Change your internal language to something along the lines of "I have an incorrect assumption about X that is preventing me from achieving it. It is worth it if an experiment for achieving X doesn't work out, because it has a good chance of yielding information that will help me get there eventually. I want X because in learning how to achieve it, it will make me feel A, B, and C." You are far from being able to say that you have failed at anything. You are making ridiculous assumptions that bring you endless suffering for as long as you hold them. So stop assuming so many things that both prevent you from improving and make you feel helpless. You are feeling pain but you aren't listening to the assumptions about reality that it is trying to educate you about. The pain will continue and most likely become worse until you put in the effort to understand it.
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• toyg 14y ago
  As somebody who flirted with depression before, I can assure you that what I'm feeling now is pure, unadulterated rage. The world was robbed of a genius by petty bureaucrats and greedy, hypocritical "non-profit" profiteers. This is obscene.
• specto 14y ago
  It is good to know there are others with my thoughts. Sometimes I feel like it's only others that keep me going. Nothing about myself.
• Mz 14y ago
  If you react really negatively to the news of this suicide, one thing you can do is seek out company. I have basically been suicidal for years but I am rarely alone. I am actually pretty pissed off and disgusted by the bullshit I am reading on hn today. Most people are assholes most of the time, then someone commits suicide and they try to say something nice for a change. A forum I belonged to posthumously reinstated a former member whom they had banned. I thought they were assholes. They couldn't be supportive while he was alive but he committed suicide so now they have to find some way to make peace with the reality that they were assholes to him while he still lived. Suddenly, the faux niceties come out. Try being supportive and tolerant to the living. The dead don't need your bullshit fake nice words. They are beyond helping. I may need to start a blog post. I am sure hn isn't interested in more of my cranky ranting about what is very normal behavior but which I happen to think is completely shitty behavior. TLDR: If you are at risk for finally offing yourself because Aaron did, try to avoid being alone. Suicide usually occurs when one is alone. Never being alone is a big part of why I am still alive, in spite of having abundant reason to say "fuck you, world, I have had enough of your shit".
• navs 14y ago
  I'm currently going through CBT and on multiple meds. None seem to be working and my uni life suffers, as does my work life. Having no social life and no friends doesn't help. Yet I keep at it. Life is full of so many possibilities, so many variables that I have yet to consider. I hope when next it comes time for me to contemplate my existence, I can hold on to that hope for an unseen, unspeculative future. I'd also like to add one more thing Depression robs you of: Self worth.
• j_anon 14y ago
  http://www.facebook.com/celebraterecovery/posts/10150473844015946 http://www.facebook.com/celebraterecovery/posts/101504738440...
• DivisibleByZero 14y ago
  Thank you for this. Depression at any level is very real and very serious. Most people will tell you to talk to friends and family. You will be alone, it will be hard; but most importantly, you will be OK. It does get better.
• orionblastar 14y ago
  Life has been shitty to me. I've attempted suicide about 13 times and failed. I decided not to attempt suicide anymore as my survival meant the universe (even God) didn't want me dead yet and there is more to learn and more to do in life for me. Since a young age I've been bullied and abused by my peers (if you can call them peers, children can be mean and so can adults) and it drove me into a depression. I vowed I would not become like the bullies, and took a stand of non-violent citing that "Might does not make right" and after being beaten up for a while for not fighting back I took up martial arts to defend myself. I learned how to avoid fights and how to defend myself without seriously harming the other person. Eventually I got into computers, when every other teenager was out getting drunk or stoned, I was writing programs on a Commodore 64 (The only computer my father could afford for me and my two brothers, and I got laughed at for not being able to afford an IBM PC or Apple //) and kept track of my brother's baseball statistics for one of my first programs (saved to a Datasette cassette drive, before we could afford a 1541 Floppy Drive) and I wrote other programs in BASIC as well. Before I left for a university with record ACT scores, so I didn't need to take the SAT to get in (Combined ACT and SAT scores were required and my ACT score along was high enough) my father bought me a Commodore Amiga 1000 with the 5.25" external floppy drive and the PC-Transformer software (to run MS-DOS programs) and a 1200 baud modem. I joined a fraternity and half the guys were nice and the other half just hazed me and bullied me and harassed me and finally I took up under-aged drinking and smoking cigars. I feared what I was becoming as I developed a hubris that I knew everything (it was the alcohol talking) and so I left to take up college elsewhere. I went to a college earned a degree, worked in their computer labs and helped out students. It was nice, but not ideal. When I was working I was always picked on and bullied and harassed by managers and other employees. No matter what job I had, I was always given more work to force me to quit, etc. I had a job as a programmer, big salary lots of benefits, I did really good work but was bullied, harassed, and abused, and management did some of it as did other employees. Finally from the stress of a toxic work environment I developed schizoaffective disorder. After that I was on short-term disability and when I came back I was fired two weeks later for having a panic attack at work because they moved me to an open area near foot traffic and a book shelf and people walked by and mocked me and laughed at me. Any job after that I was just hired to take them to the next level and reach goals, and after that fired. I was mocked, abused, and harassed and bulled at those jobs too. Eventually I ended up on disability, too sick to work. I am doing my best to get better and try to get back to work. I am working on some ebooks and trying to write programs again, but due to the emotional, psychological, physical, traumas I developed writer's block, so my work goes slow. I was able to finally clear the negative thoughts out enough to write a Fibonacci Sequence in ANSI C on GCC under Ubuntu 12.10, I wrote psuedocode in a paper notebook and ran the code in my head and wrote the variables down on paper to debug it. Then I wrote it in under 15 minutes on Ubuntu. It isn't much, but at least I was able to do something. That much is worth living for. I have a wife and son, so I live for them as well.
• azizali 14y ago
  Well said, and thank you for posting this. Really
• tekromancr 14y ago
  I have been trying really hard to fight my own depression for the last 5 years, and this news hit me at a particularly low point. I really want to thank the OP for posting this and helping me derail some suicidal processes I had running since discovering this. I really need help, but I am not in a position to get it, so thank you for helping me live just a little bit longer.
  • Pitarou 14y ago
    That really means a lot to me. I hope you'll be in a position to "pay it forward" some day. :-)
• buro9 14y ago
  Is it possible to have a rational discussion on suicide without it offending someone's own will to live? Is there a natural law that suicide breaches, is this why it upsets and offends so many at the thought? I'm personally of the deep belief that suicide is an option. And it's also something I think of at times. I think of suicide when I'm up, when I'm down... but generally never when I have a struggle and something to fight for. I think of suicide semi-frequently and always have. I view suicide as an option because I don't believe in afterlife, or that life is a gift (from whom? we're supposed to be thankful how?)... life and personal existence is a bizarre improbable thing, we are here but nothing follows and nothing will remain of us in the grand scheme of things. When you know life is fundamentally irrelevant, that we are but a speck of dust... what's the difference between a span of 40 years and a span of 80 years? I like to think that life should be qualitatively lived, struggles endured in a constant hope of experiencing a high-quality of living. Is there anything so deeply flawed with viewing my life as being mine to do with as I please, and also acknowledging that if I come to some point that a remainder of my life would be lived in misery that I might choose to exercise a right over my life to end it on a qualitative high? I don't find that these arguments differ greatly from those in terminal illness (whom most would sympathise with), but like many things that are unseen (mental illness, emotional state, state of happiness or sadness)... the unseen seem to be accepted as being unreal, fixable, unacceptable. Yet there are times that suicide can almost be thought of as noble. When a lover dies and the lone lover pines so greatly and finds that they cannot continue to have any quality of life without the other person. I don't believe that I've ever been clinically depressed, and am a very optimistic and hopeful person. Yet my reasoning isn't offended or appalled when I see reports of suicide, and nor could I make a claim that I would never consider it. It is, for me, part of living... as death is for everyone... and as we ponder death beyond our control, I also ponder death within our control. I find it hard to comprehend the reaction of others to stories of suicide that seem to follow misconceptions about someone having to be depressed, or the time of year... I don't think suicide is the product of a person with a fault in some way, I find it to be a rational thing.
  • Pitarou 14y ago
    In the West, the vast majority of people who kill themselves do so as a direct result of depression. Their perceptions distorted, and their decision-making skills are impaired. If you find this "hard to comprehend", then perhaps you should re-examine your assumptions.
• aaronthrowaway 14y ago
  I'd like to add that I went through something very similar, although on a smaller scale. The prosecutor was charging me with ridiculous things, giving me the option to plead guilty or go to trial and keep appealing until I went broke, and ending up in jail on top of it. When I read Aaron's story, I understood exactly how he felt. I felt like killing myself so many times. The prosecutor destroyed my family, my livelihood, my reputation, my life. And there was no "victim" either. I was completely alone at the end of it. I'm on year 2 of starting again, and I'm telling you it does get better. A lot better. I hope that Aaron's story sheds some light on the lack of empathy, and straight up bullying the prosecutors employ against vulnerable people. They went harder on me when they found out I lost my job. They are bullies, plain and simple.