[Closed] Suicide............know anyone??

I have attempted suicide twice (and overdosed purely as cries for help on a few other occasions) but both times I chose pills because I was frightened of the finality of a method like hanging. I didn't really want to die 100% but my frame of mind was such that if I had been told I was going to die (as a result of overdose) I wouldn't have minded all that much.
I don't actually know anyone who has committed suicide but I'm sure it will be emotionally 'interesting' if/when someone does.

My aunt had a very long history of mental illness & finally she could take things no more & age 50 she killed herself.

About 10 years ago a work colleague & friend couldn't cope with the break up of a relationship on top of other issues he had from things he saw in the army in Northern Ireland. He had one attempt but stepping out in front of a motorbike was unsuccessful, sadly the second attempt using a car, hose pipe & bottle on Vodka was 🙁

Both left family & friends asking questions about why they did it & could they have done something to help/prevent it.

My best mate attempted it once but it was more like a cry for help & was a hard lesson learned. We have always kept in touch & even now he's 12,000 miles away we are there for each other if needed.

I am gob smacked by how many people know friends who have killed themselves.

Luckily, the trend has been downwards recently.

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"Amongst people under 35, more people die from suicide than in road traffic accidents."

Didn't think I'd be reading a thread that would bring me to tears tonight 🙁

3

2 friends, both ex armed forces. One hung the other OD.

1 Friends brother OD

As hard as it maybe for someone to take their own life it's even harder on those that spend the rest of their lives living with it.

There is always an alternative!

add me to that mailing list

Bloody vultures 😉

As awful as the accounts in this thread are, it's certainly heartening to hear from you peeps - so, y'know, thanks, especially as I'm a total stranger.

I think it's important to consider that there are people around who simply don't want to be alive - no one chose to be born, after all. I wonder how different the world would be if suicide was more acceptable and people didn't have to do it clandestinely - thye could just put their affairs in order and explain briefly to their family that they don't want to be alive any more.

Or is that a selfish attitude to things?

(Some people hate misused/missing apostrophes, some people hate common misspellings, some hate fools who muddle up they're theres & theirs. All these things make me twitch... along with mixing up "hung" and "hanged"...)

miaowing_kat - how's things now?

Bananaworld- Life is[s] can be the bedpan you describe. Talk to some-one, any-one, a professional, a friend, a stranger, any-one. Go for a ride, listen to something uplifting. There is plenty of hope out there you just got to find your bit. I talk from experience.

I still think of my friend, even though it was quite a few years ago. What could we have done? etc. Every time I see his sister (who found him) it breaks my heart to think of her and the families pain, it was/is bad enough for those of us that were his friends. God alone knows what that family has gone through.

Same as others have offered e-mail me if you want.

i do not think it is selfish.
i think if a person of sound mind wants to end their life, then it is up to them to do so.
i do find it sad if the person is fit and well,but like someone said earlier, we do not know what is going on in their mind.

My Dad works freelance for various orchestras - he was on tour with the London Phil in South America years ago when one of the guys slit his wrists in the hotel bath. Caused one hell of a mess apparently and the rest of the (understandably traumatised) people in the orchestra had to deal with getting his body flown home, telling his wife etc.

A chemistry student a year or 2 below me at Cardiff Uni killed himself by taking 96 Pro-Plus.

It was only the thought of the people I was leaving behind that stopped me going through with it a few years back. I wish I'd talked to someone sooner, but your mind doesn't work logically when you're as low as you can get.
Since then I've had a lot of support from family and friends, as well as professional counselling, and I think it's done me a world of good. I still have my dark moments, but now I know the signs, and can talk about it before it gets too bad.

Banana world so just what is are your problems then,if they are to personal email any one of us who have offered to listen,we dont have to listen or show any interest,but we will and do,for you or anyone else,thats why us cyclists stick together,probably either one of us has heard of someone wioth similar problems or either experienced it ourselves.

From experience, depression comes from
Relationship issues,
work,
money,
death of a loved one,
sexuality problems,

fc, email me anytime love..

Hey Bannaworld Please talk to me you know who I am. I'm having issues myself at the moment and have sought professional help. It sounds like you may need to do the same.

I don't know anyone who topped themselves but kind of know of a couple.

1 drove his car into my FiL's lorry to top himself. He succeeded in killing himself and ruining my FiL's legs too, putting him on long term sick, early retirement from a job he loved.

Another one was married to my mates girlfriend (before my mate met her). He topped himself and left his wife and kid with no dad.

According to those individuals mentioned above, those who kill themselves are selfish tw4ts who had no thought for the mess they leave behind.

Just remember, every day, that tomorrow could be the best day of your life...

jim29 - a wonderful outlook on life! Well put.

In my line f work I have dealt with an astounding number of suicides from young (13 year old female) to the old. Many people do it accidentally as a distant cry for help believing they will be found before the OD becomes fatal, many are pre determined that it will be their exit strategy from life and I have forecast one in particular (the wifes best friend). Very very sad for lall those left behind and the most selfish act anyone can do in my opinion.
To those who are feeling/having suicidal thoughts YOU MUST SEEK HELP, and part of the recovery p[rocess is accepting you have a mental illness and that you need help to overcome it. Every one has some worth even if you cant see it at the moment, you just need help finding it.
There will always be those that are unwilling or to proud/stubborn/selfish to accept help and they are the ones that carry through their acts.
I had a very close work mate who was too proud to mention a real minor debt and problem that caused the debt, it would have been sorted as soon as he told us however he selfisly went and put a twelve bore in his mouth and removed his brain leaving behind two traumatised sons and a wife. Brave or determined, for someone that had been shot by a sniper and had half his flak jacket pushed out his back it just said to me that he wanted to punish himself-who did he really punish?.......

yer good friend of mine topped himself. life and soul of the party and a topp bloke. never saw it coming, but he was in a pretty bad way. its a weird thing to think he would rather be dead than carry on. its coming up for 10 years now and i still miss him. i have been told its common in young me between 19 and 28? where do they get these numbers from?

joe

Stats mate from the coroners around the country I would imagine.

The company I first worked for had 2 partners running it. Both around 50 and very successful. One of them had a wonderful wife, 2 great kids and the practice was doing really well.

He threw himself under a train totally out of the blue.

My secretary's husband has clinical depression. Everyday is an ordeal for him. Prior to his depression he was one of the best wagon body builders in the country, a real perfectionist. Now he cant even try to do the ironing, because if he cant get a crease out it make him feel worthless. He has even planned his own death in intricate detail. Only his wife keeps him going, but he is in such a dark place that I can not even begin to think how he feels.

Banana... email in profile mate. Anytime you need a stranger to chat to, or to go on a ride with hit me up...

1 person too many, he was ill for a while but was shocked to find out what had happened.

I did find one person a few years back when i was duty manager in a JS store, was closing down the store at the night checked the customer loo's and saw legs and feet hanging as i went in, worse experience ive ever had, when im on late at work i send security to check these area's before i hand over to nights now!

Yes.

I know folk who have taken OD's on more than one occasion, luckily they are still here today and on the mend hopefully.
I know ( or used to know ) people who have committed suicide.
I also deal with going such incidents as part of my work, both suicides and attempted suicides, and those that have died through activities not necessarily set out as suicide ( accidental OD's etc )

There is no doubt that where the person may have been successful in killing themselves, it leaves an awfully big wake of issues and problems afterwards. And for those that are left behind, it creates more problems than the death solved.

Yes. A good friend. I wish he felt he could have talked about it.

Bloody vultures 😉

seriously any one of you, drop me a mail. You don't know me and i don't know you...but it might make you feel better

A school mate threw himself in front of a truck over a girl.

A family friend hung himself

A mate was always taking od's as cries for help never enough to kill herself although that's what she claimed to be trying,one day it all caught up with her just as she appeared to be getting her life sorted.

Before I met her the mother inlaw attempted it several times again cries for help, which led to her family being broken up and social services involved.

Sister inlaw also attempted it on many occasions, and although the coronor put her death down as misadventure, most of the family claimed it was suicide, I am still adament it was something more sinister.

I have been very very close on a couple of occasions in the last few years.

I am bi-polar and seem to lapse into very acute deep depressions which seem to come from nowhere although I suspect that chronic work related stress may very possibly a trigger. It is always the anxiety that accompanies the depression that drives me to the brink, although I am not much better in my manic phases and am equally at risk of self harm during those phases.

I don't really think that I really want to die - but during these phases my brain just isn't working right and I would be willing to do anything to stop the pain and the only solution seems to be to end it once and for all. In such periods the drugs seem to be as much of a problem as they do a cure and talking it through either with friends or professionals isn't really of any help.

I am certain in the knowledge that knowing how much pain it would cause my elderly father is what has perhaps prevented my from taking any action before.

In the end I decided that I couldn't go through the wild mood swings any longer and decided to take the professionals advice and have been taking a mood stabilizer for the last 6 months.

Been in that space a couple of times.

it has been really pretty touch a couple of specific occaisions, arcing coincidences and daemons whispering the last. if i hadn't actively sought out a friend on that specific day i really don't think i'd be here.

If there was an 'off' button you could push, then i would have pushed it.

if i was being honest what has stopped me has been the thought of it going wrong. I mean just how many oxycodone pills do you need. they are evil shit, i checked. plus i do not relish the thought of being 'stoned' on the way out. **** that.

strictly back on topic though i knew a guy who hung himself. he went somewhere out of the way so his (young) kids wouldn't find him. and a siblings partners brother sucked an exhaust pipe.

I do think that if everyone could suffer depression for a week as a sort of psychological work experience, there'd be a lot more compassion / understanding of depression / suicide and a lot less of it. Depression is absolutely soul destroying and if you've had it, you can easily see why people kill themselves - it's a pretty rational thing to do under the circumstances. Three key characteristics are total despair, feelings of worthlessness (hence no one will believe me and I'd just be wasting the GP's time) and shame (hence keep it to yourself). It was singularly the most unpleasant and terrifying experience of my life and I only had it briefly....

Yeh, my godmother. Don't really remember her, but she lived with us for a while when I was a child. Remember being told she had gone missing, a few months later she was found in a river.

More recently, my gf's Mums neighbour killed himself. He was mentally ill but must be hard for his elderly Mum who he lived with.

Did have a bit of an eye opener a few years back...I visited a customer to fix his phone line, turned up and the house and garden was falling to bits, shame as it was a big house on a corner plot with big gardens. After being let inside by this elderly bloke it was like going back in time, the place hadn't been touched in about 40 years. He still had a hardwired telephone with the fabric covered cord, no socket, only time I've ever seen one in seven years at BT. Anyway, he had books propping up his sofa and stacked up the walls, pottery figurines everywhere, piles and piles of newspapers, dark curtains over all the windows. He even had to let me in and out all the time as he'd adapted the door to make it near on impossible to open.

Whilst I was there he was telling me how his wife had committed suicide years back when he was younger, all the details, obviously eaten away at him ever since to the point he had turned into a hermit and never left the house. He said it had torn his family apart as his kids blamed him for her suicide and had disowned him. Sympathised with him etc...wasn't really sure whether to believe the guy to be honest. It wasn't til I'd finished and was leaving, that he took me across the room and made me read his wife's suicide note, written on a bit of note paper. He'd framed it and given it pride of place in the living room.

Spent pretty much all of his adult life alone and dwelling over it 🙁

A few of my former school mates topped themselves all in the space of a month of so a few years back. All in the same place too.

Somebody I worked with hung himself in his garage just over a year ago. Parents found him in the morning 😐

I didn't know him all that closely, but many of his friends were very cut up for a while.

Thought I would catch up with an old college mate from way back(20 years),phoned his mum and dad and found out he had taken his life 6 years previous.Everyone has good friends who they drift apart from(he lived at the other end of the country),but what surprised me was the shock I felt about his loss.I visited his elderly parents,both of whom were always blind,and it struck me how much his passing meant even to me.We spoke at length about his life,and it seemed that he was a larger than life friend to many.A fantastic bloke with all the time in the world for others.His folks soldier on,living with this memory every day.
Kenny my friend,long may folk remember your legacy.
I guess it's my way of saying,before you commit to the ultimate act,seek help and support,most of us are surrounded by people who can and will help!!!

As a policeman I’ve dealt with countless suicides over the years. It is an extremely complicated phenomenon.

People sometimes have a very strong desire to end their lives, due to depression or a belief the future seems beyond hope and reason. Others may have other ideas. They see suicide as the only option to an intolerable situation, although they would not choose to die if they could find another way out. I’m no expert but I think certain people are genetically pre-disposed towards it. I’ve know it to run in families so I believe there are physiological reasons, chemical imbalances in the brain etc.

I remember what a police negotiator said amongst other things to some poor bugger that was contemplating throwing themselves over a bridge - “You’re considering a permanent solution to a temporary problem”, which I thought seemed to make sense.

I think we all tread a thin line in this life between everything being hunky-dory and utter desperation. Who knows what anyone of us would do given a sudden and horrific change in circumstances, i.e. the loss of a partner or child or onset of mental illness?

Man, this is terrible, how many people know more than one person who has committed suicide, I know far too many.

Brother in laws Dad had a heart a few years ago, his mum could not cope, so she took her life the next Christmas, left my brother in law in bits, with serious mental health issues, even came close to suicide himself, now his two young kids are asking where there grandparents are.

It is always the people who are left behind who suffer.

More recently, my auntie went in for a simple procedure, tragically a mistake was made and she had two massive heart attacks and died, the postmortem revealed that her heart was fine, the guy responsible realised his mistake and toppped him self, leaving a young family behind. This has destroyed my uncles life.

On one hand I do believe that life is a gift, but my wife has worked in a mental health hospital I understand there are states of mind where this is the only way out. She knows a few patients where it has gone wrong and they are left as cripples. I just hope I am never there myself.

Death is never nice, but it comes to us all. I just don't think we can say when.

i know a few people who have.
the latest was my mates brother 2-3 months ago

my best mate's dad threw himself in front of a train. He was clinically depressed, which opened my eyes to depression. I used to think people just needed to 'get over it and get on with life'

My next door neighbour hung himself in the garage, whilst I was on the other side of the wall in our back yard. I think I was the last to speak to him, which is kind of sad really. I think he did it because his partner was a total nightmare that he couldn't live with.

An absolutely beautiful girl I know tried to commit suicide when her dad died. She had her legs amputated as a result. She survived and moved on, she is now part of the UK disabled waterski team which has won world champs for the UK in last few years. The UK disabled waterski team are part of many unknown UK teams that win everything in their sport, but get no recognition. There are others in the team that have a similar story to tell, but I know Ellie.

This is Ellie (I'm the bloke on the right)
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Again, unfortunately yes. 2 friends and a close family member, one quite recently. I found out when it happened that it is a lot more common than you would think.

A few, not close friends but people I knew - all men. Whilst I haven't been there myself, I do empathise with them but, it is in most cases selfish IMO - trying to hurt others and make them feel your hurt,is how I see it, except those with incurable medical conditons, or clincal mental health problems.

I know what it feels like - I think in part, Bananaworld if you have a childhood picture of yourself, sort of 5 years old, just look at that when you have those feelings - you'll be letting that child down if you go through with it!

Peace, and respect yourself.

Pete aka Woodsman

Yes.

My very good friend Andy who lived 8 doors away - Hung himself in the garage April 26th - No "real" reason to do such a thing.

You may remember him as "Whatsit" who used to post on here.

I got a phone call from his wife at 08:25 - So unintelligable was the call, I had to ring 1471 to confirm who the call was from - ran round at break-neck speed to find Carole on the patio in a real bad state ..... I looked in the garage to see Andy hanging. - Very much dead.

Called my wife to collect the kids immediatly & to just collect the kids as soon as possible & to ask no questions when she arrived - Just to get the kids away from the house.
Karen came round Very quickly & took the kids away as they had no idea anything was wrong.
I called the emergancy services as soon as I'd place the call to my wife.

I had the unenviable task of cutting his body down & attempting resuccitation on an obviously dead body.

Don't take this the wrong way. But, I totally & utterly hate him for what he has put everyone through. - You have NO idea what his wife & two young daughters has had to go through.

We've tried our damdest to help out...Things like trying to be a 'surragate father' to the two young daughters he left behind & a good friend to Carole, his wife. Luckily both kids seem to really like me. But, however much you try to do, it somehow never really feels enough.

My own wife has now ended up on anti-depresants due to a delayed reaction from the situation.

The bottom line is that he had no 'real' reason to do something so utterly selfish & stupid. - The problems he had were nothing in real terms. But, the sheer mess he left behind is unreal.

It happened at the end of April, but the reprocussions are still very much in existance.

I miss him dearly, but I totally hate him for what he's done.

( Hit a very raw nerve on this one)
Chris

Yes

My Aunt did it a few years ago, Just put a plastic bag over her head and suffocated herself !!
She was in her late 60`s and had out lived 2 husbands , all her affairs had been sorted that week including updating her will to include her new grandson.
She had planned eveything , right down to cancelling the papers and the milk
A lovely lady and a real waste
RIP Lynn

I don't recall anyone 'close' to me doing such a thing, luckily.

However, I did think about doing it before.
Motivated by depression - most likely instigated by a combination of drug use and existential angst about a man's role in today's changing society - and thankfully mentioned it to someone who hustled me to the GP sharpish. Got sorted with a course of meds and had a chance to level out and reflect.
Still get a bit down sometimes, but never to that same depth. Now I'm a father I can't even contemplate leaving my daughter (or other family for that matter) in a state of confusion and distress. Not fair.

Bananaworld - you are not alone, so don't convince yourself otherwise. You matter to somebody as much as they, or others, matter to you. As your mountain biking brethren have suggested, tell someone or see a GP. Clear your head of 'self-medication' if necessary, and get some fresh air and excercise. Eat healthy and sleep well, and spend some time doing things that ease your soul if possible.
The change of attitude and any help won't happen in a day, so be patient and be strong.
We're here if you need us.
Peace, brother.

Jeez - how much time have you got? As a Forester suicides seem to love topping themselves in my woods. First one(s) were carbon monoxide specials in my forests. Quickly became a pain in the arse when we had to deal with the families. Some time later two friends committed suicide, totally unrelated. 1) Catholic Police officer and a good mate in Ulster asked another friend (Protestant girl) to explain why they were no longer going out. 10mins later and a Browning 9mm and he was dead. What a waste. 2) Another mate who had a suicide pact with his mate, shot gun pact, my mate died instantaneously his mate died in his mothers arms. I spent years going through the entrance to the forest they killed themselves in.

This week just been to the funeral of a friends husband who topped himself. What can you say?

Sorry to say I have got to the point were dealing with the living and the aftermath is more important than the selfish ass who took their own life.

Life is precious. Where I understand that some people get depressed etc the fact remains that someone has to pick up the pieces. When I asked how my mate felt about her step dad's actions she simply replied 'Angry'

As a student forester I went away on holiday and came back to be to my foreman had simply walked into a local river. I was gutted. He seemed like a normal bloke, even had a tree named after him. We were left to destroy his two favourite dogs, clean out his house, and sort out his personal effects.

Lesson learned?

1. Suicides will do it no matter what you do
2. Support networks are essential.
3. Support to social welfare and mental care is essential

SnS - Big manly kind of hug, punch on the arm, nod of appreciation. I didn't get put in the same situation as you, but you summed up how it felt for me.

RIP to all those who sadly choose not to be with us now, I hope not to see my friends soon but I will see them again.....