I do think you waive that right to kill yourself when you have minor children. Just like I think you waive the right to come out as transgender (if you are married), or gay (if you are married), or any other of the myriad other things people do that destroy the entity of the family.

Hence why I will never have kids.

Your child's life is dependent on you being alive to earn money and guide them. That's what you signed up for--figure how to function enough through pharmaceutical intervention and then blow your brains out (if you wish) when they're adults.

I suffer from depression and was saddened when I read (yesterday) what Rollins had written.

But I was glad he was brutally honest. I disagreed with him, but I knew more about him.

And same with his apology.

Ok, let me see if I have this straight, depression is an uncontrollable disease so people suffering from it who kill themselves deserve our unreserved sympathy, but those people who self medicate their depression and anxiety with drugs and alchohol, can kick the habit if they just have enough will power, because addiction isn't a real disease so screw them?

Depression isn't like cancer or spinal injury. With those, you have a diagnosis, you have a (or a set of) treatment option to choose from, or you have an opinion that says, this is it, there's nothing more than can be done - settle in and come to grips.

As complicated and horrible as those diagnoses are, I wish depression were as simple as that. I thank God I don't suffer from it. Living with my ex's depression was an eye opener. I moved from cluelessness to just-get-over-it to sad resignation at the squishy-ness of it. Every day, sometimes every moment, is a struggle. A cancer patient can usually make a clear-headed decision about treatment - someone with depression often doesn't see a problem. This rings with truth:

"Depression is so personal and so unique to each of us that when you're in its teeth, you think you invented it."

"I get it, but then again, maybe I don’t."

"I liked the guy, but all I could think of then is all I can think of now — the drawings his kids had made that were pasted up on the walls of his kitchen."

It sounds to me like Rollins was struggling to understand why someone would commit suicide more than condemning the people who do.

Unless you have experienced it a total loss of the need to live which is replaced by an all encompassing need to die is unthinkable.

Nothing else exists except that desire. Nothing.

Isab makes the gaping flaw in rationality that all addicts are depressed.

Next?

Posted by: Amy Alkon at August 23, 2014 9:15 AM

Did I say that? No I didn't , but one of the things I have noticed about addicts is that many of them become addicted through self medication to mitigate the very real pain in their lives.

As usual, Amy, you are confusing cause and effect, and somehow think addiction is a personal problem rather than a symptom of underlying mental illness, that it so often is.

About 10 years ago, in the depths of despair, I used google to search for a sure-fire way to commit suicide. Back then, it was almost impossible to find that kind of information online; as I remember it, all the results were for suicide prevention sites. This one was at the top: http://www.metanoia.org/suicide/. I read the material, and it gave me pause. Except in my darkest moments (I still have them occasionally, I am glad I received this help.

Times have changed. Now if you google "how to commit suicide" you will get a different kind of help: practical information on methods to kill yourself.

When I was a kid, my mother would threaten to kill herself if we wouldn't do what ever she wanted. Dad would be at work, and he'd get a call along the lines of "I just swallowed a bottle of pills. Goodbye." And he would call an ambulance and rush home, only to find out she was faking it. My little brother called it the Suicide Game, and it made all of us very cynical towards anyone who threatened suicide.

Fast forward, when my younger daughter was 11, she came out to me. I told her that it didn't matter to me, but that the kids at school really didn't need to know, because some might bully her. She told people anyways, and they did bully her. Worse, her father (we were divorced) also turned on her. One morning as I was rushing around getting ready for work she walked into the living room and said "Mom, I just swallowed some bleach.". In that moment I understood what suicide really meant, and as I sat beside her hospital bed for 4 days I swore I would never judge anyone by my mothers fucked up example again.

Oh god Kat!

I feel terrible for both your daughter and yourself. A horrible situation.

I've known several people whose parents committed suicide, and they were all horribly, horribly damaged by it. These weren't elderly parents otherwise in danger of dying. Whether the children were 6 yrs old or 40 yrs old, the effects and consequences of the suicides reverberate through the generations.

I've seen his name on alt-weekly columns I never bothered to read.

Who here is Rollins biggest fan? Can you explain the magic?

Fast forward, when my younger daughter was 11, she came out to me.

Uh huh.

--

He should not have offered the show-trial apology.

Suicide is a traumatic event for anyone who cares about the person who killed themselves. But there are times when life is not worth living and you have to think of yourself more than others. So yes. Suicide is selfish. But so is not giving up all your worldly goods and dedicating your life to the betterment of others. We all have a right to some selfishness.

And Bob in Texas losing the need to live doesn't always lead to suicide. My life has no intrinsic value. I.e. I really don't care if I live or not. My death is not a personally significant event. But my life does have extrinsic value.

Who here is Rollins biggest fan? Can you explain the magic?

The "magic" began in the L.A. punk scene in the 1980s, which was populated by a lot of not-conventionally-attractive people.

Rollins was built like a brick shithouse and he wrote (bad) poetry, so he was somehow transformed into a tough-but-sensitive intellectual and had a lot of women going to his poetry readings.

That's pretty much all there was to it.

Correction? Above, the second "Rollins" appears as "Robbins".

Rollins should have stopped the minute he admitted he didn't understand depression. If you don't understand it, why would you judge someone who succumbs to the ultimate and final expression of it?

Ben, you crack me up. "Suicide is selfish." No, it's not. How could it be selfish when you're convinced that the world would be better off without you?

You want to know what I consider selfish? Those that think they can appeal to a suicidal person by calling them selfish. "Don't kill yourself, because then I will be sad."

So, you can do nothing to alleviate the pain that a person is in, but you'll ask them to just suck it up so you won't feel so bad.

It's no different than asking a person who is terminally ill, to avoid euthanasia because you're not ready to say good-bye! "Pretty please...I need you to suffer a slow, agonizing death that will reduce you to incoherent, dribbling vegetable so that I can take my time and prepare for your impending death."

Who's the really selfish person? The one who wants to end his pain, or the sanctimonious do-gooders who try to stand in his way, all the while being completely useless to do anything about his suffering?

And the suggestion that a person waives their right to commit suicide because they're a parent is like saying they waived their right to die cancer.

You can say you want that they don't have the right to die of cancer, but cancer will have its way, whether it's "right" or not. The same thing with depression. It's a terminal illness.

> so he was somehow transformed into a
> tough-but-sensitive intellectual

That was the vibe of all the first lines of the weekly pieces... A guy who was going give his audience what they wanted.

Huh? 'Punk?' You want teenage resentment expressed through show business behavior? I can do that!

Huh? 'Writing?' You want vibe of wordy aggression? I can do that!

People who make a living being popular for not much get in trouble when they try to do the tough stuff... Y'know, principles, judgment... That kind of thing. Adult stuff.

They almost always end up backtracking.

What Kevin said.

Rollins sometimes does speaking tours, some of which are recordings. I've seen (heard) him speak live and found him charismatic and boundlessly energetic. YMMV.

In Rollins' "defense", when he was a young man he saw his best friend murdered.

I always wonder about people who kill themselves where someone else will find them.

I knew one person rather closely who had a parent commit suicide and while she had a good shell, she was really messed up on the inside because of it (at least partially - there was probably other stuff too)

Though I know that this piece is technically not only about Robin Williams, one thing I noted was that the youngest of Williams's three children is in his early 20s. I wonder, somewhat, if Williams was trying to hang on until he could get all three into adulthood. Maybe that had NOTHING to do with it, and having a parent commit suicide is always terrible…but I do think there's a difference between losing a parent as a minor child and losing one as an adult.

I'm not speaking from any personal knowledge (the only suicide I ever knew had no children), but it seems to me that if someone is messed up enough to kill him/herself, (s)he likely isn't functioning too well as a parent. The loss suffered by the children began before the actual suicide.

Probably because I've been around for a long time, I have known four people who committed suicide. Two were depressed, two were not. The children, adults, of the ones who were not depressed understood the logic. The children of the depressed parents were, and still are, confused and fucked up.

Good article in NYT on understanding suicide.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/magazine/06suicide-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0&gwh=2FEE171AEDA2D4043B66CDAE9076961E&gwt=pay

Patrick, I didn't say anything about preventing suicide. I just said it was an acceptable level of selfishness. I put it on the same level of selfishness as eating. After all you decided your life was more important than whatever you are eating.

Ppen and some others have the view that when you have a child you enter monastic orders and take vows of poverty and service to the child. That is just not healthy both personally and societally. It is also not good for the child.

While the loss of a parent is quite traumatic to a child, the loss of a child is equally traumatic to the parent. I assume no one here sprung full formed from the earth, so everyone is a child. Does that mean no one has a 'right' to suicide? That is certainly not an enforceable position.

My husband killed himself. I'm pretty sure he was bipolar and he had the childhood from hell. I tried everything to get him help and one day he just went out and did it. He'd told me several times he would, and I believed him, which is why I begged him to go to therapy, etc. I even managed to get him to a couple times, but he'd turn on the charm and totally fool the psychologist. He finally told me one day that he would die before he talked about his childhood, and he made good on that thread.

He had three kids (none of them mine). He was never a stellar parent and he rarely saw them, but he managed to mess up all three of them just the same.

And not until after he died did I learn he was the FIFTH suicide in that extended family. I know for a fact a lot of them had addiction and mental issues, so I'm sure that contributed a lot to it.

So no, you can't always stop them, and yes, they do think the world will be better off without them. And they just want the hurting to stop.

You can say you want that they don't have the right to die of cancer, but cancer will have its way, whether it's "right" or not. The same thing with depression. It's a terminal illness.

Let go of my leg (and everyone else's).

Daghain, I was reading the comments and wondered if a person who was feeling so much despair, to the point of considering suicide, was capable of thinking of someone else.

It would not have occurred to me that a person would think the world is better of without them.

Thank you for sharing the view from inside.

> It would not have occurred to me
> that a person would think the world
> is better of without them.

Some people who are all emotionally roiled feel that way, and some don't, and some will say things like that to bring others into their enterprise.

I knew, somewhat distantly, a suicide who essentially died of melodrama... She was always telling sturmy-drangy tales of angst and tragedy with her dating life and all the rest, even though she was actually a pretty sane and comfortable person. When her death happened, there'd been so much theatrical stuff that no one was too surprised, and no one felt particularly responsible... Those who knew her best had been giving her good counsel and deep patience for many years.

The closer person in my life who committed suicide wasn't offering trip wires like that... Never said "The world is better without me."

That second suicide was none the less irrevocable.

Watching out for particular wordings can be amusing, but they aren't necessarily indicative of what's going on in other people's lives.

Remember Monica Lewinsky? A bunch of senators, presumably (older, male) Democrats, tried to make great hay out of one line from her during intimate conversation with a girlfriend: "I've been a liar all my life."

But it was the kind of casual, nuanced and entirely MUNDANE thing that chattering young women say when talking to each other about emotional stuff. Zero probative value.

That's how I feel about "The world would be better off without me." Maybe they mean it, maybe they don't... So taken alone, it doesn't count for all that much.

The interior lives of others can be hard to read.

"Who here is Rollins biggest fan? Can you explain the magic?"

Kevin mostly covered the territory, but yeah, I was in that trap once. Rollins was/is a charismatic guy; Black Flag was a pretty good band in its day, and Rollins somehow got the reputation of being a Great Philosopher. Later on, I realized he was mostly a dipshit, who tends to open his mouth first and postpone thinking until later (as we've seen here). Yet another reinforcement of the lesson that, just because a person is really good at one thing, that does not make them an expert on everything.

That's how I feel about "The world would be better off without me." Maybe they mean it, maybe they don't... So taken alone, it doesn't count for all that much.

Crid - August 24, 2014 7:05 PM

I have just never heard anyone utter those words in person. And not for a lack of flagrant hyperbole on my part.

It is not uncommon Michelle. And people often don't say anything even when they feel that way.

I remember a 1980s(?) letter to the "Ask Beth" teen advice column (I wish I could find it), from a girl who felt no one was taking her depression and other problems seriously. She ended with a question that was along the lines of: "How do you commit suicide without creating a fuss?"

Since I was never the type of teen to be sensitive to the problems of strangers, my only reaction at the time was "how can anyone ask such an idiotic question? What a MORON!"

BTW, here's another Ask Beth column on suicide:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&dat=19851231&id=DfpNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=cIsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6705,5132185

It raises an important point - the need to LISTEN to the person considering suicide, since the latter person is likely to resent well-meaning people who do nothing but try to talk the suicidal person out of it.

My husband never came out and said "The world would be a better place without me" in the literal sense but he sure as hell alluded to it. Bitter, constant self-criticism about being "useless" and the inability to look at the good side of anything pretty much said it all. That and the whole "I don't know why anyone bothers with me" type of comments made it very clear he thought he was doing us all a favor. He had some serious mental problems, that one, and in the end I think he was hurting so bad he just wanted an end to it all.

Not everyone feels that way, and yes, some people are drama addicts, but this IS a common thread among suicides. You have to look at the whole picture to see if you think that's part of the reason they did it (and no, you'll never know for sure, because they're gone and you can't ask them).

That's the thing that makes the surviving family members' grief so horrible - you can NEVER know what drove them to it, exactly. And you can second guess yourself to hell and back about what you could have done differently to make them not kill themselves. But in the end, you have to accept the fact that you did the best you could at the time, and leave it at that, or you'll drive yourself crazy.

@"I do think you waive that right to kill yourself when you have minor children"

So if life for someone is near constant pain, they 'must' endure another several decades of excruciating pain?