Suicide

Note: I started writing this right after a Freakonomics episode broadcast, which is no longer timely, and never published it because the conclusion I came to seemed unflattering to my friend who committed suicide. I still don't know what happened to him. We hadn't spoken in years, not for any reason in particular. I remember him fondly, but ultimately, if you're in pain, you have to choose to reach out, and he never did to me. This post isn't about him. Just my own thoughts on suicide.

My best friend from the fifth grade committed suicide a while ago. The Freakonomics podcast has also somewhat recently rebroadcast an episode about suicide. I've struggled in the past with depression and suicidal thoughts, but I don't know if I've ever really written about it, so this seems like as good a time as any.

In the episode they talk about the apparent paradox of the rate of suicide increasing with quality of life.

STEPHEN DUBNER: Remember the point Steve Levitt made earlier in show – how puzzling it is that people whose lives look so hard don’t kill themselves in huge numbers? Remember the Piraha, the Amazonian tribe with their outrageous rates of infant mortality and malaria – but no suicide? Or African Americans, who trail white Americans on just about every meaningful socioeconomic dimension – but commit suicide half as often?

DAVID LESTER: Actually, I’ve done studies on the quality of life in nations and the quality of life in the different states in America. And regions with a higher quality of life have a higher suicide rate. Now, quality of life is more than wealth. The people who try and rate the quality of life use a variety of indices: health, education, culture, geography, all kinds of things. So they put more into it than just median family income, or individual per capita income.

They also mention statistics about the rate going up for the elderly, and how people may make a seemingly rational economic decision about whether the fear of living is greater than the fear of death.

I don't know if the people who study these things are just very divorced from the impulse, and can't empathize, or maybe what I think I understand about it is unusual or off the mark, but it seems to me to be a fundamental misunderstanding of why a person might want to end their life.

There are extreme cases, where corporal suffering can be so severe as to drive people to suicide. e.g. Crystal met a guy at physical therapy who had some kind of nerve disorder that made any sensation painful, and the suicide rate for people with that disorder is close to 100%. But this is rare. Normal poverty, normal disease, where daily joy comes with daily suffering, I think, wouldn't be enough to make people even think about suicide.

There's a scene in Mr. Robot that seems more on point. Like it was written by someone who's been there. Parts of it almost word for word the internal monologue I'd have sometimes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wgJ3IyVEdM

Think about it Bill ... If you died, would anyone care? Would they really care? Maybe they’d cry for a day, but let’s be honest. No one would give a shit. They wouldn’t. The few people that would feel obligated to go to your funeral would probably be annoyed, and leave as soon as possible. That’s who you are. That’s what you are. You’re nothing to anyone. To everyone. Think about it, Bill, cause if you do, if you let yourself, you'll know I’m telling you the truth, so instead of wasting any more of my time, I need you to go call someone that matters, because, Bill, you don’t.

Quality of life can be incredibly low, and people will drive through it, if they feel like it matters whether or not they do. People living in poverty have little by way of resources besides each other. They need each other. Need is a powerful thing, and feeling needed is a powerful thing.

Increase quality of life, and what happens? You have access to more infrastructure, services, goods, tools, experts. If you have enough money, you don't have to rely on your family, or your neighbors for help. You just pay for help. If you die, the same money will take care of your heirs, as it took care of you: Impersonally. You get to be comfortable, but at the end of the day, how much does that matter? If people don't need you, don't depend on you, the person, how much do you matter?

I've struggled with depression, been tempted by suicide. It's never been because I wasn't having enough fun, or I had no money, or I had to eat a poor person's diet, or I didn't have a soft bed, or I was struggling or failing to accomplish something.

When times are hard, you find ways to laugh. Food is food. Creature comforts are overrated. I'm big on learning something from failing and trying again.

Struggling with depression, for me, has always been because of feeling unloved, or insignificant to people. Sometimes to a specific person. At times feeling like no one could really love me, because I felt like I lacked a sufficient core. Sufficient self interest.

Feeling that core aspects of your personality make you fundamentally unloveable is miserable. It feels hopeless in a way that very few physical circumstances can feel hopeless.

Ultimately, I didn't shake that idea for a good while, but I chose to focus on debt, and once I'd framed things that way, I've never considered suicide since.

Motivated by real love or not, people in my life had helped me. Given me their time, offered hospitality, listened to my problems, offered encouragement, advice and wisdom. These are all investments in a person's well being, and even if you think of yourself as worthless, these things give you worth. Killing myself would be spitting in the faces of everyone who'd ever shown me kindness, and I could tolerate just about anything before I could tolerate that.