There also is a vanity issue involved as well. I enjoy looking youthful and healthy per a good diet and exercise regimen. However past a certain age no matter what one does the deterioration will still hit.

And I would rather go out still youthful and kicking that to just hang around until I can barely do for myself anymore.

As mentioned in the article suicide is one of the ultimate freedoms. To choose one’s own end. And if you look at some spiritual beliefs and even some societal mores people oppose it because they think you owe some deity or others something.

As my grandfather, father, and uncles told me “The world owes me nothing.” So to me that means that I owe the world nothing either.

Shame on those who prosecuted Dr. Kevorkian. Mouth breathing degenerate hairless apes.

You may want to review Maslow’s Hierachy of Needs.

What does one have to look forward to: every day you look in the mirror and every day you are uglier. This is a world for the young; not the old. Even if you are vigorous and in good health at a certain age it is highly unlikely that you a going to find a companion. Who wants a relationship with another old person anyway. One ugly face looking into another ugly face.

It is simple mathematics! The odds of more suffering greatly outweigh the chance of finding happiness; assuming that you believe happiness can be found in old age. And don’t give me any pious talk about a Higher Power and the Life Hereafter. If there is one, I am sure I will suffer there as I have all of my life. That must be the way “GOD” wants it. HE must enjoy watching people suffer.

Hopefully one day a person can go somewhere and receive a guaranteed merciful death when they choose without having to have a terminal illness.

The rest of us just have to make do with self inflicted methods and hope we succeed.

Society has a stake in keeping suicidal people alive not because it has the best interests of the suicidal at heart (if they did they would allow euthanasia in case of unbearable and unmedicable suffering no matter the variety) but because the very topic of suicide is one of the last taboos in the modern world and it invokes blind & irrational fear in people’s hearts: both because it reminds them of the inevitability of death (the same reason why the elderly and the sick are segregated from so called normal and healthy people) and the very real possibility life can become so bad the natural instinct of self-preservation gets overwritten and death (while still feared in most cases) becomes desirable as a means to an end. The prospect of grave suffering, misfortune, the malice of others, the absence of objective values or objective meaning to life is indeed ghastly and people generally do not want to be reminded of how their lives are subject to change and chance (what you have today you may lose tomorrow, in the blink of an eye all one’s hopes, dreams and prospects may be shattered) and how they are building on quicksand, with death as an ever present and inescapable certainty.

People commit suicide, not because they are mentally ill (even if they were this does not preclude rational thinking and sound decision making), but because they suffer unbearably (be it mentally or physically) and they have exhausted the means of alleviating that suffering and correcting unacceptable life-conditions. No one rushes into his death without good cause since thousands of years of evolution have instilled in us the will to live and nothing but the greatest misery, abject suffering and complete loss of hope will impel us to bravely overcome the greatest resistance and seek our own deliverance. Thinking about death and wishing one’s own demise is not a symptom of a mental illness but of very grave suffering and it’s perfectly normal in certain, suprisingly common, situations (make the circumstances in which one has to live sufficiently bad and nearly everyone will take their own life). With the amount of suffering in the world it’s a miracle no more than one million people commit suicide each year and as Camus stated ‘all healthy men have thought of their own suicide’, a variant of this would be Cesare Pavese’s ‘no one ever lacks a good reason for suicide’. I’m fairly certain almost everyone of us has had moments in which we contemplated death and said to ourselves we’d be better off dead (indeed a very strange strong case could be made here, even for all of mankind and not just individual cases), how then could the same action be called pathological and a sure sign of an illness (which can’t even be proven empirically and defined properly: when we ask what depression is we get the answer it’s the presence of a persistently low mood while one of the key symptoms is persistently low mood, when we ask what the sickness is that affects the brain causing this persistently low mood we get some vague, incoherent mumbling about serotonine). In short: suicide is a moral issue, not a medical one.

We as a humane society shouldn’t be prolonging people’s suffering and keeping them here at all costs (even to our own humanity and morality) when its clear their limits have been reached and their will to live exhausted. If anything (given the notion that suffering is necessarily bad and the immorality of allowing suffering to exist when you can do something about it) we should help them achieve a good and soft death by ensuring they don’t have to be sneaky about it (by allowing them to say goodbye to their loved-ones, getting their affairs in order without being hassled and clearly explaining their motivation much of the suffering, guilt and doubt of the family would be removed), taking away the chance of failure and even more horrible consequences (permanent disability, disfigurement) and by soothing the pain and fear from which they’ve already had more than their fair share) that usually accompanies death. Herodotos informs of the custom of state-approved suicide on the island of Cos: when a person wanted to die he could inform the leaders of the state and if he could make a coherent case he would receive the cup of hemlock from the hands of the highest magistrate himself. If such a humane and perfectly rational modus operandi was possible in ancient Greece why wouldn’t it be possible here? This will not cause the disintegration of society, massive depopulation or steep decline in morals but what it will do is ensure for everyone a decent chance at happiness and protection against unnecessary and hopeless suffering which is an evil by all accounts.

“Would a rose by any other name not smell as sweet?” If imprisonment were to be called by any other name would it be less punitive and degrading? Psychiatrists are lucky a lot if not most of their patients are so messed up mentally they forego their rights and don’t press charges against them or many a career would be cut short. Surely no judge worth his or her salt will cast aside one of the most fundamental principles in the legal system and the constitution. So called mentally ill people, especially those wanting to commit suicide, are worse off than criminals since they have fewer rights (committed psychiatric patients have about the same legal status as minors) and are basically left at the mercy of their attending psychiatrist and the folly of society as a whole. While you can’t be arrested for thinking about committing a crime (murder, theft…), suicidal ideation is apparently enough to rob people of their liberty and lock them up against their will. In physical medicine treatment cannot be forced upon you, in psychiatry it doesn’t matter what you think or want as long as someone with a medical degree signs off on a paper declaring you unsound of mind. Surely I’m not the only one who has a serious problem with this?

Why should there be an intervention if you intent to hurt yourself but not others? Lets compare suicide with alcoholism: the law does not forbid alcoholism in itself (you have the right to drink yourself stupid every night if you so wish) but the police will arrest you if you drive drunk, hit your wife or cause a ruckus in public while under the influence. Clearly if you pose a danger to others society has the right to neutralize that danger as long as it happens according to the relevant law, however the law explicitly recognizes individual autonomy (one of the most basic rights of all) and your liberty to do as you please as long as it does not harm others. You can’t have it both ways: either you grant people liberty and allow them freedom of choice even when they do something you absolutely abhor or you deny them their liberty and attempt to control every sort of behaviour that is deemed unacceptable. The liberty to do as you please as long as it’s within the norms and values of a certain system (far beyond merely respecting the rights of others) is not liberty but slavery: in that sense even citizens of the Third Reich were free, at least as long as they did what they were told and didn’t oppose the regime in any way. Clearly this is rather absurd. In Soviet Russia political protesters and critics of the regime were regularly committed to psychiatric hospitals and detained against their will, drugged or electrocuted until they were ‘cured’ (that is conformed to the political status quo and gave up their cause and ‘subversive ideas’). How does that differ from the current practice of locking up, drugging and applying ECT to would be suicides? In both cases behaviour and in so far as that’s possible convictions and opinions were modified through punitive measures, incarceration and the forced administration of mind-altering drugs or invasive physical therapies. This is hardly compatible with the notion of individual freedom and human dignity.

Somewhere over the rainbow- skies
are blue
and the dreams
that you dare to dream
really do come true

Someday I’ll wish upon a star
and wake up
where the clouds are far behind me
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
away above the chimney tops
that’s where you’ll find me

(Instrumental)

Someday I’ll wish upon a star
and wake up
where the clouds are far behind me
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
away above the chimney tops
that’s where you’ll find me

Somewhere over the rainbow
skies are blue
and the dreams…that you dare to dream
really do come true
If happy little bluebirds fly
above the rainbow, why
Oh, why can’t I?

In some contexts murder is ‘understandable’ (rage) and can even be considered ‘rational’ (self defence) – yet it does not make it a desirable thing.

I’m 40 and have no chronic illnesses. My suicide now would not be ‘understandable’. I have no intention of it either.
However, I can at this moment in time say that I can foresee circumstances in which I would prefer to die than to go on living. The fine points aren’t there – but generally speaking; being a burden to others, chronic physical or emotional pain and a general sense of the ongoing torment of hope outweighing the likely suffering in the wait.

If those circumstances are met and I will address the fine points as they need to be. If I then complete suicide – being of rational and uninfluenced mind at this time where I have already set out this process of determination – could such an action be considered rational?

I also find it of great interest that Kohlberg, the grandfather of moral reasoning and presumably highly rational, should end his life by walking into the sea.

MF comments above that “suicide is legal.” This is true in a limited sense – suicide itself is not punished criminally. But, interestingly, suicide is the only non-criminal act that can be prevented by force. It is the only non-criminal act the assisting of which is a crime. And, most importantly, the only humane means of death – overdose of barbiturates – is illegal (unless prescribed). Legal methods (gunshot, hanging, opening an artery) are painful and likely to result in injury and horrors – they are considered too cruel for even convicted murderers or animals. These factors together function as a de facto suicide prohibition.