What's the best way to die?

Abruptly. People sometimes think they want time to wrap up their affairs but as someone who has done some grief counseling in the past o e of the saddest things I have seen repeatedly is long drawn out terminal illnesses and their effect on friends and families. Invariably your loved ones after seeing you in pain for months on end will have the thought "maybe it would be better if you just died instead of continuing to suffer". And then you do, and even though it is absurd they then feel immense guilt for wishing you would hurry up and die. Or after the first month of shock is over and they have visited you every day, they start to get back to their normal lives, not able to miss another day of school or work, then when they have t seen you for a week or two, you die, leaving them again filled with guilt. It just tears people apart.

I wish for a quick and somewhat unexpected death. I would rather leave people wishing they had a chance to say goodbye than have them feel guilty that they had the chance but decided to go to work or school instead.

As someone who was bothered by a fear of death from a young age, I always thought I would want to die in a blaze of glory - skiing off a huge cliff, skydiving, etc... But as I aged (still young, only 34) I found, what I think, is the perfect summation of how I want to die (I forget the author, in a hurry and google is failing me. Probably Neruda):

"I want to die at the end of the day // in the high seas // with my face towards the sky // when it seems like agony is just a dream // and the soul, a bird ascending in flight // Let there be no sad tears as I draw my last breath, // At one and alone with the sky and the sea, // No sobbing, nor prayer, nor laments of death // I only would hear the deep waves cover me // To die when the bright glow of twilight is fading, // and catches the waves in its last net of light // to be like that sun as its luminous shading // expires and is lost in the arms of the night // To die, and die young, before time has destroyed // the delicate fabric illusion has spun // when life can still say: “I am yours” but the void // Of a final echo tells us death has won!"

How exactly to attain that feeling, I am unsure...

My grandfather died a couple years ago. He was 95. He was up at his lake cabin fishing with some family and friends. He woke up one morning not feeling well and was dead by evening with his wife and a son at his side.

I think that's the way to go - quickly after having lived a long and full life.

Disclaimer: information might not be 100% accurate from memory, it comes close though.

In meditation retreat I was told that meditation (Vipassana in this case) is actually practicing in being prepared to die. According to this idea by doing this you can live fully. For me this seems a bit vague, but it did plant a seed in my head.

The thing is, meditation teaches you equanimity, which from my understanding means being able to feel but without judgement. When I was in deep meditation I experienced equanimity a couple of times. At one point my muscles were aching so much by sitting perfectly still that I walked like a cripple after that meditation session. My body just could not perform normally, which I found odd in a sense. Yet, I never felt any pain, I noticed my body was having a hard time sitting perfectly upright in a still position, that was it. Or perhaps better said: I did feel a form of pain (aka that something is wrong with my body), but I never experienced any suffering from it. The converse is also true with regards to pleasure (e.g. small forms of non-clinical addiction).

What I learned from practicing equanimity is that I prefer to die while using this skill. Because to me it means I won't die by suffering from pain or pleasure, I just die and experience how it feels. It could be pain, it might be pleasure, either way I just experience it and nothing more.

Note: while equanimity has to be explained through language, it's not an intellectual concept in the sense that riding a bike isn't an intellectual concept. It's something you do. Intellectualising about riding a bike won't get you anywhere, same goes for equanimity in the way that I've been taught.

Oh, I have recently written a (very) short story on the subject:

https://medium.com/@rayalez/the-best-way-to-die-b6118acb34c7

Seriously, though, I don't want to die at all, I hate death, but if I had to choose it would be morphine overdose. Also I hope I'll have the balls to commit suicide before I'm a bed-ridden piece of meat. Once my body and brain are bad enough to prevent me form writing/programming/creating things - it's time to go. I don't understand people who spend years suffering for no reason just to let random mindless natural causes to decide when it's over.

Also, there's a horrifying article on how people actually end up dying in modern medical system:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/

(I strongly suggest you read it, is amazing)

The best way to die? With awareness of the time, in a mixture of gases - 90% nitrogen and 8% oxygen or less.

I have always wondered about Aldous Huxley's death. He asked his wife to inject him with 100ug of LSD while on his deathbed. I believe that he died some hours later.

Maybe dying this way is not pleasant, who knows, but at least sounds interesting.

Maybe both effects combine into something that is much more?

A bit morbid, but interesting reading. Apparently death by Opium is a great way to go, if not slightly illegal

When I die, I would like to be immediately resuscitated and be told I had just died.

I just do not want to wake up dead. The shock of realizing I was dead would kill me.

I want to die quietly, in my sleep

Like my grandfather

Not screaming

Like his passengers.

No mention of Albert Hoffmann taking LSD on his deathbead?

https://thedreamatists.wordpress.com/2007/08/06/aldous-huxle...

No mention of anxiety relief during end of life with psychedelics?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/magazine/how-psychedelic-d...

Maybe that's under "..many of the other drugs used to soothe patients.. "

Maybe it's just my own wheelhouse and hobby horse.

Pretty sure Monty Python answered this question definitively... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLctf4o6feQ

Not very likely, but I've always wondered what the feeling would be like when your head is suddenly detached from the body (e.g. beheading by guillotine[0]). A more down to earth way I'd prefer is hallucinogen overdose - should be hell of a trip.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine#Living_heads

I am by no means obsessed with death but for as long as I can remember thinking about dying I've fantasized about going out like this:

After reaching a point where I feel like the end is nigh, and/or my quality of life has sufficiently deteriorated, I skydive from 20,000 feet into the mouth of a live volcano. No parachute (obviously).

Not sure why I see this as romantically as I do but I can't think of a better way to go.

Thank you for submitting this. An interesting post in the same vein is Who by Very Slow Decay[1]. It's a freshly-minted doctor's view of death.

1. http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/

“The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man's worst fear is just death.” -Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A quick and painless death by trying to save children, loved ones, puppies, or kittens from morbid danger.

I have a strong fear of flying, which is unfortunate since I have to fly to my company's HQ once a month or so. One of my coping mechanisms is that, at worst, my death would be swift and with enough luck, painless. Above all else, it better be quick.

I always thought an overdose of sleeping pills would be the way to go.

A parachute not opening... that's a way to die. Getting caught in the gears of a combine... having your nuts bit off by a Laplander, that's the way I wanna go!

Orbiting a star in a space suit as it goes nova.

Probably hypothermia. You just sort of wink out.

I was expecting a numbered list with a GIF for every point. I'm disappointed, and should probably stop reading BuzzFeed

Sudden cardiac death is not a bad way to go.

I know I want to die. Not now. But later on. And then I want to be reborn soon there after to continue my works.

The body will grow old, frail. It will slowly deteriorate, whereas my mental faculties will still be tied to this body. So let it.

When I leave, I'll tell those around me, "See you soon". Because I will meet them again.

I am a reincarnationalist; not by belief, but by personal proof. I can't prove it scientifically. So there's that.

I've mentioned this elsewhere, but some here may enjoy reading Atul Gawande's Being Mortal.

Per the old joke, "I want to be shot by a jealous husband".

I don't know. Surprise me.

Unafraid.

Jim died just as he had lived: in a darkly lit room waiting for a deploy script to finish running while through tears of exhaustion he tried to focus on a screen crawling with log entries he could make nothing of. Tabbing back and forth to sterile commentless code, that did everything except the one thing it was obviously supposed to do, ignoring, for just a little while longer, the ringing in his head and the faint scent of springtime morning urging him to sleep, and that other, stronger scent, exhorting him to do some laundry.

He passed away peaceably at his keyboard, the deploy failed, and eventually the team had to roll back the changes.

Jim died in the best possible way: working on staging. He would have wanted it that way.

He died just as he lived.

In his Jeep.

Dying is for fools.

The best way to die is when you have a guaranteed that your next destination is heaven. Otherwise you should at least know that you have prepared for it.