HOW NOT TO COMMIT SUICIDE - The physical aftermath of a suicide attempt + Suicide Notes

by Art Kleiner...........................Most suicides are drug overdoses, and many drug overdose patients reach the hospital in a coma. The danger in all drug overdoses is that the brain may not get enough oxygen. The airway to the lungs may get blocked off by the patient's vomit, or by the tongue falling back into the throat, or by drug-induced slowdown in the part of the deep brain that controls the rate and depth of breathing. Or the heart may seize and fibrillate -- all the heart muscle fibers quiver, but none in rhythm with each other. The blood doesn't move, so it doesn't take oxygen to the brain or carry away waste. It only takes three to five minutes without oxygen to do permanent damage to the brain, starting at its most sophisticated sections. The memory is destroyed; the ability to read or speak is cut back. The longer it goes on, the more severe the retardation. So any poisoned patient is constantly monitored to make sure they can breath and their heart is beating. If they can't breathe, they are intubated. A physician slides a tube down the mouth or nose, through their throat, into the lungs for air to pass through.

Drug overdose patients are usually given sugar (in case they have low blood sugar), thiamine (which might have been depleted from the blood by alcohol) and Narcan, an antidote for opiates. They're given because the deficiencies or drug effects they correct are hard to spot right away and can be quickly lethal. Compared to the very other antidotes that exist, these are considered low-risk. Patients are often given Ipecac, which makes them vomit. Then they are given activated charcoal, which looks like gruel and soaks up some of the poison in the intestines before coming out in diarrhea induced by a cathartic, magnesium citrate. The cathartic also increases the rapidity with which the poison goes through the intestines, thus cutting down the amount absorbed by the body.If the patient is in a coma a tube maybe run through the nose or mouth and passed bit by bit down the esophagus in the stomach. A saline solution flows through it into the stomach, and then is sucked back through the tube with some of the poison. Emergency room staff call this "lavage"; in the street it's known as getting your stomach pumped.

"If you come in awake and alert you should not have your stomach washed out," Bedard said. "But some doctors and nurses don't like to take care of overdoses. They feel like suicidal people should be punished, so they stick a tube down. It's not pleasant -- the tube is about the size your thumb. Most people feel like they're choking to death."
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site
The two most common types of drugs in suicides, McKinney said, are those found around the house and those used in psychotherapy. Seemingly innocent aspirin is "one of the messiest, most complicated overdoses you ever hope to see," he said. People who swallow lots of aspirin react first by getting sick to their stomachs. Beyond that, it affects nearly every system in the body unpredictably, and two different people who took 100 aspirins could get sick in completely different ways. Aspirin is an acid. It burns the gastrointestinal tract from the inside. It changes the blood's pH level which is normally at 7.4 (close to neutral). It sometimes makes the blood acidic, but it also accelerates the brains' breathing control center, which puffs out carbon dioxide twice as fast as it normally would, and thus makes the blood alkaline. Either way, it throws off the metabolic balance among kidney, lung and blood. "It produces fever," McKinney said. "The fever, in turn, if it goes on long enough to overheat the brain, can cause seizures. You can burn out parts of your nervous system." Aspirin also carries a high risk of gastric hemorrhage. Occasionally people on aspirin overdoses become deaf or develop a ringing in their ears that doesn't go away.

The pain-reliever acetaminophen, sold as Tylenol, also makes people sick to their stomachs at first, but then gets more deadly. The drug changes into toxic particles that are usually neutralized by glutathione, one type of coenzyme found in the liver. In overdose, if it isn't pumped out in time, the toxic particles deplete all of the glutathione, causing the painful death of an hepatic coma. Even relatively late in the process surrogate glutathione can save the liver, but if the organ does become diseased the results can be similar to those of hepatitis: jaundice, itchy skin, depression, long-term listlessness, inability to eat much.

"The liver detoxifies poisons that build up in the body," McKinney said. "If you destroy the liver it's like never taking the garbage out. Specifically the most common build up is ammonia in the blood, which you know if it goes too far will put you in a very deep coma, and then kill you."

Both McKinney and Bedard told me about people who took Tylenol or phosphorous, which also destroys the liver (and incidentally produces phosphorescent vomit). In both cases, they slept off the initial sickness and recovered for five days -- during which time they decided suicide was a mistake after all and they wanted to live. But the liver had been destroyed and after five days each of them started to feel very sick, passed into deep coma, and died. "He knew it would happen and that there was nothing we could do about it," Bedard said, "and his friends and family knew it, and for five days they sat in the hospital together waiting for it."

Probably the most painful form of suicide attempt, whether or not it ends in death, is swallowing lye, Drano, oven cleaner and other household caustics. Most of us know how painful these are because scare stories have been passed down in household lore from 100 years ago, when caustics were the preferred suicide method. Unlike suicides today, who visualize themselves slipping off into oblivion, people who killed themselves in the 19th century expected to suffer along the way.

Very few people that ingest caustics die," McKinney said. "If they do die, it's days, weeks or even months later, of infection. I'm pretty immune to most gore, but the draw the line at the burn unit." Caustics scar the mouth and tongue, puncture holes in the esophagus, burn the chest from the inside and block the gastrointestinal tract with scar tissue. Even the process of treating inner burns is painful; surgeons drop an endoscope, or fiber-optic camera, down the person's throat, unavoidably scraping it against the raw nerves there, to see what the damage is. Repairing an inner burn can take 15 or 20 years worth of surgical operations, plus fluid therapy and antibiotics to keep infections from growing. Swallowing can be painful for the rest of a person's life and some survivors of such attempts have to be fed intravenously for years afterwards.

Psychiatric drugs -- phenothiazines like Thorazine or Haldol, tricyclic antidepressants like Elavil - cause what are probably the most morally offensive overdose cases. "It's a built-in irony," McKinney said. "The very population of patients currently under therapy to supposedly avoid suicide are often handed enormous quantities of medication. You might as well give the guy a gun.

Except in child abuse, nothing outrages the emergency room staff as much as when someone comes in with an overdose on Thorazine and you go through the pockets and see the same doctor has prescribe three or four hundred tablets in a two-week period. Those are the doctors who get a phone call at three a.m. saying, 'You better get down here now and see your patient.'" (Hardly ever does the psychiatrist show up, McKinney and other doctors told me; it's more common for the answering service to find out who's calling and why and then say the psychiatrist is out of town.)

Tricyclic antidepressant patients are in a particular high-risk situation," McKinney said. "Typically a person is depressed over a long time; he goes to a psychiatrist and after some psych workshop procedures it's decided he needs an antidepressant. Classically, Elavil is prescribed. Elavil takes three to eight weeks to work, and an average of four weeks. The person may not be told clearly enough or may not want to hear that the drug takes a long time. Two weeks later he bolts upright and says, 'This is the biggest crock of shit,' and swallows the rest of them."

The phenothiazines, or major tranquilizers, are used to calm down psychosis or extreme anxiety. The tricyclic antidepressants are chemical mood elevators. Both work by somehow altering the minute bursts of chemicals which neurons send across the synapses, or gaps between nerves, to carry impulses from one nerve to another.

Because they affect the nervous system which in turn reacts with every other system in the body, psychiatric drugs have lots of side-effects - dilated pupils, dry mouth, feverishness, speeded-up heartrate, slowed down digestive muscles, breakdowns in coordination, rolling eyes. Overdose can accelerate these in any part of the body. I once met a man whose hand muscles had contracted violently after a phenothiazine overdose, leaving his fingers permanently warped. Tardive dyskinesia, a Parkinson's-Disease-like condition caused in some patients by long-term use of the drugs, can be accelerated by the overdose. Probably the most common permanent damage from overdoes is brain damage, caused by seizures and fibrillation.

The exotic drugs of mystery novels, strychnine and cyanide, are painful and deadly, but rarely show up in emergency rooms. What shows up all the time are sleeping pills and mood pills -- the sedative hypnotics -- barbiturates like Seconal, mild tranquilizers like Valium. Typically, a sedative overdose will do nothing more than put you to sleep for a day or two, and leave you with a bad hangover and a case of the slows when you wake up. But like many other overdoses, sedatives are often taken with alcohol, which makes people nauseous. Anyone who vomits when they're passed out risks sucking some of the vomit into their lungs, which is called aspiration.

It's as dangerous as it sounds disgusting. Vomit contains enzymes from the stomach that destroy tissue, and those go to work on the lung walls. It also contains a rich broth of food, perfect for pneumonia bugs to grow in. People can also drown in vomit, which keeps air from getting to the brain, which once again causes brain damage. As aspirating patient goes into intensive care; a device called a bronchoscope is used to look into their lungs and pull out whatever pieces of vomit it can.

The human body is hard to kill

Drug overdoses are always unpredictable. The drugs react with other drugs people take at the time, with alcohol, with odd allergies and drugs lingering around in the bloodstream from years before. "One fellow took four cold tablets," McKinney said, "and went to an emergency room complaining of a headache. He blew the blood vessels behind of his eyes out."

Violent death is so often portrayed as sudden and painless, but the human body is harder to kill it seems. For instance, people rarely die from slashing their wrists. "Most people who try it aren't really suicidal," Bedard said. "Usually it's a cry for help. A few want to see what it feels like to cut themselves. We just sew them up and call in the psychiatrist." Even if you cut your artery, which most people don't, it's hard to bleed to death because the bleeding stops on its own unless the cut is extremely severe. Popular wisdom says sitting in hot water makes you bleed faster, but Bedard said he's known people who tried it, passed out and woke up in a bathtub full of cold bloody water.

But it's an easy way to hurt yourself," he said. "You can damage the tendons and median nerve which control the muscles of your hand. People end up with claw hands. Lots of times, with microsurgery, that can be repaired, but it means six to twelve months out of your life, and you still end up with a weak or deformed hand."

The few people who cut their throats also rarely die. "They often cut the recurrent laryngeal nerve," Bedard said, "the nerve that goes up to the voicebox and larynx, and lose their voices. Or they cut themselves and bleed beneath the surface until they choke on a buildup of blood inside the trachea."

Bedard said most suicide shootings he's seen were hostile, done while someone else was around to react to it. Interestingly, you can shoot yourself in the head and miss the brain but merely blow out an eye or part of your jaw. If you die, the death is usually drawn out and painful.

"People can live eight hours with a hole in their head the size of a half dollar," Bedard said. "If you shoot yourself in the temple, the primitive parts of your brain that control breathing will go on for a long time, from minutes to hours. Eventually they may be shut off by pressure from the swelling of the upper brain that was shot. Or they may not be shut off at all. One man I treated is completely paralyzed on his left side, and can't speak, walk or feed himself. It's as if he had a major stroke. He hit the area of the brain which controls motor function."

Jumps and hanging, again from Bedard: "I'm amazed at how far you can fall after a jump and not kill yourself. Some people have fallen 150 feet and lived. They'll break many of their bones or rupture an organ like the spleen. Many people who try to hang themselves don't fall far enough to jerk their head back and snap their airway. They strangle themselves instead, and don't always die; they get brain damage from lack of oxygen." People who try to poison themselves with gas or carbon dioxide may also get brain damage for the same reason.

Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site

And finally, just falling into a coma can lead to permanent damage. "If you're slumped on a table, leaning on your arm for a day and a half," Bedard said, "you put pressure on the armpit. You can permanently damage the nerve there and make it hard to use your arm. Or your muscles might start to dissolve into your bloodstream and clog up your kidneys. The muscle damage probably eventually returns to normal."

These clinical generalizations make suicidal people seem like statistical ciphers who made a mistake and suffered the immediate, appropriate retribution. But it doesn't feel like that at the time. Whether or not you are glad you were rescued, recovering from a suicide attempt is like being in the emergency room for any other reason. The flash that brought you there was over in a moment. The waiting, being embarrassed, wondering what will happen next and bearing sharp or dull pain go on for hours.

What happens afterwards?

How, according to people who work with them, do suicide attempters feel when they wake up in the hospital? Glad they were saved. Convinced that suicide was a mistake. Angry they were saved. Angry at the friend or neighbor who betrayed them by calling emergency. Eager to get out of the hospital so they can try it again. Embarrassed. Relieved. Happy to be taken care of. Eager to start taking care of themselves again. Unwilling to think about it. Wondering what everyone else they know things about it. Wondering if the person they were trying to reach will finally pay attention to them.

"A lot of what I hear in the emergency room is hostility towards a specific person," Dr. Bedard said. "Once they know they're not going to die, they go out of their way to talk to me about it. 'I'll show that son of a bitch. He didn't think I had the guts to do it.' A lot of these people fantasize about seeing themselves at the funeral. 'The whole world's going to be upset.'"

Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site

There are people who get ignored repeatedly until they attempt suicide. One woman I heard about tried to kill herself six times in one year. "My husband says he's too busy if I ask him to take me out to dinner," she told the emergency room staff. "But for this he makes time."

If it isn't the attention of a particular person, it might be the emergency room staff. Sadly, many people can only get a lot of paid professional people to notice them by threatening their own life. "A lot of people we see are repeaters," Bedard said. "They might come in 20 times in five years. To them it's a game. 'Either you take Ipecac and vomit or we'll have to do gastric lavage', we'll say. 'You know and I know it'll hurt, so why don't you take the Ipecac?' Sometimes you see the same people so often it's like visiting an old friend.

Other people take a pill overdose not to risk their lives, but to find a place where they can be taken care of and forget their problems for a while. "People want time out," said Temple University psychiatry professor Michael Simpson, who ran the emergency psychiatric service at Guy's Hospital in London. "That's why sometimes they'll seek psychiatric support but leave in a day or two. They used to be able to do it more freely in the drug culture by finding a crashpad. Now the medical model is one of the few excuses for going away and lying around and having people be kind to you that is seen as a valid reason to leave work. Maybe we need other ways to legitimize that."

People who attempt suicide are almost never arrested, but they lose their right to decide what happens to them. In every state, being a possible danger to oneself, in the opinion of the psychiatrist who interviews you, is cause for being held for psychiatric care for a limited period of time. In California, the period of time is three days; it can be followed, with an application to a judge, by a 14-day period. Beyond that, the regular rules for entering a mental hospital voluntarily or being committed apply. Clearly, how you act at the initial interview with a psychiatrist has a lot to do with how long you stay under psychiatric care. So does the attitude of the psychiatrist who examines you and the availability of good or bad psychiatric facilities in your area.

Rarely are patients held longer than three days for psychiatric reasons. In fact, some hospitals send more than half of the suicidal patients home as soon as they can go. Some patients are routed to state or private psychiatric hospitals; some go to local board-and-care homes or halfway houses or outpatient clinics or nowhere at all. "The only generalization you can make," said Ed Hamell, a senior psychiatric specialist at a private psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C., "is that people who find themselves in hospitals following suicide attempts will be treated as not able to be responsible for their own safety."

Howard Blackstone, the clinical director of the Marin County mental health crisis unit, told some of the things that happen in the initial psychiatric interview. "We're trying to find out what happened. Was it well thought out or was it impulsive? What kinds of problems led up to that point? What state were they in when they tried to do it? How likely are they to try it again? Oftentimes someone will come in upset, but after a day or two hold they will look back and say 'Why the hell did I do that?' If we believe that someone is still perturbed and still ruminating about how to kill themselves, we are required to hold on to them. We evaluate reasons less than state of mind. The purpose of what we're doing is to help someone out of a state of mind where they may do something not in their best interest."

Beyond that, I can't generalize about the psychiatric consequences of suicide. There are too many possibilities, they differ too much from place to place and the patient has too little control over where he or she ends up. In many psychiatric institutions (and other social welfare institutions, like nursing homes) suicide is a sensitive issue, because a funding agency may investigate an institution if a suicide happens within its walls. Or a psychiatrist may be held responsible for a suicide if it can be proved he knew about it beforehand and didn't act reasonably to prevent it. Here as everywhere else, the main priority is keeping the person alive.

That may be changing....
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site

The priority to keep a person alive may be changing

"There are a growing number of people in the psychiatric community," David Gruder said, "who feel privately that their patients, regardless of the law, have the right to decide whether or not to take their own life. Under certain circumstances, there are psychiatrists who won't prevent some of their patients from killing themselves. But you can't talk about this out loud too often, because it's illegal and could also be grounds for disbarment." He said an influential book for therapists on this subject is Back to One by Sheldon Kopp (1977; $7.95 postpaid from Science and Behavior Books, P.O. Box 11457, Palo Alto, CA 94306).

If you believe, as I did starting this article, that each of us has a right to commit suicide and potentially valid reasons for doing so which should be respected, you might think there's something gruesome about a system which automatically acts to preserve life, whether the person wants it preserved or not. There's an apocryphal story told in every emergency room: someone comes in for the thirtieth or fortieth time on a suicide attempt and a doctor finally explodes and says, "Look, why don't you try it this way," and the patient does next time and dies. Every professional I talked to -- doctor, paramedic, suicide prevention counselor, therapist, pharmacologist ,nurse -- said there have been people who made them thin, 'you're right. You have nothing to live for.' But the attempt to save the person's life is always made. As Dr. Richard Fein, who directs outpatient services at San Francisco General Hospital, said, to decide whether someone's life is worth living in an emergency is gross arrogance.

There are people who think suicide can be a method of natural selection in an overcrowded world. Suicides in prisons are often not saved, I was told by several people; the same is true sometimes in some cities, for the indigent suicide, the alcoholic suicide, the aged or non-white suicide. Nobody else wants them; they finally succumb to the obvious. Aren't there people who ought to be killing themselves but are not?
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site

Brr. I'm on the side of saving lives automatically. I liked what Stuart Bair, who counsels many of the desperate and penniless suicide attempters at San Francisco General Hospital, said: "I believe in miracles. I think there's always a reason to hope someone's life will improve." And I like what psychiatrist Michael Simpson said about the terminally ill that groups like Exit and Hemlock are trying to reach: "Those who work with terminal patients, like people in hospices, say there are very few requests for suicide. People want to be relieved of pain, which we could do for nearly everyone if we were given good hospice and palliative care. We need to be sure we've guaranteed mercy living before we get around to mercy killing."

Anyway, I suspect suicidal people are automatically rescued not for their own sakes, but for the rest of us. A suicide death, unless it is rationally prepared for, devastates. The message of a suicide attempt is often: Death is better than the pain you've caused me. And the message doesn't have to come from someone you know. David Gruder, who directed crisis hotlines, told me about a woman who called up and raved: "I've had it. I'm pissed off. I'm killing myself and damned if I'm not to take someone else with me and you, you bastard, are coming. BANG!" She shot herself. And, as it happened, it was the hotline worker's first call. She went right into a nervous breakdown.

But I believe the main reason a suicide attempt devastates and fascinates us is it reminds us how fragile our own hold on life is. "Here I am struggling along with my problems," Michael Simpson said, "and here's a guy who's given up. Is it possible I'm wrong in bothering so hard to try to live? Once you start discussing suicide you're asking what the grounds are for killing ourselves. The other side of that question is, 'What am I living for?' That's an ugly question for most of us because we don't usually know."

Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site
If someone you know is thinking of suicide, or you think they are, and you don't want them to die, tell them. "Please call me or call suicide prevention before you try anything because I care about you and I don't want you to die." Don't argue with them about why life is worth living, because you can't win that one in rational argument. Tell them how you and other people will feel when they're gone. If there are mental health services you trust in your neighborhood, you may want to suggest them.

If you are scared you may commit suicide, and sometimes you don't want to, there may be more options than you realize. A good guide to whatever mental health services are around and how to find them is You Are Not Alone (NWEC, p. 327). It's worth looking around to see if there's a friend, family member or neighbor that you can talk to about it. Even if, like me, you distrust mental health services, it's probably worth calling suicide prevention. They're listed under that name in the phone book white pages, or call the American Association of Suicidology at (303) 692-0985 for the phone number of one near you.

If you want to make someone pay attention to you through a suicide attempt, you might consider leaving a note for that person and checking into an emergency room and telling them you're suicidal. You'll got through the same psychiatric hold, but without the damage to your body. Choose your emergency room carefully. Some, like Herrick Hospital in Berkeley, often have eight- to ten-hour waits for non-critical patients, in dismal surroundings that will probably make you feel worse.

Or, have you considered changing your life?
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site

Suicide Notes

These suicide notes were gathered at the coroners' offices by a suicidologist/psychiatrist who asked to be anonymous. He edited identifying details out of the compiled manuscript, and we changed the names. But the text of each letter plus the age and sex given are real. All these people did kill themselves. Were they ambivalent about it? About half the hundred or so letters we saw seemed to have some element of doubt.

Married Female, age 59

Dear David,
After six weeks of streptomycin shots and a total of eleven weeks of rest in bed we have conclusive proof that the ulcers in my bronchial tubes have not healed. The short period of the streptomycin inhalations could not have brought on the results if the ulceration had even partially healed. To try further would mean many more months of bed rest -- more shots and inhalations -- I can't remain at the hospital for the winter months and a prolonged stay at a rest home is out of the question. I did some figuring -- the weekly rate there -- the amount of streptomycin for shots and inhalations plus the doctor's weekly visits would total to over $200 a week -- I can't bleed my family for any such amount of money, and that means that as soon as the money I have in my checking account runs out I would have to return home -- back to the same conditions which caused me to go downhill so steadily. It's a vicious circle from which there seems no escape. I could of course use up the money from the sale of our furnishings and silver as well as some I put aside for the furnishing of our home -- but all it put together would be like a drop ion the bucket -- besides I am now convinced that my condition is too chronic and therefore a cure doubtful.

All of a sudden all will and determination to fight on has left me. I have long ago prepared myself for the time when I reached the end of the trail. I feel calm and at peace and grateful that I can go to sleep painlessly. I feel justified in terminating a life which no longer holds any hope of having the essentials which make it worth living -- I did desperately want to get well -- I still had much to live for -- hope for recovery -- hope of a reunion with the children -- work which I loved and which could have given me financial security and great satisfaction. But it was not to be -- I am defeated and exhausted physically and emotionally.

Please tell the children that I loved them always and that my love has never faltered. I grieve that I could not have had the joy of being close to our babies, but that is no one's fault. Thank God they are well -- with my passing all menace to their wellbeing will have disappeared.

I want you to know that I have a deep affection for you. I am deeply grateful for all your kindness. I wish I could have made a happier life for you. It was mostly my fault, please forgive me.

Please write to Fran and Tony and to Marilyn and Jim and tell them that my love and gratitude could not possibly be put into words. Their generosity, devotion, love and tact made it possible for me to accept their financial help over a long period of time. I wish with all my heart that they might have been better rewarded -- All of you, my dear ones, I ask to keep my memory alive in your hearts -- To live on in the hearts of our dear ones is all that I can conceive of immortality. Please think of me kindly. Remember that which was good and lovely in our relationship and forgive me for the many mistakes I have made. Now that it is all said I feel at peace.

I want Dr. B. to officiate at my funeral. I think Joe would like to have him with him at that time.

Dear David,

I am said that I must go just a few days before your birthday -- but it so happened to pan out. I see no good in incurring the expense and misery of the bronchoscopy. I wish I could spare you the ordeal you have ahead. Try not to grieve. I ask all of you, my dear ones, not to mourn my passing. Be glad I am at least free from the misery of the bronchoscopy. I wish I could spare you the ordeal you have ahead. Try not to grieve. I ask all of you, my dear ones, not to mourn my passing. Be glad I am at least free from the miseries and loneliness I have endured for so long and that at last I'll have peace and rest...



Single female, age 21

My dearest Andrew,

It seems as if I have been spending all my life apologizing to you for things that happened whether they were my fault or not.

I am enclosing your pin because I want you to think of what you took from me every time you see it.

I don't want you to think I would kill myself over you because you're not worth any emotion at all. It is what you cost me that hurts and nothing can replace it.

Single male, age 51

Sunday 4:45 PM. Here goes

To who it may concern

Though I am about to kick the bucket I am as happy as ever. I am tired of this life so am going over to see the other side.

Good luck to all.

Benjamin P.

Married male, age 48

Elaine, Darling,

My mind -- always warped and twisted -- has reached the point where I can wait no longer -- I don't dare wait longer -- until there is the final twist and it snaps and I spend the rest of my life in some state run snake pit.

I am going out -- and I hope it is out -- Nirvanha, I think the Bhudaists (how do you spell Bhudaists?) call it which is the word for "nothing." That's as I have told you for years, is what I want. Imagine God playing a dirty trick on me like another life!!!

I've lived 47 years -- there aren't 47 days I would live over again if I could avoid it.

Let us, for a moment be sensible. I do ont remember if the partnership agreement provides for a case like this -- but if it doesn't and I think it doesn't, I would much prefer -- I haven't time to make this a legal requirement -- but, I would much prefer that you, as executrix under my will, do not elect to participate in profits for 2 or 3 years or whatever it may be that is specified there. My partners have been generous with me while I worked with them. There is no reason why, under the circumstances of my withdrawal from the firm, they should pay anything more.

I could wish that I had, for my goodby kiss, a .38 police special with which I have made some good scores -- not records but at least made my mark. Instead, I have this black bitch -- bitch, if the word is not familiar to you -- but at least an honest one who will mean what she says.

The neighbors may think it's a motor backfire ,but to me she will whisper -- "Rest - Sleep."

Albert

P.S. I think there is enough insurance to see Valerie through school, but if there isn't -- I am sure you would out of the insurance payments, at least --

I hope further and I don't insist that you have the ordinary decency -- decency that is -- to do so -- Will you see Valerie through college -- she is the only one about whom I am concerned as this .38 whispers in my ear.



Married male, age 45

My darling,

May her guts rot in hell -- I loved her so much.

Henry

Divorced female, age 61

You cops will want to know why I did it, well, just let us say that I lived 61 years too many.

People have always put obstacles in my way. One of the great ones is leaving this world when you want to and have nothing to live for.

I am not insane. My mind was never more clear. It has been a long day. The motor got so hot it would not run so I just had to sit here and wait. The breaks were against me to the last.

The sun is leaving the hill now so hope nothing else happens.

Married male, age 74

What is a few short years to live in hell. That is all I get around here.

No more I will pay the bills.

No more I will drive the car.

No more I will wash, iron & mend any clothes.

No more I will have to eat the leftover articles that was cooked the day before.

This is no way to live.

Either is it any way to die.

Her grub I can not eat.

At night I can not sleep.

I married the wrong nag-nag-nag and I lost my life.

W.S.

to the undertaker

We have got plenty money to give me a decent burial. Don't let my wife kid you by saying she has not got any money.

Give this note to the cops.

Give me liberty or give me death.

W.S.

Married male, age 45

Dear Claudia,

You win, I can't take it any longer, I know you have been waiting for this to happen. I hope it makes you very happy, this is not an easy thing to do, but I've got to the point where there is nothing to live for, a little bit of kindness from you would of made everything so different, but all that ever interested you was the dollar.

It is pretty hard for me to do anything when you are so greedy even with this house you couldn't even be fair with that, well it's all yours now and you won't have to see the Lawyer anymore.

I wish you would you give my personal things to Danny, you couldn't get much from selling them anyway, you still have my insurance, it isn't much but it will be enough to take care of my debts and still have a few bucks left.

You always told me that I was the one that made Sharon take her life, in fact you said I killed her, but you know down deep in your heart it was you that made her do what she did, and now you have two deaths to your credit, it should make you feel very proud.

Good By Kid

P.S. Disregard all the mean things I've said in this letter, I have said a lot of things to you I didn't really mean and I hope you get well and wish you the best of everything.

Cathy -- don't come in.

Call your mother, she will know what to do.

Love

Daddy

Cathy don't go in the bedroom.

Married female, age 50

When a "man" doesn't know where to take his wife -- then she isn't a wife any more --

I hope you will be "free" to take anyone any place and I'm sure you will not have any trouble as to places --

Please don't tell my mother the truth -- your whole tribe is partly responsible for this -- from your mother on down -- hope they are satisfied.

Married female, age 56

About the Evil god (yes)

About the Evil Seers killing people for their money (yes)

I am a profit at my death

I am a root of the stem of Jesse (yes)

We have made many discoveries. We have found out who the people with the mark of the beast are. And the devil was a human being now killed and cast into hell and the angel with the keys of the bottomless pit is in hell casting out all the good souls which these evil people have cast into hell for no reason. The good Seers who serve our God are 1/3 to 2/3 of the evil ones in this world. We are better than holding our owne but in Heaven God is almost over come and I kill myself so I may go and help him, because I have a funny little quirk in my brain which helps.

6 palmy each at a few years sport. Our god will send them into the world.



Single male, age 13

I know what I am doing. Annette found out. Ask Cara. I love you all.

Bill

Widowed female, age 52 (Her husband died three months before.)

Please tell Ron's folks I love them very much but my heart breaks when I see or hear from them. Also all our friends especially Irene and Charles and Ella I love them also. Forgive me for not seeing them.

Everyone seems so happy and I am so alone. Amy. I wanted to visit you but I am going around in a dream. Alice I wanted to help you paint but how could I with a broken heart. And my head aches so much any more my nerves are ready to break and what would happen if they did.

You will say I am crazy and I can't go on this way just half living.

I loved this house once but now it is so full of memories I can't stay here. I have tried to think of some way to go on but can't. Am so nervous all the time -- I loved Ron too much but is that a sin, with him gone I have nothing. Oh I have the girls and family but they don't fill the vacant spot left in my heart ...

Xmas is coming I can't go on I'm afraid I would break down. I've thought of this so many times. I love every one but I can't be one of you any more. Please think kindly of me and forgive me. I only hope this is fatal then I can rest and no more trouble to any one. Do with Lisa whats best I know she has been a lot of worry to mama and I'm sorry. I tried to keep the yard up that seemed to be the only comfort I had. I loved it but that wasn't anything. I've lost every thing so why go on. I worshipped Ron and when he went I lost my whole world and everything.

I'm so tired and lonely.

There goes a siren. Oh how can I stand being left. I need to go to a Dr. but I am afraid. I'm so cold.

Mother Love, Louise

Married male, age 40

Jimmy!

Remember what I told you and always respect, protect and obey your mother and always remember that I love you so much. I am going to leave you forever because I am too sick to go on. God bless you my Son and when your time comes to go to Heaven you will find your ole Pappy waiting for you.

Daddy



Single female, age 16

Dear Mother & Dad,

Please forgive me. I have tried to be good to you both. I love you both very much and wanted to get along with you both. I have tried.

I have wanted to go out with you and Dad but I was always afraid to ask for I always felt that the answer would be no.

And about Bud, I want to dismiss every idea about him. I don't like him any more than a companion, for a while I thought I did but no more, in fact, I am quite tired of him, as you know, I get tired of everyone after a while.

And mother, I wish that you hadn't called me a liar, and said I was just like Hap. as I'm not. It is just that I am afraid of you both at times, but I love you both very much.

So Long

Your loving daughter

that will always

love you

Mary

P.S. Please forgive me. I want you to, and don't think for one minute that I haven't appreciate everything you've done.



Single male, age 35 (He committed suicide after he killed his girlfriend.)

Mommie, my Darling,

To love you as I do and live without you is more than I can bear. I love you so completely, wholeheartedly without restraint. I worship you, that is my fault. With your indifference to me; is the difference. I've tried so hard to make our lives pleasant and lovable, but you didn't seem to care. You had great plans which didn't include me. You didn't respect me. That was the trouble. You treated me like a child. I couldn't reach you as a man and woman or man and wife as we've lived. I let you know my feelings toward you when I shouldn't have. How I loved you, what you meant to me. Without you life is unbearable.

This is the best way. This will solve all our problems. You can't hurt me further and anyone else. I was a "toll" while you needed me or thought you did. But now that I could use some help, you won't supply the need that was prominent when you need it. So, good bye my love. If it is possible to love in the hereafter, I will love you even after death. May God have mercy on both our souls. He alone knows my heartache and sorrow and love for you.

Daddy

Single female, age 31

My boss, Kenneth J., seduced me and made me pregnant. He refuses to help me. I had not had intercourse in two years. He says that I will have to suffer through it by myself.

Several people know about this -- my doctor, Dr. James R., and Pete M., who works at Willams. Pete and I never had a love affair, although Kenneth would like to drag Pete into it. Also, Dr. Arnold W. knows about it.

I have always been such a good girl.

Daddy dear --

As much as it hurts me, I cannot make it this Friday. I may be in very serious trouble. I have always been a very good person, but it looks like I really got in a mess, through no real fault of my own.

I must have been born to suffer.

Love - Elizabeth

P.S. Call me if you can. When will Sally be back? I may need her desperately.



Married man, age 52

Dear Joan,

For 23 years we lived happy together. Our married life was ideal, until two years ago when I witnessed Kristy die in the hospital something snapped in me. You remember when I returned from the hospital I broke down. That was the beginning of my illness. Since then my condition was getting progressively worse, I could neither work or think logically. You have been thru "Hell" with me since then. Only you and I know how much you have lived thru. I feel that I will not improve and can't keep on causing you and the children so much misery. I loved you and was proud of you. I loved the children dearly and could not see them suffer so much on account of me.

Dear Children:

Please forgive me.

Love, Frank

Divorced female, age 37

To No-one and Everyone:

Because of a growing conviction that a hereditary insanity is manifesting itself beyond my control, I am taking this way out -- before mere nuisance attacks and rages against others assume a more dangerous form.

Because I am an agnostic and believe funeral fanfare to be nonsense -- I ask that it be forgotten. Instead, knowing there to be a marked shortage of cadavers for the medical profession, for which I have endless respect, I hereby bequeath 1) my body to medics for dissection; also 2) To Mark B. all personal effects -- to be divided as whim decrees -- with Dr. Lois J., L.A. and to each -- a deep fondness and love. 3) To Joe A. the greatest devotion -- the kind that "passeth all understanding." 3a) And my life.

Anita R.

4) To my father, Vincent M., the sum of one dollar ($1)



Trina, a college student, 21 years old

Fall quarter I called Suicide Prevention. I'd called them before and the people were nice, but this time the woman acted a little indignant. "Why the hell do you want to do something like that?" she asked. We talked until she said she had other phone calls. But she made me promise I wouldn't try it without calling back first. I had a bottle of Coricidin from a wisdom tooth operation. I'd been thinking about it for a month off and on. Much later that night I took ten Coricidin and went to bed. I woke up in the morning feeling really rotten -- weepy, groggy. I could hardly move I thought I was going to die any minute. My roommate came home and got a friend to drive me to the school infirmary, where they gave me something that made me sick to my stomach. The doctor who gave it to me calmed me down. She said it happens to a lot of people, the pills wouldn't hurt me. I felt tingly, like I might pass out any minute.

I was immediately taken in a wheelchair to the psychiatrist's office. I talked to him about five minutes. He kept yelling ta me about why did I take the pills, why didn't I do this or that. I remember thinking, boy this man is a real jerk. I told him I didn't want to see him any more. He said, "That's fine," and put me in a locked room with bars on the windows. I couldn't make phone calls. I felt humiliated, which made me angry. I'm not crazy. I'm not weird. I don't want people to look at me like I'm nuts. I'm not some nutty kid who tried to knock herself off. I was most angry at being stuck in that room. I expected to be put in a straitjacket any minute. I complained until they moved me a pretty room and let me make phone calls.

I was there about two weeks. My psychiatrist kept harping at me about school -- was I going to stay in or drop out? I saw him ten minutes a day. The other patients and one orderly helped me a lot more than he did. I just wanted to find a place where I could be alone and think about things. I left feeling like not much had been accomplished, except letting me know that I didn't want to attempt it again. No -- I feel like I've become a lot more sensitive to people. I don't look at their problems as trivial any more. I almost like it when my friends come to me with problems. I feel like I can help now. I still haven't told the two people I was most angry at -- my father and my boyfriend -- why I was in the hospital.



Sandra, a clerk, 27 years old

A year ago March, while I was living in Michigan, I took an overdose of Elavil. I was seeing a psychiatrist and I was just getting off the medication. But the bottle was still in my apartment. I'd one out and had drinks, came home and that's when I did it -- about ten in the evening or so. I called my boyfriend Jonathan in California and my social worker. I told them I had taken the pills. The social worker told me to drive to the emergency room. I'd have been lucky to make it to the front door. Jonathan called a friend of mine, who came to the apartment and broke down the door. I was in a coma for five days. I guess I was lucky because the doctors told everybody I wasn't going to make it. Then they said I've have permanent brain damage. When it didn't happen they said it was the miracle of the floor. I was out of the hospital in about three weeks; a week of that was in the psychiatric ward, which was a real drag.

I had a lot of problems with my memory for a while. Even now I can't remember some things. Starting a week before the overdose I don't remember anything at all. All I know about it is what Jonathan says I told him over the phone. Everybody asks "Why did you do it?" and I don't know. It sounds real stupid.

Everybody in the hospital was real nice. I was afraid that they would get down on me but they didn't. It was a Catholic hospital, and I had my own room. Friends were there 24 hours a day. It made me realize how many friends I had. On the psychiatric ward they give you tests for brain damage. They ask you a lot of silly questions. They test your reflexes, your memory. They give you EKG tests. It took a while to get back my coordination. I couldn't write or do other things with my hands. Most of the time I stayed by myself. There were programs for the other patients but they didn't put me in any because they didn't know how long I would be staying.

I'd tried twice, but those times weren't serious. I was just trying to get some attention. The first time I was 14, and I slashed my wrists. It was basic adolescent scare tactics. As a result I ended up in an inpatient clinic for teenagers for about five months. Almost everybody there was there because they ran away or they were doing a lot of drugs. The second time was a couple of years ago. I did a Valium overdose. It wasn't very serious -- I just had to have my stomach pumped.

This time it shocked me to realize what could have happened to me. I realized how much I had hurt my friends and family, which I didn't think about before. I started wondering if people could trust me. It upset my life a lot -- it threw everything backwards. Jonathan flew in from California. HE said the scariest part was worrying about having to decide what to do if my body kept living but I had no brain response. When I first woke up I didn't think there would be anything wrong with me. And then it hit me that I couldn't move. I was embarrassed that people had to see me like that.

Once you're out of the hospital a lot of institutions won't hire you. You can't get health insurance. You have to lie on your job applications. People look at you like you're dangerous. It's real scary for some of my friends -- they think they're responsible. Trying to convince people that I was OK was the hardest thing. That they didn't have to watch over me, that I wasn't going to try it again.

Thomas, a hairdresser, 21 years old

I tried it five years ago. I was at a neighbor's house and fired a gun at my head. Nothing happened; it seemed empty. I fired it at a wall and put a bullet in it. So a minute later I found some Seconals in a medicine cabinet. I remember watching cartoons and taking the pills one by one. A neighbor lady found me and couldn't wake me up. I couldn't open my eyes or move, but I heard everything. I remember the lady shaking me and saying, "Oh, my God." I remember the ambulance people taking off my clothes and making me throw up. There wasn't any pain. I don't remember having my stomach pumped.

When I woke up it was five days later. A big black lady kept tickling me. "'Bout time you woke up," she said. "I've been tickling you for three days." I thought I was in heaven -- it looked like some place in heaven for the misfits. Turned out I was in the basement of a free clinic, a long room with rows of beds with all kinds of teenagers, pregnant girls, suicides, drug addicts. We walked around in gowns, smoking cigarettes and watching TV. The reason I tried was I was angry at my mother, but when she came in she just said, "Why'd you do this -- to try to get attention?"

Am I glad I was rescued? Oh yeah. I was so glad I didn't die. It made me realize how much I appreciate myself, because I had a glimpse of what I might have lost. I had some friends and I would've missed them. I didn't have to go home after that. They put me in a foster home. The State made me go to a psychiatrist. I never liked the man. I thought he had more problems than I did. I felt drugged and slow for a couple of years. Every now and then I'd take speed to feel normal. Downers still make me feel speedy. If I had a suicidal friend now I'd ask them, "Why don't you have any alternatives? Could it really be so awful?" That's what I say to myself now.

Suicide Killers - documentary

Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site