Hey all,

Just wondering if anyone had read any prose or articles relating to suicde recently. Sounds macabre I know but I'm working on something for FGP and just wanted to get some different takes on how the subject has been tackled in books. Purple America by Rick Moody is probably one of the most moving depictions that I've come across.

Unfortunately I have many personal experiences to draw upon with this subject but I still seem to have difficulty bringing the words together.

Has anyone here had a go at trying to write about the subject?

Let me know

Geoff

Geoff,

I can remember reading an article about how most people who commit suicide, 99% of the time change their mind when it's too late. How somebody came up with this fact is beyond me!

It must be quite harrowing regretting slitting your wrists when most of your blood is on the tiled bathroom floor.

Another fact I once read about slit-wrists is that it's the most common form of suicide because it's seen as a cry for help. Most suicidee's [is that a word?] slit their wrists horizontally which, most of the time, isn't fatal because the veins can be repaired. The really serious suicidee's slit their wrists vertically, which makes the cuts on the veins impossible to repair.

The Golden Gate bridge was designed to be suicide proof! The metal barrier was originally designed to be twelve feet high and the designer boasted that nobody would be able to commmit suicide. When they built the barrier, they changed the height. It's one of the most popular places in America, alongside Niagara falls and skyscrapers for people to commit suicide from. They don't die from the fall in SF bay. It's the freezing water that kills them.

Over 400 people have thrown themselves off the Eiffel Tower since it was built. They've had to put a wire cage around the heighest observation point, but the first two floors are still available for the more athletic leapers to jump from. In the Victorian times it was quite fashionable to commit suicide from the Eiffel Tower. The first person to do so did it in style, by hanging himself from one of the girders.

I remember reading about suicidee's that take massive doses of pills. If you take paracetomol or aspirin, you don't die the same day. Your stomach will bleed for days before you die and your liver packs up. Once a suicidee has taken a bottle of pills, there's nothing they can do to save you.

Writers have a higher chance of committing suicide. Hemingway blew his head off with a shotgun, which was a bit silly really.

Gun suicides with handguns are not very reliable and usually fail. I remember reading about how most suicidee's who use guns to kill themselves usually always miss the part of the brain that will render them dead. Most of the time the bullet deflects from the skull. There's a sure-fire way to avoid this: under the chin.

Hope some of these macabre facts are of use to you

Oh, and I always found it bad taste that the Samaratans don't have a chat room on their website. Think of the lifes they could have saved online!

Ste

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the reply, this seems to be truly the last taboo and tends to be a subject few people want to even contemplate let alone discuss.

My best friend Martin committed suicide in 1998 and the real tragedy is that he'd been trying to get hold of me nut I was stuck back at university looking after my girlfriend who had attempted to kill herself two weeks earlier.

Since then I have been fascinated by the subject and read numerous articles and books on the subject. The trouble is for all that I know about the subject it still seems a very difficult thing to write about and I'm not sure of the angle to take. I'll be posting my first attempt to deal with the subject shortly. I'd love for you to have a look at it as you seem quite knowledgeable on the subject yourself.

Some other macabre facts you may not know.

Every 60 seconds someone attempts suicide.

Roughly every 18 minutes someone succeeds.

Most suicides seem to occur around late July.

Most people who commit sucide will leave no note and surprisingly seems to be a spare of the moment occurrence despite the belief that many people plan this event way ahead.

Four males die by suicide for every female but at least twice as many women as men attempt it.

In the US it's the 11th leadinf cause of death. And it's the THIRD ranking cause of death for teens aged 13-19.

Death by suicide is the fastest growing method.

From a height falling onto water is just like hitting concrete due to the surface tension. As you say if the fall doesn't kill you the shock will.

There are literally thousands of websites offering 'useful' advice on the subject of ending your own life. Just do a quick search on Google.

It's true that many people attempt suicide by swallowing vast amounts of pain killers but fortunately becuse this is a fairly slow method (despite the dangers to the stomach and liver) people can often be saved. I have personal experience of this. This was the method chosen by my girlfriend who also slit her wrists and decided to down an entire bottle of vodka to boot. She was very very ill for three days but she managed a complete recovery. Thankfully the liver is a very very resilient organ. Those that really know what they're doing and are seeking a permanent end often take huge does of iron combined with other drugs. Huge quantities of iron are exceptionally toxic.

There are many many methods that people have used that I won't go into. But that's another point I was wondering whether or not to include these in my writing. The last thing I'd ever want to do is give people helpful hints on how to take their own life.

Anyway I'll let you know when I've posted it and I'd be grateful if you could cast your eye over it.

Geoff

<Added>

Death by suicide is the fastest growing method. This should be death by firearm is the fastest growing method.

Geoff,

Have you read Veronica Decides to Die by Paolo Coelho? He was once a psychiatric patient so writes from personal experience of deep despair.

Yours,

Formerly Evil Capitalist in exile.



<Added>

make that Veronika & Paulo

Geoff, some wicked facts there! - I was amazed.

One fact I've just remembered. This amazed me when I read it. I can't remember where I read it, but it was a factual book I was reading at the time. Heroin addicts often look like they have overdosed/suicide when in reality they have taken gin after they have injected themselves. This, apparently, is a lethal cocktail for the body. Bizarre! So if you know any heroin addicts that need offing...

No, go on, this is fascinating and we surely live in a world where talking about a controversial subject can do more good than harm.

I think if you were writing about suicide then you would include the absolute truth. Most people who read about it are revulsed by it, appalled by it etc. It's only the few that are in the state to take their lives that intend to go through with it at any cost. If they read about it, it's possible that they might change their mind.

Weird how you said about the July fact. Last month there were a couple of suicide reports on the news. Did you see any of them? - One woman tried to jump off Niagara falls but someone managed to hold onto her. It was all very dramatic, camcorder footage of the whole event. They pulled her to safety.

The other was a real adrenaline piece of video. American again. The footage was from a highway patrol cop driving on a bridge. He stopped his car, saw this man or woman, can't remember which, climbing over the railings of the bridge. He JUST, and I mean split-second timing managed to grab her before she jumped. It was amazing.

The other was British and it was either a man or a woman but the person had tried to jump off a high-wire fence onto a live-wire train track. A pretty extreme way to commit suicide. She was hanging onto the wire, dangling above the live tracks. They managed to rescue her.

All three of these videos were on British news channels in July.

One more fact I can remember, and if you're squeamish, don't read what I'm about to say below: Most bodies bounce when they hit the ground. That fact alone is enough to put anyone off from jumping off a tall building

Clive Barker attributes his deep rooted horror to the fact that as a child his parents took him to a flying circus performance. The 'Flying Birdman' fell from the sky before his very eyes. Coinicidentally, Stephen King recites being terrified for life from a story one of his relatives used to tell him about a suicide they had witnessed on the street.

I was reading an article about an engaged couple who were posing in-front of the Eiffel Tower last year for photos. While they were there, a man leaped to his death. When they returned home they had the photos developed. To their horror, they caught the falling man in-frame on one of the photos. Very scary.

I think I would die on the spot if I witnessed a suicide. I'm so squeamish, it defies belief.

I'll read you upload, no worries.

There's an article on suicides that you might learn from, here:
http://www.thedailystar.net/2003/09/12/d30912020327.htm

Ste

Hi Steve,

I'll definitely check that link out.

Was just mulling over the whole link between creativity and suicide re your thread about where ideas come from.

There is a definite link between highly creative people and suicide as there is a link between highly intelligent and creative people and depression. Again this topic is absolutely huge but one key theme is the importance of serotonin.

Low levels of serotonin are related to suicide indeed stain analysis of brains from suicide autopsise versus people who died of other causes shows dramatic differences in the region known as the dorsal raphe nucleus. Most importantly they show that the brains of suicide victims were desperately trying to produce more serotonin. Now the evidence is highly confusing and the complexities subtle. Having waded through hundreds of scientisfic papers I'm still unable to draw any definitive conclusions.

Low levels of serotonin are related to depression and impulsiveness. I myself have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder co-morbid with mild tourettes (The paradox here is that the two are often linked yet studies suggest ADHD is linked to low serotonin levels and tourettes to high!) People who suffer from bipolar disorder (manic depression) also tend to have lower serotonin levels and there are stats that show people who bipolar disorder have a higher incidence of suicide.

Both these sets of people also tend to be labelled as highly creative.

For more info look at

http://borntoexplore.org/index.html

A fascinating look at ADHD, ADD and bipolar disorder and the many problems that beset people with such conditions.

Another interesting fact is that people with low serotonin levels are said to have a more realistic perspective. Though often you'll find reports that depressed people focus only on the negative and fail to recall details from their life. Though the evidence shows that serotonin is in effect the brains happy drug, the chemical equivalent of rose tinted glasses if you will. I won't go into this topic in much further detail but I plan to cover it in great detail in my second book Smoke.

I really can waffle can't I?

Geoff

Hi Geoff,

I'll admit that I am sometimes depressed but seem to have gotten over it big time these past few months. The reasons are a mystery, but whatever is going on in my life right now seems to be perfect for me.

Is there anyway to boost my serotin levels - Because if there is...

This ADHD thing that seems to have exploded into society in the last decade. Is it real or is just expanded analysis of something that has been around since the dawn of man? Maybe every creative person has a disorder of some kind. It can't be normal to be creating worlds in our heads and writing stories, but it seems so natural to us. When I get a writing high, is this my brain having a serotonin session?

Something I've often thought about suicide is that those that survive suicide attempts - is that the subconscious saying, 'Don't you f****ng dare take your life away.' As in, our subconscious does something so small and unnoticable that we survive an attempt? That deep in our mind we didn't really want to die but just, maybe, had to get it out of our system.

Being a happy and contented person in my life right now, I have no qualms in saying I've often been depressed and once tried to commit suicide. There's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong talking about it. It's those that don't talk about it that live with the burden of life on their shoulders. Reading some of Rod Steiger's quotes about depression really uplifted me when I was having a bad time. But I know one thing, I'll never try to take my life again. Life's too short to f*** about and waste it. I'm holding onto every metaphsyical strand of light and intend to get the most out of my existence.

On the other side of the coin, if it wasn't for creativity, if I wasn't a writer, I don't think I would even be here now.

I don't know if anyone is reading this and thinking, 'God, how morbid,' but it couldn't be further from that.

It took the death of someone very close to me to wake-up in the world and confront my existence. It's not been the most smooth journey of discovery, but I've got it close to sorted and sealed. I'll just keep writing and let fate do the rest.

What a grim fandango of a day this is turning out to be

Ste

Live for Today
Or just wait till tomorrow
Why live tomorrow
When I feel the pain of the world

The strong they shall move On
And we will feel the pain in the world

We call out for Help
Our pain terns to words
Our words into air
Our Word Stay Unheard

Now I am gone, please don’t be angry, don’t be sad
This is my choice one I couldn’t help but make

Our lives we live strong
Our lives we live weak
I lived my life to the full, I hope you can see that
Live for Today

Now I say goodbye & a sorry to go with it

Please follow my wish and be your best have the best and enjoy the best.
Again Live for today, there may be no Tomorrow



Don't know if this will help at all but its a goodbye note that I wrote a few months ago befor a suicide atempt. well more a poem but still hope its sum use.

Not suicide per se, but my own feelings during a period of my life when I regularly considered going down that path:

Sweet & Sour

Respec' dudes!

It's not a shameless plug but I put a different slant on it with my 'Frankie Finbar' piece of shite. And I'm not trivialising it cuz, apparently like yous two, I know what I'm talkin' about.

Must dash I can hear the distant rumbling of a Stella-shaped glass.

Dave

Hi Geoff
I've only just seen this, (been slacking in the forums lately). Were you looking for fictional treatments of suicide? And from the victim's or the finder's point of view?(From reading Feeling Gravity's Pull, I see you are dealing with both sides).

The only one I can think of off the top of my head is at the end of The Last of Cherie by Collette (Cherie shoots himself), but I'll see if I can think of others.

I have one coming up in Terrestrial, but it'll be a while yet before I post it. If you want to see it, I don't midn mailing it to you.

Sharon