Someone I really care about told me the other day that if things don’t get better by the time 2016 gets off and running, that they are going to kill themselves. I most certainly could relate to their anguish not only because I knew what they’ve been through over the past year, but also given what I’ve been through myself during the same period of time with my own battles with physical pain. But as much as my ego has often tried to convince me that suicide is the easiest way out to escape all my pain, I’ve come to realize and accept that it’s not. And although on those high pain-filled days it may seem quite tempting, I received an article not too long ago that gave me yet another reason why this is definitely not something I should ever consider.
The article came from my spiritual teacher and was about a woman who had been going through a very long course of mental and emotional pain herself. One day she decided she had enough of it in her life and took 90 pills to end it all. In her mind, she would just drift off to sleep and that would be that. What she never took into light was the fact that maybe (a) it wasn’t her time, and (b) that the attempt wouldn’t work. And when it didn’t and she came to in a hospital bed, things were far worse. On top of all the existing pain she had tried to escape, her body was now a complete mess with a total upheaval of her entire nervous system. She couldn’t talk without feeling like there were marbles in her mouth, she couldn’t move with ease like she could before the attempt, and about the best she could do once she was released from the hospital was empty the dishwasher on any given day. She said that it was as if she was a prisoner in her own body and knew everything that was going on, but was totally unable to function like she once used to. So not only was she far worse than she was prior to her suicide attempt, she now had a very long road to physical recovery as well. Eventually she did recover, many, many, many years later, through an incredible amount of physical and mental therapies. But looking back, she stated that suicide had been by far the worst choice she could have ever made for herself.
Reading that story in all honesty, scared the crap out of me. I can only imagine what might have happened back in 2011 when I actually did attempt suicide myself. If I hadn’t escaped all those carbon monoxide fumes I was subjecting myself too and somehow stayed within them for prolonged exposure and then lived to tell about it, I too might have been left in a far worse condition than I actually have been in the past few years of my life.
So while I may not currently be in the best state of mind and body, especially over the past year of my life, I know that suicide isn’t the answer, not only because I know my Higher Power has a greater plan for me and not only because I know there are many who truly care about me. Now I have another reason to see that attempting suicide could make things incredibly far worse for myself and take even more years away from the good life I know my Higher Power has planned for me. Thank God for my spiritual teacher sending me that article…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
A fellow here didn’t set *out* to suicide – he just got extraordinarily drunk while he was living out-of-doors in early winter. He was so self-sedated that he didn’t notice that he and his sleeping bag had rolled into his own campfire – and that he literally cooked off his legs and his genitals. He lived, too – for about 24 hours of agony.
My sister was, for 18 years, a pharmacy technician at the hospital in Sylvania, OH, on the night shift. One night, they brought in a fellow who had tried to suicide by drinking a bottle of Draino. The powerful corrosive in Draino destroyed most of his esophagus, his stomach, and both intestines…. but, due to some heroic (some might say, cruel) intervention by the ER staff, he lived. He would be eating, drinking, and eliminating through tubes for the rest of his life – but he lived. If you can call it that.
At an AA meeting in Lenexa, KS, a knock at the back door revealed a woman in a “scooter” with a steering “straw” actuated by blowing, escorted by a nurse. She was paralyzed from the neck down from the injuries from a drunken attempt at suicide by crashing into a concrete bridge support at more than 70 miles an hour. Sadly, she survived, and was now attending AA meetings – to learn how to deal with life, now that she was completely incapable of either drinking by herself or taking her own life, ever again.
My first lover’s suicide was a success – mostly. He had planned to shoot himself in the heart, stopping that muscle once and for all. Instead, he missed and severed his aorta, which allowed him to thrash around on the ground, drowning in his own blood, for somewhere between three and five minutes. I have often speculated on how awful and agonizingly long those last minutes must have felt.
All in all, I’d say these cautionary experiences have kept me from thoughts of suicide for a long, long time. I know that those thoughts still do come, on occasion – but these experiences tend to chase them out of my mind rather rapidly.
For what it’s worth…I understand why those thoughts come, for you and many other people in perpetual pain. I *get* the desire to just “be done with life.” And there may come a time when the alternative becomes valid….not so much suicide but euthanasia.
I just don’t think it’s right now – even though I know it’s a real and powerful struggle, right now.
Wow, great share Steve. Deep incredible things to think about. Thank you so much for sharing these terrible things that happened to people who tried to attempt suicide.