I Am Disgusted With Tegretol

A week or two ago, I began taking 150 mg of Tegretol, increasing the dosage from 50 mg, in the hopes that my moods would stop swinging like a pendulum. At first, I thought the drug was having the desired effect, but now I suspect that I was merely on an upswing at the time that I began taking the drug.

Let me tell you something, if you are considering suicide, based on no personal experience. If you really want to drug yourself to death, you're going to need a medication that doesn't mix with alcohol, some strong alcohol in lethal doses, and an anti-emetic, so that you don't barf up all that you have taken, which would be the normal course of events. I once bought half a gallon of whiskey with the intention of following through with this, but I lacked the courage or determination, or something. That was fifteen years ago, and I'm still alive because I have taken no definitive and affirmative action to die.

Massive quantities of drugs and alcohol taken together have been known to kill quite a number of famous actors and musicians:

death followed a night of hard partying that had involved beer, champagne, barbiturates, cocaine and finally morphine. This combination caused his throat muscles to constrict severely and he suffocated throughout the course of the night. Wikipedia: Tommy Bolin

Driving a car eighty miles an hour with one's eyes closed doesn't count, nor does driving eighty miles per hour on black-iced roads. Those are merely games, which kill some, leave some crippled, and are unreliable methods. The fact remains that the most lethal suicide methods are firearms and suffocation (hanging), in that order. A Brown University study found:

From January 1990 to December 1997, among individuals 10 years or older in the state of Illinois, there were 37 352 hospital admissions for para-suicide and 10 287 completed suicides. Firearms are the most lethal suicide method. Episodes involving firearms are 2.6 times (95% CI 2.1 to 3.1) more lethal than those involving suffocation—the second most lethal suicide method. Preventing access to firearms can reduce the proportion of fatal firearms related suicides by 32% among minors, and 6.5% among adults. Lethality of firearms relative to other suicide methods: a population based study.

A friend who may be required to carry a gun asked me if I would be comfortable with a gun in the house. I didn't respond because I think I might be happy with a gun in the house, knowing that the experience that I so dislike so much of the time could be over in the pull of a trigger. Parents should keep guns in the house, the bigger the better, otherwise their children may have no means to kill themselves when the need arises.