Because of the stance on assisted suicide I must fight for what’s wrong. No one should be born disabled because of the risk that their suffering is unlimited.

I’m not an expert on genetics but from what little I understand there’s no scientific definition of what is genetically a human being and what’s not.

This is not some abstract point because of the advances in genetic screening technology and embryo implantation. It’s not only possible but this technology is being used by those who can afford it to create ‘perfect’ beings.

Those who can access this technology can screen for a wide variety of things from illness to gender. The critical point is that it is being used to select gender but it’s also being used for normalisation. In particular this normalisation is preventing the set of diversity which is described as disability from existing. 

The pervasive use of this technology to create designer babies is one of the great ethical questions of this generation. I have struggled with it and failed until now to come up with what I feel is certainty. This is discussed in the Don’t Exterminate Us tag on this blog.

Let me put it simply. I believe that disabled people are part of natural diversity and should exist. In utopia and in heaven those who are classed as disabled will exist. The principle I’m talking about here is the principle of integrity of disability. 

However my uncertainty spawns from the fact that those who are different are likely to suffer much more and to become suicidal. I’m well aware of the punishment done to those who are too different by human civilisation and I wish I was never born. 

I’ve pretty much left this thought process stuck at this dilemma. I’ve focused on saving myself so I’ve been fighting for my death. The responses I’ve had have made me certain that it’s much better to never be born if you’re too different than live amongst the monsters who call themselves the human race. 

The reason? They believe in unlimited suffering. They do not believe in the right to die. Therefore the disabled are not safe. 

I would die for equality but it’d be no sacrifice because I want to die

If you would die for equality then, perhaps, I wouldn’t want to die.

If you would sacrifice for equality then you would have to help me die because you’d know how I feel and if you did then you’d want to die too.

There’s an inalienable human right to choose how and when one dies.

Human rights frameworks are ever evolving but there’s a constant battle to keep them moving ahead. There’s a never ending war for liberty and equality.

As you’ll gather from the rest of this blog I’m a firm proponent of the right to die. I see the legalisation of assisted suicide as an essential form of mercy. It is humane to provide suicidal individuals control over their death whereas the status quo is both inhumane and tyrannical.

Human rights fight against the control which politicians want to exert over the populous and put control in the hands of individuals. People are free to determine their life decisions and life choices because these freedoms are protected by human rights.

The current suicide system fights against legitimising suicide. It also wants to keep assisted suicide illegal. Suicide is no longer a crime but imprisonment is still used albeit imprisonment in a psychiatric hospital. The suicide system has focused a lot on suicide prevention so even though suicide is decriminalised it has become more and more difficult to use good suicide methods (quick, painless, non violent, reliable). The police will intervene if they’re made aware that anyone has gotten hold of good suicide drugs or other methods of suicide which are purchased online and shipped from overseas.

There is no mercy in these blatant assaults on personal liberty. Those who would help someone to die are considered to be criminals. This bizarre criminalisation is the height of cruelty. It is typical of the absence of humanity which is typified by the objectives and practices of the modern suicide system.

The practices of the modern suicide system lack compassion as well as a basic concept of how terrible the suffering is which precipitates suicidal feelings. No greater good is served because the modern system doesn’t care a whit for preventing suicidal feelings from happening but focuses on stopping suicide attempts from succeeding. This blatant inhumanity is because it doesn’t appreciate how severe the suffering is.

The modern suicide cares nothing about prolonging or worsening the suffering. If it did I’d never need to write another word.

It is as merciless and inhumane as the people that the status quo continue on. This might sound harsh but in the history of human rights is usually a fight between a few opponents and a few proponents. The people benefit or are cursed by whomever wins but their inaction has resulted in things like the atrocities done by the Nazis or the persecution of homosexuals.

Suicidal individuals are persecuted today by a system which refuses to respect the decision to die. The system doesn’t appreciate the suffering which is severe enough to be worth dying to escape or care about worsening it. The suicide system doesn’t care about human rights and basic liberties either. It is wretched and inhumane but it is well supported by politicians and the public alike.

Suicide is a choice and it’s a major decision but the decision is made so the individual can be spared from too great a suffering. A humane response begins with respecting the individual to know what’s too awful for them to live through and it’s an example of the humanity which is wholly absent from this society and culture.

Suicide pain is by definition severe and a humane response is to prioritise the brevity of the suffering even if it is achieved by granting a suicidal individual a good death. The mercy comes from empathy. Evil proliferates because there’s no empathy.

But I am just a slave trying to change the slavers. I can’t fight the tyranny alone. You need to find the empathy in yourselves. Until then the inhumane inhumanity will just keep on going.

Read more about this on my suicide blog.

Suicide digital surveillance and intervention

The technology of modern personal communication creates a lot of positive things for lots of people. Unfortunately it also has some drawbacks and the one I want to talk about here is how personal information in digital systems can be used to prevent suicide.

The prevention of suicide sounds like a good thing but this is a misnomer. Suicide is a valuable solution and a personal choice. Personally I believe that assisted suicide must be legalised and there should be a human right to choose one’s death.

However such views aren’t commonly held. Most of the suicide organisations and experts seem to support the prevention of suicide rather than recognise it is a personal choice. A substantial amount of effort is therefore put in to preventing suicidal individuals from accessing good suicide methods and digital technology provides an excellent way to surveil suicidal individuals to prevent them from killing themselves.

This is technology being used for persecution. I’m sure most technologists don’t see it that way and this ignorance is reinforced by the attitude of the police and healthcare professionals. It’s not thought of as persecution because it is being used to meet what are purported to be ethical objectives.

Suicide is perceived as a symptom of mental illness therefore it is an Irrational choice and vulnerable individuals need to be helped to prevent them from killing themselves. Using Outernet data to protect individuals from succeeding in killing themselves is therefore not persecution but care. Surveillance can also be used to connect suicidal individuals with people to talk to so, again, it’s a caring act to breach personal data privacy to help suicidal individuals get the support they need.

In fact this misuse of technology can make things worse. It is deemed ethical because it serves a mental healthcare objective. But it usurps the individual’s decision. It enforces a tyranny which believes no free individual can choose to kill themselves.

It is unethical to dominate someone’s free will with a view to suppressing their freedom but people in the technology sector aren’t ethicists. They look to other professionals such as mental health professionals to guide them. They especially defer to doctors just like the public do.

The faith in the healthcare profession and its ethics is woefully misguided I’m afraid. Its very foundation is unscientific and the rest is the fruit of a poisonous tree. Simply, the healthcare profession should never have governed the phenomenon of mental illness because mental illness isn’t an illness.

Remember how homosexuality was once a mental illness but is no longer thought of as an illness. It was never caused by a biological brain disease but it has been classed as a mental illness for a few centuries. What’s critical here is the way cultural norms and prejudice are disguised as scientific illnesses. Homosexuality wasn’t demedicalised because of new research which demonstrated there was no biological cause for it. It was demedicalised because cultural values changed.

Then there’s misery and depression. Depression is the medical construct for misery but the meaning of the phenomena are totally different. I think it’s easy to understand that intense or persistent misery are natural human responses but calling it depression changes the sense and masks the truth. Free men experience misery and it’s normal. Sick men have depression and it’s an abnormal, irrational response to life circumstances because it’s thought of as being caused by a brain defect.

If suicide is a rational response and a natural human choice then it’s not an illness. Just like homosexuality. Free men can choose but sick men can’t. Free men can choose suicide but sick minds can’t.

It involves death which is why I’d accept the need to prevent against a mistake made on impulse but this doesn’t mean every suicide is a mistake. But I do see suicide as an acceptable and rational response to too much misery. Extreme suffering, be it physical or psychological pain, can be escaped from if it’s in the present or the future.

That’s why people choose suicide. Suicidal individuals have faced a pain which is to much for them to endure or one they will face in the future.

Suicide pain is by definition very severe because it causes someone to choose suicide and this includes psychological or life pain. It’s so easy to dismiss the validity of severe emotional suffering because of the meanings which the mental illness fallacy casts upon those it calls depressed.

What I’m trying to explain is the trust which an individual deserves when they want to die. Whatever pain they’re suffering and for whatever reason it is always extreme pain when it makes the individual suicidal. I trust in this much more than I trust in anything coming out of the psychiatric profession because I’ve experienced it.

The first time I wanted to die there was a confluence of factors which made me want to die. One of them was a relationship breakup. I fell in love then the relationship ended and I was decimated inside. It’s easy to dismiss this reason for suicide as irrational or illegitimate because most people don’t suffer what I suffer when I lose someone I love from my life. But I feel the suffering intensely. It took me a while to get over it but I fell in love again and when the relationship broke up I suffered even more and for longer than the first time. I wish I’d died the first time because a life without love is as impossible to endure as the years of suicide pain I feel when the person I loved is no longer in my life.

To escape the pain of love lost is a good enough reason to die for me because I’ve felt it and it is awful. It helps me trust other suicidal individuals. The things which make them want to die are undoubtedly different from my reasons but irrespective of the reason the suffering is always extreme when suicide becomes a good solution. People who want to escape what is beyond their threshold of pain then suicide provides the protection from harm that nothing else can.

When you find yourself suffering more than you can handle then you’ll want to die. You might act on impulse or you might spend some time thinking about it. The decision might be the wrong one or the right one but it’s a decision you will make if you suffer too much or fear suffering too much.

Can you empathise yet with a suicidal individual? If you can then you’d respect the decision but if you can’t then it’s easy to try and stop all suicidal individuals from succeeding. You can take away the liberty of a sick mind but not from a free man.

Perhaps there should be a level of protection against an impulsive suicidal act but that’s not the objective of suicide prevention surveillance of personal data. The aim there lacks empathy and respect for personal liberty. Suicide surveillance aims to prevent all suicides and so makes things worse.

If a suicidal individual understands their decision then they should be free to carry it out. I believe they should be granted an assisted suicide.

You might not want me to die. That’s a natural response too. But I don’t want to suffer anymore. If I die then the people who care for me will grieve but I’m sure they’d put the end of my suffering above the prevention of theirs.

The key is to see suicide as rational and trust that the pain is severe. Suicide is ultimately a personal choice. Cultural values haven’t caught up yet but they will then assisted suicide will be legalised. Already there’s a few countries which are leading the way. Till then the folks at Google, Facebook, Apple and the other technology companies need to find their heart and stop the blanket anti suicide policies they have in place.

In conclusion

Stop the persecution. Understand and trust that the suffering which causes suicidal feelings is severe. Don’t make things worse for those who have already suffered too much. Respect the liberty of free men even if you don’t want us to die.

And don’t trust the fallacy of mental health. This system would do anything to prevent a suicidal individual from succeeding but never attempted to even think about how to prevent suicidal feelings from happening. Worse still, the system is based on a lie. If mental illness was a real thing then homosexuality would still be a mental illness and personal private data would be used to persecute homosexuals.

A letter about suicide to a prince (alternative version 5 – another short version)

I sent this.

It will cause more deaths but is more humane. Legalise assisted suicide.

It’s always hard to fight for those freedoms which don’t exist yet. One of the most difficult freedoms is the right to choose one’s death because this will mean more people die. It is like the legalisation of abortion movement in that its opponents call it murder. Proponents call it freedom.

This godforsaken country refuses to legalise assisted suicide. Death isn’t as bad as living through a life which is worse than death. Suicidal individuals make an assessment and they value the escape from suffering now as the most important thing. When you find out what suffering is too much for you to bear then you will make the same decision.

Please consider the legalisation of assisted suicide. It is a merciful act whereas the blanket prevention of assisted suicide is inhumane. Assisted suicide would, if legalised, cause more death but these premature deaths are based on personal decisions to escape from the current or future pain which is beyond the individual’s threshold. They are suffering more than they can endure and suicide will always end their torment. That’s the essence of the rational decision to die. Suicide ends and prevents personal torture.

If the individual needs their pain to end but they’re powerless to stop it then suicide is the mercy which will always work. If you knew their suffering then you’d understand why they’d give up the rest of their existence just to stop suffering today. Each has their own breaking point.

You’d choose suicide if it happened to you. I firmly believe that you would. It’s a rational response to too much pain and misery. Please consider the legalisation of assisted suicide. It represents the mercy I’ve so desperately needed.

A letter about suicide to a prince (alternative version 4 – another short version)

I sent this.

I can’t be happy. If I’d killed myself sooner I’d be better off than I am now. Help me die.

I wanted to be happy but I was miserable. I have tried mental health treatments but it failed. So for over a decade I’ve continued to live and continued to want to die.

I have been suffering too much for too long. Now I pray for my death but never my life. I carve out a wretched existence from the ashes of my ruined life but it is not worth living.

My misery and its constancy are why I want to die. I could not live through the torment a long time ago but things got worse and the variety of treatments I’ve used failed. I am constantly reminded that if I’d succeeded in killing myself a long time ago I’d be better off than I am now. My personal tragedy is all the worse because I failed to kill myself.

There’s nothing to limit my suffering. Except suicide. No laws. No agency. No humanity. Thus I suffer then suffer more. I have wanted to die for a very long time because I did not want to suffer anymore a long time ago. I was never able to choose to be happy and treatment failed. I just want to die.

So I ask you to fight for me and what I need. I need mercy and empathy. I need a legal assisted suicide.

Consider my plight and how you’d react if my torment happened to you. I believe you would want what I want. To be free from the harms and the torment.

Please consider the value of legalising assisted suicide.

A letter about suicide to a prince (alternative version 3)

I have to condense what I need to say into 300 words to submit my message to Prince William. Ugh. The first version which I’ve already published on this blog was 1,500 words. I submitted this.

Some miserable people can’t choose to become happy

I’ve wanted to die for well over a decade. I’ve tried a few different treatments but I continued to want to die.

My current life is a wretched existence and I’d be glad to die so my misery will finally end. I currently take medication, have a social worker and am in contact with the Samaritans. None of this has assuaged my suicidal feelings.

I can’t choose to become happy. I have been stuck in misery because treatment failed to make me happy. Treatment couldn’t even dull my misery enough for me to want to live. My misery is as immutable as my suicidal response. Things have gotten so bad that now I pray for death but I never pray for life. If I could become happy then it would have happened already but nothing has saved me from my personal tragedy.

The only way to end my misery is suicide. If I’d succeeded in killing myself a long time ago I’d be better off than I am now and I would have been spared from so much torment. I carve out this wretched existence from the embers of my ruined life but it is not worth living.

I am powerless to end my suffering or choose to become happy. It’s been like this for a very long time. That’s why I choose suicide but I have failed to succeed. I need help to die.

So please think about my plight when you think about suicide. I wish assisted suicide was legal. I’d like you to consider the possibility of its legalisation.

Assisted suicide is a merciful act. It could end my suffering when nothing else can and it would spare me from more torment. My tragedy ends when I die.

A letter about suicide to a prince (version 1)

I’m writing this post in response to Prince William and his comments about suicide here. It’s too long to fit in the space for comments on the Prince’s site. It also needs editing. I’m not going to send this version.

Some miserable people can’t choose to become happy and talking doesn’t help (being alive shouldn’t feel like punishment)

It’s great to see someone of your stature taking an interest in suicide issues. I have some views which I think you should hear.

First of all let me explain that I’ve been in touch with the Samaritans quite recently. I’m afraid their responses made me feel more alone. I also am in touch with mental health services. I have a social worker and I take medication.

I’ve spent over a decade wanting to die. The attempts I’ve made have failed so I’ve kept on suffering though I’m desperate for it to end. My personal experience has informed me of a lot a out suicide.

For example, you obviously understand that it’s misery which causes a lot of suicidal feelings. There’s also the avoidance of extreme suffering which also motivates individuals to choose suicide.

There’s no panacea for this. Talking and opening up definitely helps some people but it doesn’t help every suicidal individual stop being suicidal. I’ve tried a variety of talking therapies and drug treatments. Some have helped but most haven’t.

It’s important to recognise that drugs and talking don’t work for everyone. There are lots of miserable people who would be glad to be happy again but it doesn’t happen. The little hope there is that treatment will work turns out to be false for some people. There are those who still want to die after getting the issues off their chest.

The important question is what happens to people like me who don’t respond to treatment and are just left feeling suicidal till they kill themselves. Are they meant to be strong and keep on living? Or should those who care for them be strong and accept that suicide is their choice which should be fulfilled?

Living while wanting to die is a profound form of torment. The expectation is that those for whom treatment fails must just keep on living no matter how bad life is or they kill themselves on their own. Neither is a humane option but they are the expectations which are held in modern Britain.

I wish I had the right words to make you understand how bad this status quo is. Suicide is caused by a desperate need to escape severe suffering. It is a deeply personal suffering but it is severe because it causes the state of desperation to end the suffering which causes suicidal feelings. It is also a state of powerlessness because the individual has no choice to escape their suffering but through suicide.

The sense of desperation and powerlessness are, in my experience, poorly assuaged by mental health treatment. I have no doubt that treatment does work for a lot of people and I’m sure some people benefit from getting it off their chest but I ask you again, what happens to those who find these options don’t work and they still want to die. As the title suggests there are those who can’t have their choice to become happy again fulfilled.

I’ve spent such a long time in this state of perpetual unfulfilled suicidal ideation. It is literally a fate worse than death. I believe it is inhumane to tolerate such prolonged and profound suffering but once treatments fail then the individual will suffer an inhumane response.

At this stage I believe a humane response is to give the suicidal individual what they want. A miserable person should be able to choose a sanctified suicide. Some suicidal individuals will choose to stay strong and not choose to die but there are others such as myself who need others to be strong enough to let us go.

A typical psychiatric response to the situation faced by suicidal individuals who remain suicidal after treatment would be to suggest further trials of treatment and a protocol for treating treatment resistant suicidal ideation. The suggestion may have merit but can you imagine how it would feel going through treatment trial after treatment trial but still desperately wanting to die?

The psychiatric response isn’t always a humane response, for example they confine suicidal individuals in psychiatric wards which are, in my personal experience, awful environments. Confinement is a punishment used on criminals and on suicidal individuals. The psychiatric response and the risk of confinement keep suicidal individuals from engaging with the mental health system. It can also make their suffering worse.

I believe it’s essential that suicidal individuals shouldn’t suffer more harm. This is pretty basic but it’s not applied or appreciated. It’s important to recognise the severity of the suffering by the fact that it causes an individual to be willing to give up the rest of their existence so their suffering stops now. Some people reach this point quickly and can act on impulse but there are others who have made a thought out decision to die. Both types are responding to extreme suffering.

I don’t think it’s fully appreciated that it is extreme suffering which drives suicidal feelings. People too easily focus on the legitimacy of the reason for suicide. Let me illustrate. Look at this link which contains personal experiences of people who want to die. As you read it I expect you’ll make judgements about the validity of the reason why the suicidal individual wants to be killed. I consider myself quite libertarian but I found myself making such judgements about what I felt was legitimate. But for the person who put their life pain on the site it causes them extreme suffering.

For example, some people want to die because they’ve lost someone they love. This might not seem like a source of severe suffering but it is for some people. You might be able to survive losing that which you love but I experience the pain very strongly. It can make me suffer for years and it has made me want to die in the past. Perhaps you experienced such extreme suffering when your mother died? Imagine if that pain hit you again and again then kept on going.

What I’m trying to say is that the pain was extreme as I experienced it and I was totally powerless to stop the pain. My pain isn’t caused from the same things as cause your pain but when it causes either of us to choose suicide then it is extremely painful. We can both endure certain things but we have a limit to what we can endure and when it’s surpassed is when suicide becomes a good solution.

My views on suicide are starkly different from the mental health mainstream in how I see the suffering of suicidal individuals. It is extreme suffering which no one should endure for any length of time. I see the state of mind where someone is just stuck wishing they were dead is one which no one should be left to languish in. This is the key point which I wish I could make you understand. (And that their suffering must never be worsened by the practices of the suicide system.)

Yet the expectation is that I should remain in suffering for a very long time. This expectation is inhumane. It’s not the only inhumane suicide related thing which is acceptable in modern Britain but needs to change but it’s as necessary as all the other improvements which will create a humane response for suicidal individuals. The real substance of the recognition of the extreme severity of suicide pain is in the motivation to legalise assisted suicide.

I believe that acknowledging the severity of the pain is necessary to begin a meaningful effort to spare individuals from such pain and painful circumstances. This requires more than the legalisation of assisted suicide but this is what is most relevant for me. I cannot become happy and the misery I experience now I would trade the rest of my existence so I could be spared from it today. Assisted suicide is the humane response and it’s the only solution which could have prevented me from suffering so much had I succeeded in killing myself a very long time ago.

Assisted suicide is a merciful act. It is the way to end too much misery which always works. Treatments do work for some people but they’re not universally effective nor will they ever be.

What I can’t accept is what I’ve been through and I wish I could make you understand. There’s been so much misery for so long. I’m just left to languish in a torment I’d chosen to die to escape from long ago. Day after day I wish I was dead but I’m still stuck alive and there’s nothing worth living for. I definitely can’t choose to become happy. Instead I can’t choose to end the pain that destroyed my will to live so long ago. Everyday I want to stop being so miserable but the only hope I have is assisted suicide.

Be strong for me and let me go. It’s what you’d want if it happened to you. I can’t choose to become happy. I’ve been miserable for too long. I can’t fight the misery and I can’t live such a miserable existence.

There is a basic human right to choose one’s death whenever possible

Between it becoming recognised in law is an evil tyranny.

You can choose to be part of the tyranny or you can choose to do nothing. This is what I’d expect from members of an evil human race which I’ve come to loathe and despise.

You can’t choose to be part of the fight for liberty because you’re evil at your core. I hope you die slowly and painfully. I hope you beg and pray for death but it never comes. I hope you can’t escape the living hell your life becomes.

Only then will you know what you’re fighting for: something which will matter to you one day. Something you will want guaranteed for you: the final mercy.

But you won’t fight for it today. You won’t fight for me and what I want. You’ll continue living your feckless lives and leave me to suffer.

I want to die and it is my right. I want a good death. I need an assisted suicide.

Death saves. You don’t.