Euthanasia: dogs and disability

The divide which is drawn towards mercy killing for animals and people which dictates the legality of the former but not the latter is bizarre to me. Why? Surely a person driven to feeling suicidal – the pit of despair and hopelessness – is orders of magnitude worse than what pain an animal feels. We have a wider set of sensory experiences and a higher cognitive framework to our lives compared to animals. This has a wide gamut but for some there are worse experiences. The disability factor – which can be very high for serious mental health problem – embedded in prognosis associated with mental health labels is a prediction of a worse life with fewer good experiences and significant distress. This is worse for a human than a dog because we’re different

In short, our ‘specialness’ which underpins the sanctity of life principle but it can also underpin the factors which make our pain so much worse than for animals. We have a higher set of experiences and profound suffering. We have greater needs than animals too but since this isn’t realised mean people are unhappy with their lived. Sometimes this is what’s overtly given as a reason where assisted suicide is legal for all. It doesn’t encompass the awfulness which drives conscious beings to suicide. Suicide is a product of too much pain (I have so much) which drives people like me to want to die.

Sadly, there are no solutions either and tens of thousands of people try to kill themselves every year. They’re trying to escape a shit life and “shit” in ways an animal couldn’t feel. This higher capability is a source for sanctity of life but it also explains the difference of the manifestations of pain. Humans can hurt in profound ways which animals can’t but the sanctity of life principles allow a way out from the pain…but not for people? Our difference from animals is the source of wonder and happiness but it can also be a terrible ordeal which is worse than for animals.

It is a higher but more obvious mercy killing if people truly understood and appreciated the nature of suicides by the disabled as understandable escape from a worse life which won’t get better. It is a rational response and the severity and nature of the pain is different and worse than the physical pain suffered by animals which have mercy killing.

Life is sacred but not a shit life. Forcing someone to suffer a shit life without hope is awful. No conscious being should suffer so but there isn’t the required social and structural change in systems required to change this tragic fact of life. It’s not the disabled alone who choose not to live a poor life. The selfishness is in the circumstances that drive the tragedy and the tragedy is anyone at all is driven to no longer want to live their life.

Own up to the failure and have the decency to at least offer the suicidal a good death instead of a shit one on top of all the other shit which caused a higher-than-an-animal being to want to die. Don’t prolong the torture.

I don’t want a tomorrow

I think I’ve run out of stuff I can be bothered to write about

Ugh. There’s so much more for me to write. I’ve been writing in notepads and electronic notepads as well as this blog for 8 or 9 months.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve started taking antidepressants but they shouldn’t have started working.

I don’t know if I should fight through this creative malaise or should I take the opportunity to try and rest. The latter is not really possible because I’m bored and I hate feeling bored as much as I hate being alive.

Ugh. Another shit day. It’s the worst day since yesterday.

It’s worked itself out anyway. I can’t post anything till I top up my fucking phone credit.

Angel of the Abyss – suicide aspect: assisted suicide pathway (prong 1 of 3)

In some earlier posts I’ve sketched the objectives which I perceive are necessary for a decent suicide system.

I think the prong that most people will have trouble with is the legalisation of assisted suicide. It is by far the most important thing to me and there are reasons other than personal interest.

Some suicidal people tell someone when they’re intending to kill themselves, even if it’s a stranger like the Samaritans. Others don’t though I’m certain they’d want to talk to someone, to hear a human voice and have one last conversation (that doesn’t have to be anything about suicide).

As I’ve explained earlier, most actively suicidal people go to their death alone. They hide their intent from everyone and when the suicide happens those who care for them are shocked and unprepared. If no suicide note is left it’s hard to understand why someone killed themselves.

These are processes I’ve gained insight into through personal experience. The current suicide system is just not suitable for people like me and that’s what’s behind Angel of the Abyss and the assisted suicide pathway.

How long should torture be allowed to go on for?

The perfect suicide system in terms of free will and liberty is one where a person can be killed or kill themselves as soon as they’re ready to die. Perhaps this might be possible for individuals who’ve completed suicide training (prong 3) but I think an assisted suicide pathway is also necessary.

The reason I believe in a pathway which delays an assisted suicide is because there’s such a thing as regrettable suicide. This is when someone kills themselves but would regret doing so later on. This is where the current direction of suicide is useful but, as I’ve written about in previous posts, it is a curse for those who would not regret dying.

The length of this delay is very hard to define. A few years ago I thought a suicidal person would have to wait years to get an assisted suicide. This is terrible and defeats the point. Years are too long because it’s torture to live for years while wanting to die. It also means people won’t engage with the pathway and, instead, do it themselves.

I thought the abortion time limit would be an indicator. Doctors kill a potential life because a woman shouldn’t have to bear a pregnancy for a child she doesn’t want whereas suicide is an adult choosing their death. I’m not sure this is the right way to determine the length of delay for assisted suicide.

In the end I’m going to choose 2 lengths of time arbitrarily and every day’s worth of unwanted life is a crime because it forces someone to endure torture.

I think 6 weeks (42 days) is the acceptable length of torture for a suicide virgin to wait for their deaths. This consists of a 5 week period and a one week period. A week (7 days) is the waiting period for a suicide veteran. The pathway has two parts, a 5 week process for suicide virgins and a 1 week process for virgins and veterans before they die.

These limits have been plucked out of the air. They can be challenged and I think they should be shorter. I can’t abide torture. 6 weeks wait could be too much pain for some people. The alternative given the hypothetical third prong of training could be for everyone to define their own torture limits.

Individuals could also decide in advance what support they’d need or accept if they became suicidal.

What happens during the assisted suicide delay period has to be the best that can be offered to resolve suicidal thoughts.

5 weeks is long enough for a chemical cocktail to work if the individual chooses the drug route. There are illegal drugs which could offer breakthroughs quickly.

Undoubtedly there would be talking options. I have my own survival belief system – in service of a dream – but it doesn’t work. My death need is very high.

The other aspect is resolving the trigger factor if there is an obvious trigger. One of the processes which leads to suicidal ideation is the ‘death of a thousand cuts’ that whittles away a person’s will to live so sometimes there’s not a single identifiable causal event.

The key point is about action to resolve the situation. This point is quite a shift in thinking but it’s based on evidence. Suicidal ideation is often triggered by a negative state change. It’s not being poor but becoming poor; it’s not about being single but becoming single; it’s not about unemployment but becoming unemployed. This is not true of all suicidal ideation but these are common situations which create suicide virgins.

The current way of thinking is centred around being resilient to these factors. They happen and they cause suicidal thoughts but rather than resolving the cause by any means necessary the current method seeks to deal with the symptoms. There’s nothing wrong with that if that’s what a suicidal wants but without the option of addressing the cause the system remains useless and the established triggers continue without being addressed.

I italicised the words ‘by any means necessary’ because that’s the attitude to investment in the pathway which is demanded. The pathway is non-judgemental except in the aspect that it is trying to save a life. A lot of good can be achieved in 5 weeks which can change an awful situation. The 1 week period has even higher need for investment.

What’s a life worth? The real answer will show itself in the funding for the pathway between decision and death.

There have been significant investment and social change in the current suicide prevention system but my belief is the Angel of the Abyss proposal is the next-generation suicide system.

It’s greatest strength is that it’s a pathway I would enter. Currently I am uninterested in what the primitive mental health system although I’ve started taking antidepressants so I’ll be nicer and normal. I don’t take meds to change my suicidal thoughts and I doubt they could. When I become actively suicidal I don’t tell anyone because I don’t want to be told not to do it.

I’d put up with the crap of small minds trying to force me to live because it suits them if, at the end of the week, I could say goodbye to them then die.

I want to die and it is inhumane to ask me to live even a week more than I want to.

Just some thoughts on suicide

Kill me. It’s what I want. It’s what I’ve wanted for a long time.

I’ve accepted help from the mental health system but it’s made things worse most of the time. It’s not made things better.

I want to die. Give me a loaded gun and I’ll happily prove it.

Angel of the Abyss – suicide aspect: prevention of suicidal ideation (prong 2 of 3)

Prescript

I’m skipping over a lot of important discussion in these posts about Angel of the Abyss. I have lots of notes but I’m trying to keep things short and simple which is a challenge for me.

This piece follows on from the two earlier posts.

A better solution and a strange line

It was in the last century that suicide was decriminalised. There was a big shift in the way people thought about suicide so it stopped being a crime.

I don’t think there’s been any real progress since. The completed suicide rate as a percentage has dropped but attempts and suicidal thoughts haven’t really changed and may, in fact, be higher.

Chemical solutions have been developed and the main one which comes to mind is clozapine, a dangerous but effective major tranquiliser. It reduces aggressive suicide attempts but the randomised control trial which proved its effectiveness at reducing suicide attempts didn’t show a clinically significant effect on the successful suicide rate.

The bulk of suicide prevention focuses on making effective and easy methods of suicide hard or impossible to acquire/use. This is important for reasons I’ve discussed earlier today but makes it nigh on impossible for suicide ‘veterans’ to succeed.

Sadly suicidology is a small field of research which has historically been underfunded and psychiatric research uses complex measures of which suicidality is but one small part.

Worst of all, little is done to prevent a significant part of the population from wanting to escape life by killing themselves at some point in their lifetimes.

This can not be allowed to continue. It is a crime against humanity and conscious beings.

Suicidal thoughts are the product of a torture process and are mental torture in themselves. Thinking about ending their existence is not something conscious beings should have to face.

I have personal beliefs that suffering and all mental states can have purpose and meaning, and can even be useful to those that survive them. I believe mental distress is not to be automatically shied away from – an unusual belief in mental health activism.

Misery is valid and can serve a purpose. Frankly no one has the knowledge let alone the wisdom to understand that interplay between misery and personal development but the primitive mental health system considers most mental distress to be unwanted. I am a pariah in circles where avoidance of mental distress is the prevailing dogma. We just don’t understand enough to make these judgements.

And yet I draw a line of judgement that all suicidal ideation must be prevented at all costs. I believe it is an experience that helps some people grow but it is still something which is beyond what I perceive as allowable. It’s torture.

What complicates my position on this is my belief that all distress except that which breaks a person is unacceptable. Misery is okay but when it reaches the point where someone can’t take it anymore and their death becomes a viable form of escape it has to stop and there needs to be a range of options available to help that person.

Further development

This second prong of Angel of the Abyss and the third one are not as well developed in terms of practical application and solutions.

I’ll write more on solutions to deal with the causes of suicidal ideation and this work is vital to the Angel of the Abyss project.

Prong one is important but it risks a lot of people dying. The second prong is vital to ensuring the first prong is all but obsolete given time.

I can’t abide the torture of suicidal ideation and my hope I’ll be the first suicide veteran to get an assisted suicide if I don’t die before it becomes legal.

Prong two protects people from getting to the point I have. It is the beauty of Angel of the Abyss whereas (for those who don’t want to die) the first prong is ugly.

As I said, I’ll write more later about ways to sort out suicidal ideation prevention. It’s not well developed yet but it’s a start.

There’s also a description of prong three to come. Hope you’re still reading by then!

Postscript

I’m writing this bit two days after the rest of the piece.

I re-read and realised there’s been no proper assessment of the potential negative effects. For example, I don’t think suicidal ideation will ever go away so needless effort need not be spent on achieving perfection but instead continuous improvement is the goal with the aspiration, the hope, that suicidal ideation can be eliminated.

There is the negative effect of social change too. I’ve created a somewhat bizarre delineation between acceptable and unacceptable misery. I’ve also proposed that some people, including myself, have found more than a modicum of benefit from the suicidal ideation process but this potentially unique value is dismissed by the rule.

Ultimately I’m dictating a principle which seems hard to make real and could have unforeseen negative consequences.

These are all things which need to be addressed to make ending the terrible mental state of wanting to die a reality.

The thing is, I believe the principle is important. No one should be broken. Torture is unacceptable. Society and culture mustnt harm people beyond their tolerance. Life shouldn’t be full of knockbacks which erode away someone’s will to live.

We can grow to be kinder and have more strength.

Society-Caused Murder (SCM or ‘scum’)

Now this post is going to make me popular…

As I mentioned in the previous post I spoke about how certain mental health professionals have tried to guilt me because I want to die.

Their reasons are I hurt people who care for me and I throw away the potential contributions I could make if I lived.

I’ve weighed these and other variables but it still hurts to be reminded. I know I’m callous but guilt isn’t going to stop me.

However I wonder if guilt could motivate the truly guilty, those who through their action or inaction harm an individual to the point where they no longer want to exist.

I’m reframing the issue because it needs to be. I’ve lied to carers and others when I’ve explained there was nothing they could do but there is in fact a responsibility they should bear.

The boss who sacks someone who then goes on to kill themselves is partially  responsible for a society-caused murder and they’re scum. The person who ends a relationship in a way that causes someone to kill themselves is also scum. There are many agents from family to professionals whose action and inaction causes someone to want to die.

Society-caused murder is also caused by societal constructs and abhorrent culture.

Why reframe it

People don’t understand the suicidal so do stupid things like manipulate their sense of guilt. This is not acceptable and certainly not by mental health professionals.

The primitive mental health system has a rubbish attitude to suicide. It believes it is a result of a brain illness, not life circumstances and their impact on specific mind types. The primitive system says there is something wrong with an individual who feels suicidal, not the awful causes which are events, actions and systems which do the harms upon too many harms which cause a person to contemplate death as their escape.
Society and culture is the problem. Ultimately it’s people who create the harms which drive the despair and hopelessness but social constructs are responsible too. They should feel the responsibility if for no other reason that there can’t be healing of the dysfunctional events and processes which create the unassailable assault on an individual’s psyche.

Reframing suicide as society-caused murder shifts the object of change away from the victims to the true perpetrators. The primitive mental health system paradigm is neither helpful nor true. The SCM concept is a tool of a far better system, one which seeks to cease people feeling suicidal in the first place.

It’s not really rocket science but there needs to be the will to change and the right direction of change. What I’m doing is applying the social model of cause. It does more for human beings than psychiatry has ever done.

It is essential that people don’t end up feeling suicidal. That’s the breaking element common to all torture.

There is a veritable pandemic of suicidal ideation in this country. The statistic is 1 in every 6 people (almost 16.7%) of the population seriously think about killing themselves at some point. That’s from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, one of the most highly regarded sources of epidemiological mental health information.

The primitive mental health system can’t change this. The social model offers far better possibilities but demands greater changes. It is the right direction of change but it takes collective will, a will that does not exist yet.

The primitive mental health system focused on individuals so the culture of lack of social responsibility is the norm and, I fear, is entrenched. After all, who wants to feel responsible for someone’s death? Psychiatrists are heartless so their constant failures washes over them whereas average people still have sensitivity which is why the ‘you’re not responsible for their death’ fallacy is so easily swallowed even though it isn’t true.

And so I’ve developed a bad tool – SCM or scum – to achieve a good aim: stop driving people to suicide.

Angel of the Abyss; suicide aspect: legalisation of assisted suicide (prong 1 of 3)

Prescript

Hmm…the title of this piece could win worst title ever. It’s not very interesting or communicative.

The Angel of the Abyss project has come a long way and it’s gotten complicated. There’s a three pronged or ‘bladed’ (my war fetish makes me think of ideas as swords) set of objectives to achieve the suicide aspect.

So, here we go…

Feeling suicidal is torture and the product of torture unique to the individual

There are different ways to think about suicidal ideation. I think the prevailing school of thought is wholly incorrect and I have enough life experience to propose an alternative.

Feeling suicidal is the worst state for any conscious being. (NB, this is different from duty-based suicide). It means they no longer want to exist.

People get to that stage through a series of events and/or a massive trigger. This is the cause of extensive harm to the psyche, a harm which is torture. (I’m trying to make this brief so I’m skipping lots of detail, discourse and examples to convey my point). This emotional torture breaks people and throws them into a pit of hopelessness and despair which they feel can only be resolved by death.

This is an awful state of mind which another of the Angel of the Abyss strategic objectives seeks to prevent from happening.

It gets worse. Having reached this ‘no other way out’ state of mind the individual becomes isolated because cultural taboos and the way psychiatry typically deals with suicide means a person keeps suicidal ideation to themselves. There are other factors involved in this isolation.

Additionally, an actively suicidal person has made a decision, one which comes with lots of negative feelings like guilt or shame which add to the turmoil. It is all weighed against the hope of relief from a terrible state of mind (and, of course, the life circumstances which are usually the cause of suicidal thoughts).

They make a very difficult decision and they make it with free will. The outcome – their death – is the only escape from the torture they go through. It can’t be survived.

Then they have to do it. They have to kill themselves but it isn’t easy. Suicide prevention cunts in the primitive mental health system have done the typical shite they do: they block the availability of effective, preferred methods rather than focus on the causes. This doesn’t change the torture which leads to suicidal ideation nor the torture of suicidal ideation itself. It doesn’t deal with causes.

Suicide virgins and veterans

The suicide prevention strategy of the primitive mental health system does protect reactive ‘virgin’ or first-timers from succeeding in their suicide attempt, something they might regret later. This is important though it is a form of tyranny which robs liberty from a free consciousness.

It also means suicide veterans (people who have consistently wanted to die over a period of time) like me are left to live through torture.

We want to die but – for whatever reason – have been unable to succeed. Failure upon failure. Ugh. There is little the current suicide system developed by the primitive mental health system can do to resolve the situation and suicide veterans are left to suffer.

Some lucky ones manage it. The blessed from my perspective.  Around 6000 people a year kill themselves though many, many more try. They risk serious consequences if they fail but their death is their primary goal. They go to their deaths alone too. There is no reprieve from the evil they’ve faced and caused them to want to cease existence.

I’ve described the tip of the iceberg in terms of the multitude of horrors of the current system. There’s a prevailing attitude from certain mental health professionals that the terrible thing is the morality of an individual who chooses death as their exit. If I could I would make them feel like I do if they dare think that way.

The Angel of the Abyss solution: legalise it

Anyway, the things I’ve described here are what drive me to demand suicide be legalised. It was decriminalised in the last century and this advancement needs to continue.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe in an anarchic suicide system as a true libertarian would. My solution is a suicide pathway. It’s something I’ll write about in another post.

I do, however, believe suicide must be legalised and I am unequivocal. I would kill anyone who wanted to die (within my personal suicide framework) because I can’t abide torture.

This is the crux of my reframing of living while wanting to die. It is torture and torture is unacceptable. This unique torture by man and god is the height of suffering for a conscious being.

The compassion offered to animals in untreatable pain is greater than the compassion I’ve been offered, another indication of the subhuman status assigned to me using psychiatric labelling.

I do not have an angel of mercy. No one has the decency to kill me either. I live day after day of a life I’ve not wanted to live for a very long time.

Mercy. Please. I beg. Mercy.

Perhaps the worst thing about the current suicide situation

The suicidal go to their deaths alone.

A scum human race drove them to want to die. The sane scum force them to die alone. Evil upon evil.

It’s like winning the lottery without buying a ticket except the diametric opposite – surviving my last serious suicide attempt

I wrote this title last night with the aim of writing about it today but am not in the mood to deal with it so instead I’m going to point out that the title is poorly written. It’s the wrong way round and starts where it should end. It’s just how I wrote it.

I think it works as a title because sometimes that’s all someone reads as they’re scanning through their personal selection of media. Most people aren’t going to read about someone’s death wish. It’s too sad and intense. I doubt many people would scan past the first few words before turning their eyes away.

By chance I started the title with a very positive idea before revealing the profound darkness which was to be the main body of the piece. Winning the lottery without buying a ticket is even better than winning the lottery.

The polar opposite is how I feel having survived my last attempt not even a year ago. I was put in a coma. My then girlfriend told me the doctors had written me off and those that cared for me had said their last goodbyes.

I woke up from the coma and my organs began functioning again. I was told it was a miracle but to me it was the diametric opposite, as the title suggests.

I think the title effectively communicates my deep sadness at living. It is a fate worse than death.

God has no mercy upon my soul.