The Top 40

Yes, it is a choice but not necessarily "tragic". Those of us left behind are the ones that feel the pain. Gee, how inconsiderate of the guy. He wants, top himself and he is not thinking of others.

It is a decision for the individual but not necessarily a "bad decision". The person has complete control and decision making capability. Nobody else should tell him to die or not die, so forth. If he wants to go, I say go. Young, old, male, female, dying of cancer or just graduated high school, whatever and whoever, if they want to die and they are willing to do what it takes to die, fine by me. Let 'em go. I watched as both my parents and some other relatives went through a dying process. It was not nice and they did not feel all that good but they chose not to die prematurely. They expressed that to me and I respected their wishes. Others may not take it so well, or be in a lot of pain or be suffering the indignities of dying. Don't you think they have a choice?

What would any of us do if we were racked with some disease or attached to tubes and machines sustaining life? If the doctor told me I had a month, couple months before the cancer ate my brain away what would I do? Tough question and here's my point: it is up to me, my decision, whether to live or die. Period.

Suicide is ultimately the most cowardly, selfish act a human being can commit. However, I know the depths of misery and emptiness that life seems that can lead people to that path. I've come very close in the past.

This point of view is from a person without depression, which is certainly the great majority of us. It means nothing and has absolutely no significance except when it is applied to that great majority.

Having no particular understanding of what the term really meant, I finally asked my brother that question long ago. He said to imagine you kissed your wife goodbye on the way to work only to arrive and be given your notice. Then a cop came to tell you that your parents had died in a traffic accident. You went home to find that your wife had left you a note and was not coming back. That would be depression.

But nothing happened.

He also said that depressives kill themselves not when they are at their worst, but their best, because they know they are due to go back and refuse the trip.

People commonly speak about their ailments, unless it causes major pain, like chronic back pain. That is because they know very well that no one could relate and they are alone with it. Way it is. Nobody knows what is going on in the mind of a depressive, and the truth is that nobody would want to. I last ten minutes with my brother when he is at his worst. That is a darkness that will take you down.

They were faking it all along, and mostly for our benefit. I don't blame them for packing it in. But I do know that I don't want my daughter to do that.

There is no feeling like the helpless feeling of finding your child in a paroxysmal death grip while trying to figure out how to dial 911 on an unfamiliar smart phone. Suicide is a nasty aftermath to have to clean up. I live with the constant fear that the girl will finally succeed. I pray she won't. I pray for her soul daily, but depression is a killer. It's a demon I find myself battling through the girl.
There is no peace.

Depression is a disease. In general, in our society, people who are not depressed, do not kill themselves. Almost invariably, those who can be rescued from the attempt, and whose depression can be alleviated, are as glad to be alive as you are. From the few details in the news reports about Mr. Williams, I think the conclusion that he was sick with depression is not unwarranted. Mr. Walsh, in this instance, is wrong.

I ran over a suicide victim with my locomotive. Someone's sixteen year old son that looked a lot like my fifteen year old. I had hit other people before, but that one was harder to get over.

Wish he would have found another way to do it that didn't involve me.

I don't know if suicide is always a bad choice. I can think of a shitpile of individuals that would improve this world by hanging or shooting themselves, jumping off a tall building or in front of a fast moving bus, having a double helping of Jones' Kool-Aid or a dry cleaners bag.

How many of them would be missed? Start with the White House, go through the Arab world, serve up some of the 'leaders" in Africa, then come back here and toss in the black race baiters and the nattering heads on CNN and MSNBC.

There will be some of their families that will miss them, but will we miss those families, those that enabled the bungholes in the first place. As for their kids, sorry, but your father was an antisocial prick.

"Let's see. I could extend my life in a bed, living off of drugs that would ALSO fuzz my brain, at an ASTONISHING rate of transfer of wealth to the "health community", Or...OR I could transfer my ENTIRE estate to worthy (OK, at least designated)sources, knowing that all the "legal crap" has been seen to long ago, and also knowing there's not much more I could do to get revenge on all the bastards that have pissed me off throughout life.
Christopher Taylor "Suicide is ultimately the most cowardly, selfish act a human being can commit."?
Realize that there are dissenting opinions.
And we ALL have made wills, appropriately addressing our local laws...right?
Suicide? Hell, just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time is getting to be more perilous every day.

Some suicides are those who are so tortured by the sorrow and pain they see in the faces and demeanor of their caregivers, that as a matter of mercy, their last willful, worthwhile act is to give up their struggle to survive in what appears to them as a life with no satisfactory future, other than to ease the suffering of their loved and loving ones.

If Robin Williams was not physically sick, I wonder whether any of his friends or he himself thought of opening or joining a clown school dedicated to cheering up kids in burn wards, cancer wards, maimed body wards, special needs schoolroom classes, and so on. What a way to wear oneself out, knowing every morning that you would be making some kid happier that day.

Robin Williams' choice was the best he could make under the circumstances he believed in. Soon enough Robin will have them laughing their asses off in heaven -- expect a rainfall of angelic buttocks down here and an angelic standing ovation up there [Hey, up there they no longer have backsides to sit on; standing ovations only].

Bravo Williams, well done.

I've been on both sides of this situation. I've seriously, desperately considered suicide as the only way out of the pain and misery of my life, when everything is so bleak and meaningless only death holds any appeal.

And I've been the only person that got a suicide note from a woman, apparently because I was the last person to be nice to her.

Its absolutely awful to bear that burden, and I would not do that to my family and friends. I cannot be that selfish. The realization of how awful and craven and selfish it would be is the only thing that pulled me back from the brink.

And Bradoplata? The train was going to be my exit. I apologize even without having done so, because of how terrible it would be for the engineer.

"In my life I have attained what I had to attain. And now the only reason I live is to serve."
----- Tukaram Maharaj, poet, hen-pecked husband, thorn in God's sides, what Chief Dan George in some movie called, a 'human being.'

What do you call the act of complicity in the killing [murdering?] of one you love who is no longer capable of killing their self, tho you believe they would if they could? Medications known and experimental had failed to stop the disease progression. The illness was so deadly, so hopeless, so consuming that the loved one could only be sustained in a medically induced coma, with constantly increasing oxygen pressure needed for oxygen to reach brain and heart.
Holy days and prayers came and went. Fearing that my loved one would literally explode an aneurysm from the increasing pressure, I finally agreed to halt all medical efforts.
So I suggest, while you live, live. And when you die, believe that your survivors will shout out with bent but not completely broken hearts, "Encore!" for a life well-lived.

Mother Effingby, I hear you. That's the worst thing I can think of.

There really IS a reason for the Church to condemn suicide in dire terms, and it has nothing to do with disease or circumstance or the infliction of harm to our loved ones. It's not an ugly legalistic reason, it's the most beautiful Reason ever expressed, and to embrace It is to live.

People are not condemned for believing a lie, but there is a harsher judgment for those who reject the Truth. Suicide is the final taking of control, the final fist in the face of God's mercy and truth, the final expression of "I don't believe You. I refuse to surrender and believe what you say about me. I don't believe what you've created is holy and good. I don't believe I'm worthy, even if you say I am."

Do such people ever see God in the next life? I don't know. But that prospect of ultimate un-seeing is dire enough to warn, in the strongest of terms, the weak soul-- and encourage them to find their rest and their fate in the hands of a loving God. To do less is to set up our own wretched kingdom and tell God to bugger off.

The most humbling thing is to believe every good thing God says about us, and to accept that for whatever reason, His mercy will make us His own. Pray for those we love who have taken their own lives. I don't know that it's unforgiveable on its face, I only know it should never seem a better "out" than living, however harshly, under His grace.

When someone decides to punch the clock, why is that a reflection on everyone else? That's a personal choice, not a reflection on others.
What choices others make belong to them and them only.

One has to realize that one can only control that which they CAN control. The balance is beyond reach and not a reflection on them.

@Joan. The screams of millions of innocents contravene what you say of God's qualities.
If what you say of, "... God's mercy and truth... holy and good ...," is true, then it MUST be true at the extremes as well as at all the in-betweens of human experience.
Please explain your view of God's qualities to 1000's of little children who have been starving and starved to death, of the 1000's more dying in pain of preventable diseases, of other 1000's of children who've been and are now being maimed, raped, enslaved, and otherwise brutalized for no good reason. Are they all descendants 'til the 4th generation of ancestors who sinned?, and are therefore punished for their ancestors' violations by a merciful, good, and truthful God?

I worked for a self-made millionaire, once upon a time, who advised those who were going to explain something to him, to, " Make your presentation to me as if I am a 10 year old, but simplify it so that even an 8-year old will understand, tho not necessarily agree with what you present."

Go. But no bs'g as God did with Job, as tho Job wasn't quite made accurately enough in the image of God so as to also condone injustice and mercilessness.

And here's another extreme for explication of God's wonderfulness in the face of deliberate suicidal actions.
I speak of the 100's of firemen, policemen, EMS personnel, and poor working slobs who either ran up the Twin Towers staircases to save lives, or stayed behind to help the crippled and injured and terrified, knowing that they themselves might well not survive.

Will God define them as not REALLY suicidal because they were sacrificing themselves for another? If so, how convenient to nullify this contravening extreme via some linguistic legerdemain (if I may pun in more than one language).

Almost any fool could figure out how to set this world straight -- provide instant karmic reaction to the person for his/her actions [appropriate instruction as to how to behave humanely, emotional rewards for humane behavior and severe controlling punishment if inhumane behavior is attempted]. Three-year olds and younger are exempted from severe punishment but may not have cookies until tomorrow if they behave badly.

Cripes, if you're all-wise, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent use some common sense and decency to help turn this madhouse into a haven home.

Go explain YOUR view to hurting children, widows. You go first. Go look in their eyes and tell them all you know. I'm sure their suffering will be alleviated by all you know.

Go. I've already been there. You're slowing things down by yammering on web sites. Why are you still sitting there? Go. Or is there no karma for good deeds, too? Go. Shut up and go.

As for your vile equating of selfless heroism, of "laying down one's life for a friend" to the cowardly act of suicide: count it one of your most ill-considered arm-chair sorties within the vast kingdom of all you don't know.

Joan, you've completely missed the point that no one can truthfully explain the contradictions that appear on this human plane.

To speak of an all-loving, compassionate, just, truthful God in the face of all the horrors of this world is to deny our humanity and human experience, and our demand, yes, demand for a fair shake from God and man.
In Job, God is presented as a big-mouthed coward, unable to make a sensible-to-humans case for fairness and compassion, but able to bluster and steamroll, cow, the hollow images of His creation.

God has a lot to answer properly for to his subjects.

Elie Wiesel spelled it out nicely in one of his stories about the death-camp Jews. One day they put God on trial for his apparent unjust behavior and lack of just behavior. After much argumentation, pro and con the charges made, the jury of Jews found God guilty as charged. At that moment one of the inmates pointed to the position of the sun in the sky, and advised, "Gentlemen, it's time for the evening prayer. Let us pray." And they did. And I believe their tears burned holes in heaven, otherwise those heavenly others would be even more restrictive now of their wisdom and inspiration to we underlings.

Yes, the Kingdom of Heaven is within, but the King is [temporarily] elsewhere. We'll have to muck around as best we can with the guidance we've been given but which not all have accepted.
Thank you too for your anger at my comments. In some other culture it would be considered ignorance being consumed in the fire of Yoga, a supremely purifying process.
Buddha when asked how he could maintain his equanimity at 120 degrees Fahrenheit and near 100% relative humidity, replied, "Sometimes I am hot Buddha, just as you are, tho you are not yet aware of your Buddhahood."
May God bless us all, and we bless each other.

Ouch, Joan, and I don't even have those vile opinions, although I probably did once.

There is a certain beauty in your death ray glare. In lesser souls it would be a weapon of mass destruction.

@James Er, thanks? I note that Mr. Palindrome is still yammering, trying to walk it back.

Meanwhile, what is NOT being discussed is how cocaine was a choice that made all Robin Williams' others choices and attempts impossible. Rehab, research, vows, accountability, religion. If you embrace the white death even once, you've just become a dead man walking. Very very few escape.

Don't think that's the absolute truth. I think William Burroughs knew best when he wrote -- long ago and I still remember --

in Letter From A Master Addict To Dangerous Drugs

The desire for cocaine can be intense. I have spent whole days walking from one drug store to another to fill a cocaine prescription. You may want cocaine intensely , but you don't have any metabolic need for it. If you can't get cocaine you eat, you go to sleep and forget it. I have talked with people who used cocaine for years, then were suddenly cut off from their supply. None of them experienced any withdrawal symptoms. Indeed it is difficult to see how a front brain stimulant could be addicting. Addiction seems to be a monopoly of sedatives.

Ah, wisdom from the 50s. Burroughs. Certainly our understanding of drugs and science stopped then, along with politics. ;)

Hummm,,,, yes that is true and a fair point,

You know what?

All these days later, and this still pisses me off.

Didn't die from a disease? Excuse me, but what the fuck do you know about it? Every one of you here that equates suicide with cowardice is a self-righteous prig who's never been in that kinda pain.

Period.

By the grace of God and years of prayer I'm still alive, but it's damned sure not due to the sniffy superiority of the people I needed to care for me. Shame on all of you. Look in a fuckin mirror some time.

Rob De Witt, please scroll up and read the rest of what people said. You apparently missed at least my comments about being in the deepest depths of depression and facing suicide. Some of us HAVE been there, and know first had what its like to see that as a very valid option.

And its still stupidly cowardly and selfish. All a suicide cares about is themselves, period. They care nothing about the others around them, how it huts or affects them. Nothing.

Ah yes, the ultimate selfish act telling a suicidal person he can't have what they want. Let me count the ways I can still control your life.

"James Er, thanks?" Well, Joan, what you wrote was so expertly and fearsomely done that it prodded me to wondering if this is what the examination is going to be like on Judgement Day. That's not a bad thing.

Yes, of course Mr. Palindrome is walking it back. It takes myself months or years to incorporate a profoundly truthful but alien idea into the core of my experience, no less when it makes me appear foolish.

Christopher Taylor,

Nope, you don't get it.

Being suicidal a few times doesn't equate to a lifetime of brokenness, and if you can't see that you need to go back to school. Read some Heinz Kohut, or Alice Miller, or even Listening to Prozac. Recognize that the hardest sell the Catholic Church has to make to guys like me isn't that suicide is a slap in the face to a merciful creator, but that God ever intended to make anybody as fucked up as I am, and could care for him. That's the tough prayer: "O Lord let me believe I could be worthy of it."

Try to get a feel for the difficulty shrinks have in convincing a self-respecting man that he was the victim of adults before he had any control. Imagine the crushing sense of self-disgust when he realizes he was worth so little that it happened to him, and his strength is meaningless.

For that matter, stop assuming this is even directed at you, and take a gander at some of the smug assurance of the morally superior exhibited in these threads about Robin Williams' suicide. I've known suicides too, and talked a few of 'em out of it - but the reason they listened is because they recognized that I knew exactly the hopelessness of knowing you have, and have had, a life that nobody, lover, friend, priest, nobody will ever understand. And so what you do is live with being alone, and avoid those situations where people brightly ask why you're not married, and happy, and going to Disneyland this weekend. But you're still here, and God did make you this way, and maybe that's all there's gonna be. And sometimes that's gotta be enough.

You learn that smoking a bowl or having a glass of wine or too may cups of coffee must be strenuously avoided, not for any moral reasons but simply because it affects your balance - and your life must be lived for the most part like you're carrying a brimful glass of water up a flight of stairs.

Like I say, read all the various threads around here and on Zblog and Matt whatsisname and see if you don't come away with the sick feeling that most of these people would feel ohsojustified of their moral superiority if you lost your balance and quietly said goodbye. It's not a pretty picture.

No, it is not a fair point, it is a point borrowed from others. I too have seen what Burroughs seen and much more recently and over a very long time.

Wanting is one thing, addiction is a figment.

Rob De Witt I apologize if I come across as seeming morally superior or demeaning toward people going through deep depression. Spending most of my life fighting it I know how it affects life.

But you might want to look in the mirror when you make that accusation.

I don't condemn or judge anyone who has committed suicide, lest I be in the position of disowning three members of my family. I've walked with others through their valley of the Shadow. Been there myself. It's horrifying. The Vortex is a real thing, a huge temptation that sounds very like our Lord's "come unto me and find rest." "Just let go," it whispers, "stop fighting this." It sounds so-o-o good. It sounds really good. It seems benign, so peaceful... KNOCK IT OFF!!

As for "fair points" or foul, everyone has an anecdote and a champion. If one says, "responsibility!" the other will say "heartless cretin!" If one says disease, another says addiction. If one calls it sin, another will have a new revelation and call evil good.

Suicide is condemned because it bears no good fruit for the victim or their loved ones. Ever. I don't want to control anyone's choices, I just don't want anyone to be lied to by others' choices.

Last point: suicide is psychologically contagious, like hysteria. I don't apologize for condemning the act.

Suffering survivors of a close one's suicide ask themselves, "Am I willing to accept my own suffering because of this suicide, because I know my loved one is no longer in excruciating, unbearable pain, pain which probably far exceeds what I am now bearing?"

What is the range of replies and what do those replies say about the survivors? Are the [adult] survivors pleased that they at least did all they could to alleviate the sufferer's pain prior to the suicide?

Some speak of the Suicide's rejection of a Deity's love and grace, a possible rejection of a sweet life in the Hereafter as reward for staying the course despite the agonizing pain.
Others speak of the Suicide's belief, right or wrong, that their Deity is holding back on giving inspiration or sufficient courage to carry on -- in essence from the Suicide's viewpoint, not denying, but allowing the Suicide to show mercy to their self by self-[de]termination.
I stand with the Others. Mercy trumps God's neglect. And the broken hearts of the survivors, perhaps that's how God wants the light to penetrate for a greater future good -- a last gift from the Suicide, agreeing to collude with God in self-sacrifice for others.

An unorthodox closure for this matter of censure, and/or an opening, more expansive view of God's humanitarian involvement, exposure?

From the amount of guilt being hoarded, one would think these commenters all were Jewish mothers.

If someone chooses to end their life it isn't a refleection of your abilities or failures. It is totally beyond your control unless you're willing to chain them in the attic.

Give up trying to control others; live your life to thefullest and best you can. Let them live theirs.

Everyone has to fight their own demons; unless they ask for help and you are a disinterested professional individual, you can't do anything. And maybe not even then.