WHEN IS SUICIDE 'JUSTIFIED': A RANT.
 I'm really annoyed. I just finished reading a review by Salon's Laura Miller of Lisa Lieberman's book Leaving You: The Cultural Meaning of Suicide. And I'm really pissed. I mean, where do these people get off moralizing about when suicide is or is not 'justified' , judging the motives of individuals' personal actions, and claiming that "it is a universal human duty to try to prevent any healthy person from self-destruction, regardless of how good that person's reasons might be?" What bullshit. Obviously neither of these two rank amateur psychologists have had any personal (I mean personal, not something your step-mother or grandfather might have thought about) experience with wanting to end their own life. They obviously also haven't had any experience with the debilitating effects of anti-depressant drugs. Christ, if they'd even read some first-person accounts on the subject like The Noonday Demon they might at least have a clue about the subject they pontificate on.
I read this review because it got off to a decent start. Lieberman says that when they are institutionalized and forced to take anti-depressive drugs "individuals at risk of destroying themselves [are] deprived of the right to determine their own behavior." But it's all down-hill from there. Judgements fly left and right: suicide is "petulant", "an act of aggression", "a variation on 'fuck you!'", involves "dishonesty, self-pity and sheer malice", a "glorified tantrum", "self-loathing masquerading as concern for others", "competitively morbid". These hackneyed guilt-ridden labels are an insult to both the intelligence and the valour of the ferocious, life-long emotional struggle of those that commit, or seriously contemplate, suicide.
Regular readers of How to Save the World have read both essays and fiction from me on the subject of depression. For those that want to know more about suicide, please disregard Miller's sanctimonious review and pass on Lieberman's flimsy and uninformed pseudo-intellectual tract, and read The Noonday Demon or any of the other well-researched, first-hand accounts of the subject, or just talk to someone who has been suicidal. The sufferers and the survivors we all know deserve that much.
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[How to Save the World]
In tribal life many older people who recognize that they can no longer add value to the tribe - go for a "walk in the snow". In tribal life, we each have our responsibility to the community. When we pose too much of a burden we can choose our own death. Death and taxes are inevitable. Surely choosing our time is how we might get some control back? In tribal life our life and our death is clearly our personal responsibility. Who made it society's?
I also like Dave's view of depression. See also Richard Gayle's post below. I suspect that the worst approach to its symptoms is to attempt to hide them. If hidden or damped, the underlying issue cannot be resolved. There is a remarkable book called "Touched by Fire" that looks at very artistic people and manic depression. There seems to be a link between talent and manic. Many in modern times, refused to take the drug because they did not want to lose the high. They would rather suffer and die that take the numbness drugs. My father was a severe manic depressive. When he was touched by fire he could move mountains. When he was in the pit - he was unreachable. He died aged 54 gripped by darkness but what a life he lived! On reflection he did not live a day longer that he should have. The dugs that would have saved his life would have turned him into a zombie.
7:53:48 PM 
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