Suicide

Two more celebrity suicides, Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade, leading to another national discussion of causes and prevention, another national fear that it might lead to a contagion of suicides. According to CBS news, suicides are up by nearly 30% over the last two decades. Why? And what can be done to bring that number down? I must confess that the national concern over suicides has always confused me. All right, I can understand but disagree with a religious view of suicide as immoral. But should all suicides be considered immoral? Aren’t there several valid reasons for wanting to end one’s life, like intolerable pain or terminal cancer or one of the incurable, progressive ailments such as ALS, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, MS, or Parkinson’s?

The age of those who attempt suicide should also be considered as well as the reasons for such an attempt. If the reason is mental illness or depression, suicide by those of any age is unacceptable. Mental illness and depression can be alleviated by therapy and drugs. The line between acceptable and unacceptable can depend on age, with acceptance rising with rising age. I’ve always thought that an unacceptable quality of life is a legitimate reason to consider suicide. The line between acceptable and unacceptable quality of life would vary considerably from one person to another. I’m eight-four years old and I often think about what is or isn’t acceptable. Am I planning to kill myself? No. Is it all right for me to think about death and suicide? Yes. Thinking doesn’t lead to acting.

Back to my original statement. I’m confused by the many different attitudes toward suicide. Certainly there is shock and despair over a suicide, just as there is for almost any sudden, unexpected death. But why should suicide be considered sinful or selfish?

Lately, I’ve thought about the methods for killing oneself. Many are bloody and gruesome and painfully shocking for those who discover the body, as for example, a gun to the head, as when Ernest Hemingway put a shotgun in his mouth. A leap from a tall building or bridge prompts frightening images, but a jump from a cruise ship, as Hart Crane did, is less traumatic, as is carbon monoxide in a closed car or head in a gas oven, as Sylvia Plath chose. A speeding car over a cliff or into a concrete abutment is violent and awful to consider. Strangulation by hanging or death by slit wrists is less violent but equally awful. Then there are the quiet methods: a heated car in an Arizona summer, a stroll into a raging South Dakota winter blizzard, a one-way swim out into the Pacific Ocean, a hunger strike, a lethal injection, or finally, the easiest and most accessible method—the drug overdose.

What exactly would prompt me to look for some way out of a life that I no longer consider acceptable? Ever poorer health (though not terminal), less and less to look forward to, a steadily narrowing of my physical world, the passing of more and more friends and relatives, and fewer and fewer activities that interest me. I’m not yet at the end of that string of reasons, but I get closer with every passing day.