Ask HN: Why aren't people medicated to fear death less? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why aren't people medicated to fear death less?

10 pointsamichail36 comments

Isn't the fear of death a kind of torture that should be alleviated with medication?

'If I am, then death is not. If Death is, then I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?' - Epicurus

Because the transition from alive to dead is horrible? Stoicism is good when your biggest problem in life is waiting too long for a starbucks coffee.

he knows from all the transitions into death hes experienced

Because it sounds like a psychological/attitude issue to solve with counselling.

That said, for general anxiety (which would include frequent thoughts of fear of death) there are tons of medications doctors give...

And most people don't fear death that much, except rarely. I mean they might fear it when they think deep about it, but they don't care about it most of the time...

I think it is rational to fear death and hence the need for medication rather than counseling.

It's rational (in the sense death is a thing, and is coming), but it's not a natural healthy state, as people are wired to ignore it most of the time.

When they can't, it points to a psychological issue, that can be numbed with medication, sure, but even better if it's solved with counselling.

Else medication is a patch, but the problem is still there, the person is just numbed that they ignore it (which has its own issues, from addiction to the medication, to loss of certain functioning etc. Medication is a wide brush, it can't target "fear of death" alone with precision and leave all the rest of our functioning alone).

Convincing someone not to fear death that much is convincing someone not to be rational. I wouldn't call that a good outcome.

On the contrary, being overly rational is an unatural and harmful state.

"We'll die anyway, so why not just kill myself now" is perfectly rational too.

"I should cheat everybody, including my own parents, spouse, and kids, if it benefits me materially and it's 100% certain I can get away with it", is perfectly rational also.

And there are many more failure modes of rationality-only based function, a lot of which totally hurt the person doing the rational-only thinking - and literature on the matter, both scientific and philosophical.

Complete rationality in all things, all the time, would result in a broken functioning and even mental illness.

That's why emotions were evolutionarily developed. They are a great shortcut/heuristic to prioritize things necessary for functioning/survival without full information. It too has failure modes, but 100% rationality would be as damaging as 100% emotional decision making.

But the thoughts above are about rationality in general.

In this specific case, "Fear of death" as a frequent/constant thought (as opposed to something helpful to avoid an accident, or an ocassional reflection on mortality) is hardly rational.

It amounts to:

"Let's have a dehabilitating -to the point that I have it constantly and need medication- fear of something inevitable, that will impact the functioning and enjoying of my actual life for no productive reason at all, as I'm going to die eventually anyway. In fact it even take me to an early grave, the very thing I want to avoid, due to anxiety induced physiological issues".

Does that sound rational?

It sure isn't by any utilitarian measure of rationality.

Einstein said (or they attributed to him, but it's a good quote anyway) "“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results".

Well, fearing death day after day, an act that will not change anything about the result, qualifies.

> "We'll die anyway, so why not just kill myself now" is perfectly rational too.

If living grants zero utility, then yeah. But 99.9% of people enjoy living, or expect to in the future, so for them it’s not logical at all.

> "I should cheat everybody, including my own parents, spouse, and kids, if it benefits me materially and it's 100% certain I can get away with it", is perfectly rational also.

But it’s an unrealistic, hypothetical situation, so we don’t really learn anything from it.

> And there are many more failure modes of rationality-only based function, a lot of which totally hurt the person doing the rational-only thinking - and literature on the matter, both scientific and philosophical.

Rationalism isn’t the same thing as being overly rational. Rationalism is based on irrational presuppositions, and thus is actually rather irrational.

> That's why emotions were evolutionarily developed.

Woof.

>If living grants zero utility, then yeah. But 99.9% of people enjoy living, or expect to in the future, so for them it’s not logical at all.

Notice how you called it "not logical" based on utility here?

Well, fear of death (not the regular kind that's about avoiding risky/deathly situations, but the chronic anxiety for one's eventual demise, to the point one needs medication even), also has zero utility.

And yet your initial premise was about how logical it is, since people really do die and it's also 100% probable.

>But it’s an unrealistic, hypothetical situation, so we don’t really learn anything from it.

Nothing unrealistic about it. Some people go all in on it. And many many more go partially for it (narcissists, sociopaths, con men, and so on) And it's rational too - nothing illogical about it. But does it really befit a human being? Is being rational in this aspect the best path for someone? If not, perhaps rationality by itself is not the be all end all?

>Rationalism isn’t the same thing as being overly rational. Rationalism is based on irrational presuppositions, and thus is actually rather irrational.

Yes, you gotta start with some axioms that themselves are not derived "rationally", but that's not the point I'm making.

When we talk about rationality, we talk about the really existing impure rationality (a system based on logic plus some non-rationally-derived axioms/pressupositions).

That's the rationality you meant when you said "fear of death is rational", and that is what I meant when I said that being overly rational is a problem.

My point was that using rationality (with its pressupositions and everything, or even an imaginary "pure" one, if it was possible to exist) as your only tool. Rationality is not enough to cover the whole human experience and to guide our life and decisions.

In any case, the above just musings on rationality.

Let's get on the point of "fear of death" again: "fear of death", is not a rational behavior. Sure, it's a rational thing to be afraid of an activity with a high death risk if you want to live. But it's irrational to be held back in life by a persistent fear of one's eventual death.

One is caution. The other is a phobia - an anxiety disorder. It even has a name, thanatophobia, and is listed in the diagnostic manual for such disorders (DSM).

In fact, a key insight here is that fear is an emotion. As in "fear of death"...

Woof!

Fear and rational avoidance are not the same thing. I drive thousands of miles without straying over the white lines because I know it is sensible, not because I am so fearful of them that I require constant medication. You don't need to live in fear to take right action. This is something you might learn in counselling for your fear.

If it is rational, that means it's beneficial, therefore not to be medicated away. Unless "rational" somehow includes "considering useless or counterproductive elements", and I would reject that.

However, I would not consider it to be terribly rational, it depends on the equation you're solving. If you're a single mother of 5 little ones, you will fear for their survival. If you're a soldier, well, your inability to face death may get many others killed.

I don’t think it’s rational. It’s natural and engrained in your monkey brain, and then your rational brain says “I’m rational and I fear it therefore it must be rational to fear it”.

Shouldn't it be the opposite? Most common psychological problems are created by the hostile environment people are living on. More meds would be the equivalent of pumping up the volume on the radio on a car whose engine make more concerning and intense noises every day.

Don't get me wrong, your question is totally valid and interesting, but I think we forgot we need to feel both good things and bad things not only for have a more complete experience of life, but also to value even more those good parts we have on them.

If some people fear of death because they are going to die due to an illness, probably they have more pain than fear, and if they fears it due to their long are, they shouldn't: They must be doing enjoying that little or that much they have remaining.

This question reminds me of something I read in the below article. In short, overcoming fear of death is thought to be one of the steps taken on the mental journey towards suicide. Fearing death keeps us alive.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/being-su...

Step 6: Disinhibition

We’ve now set the mental stage, but it is of course the final act that separates suicidal ideation from an actual suicide. Baumeister speculates that behavioral disinhibition, which is required to overcome the intrinsic fear of causing oneself pain through death, not to mention the anticipated suffering of loved ones left behind to grieve, is another consequence of cognitive deconstruction. This is because it disallows the high-level abstractions (reflecting on the inherent “wrongness” of suicide, how others will feel, even concerns about self-preservation) that, under normal conditions, keep us alive.

"Brave New World" is not supposed to be a manual.

"Remember one cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments."

Better a gram than a damn

It's why people invented religion

It's why people invented beer.

  And malt does more than Milton can
  To justify God's ways to man.

"Isn't the fear of death a kind of torture that should be alleviated with medication?"

Depends on the degree of fear. The general answer is "no". People who have an abnormal fear of death that interferes with their daily lives could use some sort of intervention.

Psychedelics can help with that; anguish and fear of death also makes relatives suffer all that more, it's inhumane that valuable drugs are denied and stigmatized by big pharma and gov agencies.

What course of medication alleviates fear of death? What are the side effects?

In all honesty I've always wondered why airlines don't offer similar services. Imagine flying under the influence of sleeping pills or anesthesia, it's basically teleportation services!

I can settle for anti-anxiety meds of choice too. (microdose of psilocybin should do the trick)

I want to point out that this is a plot point of recent Netflix movie WHITE NOISE.

I’m the only sober man in this bar OP, they’re medicated. Self medicated :-)

- Greg

Sent from my iPhone

Do you mean people with terminal illness?

No, I mean everybody who fears death regardless of whether they are ill.

That sounds like a mental illness that should be treated with some sort of anti-anxiety medication.

I'm not sure that medicating the general population to numb their most basic survival instincts is such a great idea. Do you want a bunch of people driving around with no fear of death? I don't...

Another word for someone who doesn't fear death is "reckless."

It's a mental illness not to fear death. Most don't fear it because they are ignorant about how close it is.

I wonder what makes people fearful of the time after their death but not the time before their birth?

Since being alive is what most people cherish, time before birth is an unconscious countdown to this nice state. Whereas time before death is a conscious countdown to have it taken from you.

That both times are a "period where you're not alive" isn't enough to make people treat them equally. It's the difference in context that matters. Else one might ask "why people aren't afraid of kitchen knives when they're cooking, but are when a serial killer charges at them with one?"

People wouldn't give a fuck about the time after their death if it was in the past, like their time before birth always is while they are alive.

Because the time before their birth is not in the future?

Fucking hell, read a book.

Thankfully there are much more interesting and positive ways to get over the fear of death than drugs: philosophy (existentialism etc.), humanistic psychology, religion (this one didn't work for me, but it seems to work for many people), literature.

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