You can't really save anyone

Trigger warning for frank discussion of suicide here.

Anthony Bourdain was taken by depression last night, I really liked his work and the world is a worse place without him here.

But at the end, he didn't agree.

Every time we get news of a celebrity committing suicide, stuff goes around social and other media telling us to check in on each other, to ask for help if we need it, and to offer it to those who do. These are all noble and good, and we should be doing them all the time. Honestly we really are doing them all the time because that is how society and social circles work, but the argument can be made that we should be doing it more, and I don't disagree.

But we have to realize that having someone who cares about you isn't necessarily an argument against suicide for someone with depression.

I am going to share some quotes from a number of people, just regular folks, on the topic:

Ignorant Fucko: "committing suicide is cowardly and you're a piece of shit who'll ruin your kid's life if you do it"
Person With Depression, listening, and stating things their illness makes them literally believe to be true in real life: "you're right, i AM a piece of shit, the thing is, because I'm such a piece of shit i know I'll ruin my kid's life by being in it, too, so killing myself now will let the kid grow up and have time to get over it instead of being raised by a stupid worthless piece of shit like me. also, you're right and I'll ruin my kid's life anyway but that just means I'm DOUBLE SHIT and even less worthy of existence on this planet. after i kill myself the world will be a better place and everyone i know will be joyously free of my shitty, cowardly, piece of shit existence. thank you for reinforcing my preexisting lack of self worth by reminding me that it's an objective truth that I'm a piece of shit"

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Whatever damage I cause from committing suicide can be overcome because my family has always been stronger than me. And once I'm gone they will no longer have a leech on their back. They can have lives again. The one bad action of suicide (FOR ME AND ME ALONE) pales in comparison to a life time of making people worse off. Because I've been at points where a friend of mine has been suicidally depressed and if I wasn't able to help him then I would be the one at fault for his death. What if I can stop someone else from dying by just not being there to fuck it up.

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So for me I don't really have family I care about (almost never talk to my sister, don't get along with my parents at all because my dad is now the kind of guy who has Fox News on the TV all day and Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity on radio any time he's driving). I barely have friends and haven't been in a relationship since high school because I'm an ubergoon. Also I actually have a well paying job as a computer engineer but have had disciplinary talks because I slack off and get distracted a lot. I feel like a liability to anyone who might hire me, don't feel good enough to find a job I feel more passionate about, and genuinely think there's like, maybe 3 people at most outside of my coworkers who would really be impacted if I died.

It's really easy to think I'm a worthless piece of shit because I don't really have friends/can't find a SO/slack off too much/don't sleep when I should/can't lose weight/do any number of things I know I should be doing better in life, decide it's not worth even trying, and then call myself a piece of shit later for not even trying. And by really easy I mean this has basically been the defining aspect of my entire life since I was 14 or so.

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I have some family and close friends that live near me. I've got a job that I don't love, but that pays the bills and lets me live in a decent place. All in all, I'm doing okay.

But none of that meant anything when I would get really depressed. And it was so difficult to get a hold of because I would have the same thoughts, but my interpretations would be so different. Like I would think, "that thing I was working on didn't work out." Under normal circumstances I would just think, "well I'll take another shot at it tomorrow," but when I depressed it was more like, "it's not going to work out. Nothing ever works out for me. And if something does work out it's only temporary so that the next failure will be that much more impactful. And that's how it's always going to be. How much longer do I have to put up with this. How much longer CAN I put up with this?"

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I think the term "depression" isn't very good. It implies sadness. Depression isn't sadness. It's psychological pain. It's the inability to feel positive about things. People who are suicidal don't want to die, exactly. They want to stop hurting. They can't conceive of any other way to ever not hurt again other than no longer living.

Yelling at them for being selfish only aggravates the situation. It makes it that much harder to get people the help they need.

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Suicidal depression is about a person's mind trying to kill them. My mind would literally point out ways to kill myself without any input on my part via extremely intrusive thoughts. Depression made me feel locked into very few options. It made me feel worthless and useless and unable to do anything whatsoever. If you told me I was a shitty person for wanting me to kill myself, you would have made my condition worse. Someone else already pointed this out: None of that helps the person with depression NOT kill themselves. Knowing all of that will crush them even more, because they think they are worthless and nothing and only a detriment to people around them... but removing themselves is going to hurt people, too! And now they feel even more trapped.

Your mind is what tells you to do things. Your mind is what makes CHOICES. Do you really think someone will be good at making good choices when the thing that makes choices is broken? It doesn't work out that way. Depression made suicide seem like the good choice for Bourdain and everyone around him. Depression told your dad that he would fuck you up for life. It told him that anyone else would be a better parent and that he should give you that chance. It didn't "make him think it was okay", it made him think it would be better. Yes, the situation was within his control, and he picked the better option in the lens of mental illness.

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Having struggled with depression with bouts of suicidal thoughts and behavior for as long as I can remember, and now suffering a chronic physical illness, they're the same thing. You do not have control over a physical illness, and the same goes for mental illness. They control you. You can try as hard as you can to adapt to the situation you're in, but in the end you are at the mercy of your illness. Telling people they're cowardly because their brain isn't working properly is like saying someone is just being weak if their legs don't work properly. I'm taking my suffering as a fucked up form of a blessing because now I truly understand how comparable they are and how unfair it is to stigmatize mental illness like that.

this past winter, I was driving up to visit my parents, and because of the timing I ended up driving through snow. I went off the road twice because of road conditions and tires that were more bare than I thought, and both times I can remember, clear as day, a thought running through my head: "at least this way it's not my fault". Both times I thought I was about to die, and both times I was at least a little relieved; all the times that suicide had gone through my head - "just turn the wheel a little and go into that tree", "you're already taking painkillers, take a few more", "would it really matter if you 'lost your footing' on these stairs?" - and I'd managed to find death without looking for it, and so at least no one would blame me for finally dying and not having to deal with this shit for another year, another month, another day, another hour.

Tragically, I survived. My car wasn't even badly damaged.

The key, in my opinion, to understanding suicidal depression is that for people who are suicidal, we're convinced that we're already doing damage to the people around us, and from our perspective, the damage caused by our permanent absence is less than the damage caused by our continued presence in any form. 


Quotes end here.

The pathology of depression is not usually such that logic and reason works on it, which is the lesson you should take away here, when someone ends themselves, the reason often does not have roots in their real world situation look at Bourdain, he had a dream life by almost any definition, a family who loved him, friends literally all around the world, a job he chose and had control over, that took him virtually anywhere he wanted to go. On the surface there was basically no reason to commit suicide, and every reason not to.

But depression doesn't work that way. Mental illness doesn't use logic, or rather it creates its own, specialized logic that has nothing much at all to do with things like facts, or even love. A schizophrenic hears voices, and, untreated, often becomes unable to tell that the voices aren't real, depression does something similar, but someone suffering from suicidal depression isn't hearing a voice tell them to commit suicide, they are hearing themselves. The world through their eyes is exactly as dark, painful, and terrible a place as they think it is and they have any number of reasons why those who love them might be telling them otherwise, none of which include the truth, that they are loved and it would be worse if they left.

You can't really save anyone in the grips of it with a phone call or a visit, not unless you literally interrupt an attempt. Not to say you shouldn't try, but telling someone that they might save a life by reaching out is also telling them that if a friend commits suicide, they are in a way responsible if they didn't reach out, or didn't reach out enough, or in time. That isn't a responsibility that most people deserve to have put on them, and even though depression is an illness, in the end, the only person who makes the decision is the person suffering.

I've never had it too terrible, but I have wiled away the odd hour now and again thinking folks around me would be better off without me fucking things up for them. I do not know if I ever would have attempted anything, but one of the things, besides laziness, that kept me from even trying is the question of how to go about it, see, the human body really wants to live, we have evolved to do so after all and after a few million years we are really good at it, even with specialized equipment and expert application there are few methods of death that are guaranteed, and people, the average suicidal person is not an expert with specialized equipment. The logic(for me) went: "My life is shit and people would be better off without me, but I don't want to fuck someone else up who has nothing to do with me, and I also don't want to fuck this up too and then spend god knows how long in the hospital being cared for by the very people who I am fucking things up for already."

This caused a paralysis of sorts and I eventually moved on to thinking about other things, like video games, or blogging. Now I don't want anyone thinking I am contemplating suicide all the time, I have not done so for quite some time now, and even when I did, it wasn't very often or continuously, more of... idle speculation I guess? But either way, that logic worked on my slightly broken brain when "But the people who love you will be sad" didn't.

I guess what I am trying to say is if you are struggling with depression and thinking of ending things, consider that yes, there are people who love you and don't want you to commit suicide and I am one of those people, but if that doesn't do it for you, also consider that it is hard and not guaranteed, and might even make things worse for you, so you may as well seek help instead

Suicide prevention hotline:
1-800-273-8255

Their website is here too.