Ten Reasons Not to Kill Yourself

Suzie Gonzalez

I read the news today, oh, boy, 
About a lucky man who made the grade, \
And though the news was rather sad
Well I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph
He blew his mind out in a car, 
He didn't notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They'd seen his face before
Nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords

Beatles, A Day in the Life

For some reason, I always heard those lyrics as describing a suicide.

Not a pet cemetery

About the picture to your right. They try to make them look like parks, but these are really dreary places to visit. 

Matthew Warren, son of Pastor Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church in California, dead. Matthew's famous father spoke at President Obama's first inauguration. He wrote a letter to his congregants to tell them that Matthew had taken his own life, had lost his battle against depression. It was a self-inflicted gunshot that killed the 27-year old.  

Huff Post quotes the father:   “No words can express the anguished grief we feel right now,” Warren wrote. “He had a brilliant intellect and a gift for sensing who was most in pain or most uncomfortable in a room. He’d then make a bee-line to that person to engage and encourage them."

“In spite of America’s best doctors, meds, counselors, and prayers for healing, the torture of mental illness never subsided."

We would say that Matthew had bad disease. What we lost, a picture of Matthew Warren.

THE STORY
I need to remind the reader at this point that the caveat at the top declaring much of what you read here as fiction is there for stories like these. 

A few years back I’m sitting across from an extraordinarily handsome young man in his early thirties. He has an excellent vocabulary and an eastern seaboard accent. He narrates about the mental illness in his family—schizophrenia, the schizo-affective disorders, bi-polar disease. He's been on his roller coaster of disorder and chronic drug and alcohol abuse, with multiple physical problems (as if these can be separate), too, all his life. 

He is talking and I am thinking, Oh My.

There is a feeling the therapist gets and I have it, a worried feeling that her patient will not make it, will kill himself, and it will be on her watch, and she will be held responsible for not getting him to the hospital in time, and even if she isn’t responsible, she will feel she could have intervened somehow.

He tells me that he knows he will kill himself one day, as sure as the sky is blue.

I tell him: Not on my watch.

He laughs and thanks me for that. He needs a great deal of direction in general.

Time passes, my friend leaves the city. We speak about continuing our work on the phone but I am reluctant. I want someone to lay eyes on him, as I like to put it, to feel him.  When we're with the patient we can get that feeling, some of us, that things aren't right, that the psychotic part of the depressive continuum is ascendant. The patient has checked out, wants no help, intends to finally carry through a plan that is always on his radar. He won’t tell any of us this. No, we won’t hear about it from his lips. In fact, when we try to get near to it we hear a resonant objection and a defense of his mental health. “I’m fine! Go back to your nap.” This I do hear, for he knows full well that a good nap does a body good.

He leaves, has a new team in another state, miles and miles away, people to keep him alive. Somehow. 
Six months later I get a call from his wife that he has finished the job. I am startled, surprised, upset, and very, very sad.  This was a pleasant man, a likable person. Surely he could have done something wonderful with his time on this planet, even if was some kind of volunteer work. But he is out of his pain, finally, is what everyone will say.

His wife, on the other hand, is furious at him. Selfish bastard! How dare he do this?  Why in the world would he do this to her? She would have stayed with him, headaches and all, no matter how difficult, no matter the drama! He was in total sobriety and on the right meds, in stable condition, as stable as he had ever been. He should have loved her more than to leave her like he did.

She hates him for this. She will never love anyone as much, or hate anyone so much, all in the same moment. We hold hands over the phone as she cries.

There are others he has left in his wake, parents, siblings, therapists, doctors, people kicking themselves, wishing they could have done more. Even I am thinking, Should I have called him once in awhile? No, he wasn’t my patient. But could I not have just checked in? Is that such a crazy thought?

Oh, it is water under the bridge. Sometimes there is nothing we can do. People leave clues, they tell us as much, that this is the plan, this is as it should be. We can call the police and the patient will charm her way out of an admission. Shlep a man squawking to the hospital, and if he is admitted, he is eventually released, and when he is, if he can get his hands on a gun, he’ll shoot himself. Or use a rope. A woman will ingest all of those meds she’s been hoarding for just the right moment. 

Sometimes we just have to face it. People are hell bent on suicide, either need a release from their pain or want to take others down with them as they go, make sure they are missed. We may not be able to stop it but we can try. 

We can say, "Not on my watch." 
And they can say, "Why not?"
And we have to find reasons why.

Maybe there is something we can do about it to slow it down, for this wave of youth killing themselves does seem to be an epidemic. We need to call it what it is, let’s talk, self-inflicted murder, no different from homicide except that the one pulling the trigger is the most obvious victim. 

To call attention to the problem we should support suicide awareness, visit AFSP's website. We can join in on their walk, donate. AFSP, the American Federation of Suicide Prevention, could use money to promote their anti-suicide campaign. We should make it our anti-suicide campaign. 

Taking a walk to draw attention to a cause is a nice idea. Good people do this. 

There's something else we must do. We have to counter the forces of death on the Internet. I feel it is a Star Wars mission we're talking about. We are the Jedi. 

If you aren't aware of this, you should know that there are websites that feed vulnerable, depressed kids step by step instructions on how to kill themselves. Here, where we are at this moment, people give advice on how to die. Go ahead. Open a new browser and Google: How can I kill myself? You'll fall off your chair there's so much advice out there. Sites share specs on lethal doses of poisons with anyone who asks for information. I imagine they teach rope knots, too.

This upsets me, that the Internet has become the Wild West, a dangerous place, because I like to shop here. There is nothing quite as amazing as Amazon, or useful as a university database, or Hulu. This is a wonderful place, cyberspace. A few rotten apples. Right? No. The tip of the iceberg.

They have to be shut down.

 Suzy Gonzalez was a child. 

Hear her story.

(CNN) -- Suzanne Gonzales seemed to have everything going for her.

A bubbly 19-year-old with loving parents and good friends, she was also a strong student and earned a science scholarship for college. But everything changed one spring day two years ago, when Suzanne's parents, Mike and Mary Gonzales, received the following e-mail.

"Dear Mom, Dad, and Jennifer, I will make this short as I know. It will be hard to deal with. If you haven't heard by now, I've passed away," the e-mail read 

Suzanne's case has an unusual twist. She frequented an Internet newsgroup called called ASH, short for Alt.Suicide.Holiday.  Members of this news group trade advice on how to commit suicide, using code words like 'transitioning' and 'exiting' and 'catching the bus.' Suzanne found this group nine weeks before she died, posting nearly one hundred messages detailing her plans.

Her parents are grieving, her friends and teachers are, too. And it is clear that Suzy had much to offer. People who are very much still alive who say they've been there and respected her wishes to end her pain, persuaded her to hide away in a Florida hotel room and take cyanide.

They told her exactly how to do it so she would make no mistake. Hers was a copycat suicide. They coached her, told her over recipes to die.

Recipes for suicide.

So yes, THIS has to stop. These websites are taking free speech too far. Throw the perpetrators in jail. Pass stiffer laws. I plan to email my congressman. He writes me to say Mazal Tov! whenever something nice happens in my family. Time he did something more.

Is it possible that bloggers like me, bloggers like you, or just readers with Google circles or Facebook pages, Tweeters, any one of us, might participate or better, start a chain, post the reasons that suicide is a very bad option, all things considered?  I'm not technologically savvy enough to know how to do that, but some of you are.

 Feel free to cut and paste. 

         Why suicide is a bad idea. 
(1) There's an agent for everyone. We have new and better medications. Be patient. There's one coming out at a pharmacy near you soon.

(2) Brain research and the fields of psychology and neurobiology are exploding. There may be a cure for depression, a laser, a surgery, who knows? Think about it. One day, zap. You're better. Things are likely to get sunnier if you wait it out. Study up on these things. Learning anything makes you feel life is worth living, too.

(3) You are not bad, not evil, not the source of all that is wrong in your life, your world, the universe. The world will not be a better place without you, no matter what the relentless, unceasing voices in your head are telling you. This is as wrong as 2 plus 2 equals 1 to think that you MUST do this, totally irrational, the thinking of a sick mind, a mind on psychosis  It's not about you, frankly.

(4) People love you, so you can't do it. You don't have this right, no matter what anyone tells you. People love you and if you believe in God, that Higher Power does, too. She has declared all forms of murder out of bounds, even yours. We don't mess with God, but it's not just God. The people who love you will really, really hurt if you kill yourself. It is one thing to feel pain, quite another to give it to others. Wait because you  probably do have love inside, although it is surely fogged over by disease. But you loved and you will continue to love at least someone, or something, and others love you. Love is ephemeral, holy, and all that is good.. Why lose that?

(5) Tough it out because you are already in the process of change, you can't not change. Our cells change over every day. Our moods can, too. We have so many ways in therapy to accomplish this thing we call affective change. Pay attention. 

(6) Change your therapist if therapy isn't working. This should be obvious, but it isn't. A new set of eyes on you is refreshing. Therapists all get a little boring after awhile.

(7) You haven't even tried aging yet. It's not so bad. Age a little, give life a chance. See what is in your future. It will be better, you'll see. And how can you not want to know the future? Seriously.

(8) There are things that only you can do, no one else can do them, and these things have to be done.

(9) There are things that only you are. Nobody else will be the uncle that you will be, or the aunt, or the mother, the father, the daughter, the son. These are unique jobs, very, very important ones.

(10) We need you. We need a new poster child every year, at least one every year, someone who comes out to the world and tells young people: Wait! It really is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. They weren't kidding! I waited and look at me! My picture is on a bus!

We can't judge people like my friend who moved away and did what he said he would do, as sure as the sky is blue, although his wife always will, or the Matthews, the Suzy Gonzalez's. They really didn't know they had a future.They were convinced, in fact, to the contrary, that life would not get better. But  Suzy scooted around her neighborhood in a plaid skirt and green tennis shoes. And Matthew helped others as soon as he sensed their discomfort. A girl like that, a boy like that, knew how to make others happy. We can't afford to lose kids who suffer from depression. They get happiness on a level that no one else ever will. 

So why then? Why do they do it? Sure there's pain. But I propose that they lost that tiny sliver of affect that kept them alive, the one we think of as love, that very positive emotion. We need it to stay alive, need to love something, someone, and we're not talking romantic love, here, rather a sense of connectedness. Friendship will do. For some, a hobby.

On Suzy's website the people who loved her wrote:

Suzy Gonzales was a bright girl who needed to be reminded of the good things
in life, not encouraged to end it. At the time of her death, Suzy was the 14th confirmed
suicide associated with this particular site, they claim 24 "successes" today.

I'm so sorry for her family, and for Matthew's, and for all of you who have lost someone to suicide.

therapydoc