Comment by ChrisNorstrom | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChrisNorstrom | Hacker News Reader

Before you downvote please take into consideration that I'm just being realistic. Of course you should seek help and calm your mind back into a logical state. Still about 1 million people commit suicide each year. You and I are not going to change that.

If you're seriously going to kill yourself, please do NOT use a gun or pills or jumping or cutting wrists or arteries. It's bad enough you've chosen to and finalized your decision to end your life you don't need to traumatize your family and friends with a gruesome death. Use an "Exit bag". It's instant, painless, blood-less, non-gruesome, and peaceful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWfWl-xJnnY

Created by a right-to-die group Exit International it's a bag that goes over your head with a tube connected to a helium tank you can purchase at a local party store. Fill the bag up completely with helium, pull it over your head and take a deep breath. You'll pass out instantly and leave the earth in just a few minutes. No blood, no suffering, no bullets. It's bad enough you're committing suicide, you don't want family finding you with your brains splattered all over the place, or your body in a bathtub full of blood. Just because you're hurting yourself by ending your life doesn't mean you need to hurt those that love you anymore than you already are. They'll find you tucked away in your bed, peacefully, and for the last time. They'll appreciate that a lot more than finding you in a pool of blood. The one thing they'll have is the knowledge that you just left the earth peacefully and calmly.

Just keeping it real.

I think there's an important distinction that needs to be made here.

The appropriate use case of an exit bag is where it is not in fact suicide, where you're dying anyway of something like cancer or Alzheimer's, so you don't have a choice whether you live or die, only whether you die cleanly or are tortured to death. Avoiding torture is healthy and sane behavior, and full credit to anything that assists such avoidance, and if this thread were about terminal illness, your comment would be appropriate and on topic.

But it's not. It's about a healthy man who had much to live for and was driven to suicide by depression and stress. And here's my view on what to do if you find yourself becoming suicidal in such a situation:

1. For heaven's sake, talk to someone. Family, friends, Internet contacts, or if you can't bear admitting your troubles to anyone who knows you, get on the phone to the Samaritans or somesuch.

2. Failing all else, if you really are at the point of committing suicide, no, DON'T use an exit bag or a gun or jump off a cliff. Take an overdose of sleeping pills instead. Why? Because maybe, just maybe once the deed is done you might change your mind, and if so, you'll be very glad indeed to have chosen a method that lets you call an ambulance and maybe get a second chance.

What right do you have to determine when it is okay for somebody else to take their life?

Nobody asked to be born and plenty of people would rather die than admit to failure.

I don't have the right to intervene by force in the face of a genuine sustained desire to die rather than admit to failure. I do, however, have the right to express my opinion that such an action is a grave mistake. As evidence backing my opinion: how often does someone say "oh that time a few years ago when I was feeling suicidally depressed but I finally gritted my teeth and admitted to failure, I wish I had gone ahead and killed myself instead"? Not very!

The cheerful music in that youtube video is kind of surreal. And gives me even weirder "suggested videos now" -- YC stuff, cats, MrColionNoir, and now strange European euthanasia charities.

Nitrous Oxide > He, really, though. (I'm against state executions, but if I were going to support them, the method should be N2O asphyxiation). I did wonder in reading that article what happened to his car afterward; I hate washing blood/brain matter out of cars (have done it a few times...). I assume his wife wouldn't want to keep it.

I think talking about the messy physical and social/emotional aftermath of suicide IS a good thing, because it might deter people from doing it.

Exit bags? In other words, it's to make suicide more palatable.

I'm sure it has good intentions, but as they say: the road to hell is full of good intentions.

Oh that's right. Downvote something you don't like to read. My comment is no more objectionable than the one talking about Exit Bags - devices to enable suicide.

Why are you talking as me? I think you replied to the wrong comment.

I got downvoted on the first comment, which I thought was entirely ridiculous. So I responded, the first comment is now a +7 and the second at -4. Go figure.

I thought your comment was enlightening, though not in a good way so I upvoted it, btw.

What motivated you to leave this comment on a recounting of the events leading up to Jody Sherman's suicide? If this story were about suicide instead of a person, I might see it. I typed up a snarky reply in that vein then realized I have absolutely no bearing on what would drive you into thinking this is a good idea, and I'm genuinely curious.

The insulation you required ("don't downvote me!") and the contortions of logic you had to apply to make this comment seem like a public service should tell you something about the comment you are currently typing. Sort of like "I don't mean to be racist, but..."

It isn't obvious? This is a community of entrepreneurs and just in the past 12 months there have been a few suicides and people saying goodbye on HN to those who have killed themselves. Entrepreneurs can be stubborn and blind sighted, if we don't succeed and acheive "Zuckerberg Status" before age 30 we flip the fuck out and want to end it all. To many of us, success is the only way to live. We're very prone to suicide. And because we're stubborn, realistically, you're not going to be able to convince a lot of us out of it. Even after you talk to us about options and give us support if we're going to do, we're going to do it. Might as well make a peaceful and easy for everyone involved rather than bloody and messy.

Because this isn't the last time someone's going to post a suicide notice and goodbye.

And I never said "don't downvote me!" my exact words were "before you downvote...".

Your intentions are good so I won't downvote but this type of post should be pasted on more pertinent forums.

> The one thing they'll have is the knowledge that you just left the earth peacefully and calmly.

Death by suicide, no matter the method, is always deeply distressing.

> about 1 million people commit suicide each year. You and I are not going to change that.

At least I'm trying to change it.

Nobody asked to be born. What gives you the right to prevent them from killing themselfs?

Left the Earth peacefully and calmly to where?

Just keeping it realistically mysterious. Cause we don't know. For sure. It could be one, it could be another. Metaphysically, we can't deny the possibility of anything out there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com