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Two sides of suicide: Make believe & reality by 40-year-old man I am a 40-year-old man and I have suffered various levels of recurrent depression for 17 years. I have been in and out of therapy for the past 12 years and have attempted suicide 5 times without any success. My current diagnosis is "major depression with psychotic features" and 7 years ago I had a very traumatic event that changed my life and caused me severe anxiety and social withdrawal. I have been seeing mental health professionals regularly for the past 2 years. My current medications are Prozac 20mg 4 times a day, Risperidone 1mg 3 times a day and Lorazepam 1mg 2 tablets at bedtime. I also take Felodipine 10mg once a day for high blood pressure. I have often confessed that life is too much for me and I would be better off dead. Sometimes my thoughts have been so convincing that I attempted suicide; not just once but five different times. Each time I was sure that the only solution to my problems in life was to put an end to it all. Shakespeare's Hamlet said it best "How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem all the uses of this world." After all, there are very few things in life that are known for certain. One is that sooner or later I will die anyway. I told myself that death is a necessary end and nature has arranged things for us all. Little or nothing left to chance, there is one way into life and 1,000 ways out. I kept telling myself that dying voluntarily was the only way to put an end to my insane suffering and the daily agitation that comes from living a life without any meaning. Goethe said "Man is in error throughout his strife" I cannot imagine a more exact phrase to describe my life experience. I do not believe in god or religion. My life has been one big mistake from which nothing of value can come from it. I told myself that I would be doing myself a favor by putting an end to it all. I was so deeply depressed and I believed all of these negative things. However, what I was thinking was not reality it was make believe. My mind was so negative that I was blinded by my own thoughts. My outlook on life was so distorted that I could not even begin to explain things. I felt that I was being perfectly logical, even logical to the point of death. But there was something stronger than all the ills of this world. The body's judgment is better than the minds, and the body shrinks from annihilation. Suicide is not a solution it is eluding, an escape from reason, it is avoiding difficult problems that we have too few skills to try and overcome. Judging whether life is worth living should not be based upon setbacks and frustrations. Everyone has their problems, each of us must develop the skills we need to help cope with our problems. It is true that each year thousands of people die because they judge that life is not worth living. On the other extreme people are getting killed for some ideas, or illusions, that gives them a reason for living (what some call their reason for living is also for others an excellent reason for dying). Just why does one person kill oneself or get killed for the same reasons. Some allowance must be made, some middle ground sought out. Killing yourself is jumping to the conclusion that life is just not worth the struggle. Those who commit suicide give up too soon, they refuse to try and learn from their setbacks. What is there to lose by making your life a little longer? What can you gain? In reality there is no experience to be learned from death because nothing has been experienced but what has been lived and made conscious. The old saying is true "Life is for learning." Top of page Webmaster: wulff@ratatosk.net |