HOW NOT TO COMMIT SUICIDE
2 of 9 pages 
Need a guide to suicide?
Don't overdose on aspirin, Tylenol, caustics such as lye or oven
cleaner, psychiatric drugs such as Thorazine or Elavil, tranquilizers,
or sleeping pills.
Don't slash your wrists.
Don't shoot yourself.
Don't jump from a not-very-high place or try to hang yourself.
(All these common techniques are unreliable and have often terrible effects on the survivor.)
They are the people whose fate has been thrown into sharper focus by
the existence of these new books. The argument between Exit and the British
suicide prevention groups played with much commotion in the press and
in conversation. The books should not be published, the suicide prevention
people said, because temporarily distraught people would use them impulsively
and die, where without them they would probably live. Yes, said the voluntary
euthanasia groups, but preparing for a rational, planned suicide as the
books encourage, and thinking out its ramifications (like who will be
affected by it) makes people less likely to kill themselves impulsively.
Yes, but the context of the how-to-die information shows suicide as an
easy way to solve problems, and doesn't encourage people to look for other
options first.
Yes, but the books are available only through the mail, with a three-month
waiting period, just to discourage such abuse. Yes, but with easy xerox
access no one can guarantee the books won't find a subterranean following.
Yes, but banning the booklet is equally manipulative -- it keeps people
from the option of dying easily unless they are lucky enough to find people
who will help them. Yes, but they might find people who will help them
avoid the pain tomorrow, if they aren't encouraged to end their lives
today. Yes, but...
The debate is fascinating to follow, because usually talk of suicide is
hushed up, for fear it will create more suicide or someone will be held
responsible. Psychologist intern David Gruder worked in a California high
school a few years ago when one of the popular seniors killed himself.
"In the next two weeks everybody pulled me aside -- students, teachers,
the principal -- to ask me what they could have done, what he meant by
it. But nobody said anything out loud to each other. Finally I gave a
talk at the library about suicide and suicide prevention, and I had to
argue with six levels of school administration to do it. I had to tell
them the clinical truth is that talking about suicide often neutralizes
it. Ignoring it always paves the way for more attempts."
When a genuine myth rises into consciousness, Ursula Le Guin wrote in
The Language of the Night (Spring '81 CQ., p. 54), the message
is always: You must change your life. Each suicide attempt, I'm
convinced, carries that message: to the person who tries it, to the people
who are close to that person, and to the rest of us as a society. I think
what happens after a suicide attempt is a sort of autopsy of what's best
and worst about our culture. Here is some of that story.