I lost my brother to suicide. The very idea that we should help people to kill themselves rather than love and care for them is anathema to me. I feel profound sorrow that we are moving in this direction.
I feel much the same way. Not a week passed since my last suicide attempt, when I got a job offer for a company I would stay with for seven years, rescuing me from failure.
This account confirms practically every suspicion that one might have about the practice of "assisted suicide": psychological diagnoses that are framed as permanent and impossible to overcome, being all but directly told by a government-run health service to just piss off and die because your continued existence is costing them money, spread through social contagion among young women, etc.
There is already a huge proliferation of people having "mental illnesses" to such an extent that they will happily self-diagnose with all sorts of things, no need to even seek a professional. These people generally exist among a left-wing worldview which teaches them the world is doomed in the near future from climate change (it is already common for people to cite this as a reason not to have children), that their society is on the verge of fascism every time the left loses an election, and that they are helpless victims of impossibly powerful evil systems such as capitalism or patriarchy. When psychological professionals do get involved, we have seen that they are actually quite happy to enable and further destructive social contagions rather than properly combat them, so long as those contagions are seen as politically progressive (see: transgenderism, especially among youth).
It is thus extremely easy to imagine a future in which all of these factors combine to produce a totally unnecessary epidemic of "assisted suicides" among young liberal people, especially young women. This does not need to happen. We can simply choose sanity.
However, the biggest obstacle to choosing sanity here is still the undying devotion to the liberal notion of "freedom." This idea of a "right to suicide" stems from the same "only explicit consent matters, literally anything else goes" mindset which has already legalized and normalized many other forms of self-destructive behavior, such as drug use, pornography and prostitution, widespread casual sex, etc. People who support "assisted suicide" are nigh-guaranteed to support allowing these lesser forms of self-destruction under the same ideology that all of this represents "individual freedom."
From how we are seeing this topic play out, I think it is clear that it is not possible to accept the liberal "total individual freedom" ideology but somehow stop just short of assisted suicide and draw the line there. After all, if it's both legal and moral for me to kill myself slowly with drugs and alcohol, why should it be illegal and immoral to just get it over with quickly?
This is a wonderful essay and deeply astute. I find the proposed Bill terrifying personally and for everyone in this country. I agree that suicide has to remain an impossibility, out of the question. I've had ideation since I was a child and spent four years with a significant chronic illness and disability (used a wheelchair for two years) which made this much worse, because I found it so hard to imagine a life or a future for myself and was terrified I'd never be able to work or have a relationship because of my disability. It wasn't true that I couldn't find love and it shouldn't matter to someone's self-esteem if they are unable to work but these fears cause immense suffering. The compassionate response is to reassure people and to improve mental health services & other NHS provision. In the end, I recovered (after having previously been discharged as a lost cause), and my whole life changed dramatically. I can't bear this talk of disability as burdensome or as worse than death, it's completely abhorrent. We have to insist on life.
I have witnessed my own country, the Netherlands, go down this incredibly slippery slope, so your alarm is absolutely warranted. Yet I always suspected there should be a way to distinguish between those who are terminally ill and will be suffering needlessly for a few extra weeks or months, and those who do still have perspective for a long and bright future. Surely it can’t be that hard to see how one form of euthanasia is dignified and warranted and the other just a display of hopelessness?
I think it is impossible to distinguish legally, partly because diagnosing someone as terminally ill is very difficult and often inaccurate, and partly because once you have allowed assisted suicide for something it is easy for lawyers to make arguments to extend the parameters. Also, as Rose describes, you can run into cases like anorexia, which is very deadly but should obviously not be considered for euthanasia. Charities which support terminally ill people and their families do not advocate for euthanasia, but for better palliative care & better provision of it. It is entirely possible and indeed necessary to ease suffering that way without allowing state sanctioned murder.
In my hometown, the high school saw 2-3 suicides a year for 5 years straight. 3 of them were brothers. Somehow the cycle was broken by the time I entered high school, but I still remember the news every year as my friends and I were approaching those grades. It is so contagious and devastating.
The most hopeful suicide story I can recall is the one involving St. John Vianney:
“A woman told St. John Vianney that she was devastated because her husband had committed suicide. She wanted to approach the great priest but his line often lasted for hours and she could not reach him. She was ready to give up and in a moment of mystical insight that only a great saint can receive, John Vianney exclaimed through the crowd, “He is saved!” The woman was incredulous so the saint repeated, stressing each word, “I tell you he is saved. He is in Purgatory, and you must pray for him. Between the parapet of the bridge and the water he had time to make an act of contrition”
I am not suggesting stopping any medication without proper medical advice. I am not trying to minimize any suffering of others. One thing people don`t consider is that at least antidepressants increase the risk of suicide, specially among children, teens and young adults. Between 2 to 10 fold, depending. There are excellent articles in madinamerica.com about it. Some by Peter Gotszche, but not all. Suicide is a risk of around 10 to 30 people each year, per 100,000 people. It is rare, it is unusual to find several in a group of people. I am guessing, with background information, aware that some biases make more common than probability might suggest to find talks of clusters of suicides. Statistically it happens and that makes it likely to be overrepresented in the discourse: it is way above what average would indicate. But one factor that might contribute is antidepressant medication. Again, reading and talking to a A PHYSICIAN, caring, competent, informed and willing to provide an OPPOSITE view of the current narrative might help. Again, I am not advising medically, nor legally, etc., and antidepressants can`t be stopped abruptly or too suddenly. Thanks.
As someone who suffered severe depression in my early 20s, and felt and acted on multiple occasions that I would be better off dead, I absolutely agree that the best thing is to have strong taboos associated with suicide. It will not stop everyone. It is not outlandish for those in the UK to fear definition creep, given what has happened in Canada and the Netherlands. I enjoyed this. Keep writing and meeting people.
I just read this powerful price after leaning that then Commons passed the first reading of the Bill. So much of your story is too familiar to me as a parent. Long life and courage to you .
I’m afraid that the desire for suicide will have to be suicided out of us. I don’t see the post christian west as being able to fight against this. As has unfortunately been shown in many other countries now.
I lost my brother to suicide. The very idea that we should help people to kill themselves rather than love and care for them is anathema to me. I feel profound sorrow that we are moving in this direction.
I feel much the same way. Not a week passed since my last suicide attempt, when I got a job offer for a company I would stay with for seven years, rescuing me from failure.
We simply cannot fathom what the future holds.
This account confirms practically every suspicion that one might have about the practice of "assisted suicide": psychological diagnoses that are framed as permanent and impossible to overcome, being all but directly told by a government-run health service to just piss off and die because your continued existence is costing them money, spread through social contagion among young women, etc.
There is already a huge proliferation of people having "mental illnesses" to such an extent that they will happily self-diagnose with all sorts of things, no need to even seek a professional. These people generally exist among a left-wing worldview which teaches them the world is doomed in the near future from climate change (it is already common for people to cite this as a reason not to have children), that their society is on the verge of fascism every time the left loses an election, and that they are helpless victims of impossibly powerful evil systems such as capitalism or patriarchy. When psychological professionals do get involved, we have seen that they are actually quite happy to enable and further destructive social contagions rather than properly combat them, so long as those contagions are seen as politically progressive (see: transgenderism, especially among youth).
It is thus extremely easy to imagine a future in which all of these factors combine to produce a totally unnecessary epidemic of "assisted suicides" among young liberal people, especially young women. This does not need to happen. We can simply choose sanity.
However, the biggest obstacle to choosing sanity here is still the undying devotion to the liberal notion of "freedom." This idea of a "right to suicide" stems from the same "only explicit consent matters, literally anything else goes" mindset which has already legalized and normalized many other forms of self-destructive behavior, such as drug use, pornography and prostitution, widespread casual sex, etc. People who support "assisted suicide" are nigh-guaranteed to support allowing these lesser forms of self-destruction under the same ideology that all of this represents "individual freedom."
From how we are seeing this topic play out, I think it is clear that it is not possible to accept the liberal "total individual freedom" ideology but somehow stop just short of assisted suicide and draw the line there. After all, if it's both legal and moral for me to kill myself slowly with drugs and alcohol, why should it be illegal and immoral to just get it over with quickly?
Bingo bango. Although not having a surplus of mentally ill liberal women would almost be worth opening this can of worms with a stick of dynamite.
This is a wonderful essay and deeply astute. I find the proposed Bill terrifying personally and for everyone in this country. I agree that suicide has to remain an impossibility, out of the question. I've had ideation since I was a child and spent four years with a significant chronic illness and disability (used a wheelchair for two years) which made this much worse, because I found it so hard to imagine a life or a future for myself and was terrified I'd never be able to work or have a relationship because of my disability. It wasn't true that I couldn't find love and it shouldn't matter to someone's self-esteem if they are unable to work but these fears cause immense suffering. The compassionate response is to reassure people and to improve mental health services & other NHS provision. In the end, I recovered (after having previously been discharged as a lost cause), and my whole life changed dramatically. I can't bear this talk of disability as burdensome or as worse than death, it's completely abhorrent. We have to insist on life.
I have witnessed my own country, the Netherlands, go down this incredibly slippery slope, so your alarm is absolutely warranted. Yet I always suspected there should be a way to distinguish between those who are terminally ill and will be suffering needlessly for a few extra weeks or months, and those who do still have perspective for a long and bright future. Surely it can’t be that hard to see how one form of euthanasia is dignified and warranted and the other just a display of hopelessness?
I think it is impossible to distinguish legally, partly because diagnosing someone as terminally ill is very difficult and often inaccurate, and partly because once you have allowed assisted suicide for something it is easy for lawyers to make arguments to extend the parameters. Also, as Rose describes, you can run into cases like anorexia, which is very deadly but should obviously not be considered for euthanasia. Charities which support terminally ill people and their families do not advocate for euthanasia, but for better palliative care & better provision of it. It is entirely possible and indeed necessary to ease suffering that way without allowing state sanctioned murder.
In my hometown, the high school saw 2-3 suicides a year for 5 years straight. 3 of them were brothers. Somehow the cycle was broken by the time I entered high school, but I still remember the news every year as my friends and I were approaching those grades. It is so contagious and devastating.
The most hopeful suicide story I can recall is the one involving St. John Vianney:
“A woman told St. John Vianney that she was devastated because her husband had committed suicide. She wanted to approach the great priest but his line often lasted for hours and she could not reach him. She was ready to give up and in a moment of mystical insight that only a great saint can receive, John Vianney exclaimed through the crowd, “He is saved!” The woman was incredulous so the saint repeated, stressing each word, “I tell you he is saved. He is in Purgatory, and you must pray for him. Between the parapet of the bridge and the water he had time to make an act of contrition”
I am not suggesting stopping any medication without proper medical advice. I am not trying to minimize any suffering of others. One thing people don`t consider is that at least antidepressants increase the risk of suicide, specially among children, teens and young adults. Between 2 to 10 fold, depending. There are excellent articles in madinamerica.com about it. Some by Peter Gotszche, but not all. Suicide is a risk of around 10 to 30 people each year, per 100,000 people. It is rare, it is unusual to find several in a group of people. I am guessing, with background information, aware that some biases make more common than probability might suggest to find talks of clusters of suicides. Statistically it happens and that makes it likely to be overrepresented in the discourse: it is way above what average would indicate. But one factor that might contribute is antidepressant medication. Again, reading and talking to a A PHYSICIAN, caring, competent, informed and willing to provide an OPPOSITE view of the current narrative might help. Again, I am not advising medically, nor legally, etc., and antidepressants can`t be stopped abruptly or too suddenly. Thanks.
As someone who suffered severe depression in my early 20s, and felt and acted on multiple occasions that I would be better off dead, I absolutely agree that the best thing is to have strong taboos associated with suicide. It will not stop everyone. It is not outlandish for those in the UK to fear definition creep, given what has happened in Canada and the Netherlands. I enjoyed this. Keep writing and meeting people.
this is a wonderful essay and solidified my doubts about the bill - thank you so much for writing this
I just read this powerful price after leaning that then Commons passed the first reading of the Bill. So much of your story is too familiar to me as a parent. Long life and courage to you .
Spectacular. Relatable. Brought me to tears.
Thank you for sharing this. I pray that this legislation is rejected.
very necessary for me today
I’m afraid that the desire for suicide will have to be suicided out of us. I don’t see the post christian west as being able to fight against this. As has unfortunately been shown in many other countries now.
Excellent
Virtue-signalling pos