January 15, 2009

Calling the Samaritans

My psychologist ordered me to stop writing in this journal, and I did for a while. But I have moved away from the town where I saw her and the primal instinct to write (communicate) reasserts itself. Even if I am only communicating with myself.

I think constantly about death, which is why I started this journal in the first place. When I was between the ages of 18 and 1991, I used to call the Samaritans nightly, because I was afraid that my depression (depressive thoughts?) would overwhelm me and I wouldn't be able or willing to make it to work the following day.

In addition, I desperately needed someone to talk with openly about my suicidal thoughts, without fear that they would call the police or a hospital. (If I told them that I had acted on my thoughts or imminently would, they would have called the police or a hospital.)

I did get some relief from those calls, sharing my deepest insecurities and worries. Once, I even found a girlfriend by calling a Samaritan-like group. The more I told the woman on the other end of the line about myself, the more she told me I deserved a hug, a kiss . . . some physical intimacy. I challenged her to make good on her observation and she did, in my bed, over and over again, throughout a period of months.

It wasn't the worse that could happen. I only regret that she smoked and her mouth tasted like an ashtray. But she was a good and loyal friend - the one who first observed that I was not really capable of taking care of myself, judging by my physical environment. She was prescient.

Today, I would not call the Samaritans, because . . . I am not interested in perpetuating my life. I would not call the Samaritans because I've been there and done that, literally hundreds of times. I would not call the Samaritans because the valuable solutions they propose are ones that I have tried, over and over again.

Maybe I should call the Samaritans, instead of asking my barber to slit my throat with a his straight razor, and telling my closest friends about my fantasy plan to cut off my head with a gas-fired chainsaw.

I've tried taking a bunch of pills, but it only led to short hospital stays that solved nothing at all. Today, sometimes I fill my mouth with pills simply out of frustration, but I know they will have barely more effect than the normal prescribed dosage. For those who really want to die, I recommend reading "Final Exit" by Derek Humphrey, because the book provides a recipe for a drug cocktail known to be lethal. The Assisted Suicide Blog quotes Derek Humphrey as saying in that book,

‘Knowing how to die well not only makes life more enjoyable but ensures that it is more endurable towards the inevitable end.’

There's something philosophical and practical that I'd like to say about suicide, based on four decades of experience: It is not enough to not want to be alive, e.g., 'I don't want to live.' In order to die, one must take affirmative steps to stop the life that lives in one's body. Otherwise that life will live on virtually endlessly. It is not enough to not want to live, or to "wish" one were dead, because wishes have no effect on the physical world unless they are acted upon.

To die, one must take affirmative and effective steps, such as hanging oneself when there is no one around to intervene, or shooting oneself in the head while sitting on a pier, where one will die of drowning if not of the gunshot alone. "If wishes were horses then beggars would ride." Wishes cannot kill someone. Only action can.

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