Atila's Student Blog

Re: On Suicidality

Runaway

Once when I was very young, I decided to run away from home. At the time my family situation was probably fine. And yet, at some point I decided to sneak out at night and never come back.

It wasn't because I hated my parents. It was more because I believed that they'd be better off without me.

They caught me of course, I wasn't at all sneaky enough.

It's been a pervasive thought in my head, that the world would be better without me because I provide no value to anyone.

Passive Suicidal Ideation

For a very long time, i've thought about killing myself.
In my youth as I've said before, I tried to kill myself with a butter knife which was ineffective.
I still thought about it,

maybe today I'll jump in front of that car. etc...

I can see now that I probably would have failed and been worse off.

Methods

When I was younger, the most suitable methods I could come up with when it came to ending my own life was starvation, stabbing or death by motor vehicle.
Starvation was probably impossible, as I've found out. Your body does not want you to die.

If you have any access to food or water, you will eventually be overcome with an ravenous, primitive desire to eat and drink anything in your path. You will eventually cave. And will then have put yourself through days and days of this for nothing.

Stabbing would also probably not be possible.
This method is often sought out by people who have seen it in movies or TV shows. It should not be considered a method, as it is only in these shows to play it up for the movies. With a success rate of ~1-4%, the odds are the opposite of in your favor. While they make it seem like you can take a razor blade to the wrist and peacefully slip into unconsciousness in the bathtub, in reality it is nothing like that. The human body is wired to not be able to harm itself in this way. In order to die from blood loss you would have to cut an artery. The arteries are meticulously located beneath several layer of muscle, tendons, and other tissues. They are not meant to be cut, especially not on purpose. Even with wonderful understanding of anatomy, such as healthcare workers, you would have a very, very poor chance of reaching them unless you were in a state of psychosis. If you attempted to, you would find yourself halfway there before realizing you mentally and physically cannot get yourself to go any further. Your mind will stop you without you having any control over it. Many people argue that if they get drunk or high beforehand they will be able to overcome it, however this would impair your ability to properly locate and cut to the arteries. The biggest risk with this method is permanent nerve damage to whatever area you attempt to cut. Depending on how deep you get before aborting, you may end up with severe scarring and potentially anemia or other blood loss related conditions.

In terms of methods, I've considered these when I became older. There was Sodium Nitrite and Carbon Monoxide.

Sodium Nitrite

While SN was initially appealing, it's use seemed confusing and I got many different answers. It might not even be guaranteed.
However, there seem to be no downsides to being saved.

Carbon Monoxide

CO was the first contender and the longest held.
Its pros were that it shouldn't be too painful.
Its cons were that it takes quite a while, maybe 1 - 5 hours and you can't be disturbed and if you fail than that's a problem.

Jumping

A very well known method.

Pros

Cons

Hanging

This is the most recent method that I initially blew off, but looking at it's pros has really changed my mind.

Pros

Cons

Closing Thoughts

Suicidal Ideation is annoying because at least for me, death is scary.
I think that writing this post has done me good, to truly walk through my current options and get these thoughts out of my head, so that when they pop up I can say to them that they'll be a fine addition to my blog.

There have been times when my mental "state" has been a lot worse than it is right now, by reading through the experiences of others I got through it.

The only people who i've told about this in real life have been my close friends, but with only them as support my life path may have been different.
When I was younger I never talked to anyone about this because I was scared that they'd make assumptions. Now I can convey my feelings in a way that should be understandable so I might reach out to official lines of help soon.

Inspirations

ReedyBear's original post on the topic and the archive of that post