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Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide

251 points by Killah911 11y ago

Dewie3 11y ago
> In a tragically comic way, this was a depressing realization when I was considering blowing my head off or getting run over. Damnation! No guarantees. Death and taxes, yes, but not a breezy afterlife. Well if the afterlife is terrible, you're going to end up there at some point anyway. So unless your religion says that suicides are punished, I don't quite see the argument. Pascal's Wager can be used as an argument against any practice that some religion frowns upon, for that matter. If you accept his argument (I stopped doing that many years ago). EDIT: and though we, in this realm, have no definite knowledge of what the Afterlife (if any) is, there is no guarantee in the Afterlife. So maybe you'll end up betting on Pascal's Wager through all such realities, indefinitely. And who's to say that, even if you have a wider and "higher" perspective, that you can ever be sure of the true nature of reality, and that there is nothing "above"?
- Inception 11y ago
  The argument is that a breezy afterlife is not guaranteed, so killing yourself isn't necessarily an escape from pain.
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    - Inception 11y ago
      Let me rephrase that: an afterlife is not guaranteed; therefore a breezy afterlife cannot be guaranteed. None of us know what is going to happen when we die. There are many beliefs, but no guarantees. The original statement was a reminder to think twice if you are contemplating suicide because whatever you think is going to happen after you die might not actually happen.
      - koonsolo 11y ago
        > None of us know what is going to happen when we die. If you know the basics of the human body such as the brain, hormones, etc, I think it's pretty clear what will happen when you die. It's the same thing what happens to a computer when you shut it down. Do you know Occam's razor? Anyone can believe what they want of course, but it won't impact reality.
        patrick73 11y ago
        Yes, it would impact reality. Beliefs such as comparing life with computers DO have an impact on reality.
- o_____________o 11y ago
  > So unless your religion says that suicides are punished Most of them do in one form or another, especially the Abrahamic tree.
  - Dewie3 11y ago
    At least religions like Buddhism don't punish you for an eternal afterlife. At worst it's just "bad karma".
    - Mikeb85 11y ago
      No, but there are hell realms in Buddhist mythology, which can be the result of 'bad karma'. They're not eternal, but they don't sound particularly pleasant either.
      - Dewie3 11y ago
        Buddhists bet their horse in one particular lifetime on eventually escaping suffering by following Buddhist teaching/philosophy. Some suicidal people bet their horse on escaping a more immediate suffering. Other than the immediacy of the suffering, their both existential "bets" from the perspective of the author, and so I don't see a great distinction between either strategy.
        Mikeb85 11y ago
        > Buddhists bet their horse in one particular lifetime on eventually escaping suffering by following Buddhist teaching/philosophy. Not actually true, otherwise all Buddhists would become monastics, which they don't. Buddhists believe that positive karma is accumulated over many lifetimes, and negative karma is extinguished after periods of suffering. In Buddhist thought, it's often enough to simply live a reasonably 'good' life, then you'll be reincarnated into a heavenly realm, or possibly another human body, etc... There are degrees of everything, and very few Buddhists (if any) believe they're going to achieve liberation after only a single lifetime. Even the Buddha was thought to have lived hundreds of lives, eventually culminating with his miraculous (by traditional accounts) life 2500 years ago...
- whybroke 11y ago
  Pascal's Wager would also imply you may as well invent as many religions as you please each requiring the thing you want to do as its dogma. Since each such religion has an equal probability of being right in his formula, in this way you can quickly overcome any inconvenience an established religion presents to what it was you wanted to do.
MarkPNeyer 11y ago
i tried killing myself many times. every time, something would happen last minute that changed things, and then life seemed to have a different character afterwards. i started to wonder if i actually did succeed after the first attempt in 2005, becuase life seems so different now than it was back then. one of the things that finally stopped my suicidal ideation was the belief that i can never actually experience death. i discovered that other people with a background in physics had the same belief - quantum immortality. http://markpneyer.me/2014/08/13/how-i-defeated-recurrent-suicidal-ideation/ http://markpneyer.me/2014/08/13/how-i-defeated-recurrent-sui...
- Filligree 11y ago
  If that really were the case, then I wouldn't be seeing your post and typing this. You still might see me do so, of course.
- murbard2 11y ago
  Even if you cannot experience death, but you can experience a horrible near miss with massive brain damage. For quantum suicide to work, you'd want to be completely unconscious when it happens, so that you never observe any injury.
- Inception 11y ago
  I've often wondered about this, but never knew there was a term for it. In the past, I've been in situations that I probably shouldn't have lived to talk about and often wondered if I really did make it out alive. Or did my perception of reality diverge from the dimension I was in and continue in a dimension where I defied the odds and lived. Thinking in terms of multiverse[0]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse
bayesianhorse 11y ago
The point about suicidal thoughts is that the urge to have the thoughts is a symptom of a disease, a phenomenon that is occurring in your brain. And on top of the other symptoms of the disease these thoughts create their own suffering. My advice is not to try to rationalize the urge. If you ask yourself the question "Why do I have to kill myself?" You will get answers. Bullshit answers, usually, but they don't look that irrational because of your state of mind. And a lot of the suffering is caused by these essentially fruitless discussions. Another key point is to realize the impermanence of the mind and of the self. Though it sounds like a buddhist teaching, everyone who survived suicidal ideation knows this: You enjoy live, then you don't, then you do again. The mind is never static. Finding that reality helps one to get a grip on the seemingly illogical phenomenon on suicidal thoughts.
- Dewie3 11y ago
  Right, I've had the experience that thoughts can deeply affect my mood and how I feel about life and myself. I wonder, though, why most people seem to simply leave it at that - "some thoughts are bad, be aware of that". Where's any kind of advice on actually dealing with this mind of ours? Sure, we have meditation and mindfulness, and at least meditation seems to be very effective for many things (I don't know enough about mindfulness). But is the mind really such a chaotic and uncontrollable beast that the only alternative is to focus/quiet it (meditation), or to symbolically shrug at the impermanence of its temperament? We tell people to exercise if we want to get stronger, but the mind is seemingly something that we either try to repress in an unhealthy way (alcoholism and friends), just blurt out/vent whatever it has been nagging us with lately ("talking about our feelings"), or meditate/mindfulness. The last alternative seems very promising and healthy, though sorely underutilized by most people, even the "my body is my temple". But I find it strange that there aren't more alternative (and complementary) approaches that are being suggested, like trying to think more constructively ("positive thinking" being a part of this). People who see the mind as a separate and wild beast will probably say that the mind can not be controlled. And I would be inclined to agree. But I think it can be steered to some degree, or at least nudged.
  - gopher2 11y ago
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lmz 11y ago
This is why I never want to have kids. I deeply resent being born and being forced to outlive my parents (his point 2).
- brador 11y ago
  Don't think of it as outliving, think of it as continuing their legacy.
  - ionised 11y ago
    This doesn't mean anything if you've decided never to have children yourself. The 'legacy' ends with you regardless.
    - brador 11y ago
      Then reconsider your decision. Nothing is set in stone.
- gohrt 11y ago
  Kids often bring joy. Consider reaching out to kids (who are already born) and helping them enjoy their life, and brighten yours. I don't know how old you are, but in many cases, elderly folks have time to wind down their lives in a graceful way, to the point where saying goodbye is bearable. Obviously people can still die accidentally/early, and ultimately you'll outlive about half the people you meet, but there is a way to learn to appreciate the time you have together, and to let go when that time ends.
  - lmz 11y ago
    It's not the "getting left behind" angle that I don't like. It's the fact that I have to wait +/- 20 more years for them to die before I can FOAD because that is what society expects.
- alexashka 11y ago
  You need a reality check - you're placing blame on outside factors (like your parents) for not being where YOU'd like to be in life. Owning up to that is the first step toward recognizing how incompetent you are at being happy. I used to be a moping ball of negativity myself once upon a time - it just doesn't work. Sooner or later you have to recognize that the way you are isn't working and take steps to change that. Today sounds like a good day to start.
nosuchthing 11y ago
It should be a liberating thought - that you've got nothing to lose, go try something exciting like white water kayaking, hike the Pacific Crest Trail, sail across the ocean, challenge yourself at a sport, biking, swimming, climbing? take a safe amount of MDMA and go to a music festival? listen to some alan watts [1] try fresh cannabis [ideally from Washington/Colorado/California], and music [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtQf5kSHKhE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtQf5kSHKhE
- csdrane 11y ago
  When you're feeling suicidal good luck enjoying any of those.
  - titanomachy 11y ago
    Not necessarily impossible. I've been completely "distracted" out of the depths of depression, at least temporarily. Depression is a cognitive feedback loop, sometimes a major change of scenery or activity can effectively disrupt it, if you can somehow bring yourself to do it.
  - samatman 11y ago
    That's the beauty of MDMA actually: there's little that suicidal ideations can do in the face of a massive flood of serotonin. It's like an antidepressant that works within an hour and lasts for about three. It can lead to insight that produces lasting change. Please heed this last part: if you choose to treat suicidal urges in this way, tell someone what's going on so you can have support for the following week. The crash can be dangerous to someone in an unstable place.
    - marssaxman 11y ago
      I was not feeling suicidal when I first took MDMA but I had been struggling with depression for years, and the experience was a key step on the way out. It was such a clear demonstration of the degree to which my perception of the world around me, and my estimation of the beauty and worth to be found there, are driven by the chemical state of my brain. I had thought that I was depressed because I lived in a crappy world; that first MDMA experience showed me that I had causality backward, and that I thought the world was crappy because I was depressed. Insight that produces lasting change indeed.
throwaway8694 11y ago
"It was only then that I realized something: my death wasn’t just about me. It would completely destroy the lives of those I cared most about. I imagined my mom, who had no part in creating my thesis mess, suffering until her dying day, blaming herself." I'm sorry, but that consideration just doesn't help. If the pain (or emptiness) is so strong that you just want everything to stop, this consideration is absolutely worthless and unimportant.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Different people can be helped by different things. I think it's rather odd to take something said by somebody who was in the middle of planning his own suicide, and who got stopped because a certain event made him think about something he hadn't considered, and say that thinking about this particular thing doesn't help. It helped him, therefore clearly it can help.
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    - Hilby 11y ago
      I think that this particular issue is very sensitive, and very personal, and very individualized. Indeed, sometimes a reminder of the ties we have to the living world is a good thing at any time. For some, thinking of others and the impact their death might have on those around them is in fact enough to get them through a particularly bad spell. I think that it's important to note that it's not a feeling of guilt that should be focused on here. It's a feeling of connection. There are people who care and can help if you reach out. There are people who care. Of course it's not always enough. If it were, people would never commit suicide, would they? There is a great deal to be said for holding on for others those times you can't hold on for yourself. After all, life is very much a series of highs and lows.. sometimes, you need to latch onto whatever you can to get you through the lows.
- tptacek 11y ago
  You're being downvoted, but if you read advice on how to help people currently experiencing suicidal impulses, one of the first things you learn is not to try to combat them with messages of guilt or obligation. As I understand it (surely someone on HN has more exposure to this than I do; I've lost friends, but not myself experienced the impulse): The "do's": listen, empathize, stay calm, be hopeful in tone, vector them towards help. The "don'ts": argue them out of it, get emotional, judge, try to fix it yourself.
eastbayjake 11y ago
In January, a student from my alma mater flew all the way across the country to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. I ended up reading a New Yorker article from 2003[1] about Golden Gate jumpers and this anecdote stopped me: Motto had a patient who committed suicide from the Golden Gate in 1963, but the jump that affected him most occurred in the seventies. “I went to this guy’s apartment afterward with the assistant medical examiner,” he told me. “The guy was in his thirties, lived alone, pretty bare apartment. He’d written a note and left it on his bureau. It said, ‘I’m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.’” He jumped. And ever since I read that, I've made it a personal mission to smile at everyone I pass on the sidewalk every day. Not only does suicide have unknowable impacts on all of the people around you, but even your most insignificant actions could have an enormous impact on the people around you. Be good to others -- you never know how much it might mean to them. [1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/13/jumpers http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/13/jumpers
- gheiou 11y ago
  I knew her--the days after her suicide were pretty surreal, because I always needed to ask my self if I had just been a little more hospitable or a little nicer that one time, could it have made a difference? How we act matters.
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  - tptacek 11y ago
    How we act matters, but we are not as a rule inadvertently responsible for the serious medical conditions of others. Suicide isn't a disease of affection deficiency. It should help to know that reaching the state of being one smile away from suicide implies a profoundly severe illness; the problem wasn't smiles, it was the way we route the ill to the mental health resources they need.
    - jules 11y ago
      In my view it's a harmful oversimplification that suicidal people are simply sick and need to get their mind fixed. I know it's not what you meant, but that's what reflexively rubbed me the wrong way about this comment because I have seen this attitude multiple times from other people who did mean that. One needs to consider that suicide is not just an affliction of the mind, it's also a product of the circumstances a normal person finds him or herself in. It's not just the thoughts that need fixing, it's the circumstances too. Usually this is a chicken and egg problem: the thoughts prevent the person from fixing the circumstances himself, and the circumstances reinforce negative thoughts. This way somebody can get sucked deeper and deeper into a black hole of increasingly irrational negative thoughts. Even if the thoughts are clearly irrational to an outsider, they are not to the person themselves. Therefore suggesting that they simply fix their mind does not help. In their view their mind is not just what needs to be fixed, it's also the circumstances. We all should do our best to not create such circumstances and to fix them when they exist. In the story of the OP for example, it's fair to say that the behaviour of the professor played a big role in almost causing his suicide. If suicide is caused by circumstances a normal person finds him or herself in, do we not bear a collective responsibility to prevent it, even if it's just a smile?
gohrt 11y ago
One specific thing you can do, that is rather unlikely to counterintuitively backfire like many ideas, is to simply make plans with some to meet and talk/eat/play with no pressure. Having something planned -- an easy commitment, but not a heavy intimidating responsibility -- gives people a sense of purpose to move foward through their day/week/month, buying time for luck and expert assistance to come together. This in addition to steering toward professional help.
rcpt 11y ago
The best quote on this topic that I know of is terrifying: The so-called 'psychotically depressed' person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote 'hopelessness' or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling. -David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
- AceJohnny2 11y ago
  He would know, he ended up committing suicide after spending most of his life battling depression :(
- jacques_chester 11y ago
  I've been suicidally depressed. It was never the balance of fears. It was pure exhaustion. As time goes on, the doorways in your life seem to close and the only one left is marked "stop". Everything else is just ... ugh ... so tiring. This feeling is an illusion. It's not real. But depression is a disease that attacks the mechanism that enables you to understand the world.
  - throwaway234567 11y ago
    I've been depressed recently -- maybe not suicidally depressed, but depressed enough to think about it a lot* -- and for me it's absolutely a balance of fears. The weights of past regrets and past failures, the fear of facing them, the fear of future failure (I'm co-founding a slowly failing startup now), the fear of disappointing or alienating loved ones -- they all gang up and become completely overwhelming. The passage above captures it pretty well, though I haven't ever gotten to the extreme it's describing. Exercise and sleep help. *I have enough people who love me and depend on me that I know I'll never act on it, but it has become something I fantasize about probably a couple times a day, and many times more on bad days.
pronoiac 11y ago
There is help; here are some resources on suicide and depression, including hotlines around the world. http://mefiwiki.com/wiki/ThereIsHelp http://mefiwiki.com/wiki/ThereIsHelp Disclosure: I run the server.
stegosaurus 11y ago
Foreword: I do not believe I have ever been in a mental state that could be considered as 'depression'. That said, I have experienced times in my life that have made me realise that the common views (e.g. you are free to do anything now; it will get better; etc) are false. They all stem from the idea that the individual is selfish. The worst times I've had in my life were the times in which I tried really hard to be virtuous, to care, to right wrongs. When I want more than just to 'succeed'. More than just to fix my life. My life is fine! Bureaucracy, for example. 'Company policy'. It makes me angry and feel as if millions of humans have lost the ability to feel empathy, have been turned into robots. It's not about the fact I can't return a broken lightbulb; I don't give a toss about the 1 GBP. It's about the knowledge that most people don't care about right and wrong. Most people will obey the rules, they will do what authority says, they will take the path of least resistance. Politics. My country treats the poor as subhuman whilst praising the rich. It fawns over 'merit'; which is really just random chance. I could go on... basically, what happens when you realise that you're playing a rigged game? It doesn't matter if you win or lose. You can run away and hide. Or you can fight, all the while knowing that your attempts almost certain to be futile. Once the box is open it never closes. I cope by employing nihilism, but the triggers are everywhere. Every 'intellectual discussion' about the merits of Red vs Blue, about the latest plan to Lock People In A Box for performing something mundane like shuffling some bits around. And all around, the advice is to take drugs. Think differently. 'Come to terms with it'. Counselling... I don't want that shit. I want a city, a country, a world that treats its citizens well. If not as equals, at least as more than dogs.
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  My thoughts exactly. At times I actually feel guilty for not killing myself because I therefore submit myself to unfair terms, which is worse than death. If our world is not fixable, we can not lead it to the state we might like, why pretend?
- ldarcyftw 11y ago
  You can't depend on outside world's behavior. You simply can't . It's just outside of your control so there is no point to worry about it.
seiji 11y ago
Actual practical thoughts: https://web.archive.org/web/20130721062525/http://suicidescale.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130721062525/http://suicidesca...
ahruygt 11y ago
I have to commend Tim Ferris for speaking out about this. He's worked his brand to the point of steel- making it sometimes hard to see him as a normal human being. I am a fan of his tip and tricks, but I really appreciate that he was vulnerable here in order to start this discussion.
beloch 11y ago
For those experiencing everything from mild depression to strong suicidal thoughts, I'd recommend the combination of cognitive behavioural therapy, if you can afford a therapist, and this book: "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by David Burns. Depression and suicidal thoughts are often rooted in twisted, invalid logic that we don't recognize as such. For example, say that a stranger unexpectedly smiles at you. It would be logical to smile back, and perhaps even strike up a conversation to ask why they're smiling at you. The reasons are probably good. Maybe they're attracted to you. Maybe they just randomly thought of something funny. The risks of speaking to that person are minimal. A twisted, illogical reaction that many of us naturally have is to assume the person is smiling at our expense and that there's something we don't know. We fear what the person will do or say if we do anything to acknowledge their smile. Instead of smiling back, we retreat inwards, wondering what's wrong with us, why we're so pathetic, anti-social, etc.. Two people can experience the same event in wildly differing ways because of how they process them. For someone who is depressed, events that should be good can easily add to their problems. Cognitive behavioural therapy focuses on catching those thoughts, identifying them as illogical, and deliberately countering them until the thought pattern in a given circumstance becomes naturally logical. In the situation above, you would need to recognize that you're assuming a lot about what the other person is thinking, recognize that the worst that can happen from striking up a conversation or just smiling back is not very bad, and that the potential gains could be very good. I had a fairly low opinion of most psychology until I came across this. It's actually helpful.
- gopher2 11y ago
  Seconded. I'm very grateful for this book.
ebbv 11y ago
This article does a great job of highlighting why I can't stand Tim Ferris. Even when talking about such an important, sensitive and terrible subject he can't stop himself from constantly hyping himself up. Every other sentence is still about how great he is, about how he's constantly talking to celebrities, etc. Awful.
- stephenitis 11y ago
  So what... Better he not be happy about who he is and his accomplishments? I don't think that this suicide post was a big humble brag... it was to address to his own readership a serious issue in his own light. The more role models that follow this line of thinking to their own audiences the less suicides and more awareness there might be as a whole. I applaud founders/engineers/leaders who speak transparently on the topic. shout out to Kyle at Keen.io for his very personal post in reaction to brad feld's own https://medium.com/@dorkitude/entrepreneurship-and-depression-5c4b19a06d83 https://medium.com/@dorkitude/entrepreneurship-and-depressio... http://www.feld.com/archives/2014/10/founder-suicides.html http://www.feld.com/archives/2014/10/founder-suicides.html
downandout 11y ago
I once had someone I looked up to and admired very much tell me that if he had gone through some of the things I had, that he would have committed suicide. Shortly after he said that, he effectively stole nearly $13M from me. I sometimes wonder if he did it thinking that it would make things so much worse for me that I actually would commit suicide (because that's what he would have done), and I wouldn't be around to fight him for it. You can't let bad experiences, bad people, and just plain bad luck make you start thinking about suicide. The reality is that most people that consider suicide don't do it. However, merely entertaining suicidal thoughts can be a caustic force in your life, as these thoughts affect every aspect of your life, and more importantly, hinder your ability to move on from the situation that caused the thoughts in the first place. When your life crumbles, chances are it wasn't built on a strong foundation to begin with. As long as you're still breathing, you have an opportunity to rebuild it.
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madamepsychosis 11y ago
Something I think could help people in these situations but doesn't have much popular support - over-the-counter antidepressants. It's telling that the author was able to check out a book on suicide, but didn't seek medical help. That would require a) getting past the stigma of suffering from depression b) calling up a doctor or therapist c) suffering through the long mental health wait times that exist in most countries, d) being sent to a CBT therapist, given a self-help book or website e) being referred to a psychiatrist f) finally being prescribed something. It can be months before a depressed person gets any kind of treatment at all. And they are the last people to have the energy it takes to navigate a byzantine healthcare system, or have a friend or family member help them (many people still believe depression is a character weakness and will punish the patient for speaking out). Antidepressants aren't all that dangerous, even when compared to other over-the-counter drugs like Plan B. They're not happy pills, they often won't even make a miserable life bearable, but they do give the patient enough energy to deal with his/her problems. Given the number of lives lost to suicide, and the high disease burden of depression, I think the safety tradeoff is absolutely worth it. I'm aware this comment is going to attract a lot of ill-will and uninformed comments about anti-depressant efficacy/ woo about happy pills etc. so I direct you to read this FAQ first. https://medical.mit.edu/faqs/antidepressants https://medical.mit.edu/faqs/antidepressants

251 points by Killah911 11y ago

> In a tragically comic way, this was a depressing realization when I was considering blowing my head off or getting run over. Damnation! No guarantees. Death and taxes, yes, but not a breezy afterlife. Well if the afterlife is terrible, you're going to end up there at some point anyway. So unless your religion says that suicides are punished, I don't quite see the argument. Pascal's Wager can be used as an argument against any practice that some religion frowns upon, for that matter. If you accept his argument (I stopped doing that many years ago). EDIT: and though we, in this realm, have no definite knowledge of what the Afterlife (if any) is, there is no guarantee in the Afterlife. So maybe you'll end up betting on Pascal's Wager through all such realities, indefinitely. And who's to say that, even if you have a wider and "higher" perspective, that you can ever be sure of the true nature of reality, and that there is nothing "above"?

Inception 11y ago
The argument is that a breezy afterlife is not guaranteed, so killing yourself isn't necessarily an escape from pain.
- deleted 11y ago
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  - Inception 11y ago
    Let me rephrase that: an afterlife is not guaranteed; therefore a breezy afterlife cannot be guaranteed. None of us know what is going to happen when we die. There are many beliefs, but no guarantees. The original statement was a reminder to think twice if you are contemplating suicide because whatever you think is going to happen after you die might not actually happen.
    - koonsolo 11y ago
      > None of us know what is going to happen when we die. If you know the basics of the human body such as the brain, hormones, etc, I think it's pretty clear what will happen when you die. It's the same thing what happens to a computer when you shut it down. Do you know Occam's razor? Anyone can believe what they want of course, but it won't impact reality.
      - patrick73 11y ago
        Yes, it would impact reality. Beliefs such as comparing life with computers DO have an impact on reality.
o_____________o 11y ago
> So unless your religion says that suicides are punished Most of them do in one form or another, especially the Abrahamic tree.
- Dewie3 11y ago
  At least religions like Buddhism don't punish you for an eternal afterlife. At worst it's just "bad karma".
  - Mikeb85 11y ago
    No, but there are hell realms in Buddhist mythology, which can be the result of 'bad karma'. They're not eternal, but they don't sound particularly pleasant either.
    - Dewie3 11y ago
      Buddhists bet their horse in one particular lifetime on eventually escaping suffering by following Buddhist teaching/philosophy. Some suicidal people bet their horse on escaping a more immediate suffering. Other than the immediacy of the suffering, their both existential "bets" from the perspective of the author, and so I don't see a great distinction between either strategy.
      - Mikeb85 11y ago
        > Buddhists bet their horse in one particular lifetime on eventually escaping suffering by following Buddhist teaching/philosophy. Not actually true, otherwise all Buddhists would become monastics, which they don't. Buddhists believe that positive karma is accumulated over many lifetimes, and negative karma is extinguished after periods of suffering. In Buddhist thought, it's often enough to simply live a reasonably 'good' life, then you'll be reincarnated into a heavenly realm, or possibly another human body, etc... There are degrees of everything, and very few Buddhists (if any) believe they're going to achieve liberation after only a single lifetime. Even the Buddha was thought to have lived hundreds of lives, eventually culminating with his miraculous (by traditional accounts) life 2500 years ago...
whybroke 11y ago
Pascal's Wager would also imply you may as well invent as many religions as you please each requiring the thing you want to do as its dogma. Since each such religion has an equal probability of being right in his formula, in this way you can quickly overcome any inconvenience an established religion presents to what it was you wanted to do.

MarkPNeyer 11y ago

i tried killing myself many times. every time, something would happen last minute that changed things, and then life seemed to have a different character afterwards. i started to wonder if i actually did succeed after the first attempt in 2005, becuase life seems so different now than it was back then. one of the things that finally stopped my suicidal ideation was the belief that i can never actually experience death. i discovered that other people with a background in physics had the same belief - quantum immortality. http://markpneyer.me/2014/08/13/how-i-defeated-recurrent-suicidal-ideation/ http://markpneyer.me/2014/08/13/how-i-defeated-recurrent-sui...

Filligree 11y ago
If that really were the case, then I wouldn't be seeing your post and typing this. You still might see me do so, of course.
murbard2 11y ago
Even if you cannot experience death, but you can experience a horrible near miss with massive brain damage. For quantum suicide to work, you'd want to be completely unconscious when it happens, so that you never observe any injury.
Inception 11y ago
I've often wondered about this, but never knew there was a term for it. In the past, I've been in situations that I probably shouldn't have lived to talk about and often wondered if I really did make it out alive. Or did my perception of reality diverge from the dimension I was in and continue in a dimension where I defied the odds and lived. Thinking in terms of multiverse[0]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse

bayesianhorse 11y ago

The point about suicidal thoughts is that the urge to have the thoughts is a symptom of a disease, a phenomenon that is occurring in your brain. And on top of the other symptoms of the disease these thoughts create their own suffering. My advice is not to try to rationalize the urge. If you ask yourself the question "Why do I have to kill myself?" You will get answers. Bullshit answers, usually, but they don't look that irrational because of your state of mind. And a lot of the suffering is caused by these essentially fruitless discussions. Another key point is to realize the impermanence of the mind and of the self. Though it sounds like a buddhist teaching, everyone who survived suicidal ideation knows this: You enjoy live, then you don't, then you do again. The mind is never static. Finding that reality helps one to get a grip on the seemingly illogical phenomenon on suicidal thoughts.

Dewie3 11y ago
Right, I've had the experience that thoughts can deeply affect my mood and how I feel about life and myself. I wonder, though, why most people seem to simply leave it at that - "some thoughts are bad, be aware of that". Where's any kind of advice on actually dealing with this mind of ours? Sure, we have meditation and mindfulness, and at least meditation seems to be very effective for many things (I don't know enough about mindfulness). But is the mind really such a chaotic and uncontrollable beast that the only alternative is to focus/quiet it (meditation), or to symbolically shrug at the impermanence of its temperament? We tell people to exercise if we want to get stronger, but the mind is seemingly something that we either try to repress in an unhealthy way (alcoholism and friends), just blurt out/vent whatever it has been nagging us with lately ("talking about our feelings"), or meditate/mindfulness. The last alternative seems very promising and healthy, though sorely underutilized by most people, even the "my body is my temple". But I find it strange that there aren't more alternative (and complementary) approaches that are being suggested, like trying to think more constructively ("positive thinking" being a part of this). People who see the mind as a separate and wild beast will probably say that the mind can not be controlled. And I would be inclined to agree. But I think it can be steered to some degree, or at least nudged.
- gopher2 11y ago

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lmz 11y ago

This is why I never want to have kids. I deeply resent being born and being forced to outlive my parents (his point 2).

brador 11y ago
Don't think of it as outliving, think of it as continuing their legacy.
- ionised 11y ago
  This doesn't mean anything if you've decided never to have children yourself. The 'legacy' ends with you regardless.
  - brador 11y ago
    Then reconsider your decision. Nothing is set in stone.
gohrt 11y ago
Kids often bring joy. Consider reaching out to kids (who are already born) and helping them enjoy their life, and brighten yours. I don't know how old you are, but in many cases, elderly folks have time to wind down their lives in a graceful way, to the point where saying goodbye is bearable. Obviously people can still die accidentally/early, and ultimately you'll outlive about half the people you meet, but there is a way to learn to appreciate the time you have together, and to let go when that time ends.
- lmz 11y ago
  It's not the "getting left behind" angle that I don't like. It's the fact that I have to wait +/- 20 more years for them to die before I can FOAD because that is what society expects.
alexashka 11y ago
You need a reality check - you're placing blame on outside factors (like your parents) for not being where YOU'd like to be in life. Owning up to that is the first step toward recognizing how incompetent you are at being happy. I used to be a moping ball of negativity myself once upon a time - it just doesn't work. Sooner or later you have to recognize that the way you are isn't working and take steps to change that. Today sounds like a good day to start.

nosuchthing 11y ago

It should be a liberating thought - that you've got nothing to lose, go try something exciting like white water kayaking, hike the Pacific Crest Trail, sail across the ocean, challenge yourself at a sport, biking, swimming, climbing? take a safe amount of MDMA and go to a music festival? listen to some alan watts [1] try fresh cannabis [ideally from Washington/Colorado/California], and music [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtQf5kSHKhE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtQf5kSHKhE

csdrane 11y ago
When you're feeling suicidal good luck enjoying any of those.
- titanomachy 11y ago
  Not necessarily impossible. I've been completely "distracted" out of the depths of depression, at least temporarily. Depression is a cognitive feedback loop, sometimes a major change of scenery or activity can effectively disrupt it, if you can somehow bring yourself to do it.
- samatman 11y ago
  That's the beauty of MDMA actually: there's little that suicidal ideations can do in the face of a massive flood of serotonin. It's like an antidepressant that works within an hour and lasts for about three. It can lead to insight that produces lasting change. Please heed this last part: if you choose to treat suicidal urges in this way, tell someone what's going on so you can have support for the following week. The crash can be dangerous to someone in an unstable place.
  - marssaxman 11y ago
    I was not feeling suicidal when I first took MDMA but I had been struggling with depression for years, and the experience was a key step on the way out. It was such a clear demonstration of the degree to which my perception of the world around me, and my estimation of the beauty and worth to be found there, are driven by the chemical state of my brain. I had thought that I was depressed because I lived in a crappy world; that first MDMA experience showed me that I had causality backward, and that I thought the world was crappy because I was depressed. Insight that produces lasting change indeed.

throwaway8694 11y ago

"It was only then that I realized something: my death wasn’t just about me. It would completely destroy the lives of those I cared most about. I imagined my mom, who had no part in creating my thesis mess, suffering until her dying day, blaming herself." I'm sorry, but that consideration just doesn't help. If the pain (or emptiness) is so strong that you just want everything to stop, this consideration is absolutely worthless and unimportant.

mikeash 11y ago
Different people can be helped by different things. I think it's rather odd to take something said by somebody who was in the middle of planning his own suicide, and who got stopped because a certain event made him think about something he hadn't considered, and say that thinking about this particular thing doesn't help. It helped him, therefore clearly it can help.
- deleted 11y ago
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  - Hilby 11y ago
    I think that this particular issue is very sensitive, and very personal, and very individualized. Indeed, sometimes a reminder of the ties we have to the living world is a good thing at any time. For some, thinking of others and the impact their death might have on those around them is in fact enough to get them through a particularly bad spell. I think that it's important to note that it's not a feeling of guilt that should be focused on here. It's a feeling of connection. There are people who care and can help if you reach out. There are people who care. Of course it's not always enough. If it were, people would never commit suicide, would they? There is a great deal to be said for holding on for others those times you can't hold on for yourself. After all, life is very much a series of highs and lows.. sometimes, you need to latch onto whatever you can to get you through the lows.
tptacek 11y ago
You're being downvoted, but if you read advice on how to help people currently experiencing suicidal impulses, one of the first things you learn is not to try to combat them with messages of guilt or obligation. As I understand it (surely someone on HN has more exposure to this than I do; I've lost friends, but not myself experienced the impulse): The "do's": listen, empathize, stay calm, be hopeful in tone, vector them towards help. The "don'ts": argue them out of it, get emotional, judge, try to fix it yourself.

eastbayjake 11y ago

In January, a student from my alma mater flew all the way across the country to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. I ended up reading a New Yorker article from 2003[1] about Golden Gate jumpers and this anecdote stopped me: Motto had a patient who committed suicide from the Golden Gate in 1963, but the jump that affected him most occurred in the seventies. “I went to this guy’s apartment afterward with the assistant medical examiner,” he told me. “The guy was in his thirties, lived alone, pretty bare apartment. He’d written a note and left it on his bureau. It said, ‘I’m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.’” He jumped. And ever since I read that, I've made it a personal mission to smile at everyone I pass on the sidewalk every day. Not only does suicide have unknowable impacts on all of the people around you, but even your most insignificant actions could have an enormous impact on the people around you. Be good to others -- you never know how much it might mean to them. [1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/13/jumpers http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/13/jumpers

gheiou 11y ago
I knew her--the days after her suicide were pretty surreal, because I always needed to ask my self if I had just been a little more hospitable or a little nicer that one time, could it have made a difference? How we act matters.
- deleted 11y ago
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- tptacek 11y ago
  How we act matters, but we are not as a rule inadvertently responsible for the serious medical conditions of others. Suicide isn't a disease of affection deficiency. It should help to know that reaching the state of being one smile away from suicide implies a profoundly severe illness; the problem wasn't smiles, it was the way we route the ill to the mental health resources they need.
  - jules 11y ago
    In my view it's a harmful oversimplification that suicidal people are simply sick and need to get their mind fixed. I know it's not what you meant, but that's what reflexively rubbed me the wrong way about this comment because I have seen this attitude multiple times from other people who did mean that. One needs to consider that suicide is not just an affliction of the mind, it's also a product of the circumstances a normal person finds him or herself in. It's not just the thoughts that need fixing, it's the circumstances too. Usually this is a chicken and egg problem: the thoughts prevent the person from fixing the circumstances himself, and the circumstances reinforce negative thoughts. This way somebody can get sucked deeper and deeper into a black hole of increasingly irrational negative thoughts. Even if the thoughts are clearly irrational to an outsider, they are not to the person themselves. Therefore suggesting that they simply fix their mind does not help. In their view their mind is not just what needs to be fixed, it's also the circumstances. We all should do our best to not create such circumstances and to fix them when they exist. In the story of the OP for example, it's fair to say that the behaviour of the professor played a big role in almost causing his suicide. If suicide is caused by circumstances a normal person finds him or herself in, do we not bear a collective responsibility to prevent it, even if it's just a smile?

gohrt 11y ago

One specific thing you can do, that is rather unlikely to counterintuitively backfire like many ideas, is to simply make plans with some to meet and talk/eat/play with no pressure. Having something planned -- an easy commitment, but not a heavy intimidating responsibility -- gives people a sense of purpose to move foward through their day/week/month, buying time for luck and expert assistance to come together. This in addition to steering toward professional help.

rcpt 11y ago

The best quote on this topic that I know of is terrifying: The so-called 'psychotically depressed' person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote 'hopelessness' or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling. -David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

AceJohnny2 11y ago
He would know, he ended up committing suicide after spending most of his life battling depression :(
jacques_chester 11y ago
I've been suicidally depressed. It was never the balance of fears. It was pure exhaustion. As time goes on, the doorways in your life seem to close and the only one left is marked "stop". Everything else is just ... ugh ... so tiring. This feeling is an illusion. It's not real. But depression is a disease that attacks the mechanism that enables you to understand the world.
- throwaway234567 11y ago
  I've been depressed recently -- maybe not suicidally depressed, but depressed enough to think about it a lot* -- and for me it's absolutely a balance of fears. The weights of past regrets and past failures, the fear of facing them, the fear of future failure (I'm co-founding a slowly failing startup now), the fear of disappointing or alienating loved ones -- they all gang up and become completely overwhelming. The passage above captures it pretty well, though I haven't ever gotten to the extreme it's describing. Exercise and sleep help. *I have enough people who love me and depend on me that I know I'll never act on it, but it has become something I fantasize about probably a couple times a day, and many times more on bad days.

pronoiac 11y ago

There is help; here are some resources on suicide and depression, including hotlines around the world. http://mefiwiki.com/wiki/ThereIsHelp http://mefiwiki.com/wiki/ThereIsHelp Disclosure: I run the server.

stegosaurus 11y ago

Foreword: I do not believe I have ever been in a mental state that could be considered as 'depression'. That said, I have experienced times in my life that have made me realise that the common views (e.g. you are free to do anything now; it will get better; etc) are false. They all stem from the idea that the individual is selfish. The worst times I've had in my life were the times in which I tried really hard to be virtuous, to care, to right wrongs. When I want more than just to 'succeed'. More than just to fix my life. My life is fine! Bureaucracy, for example. 'Company policy'. It makes me angry and feel as if millions of humans have lost the ability to feel empathy, have been turned into robots. It's not about the fact I can't return a broken lightbulb; I don't give a toss about the 1 GBP. It's about the knowledge that most people don't care about right and wrong. Most people will obey the rules, they will do what authority says, they will take the path of least resistance. Politics. My country treats the poor as subhuman whilst praising the rich. It fawns over 'merit'; which is really just random chance. I could go on... basically, what happens when you realise that you're playing a rigged game? It doesn't matter if you win or lose. You can run away and hide. Or you can fight, all the while knowing that your attempts almost certain to be futile. Once the box is open it never closes. I cope by employing nihilism, but the triggers are everywhere. Every 'intellectual discussion' about the merits of Red vs Blue, about the latest plan to Lock People In A Box for performing something mundane like shuffling some bits around. And all around, the advice is to take drugs. Think differently. 'Come to terms with it'. Counselling... I don't want that shit. I want a city, a country, a world that treats its citizens well. If not as equals, at least as more than dogs.

guard-of-terra 11y ago
My thoughts exactly. At times I actually feel guilty for not killing myself because I therefore submit myself to unfair terms, which is worse than death. If our world is not fixable, we can not lead it to the state we might like, why pretend?
ldarcyftw 11y ago
You can't depend on outside world's behavior. You simply can't . It's just outside of your control so there is no point to worry about it.

seiji 11y ago

Actual practical thoughts: https://web.archive.org/web/20130721062525/http://suicidescale.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130721062525/http://suicidesca...

ahruygt 11y ago

I have to commend Tim Ferris for speaking out about this. He's worked his brand to the point of steel- making it sometimes hard to see him as a normal human being. I am a fan of his tip and tricks, but I really appreciate that he was vulnerable here in order to start this discussion.

beloch 11y ago

For those experiencing everything from mild depression to strong suicidal thoughts, I'd recommend the combination of cognitive behavioural therapy, if you can afford a therapist, and this book: "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by David Burns. Depression and suicidal thoughts are often rooted in twisted, invalid logic that we don't recognize as such. For example, say that a stranger unexpectedly smiles at you. It would be logical to smile back, and perhaps even strike up a conversation to ask why they're smiling at you. The reasons are probably good. Maybe they're attracted to you. Maybe they just randomly thought of something funny. The risks of speaking to that person are minimal. A twisted, illogical reaction that many of us naturally have is to assume the person is smiling at our expense and that there's something we don't know. We fear what the person will do or say if we do anything to acknowledge their smile. Instead of smiling back, we retreat inwards, wondering what's wrong with us, why we're so pathetic, anti-social, etc.. Two people can experience the same event in wildly differing ways because of how they process them. For someone who is depressed, events that should be good can easily add to their problems. Cognitive behavioural therapy focuses on catching those thoughts, identifying them as illogical, and deliberately countering them until the thought pattern in a given circumstance becomes naturally logical. In the situation above, you would need to recognize that you're assuming a lot about what the other person is thinking, recognize that the worst that can happen from striking up a conversation or just smiling back is not very bad, and that the potential gains could be very good. I had a fairly low opinion of most psychology until I came across this. It's actually helpful.

gopher2 11y ago
Seconded. I'm very grateful for this book.

ebbv 11y ago

This article does a great job of highlighting why I can't stand Tim Ferris. Even when talking about such an important, sensitive and terrible subject he can't stop himself from constantly hyping himself up. Every other sentence is still about how great he is, about how he's constantly talking to celebrities, etc. Awful.

stephenitis 11y ago
So what... Better he not be happy about who he is and his accomplishments? I don't think that this suicide post was a big humble brag... it was to address to his own readership a serious issue in his own light. The more role models that follow this line of thinking to their own audiences the less suicides and more awareness there might be as a whole. I applaud founders/engineers/leaders who speak transparently on the topic. shout out to Kyle at Keen.io for his very personal post in reaction to brad feld's own https://medium.com/@dorkitude/entrepreneurship-and-depression-5c4b19a06d83 https://medium.com/@dorkitude/entrepreneurship-and-depressio... http://www.feld.com/archives/2014/10/founder-suicides.html http://www.feld.com/archives/2014/10/founder-suicides.html

downandout 11y ago

I once had someone I looked up to and admired very much tell me that if he had gone through some of the things I had, that he would have committed suicide. Shortly after he said that, he effectively stole nearly $13M from me. I sometimes wonder if he did it thinking that it would make things so much worse for me that I actually would commit suicide (because that's what he would have done), and I wouldn't be around to fight him for it. You can't let bad experiences, bad people, and just plain bad luck make you start thinking about suicide. The reality is that most people that consider suicide don't do it. However, merely entertaining suicidal thoughts can be a caustic force in your life, as these thoughts affect every aspect of your life, and more importantly, hinder your ability to move on from the situation that caused the thoughts in the first place. When your life crumbles, chances are it wasn't built on a strong foundation to begin with. As long as you're still breathing, you have an opportunity to rebuild it.

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madamepsychosis 11y ago

Something I think could help people in these situations but doesn't have much popular support - over-the-counter antidepressants. It's telling that the author was able to check out a book on suicide, but didn't seek medical help. That would require a) getting past the stigma of suffering from depression b) calling up a doctor or therapist c) suffering through the long mental health wait times that exist in most countries, d) being sent to a CBT therapist, given a self-help book or website e) being referred to a psychiatrist f) finally being prescribed something. It can be months before a depressed person gets any kind of treatment at all. And they are the last people to have the energy it takes to navigate a byzantine healthcare system, or have a friend or family member help them (many people still believe depression is a character weakness and will punish the patient for speaking out). Antidepressants aren't all that dangerous, even when compared to other over-the-counter drugs like Plan B. They're not happy pills, they often won't even make a miserable life bearable, but they do give the patient enough energy to deal with his/her problems. Given the number of lives lost to suicide, and the high disease burden of depression, I think the safety tradeoff is absolutely worth it. I'm aware this comment is going to attract a lot of ill-will and uninformed comments about anti-depressant efficacy/ woo about happy pills etc. so I direct you to read this FAQ first. https://medical.mit.edu/faqs/antidepressants https://medical.mit.edu/faqs/antidepressants