Cap Guns & kids.

[Wilma]

Earlier this summer a suicide was commited next door to my old home in Sedgwick County.  The young lady hid her truck behind a big building where it wasn't easily seen from the street, took a handful of pills and died.  It was too late by the time a neighbor got curious about a strange truck being parked on the property and called the owner who called the police.  If a person is determined to die, they are going to do it in a way that is easy and too late to be helped.  If they fail the first time, they will try again.

[Teresa]

I can't imagine anything bad enough to leave your family with the sadness and guilt of committing suicide.
That's the ultimate in selfishness.
And I understand that mental illness is a big part of suicides and that just breaks my heart. You always wonder if someone..somewhere ..could have maybe helped.
I am sure that we all have had times when you just are so tired of everything that all you would like to do is escape and never be found.. but to kill yourself?? That is very very desperate.
Not me.. I am too afraid I will miss out on something tomorrow..  LOL

But if I was going to do it.. I sure as hell would NOT shoot myself. I hate pain.. and if you don't get that gun just right.. EEeooowwwweeeee... it doesn't work and then you are in a vegetative doo doo state for the rest of your earthly time. That to me would be the worst hell you could live through.

I suppose if I had to do it I  would take pills.. lots of them... and go to the woods or something.. ( like an old cat who knows it is her time to go) then you just go to sleep... but if it involved  pain?? NEVER........Forget it.

Again.. I had one of my best friends commit suicide.. ( she had access to guns.. but didn't use them ) but she still did it.
Sad thing is.. and I will never get over the guilt..is the fact that I hadn't talked to her for about a month ..and I had thought about her so much and kept thinking I should call.. never in a million years dreaming that she had any intention of ending her life. She just wasn't that personality type at all..and .........well... it was awful...
soooooo.. no matter what the speculation is about guns or pills or razor blades..
The fact is.. if they are going to do it.. they will find a way.

[Teresa]

Made by an acquaintance of mine..

[flo]

not to make light of anyone who has taken their own life or anyone who has lost someone to suicide, but Teresa mentioned if the gun isn't positioned just right, ouch and pain . . . this reminded me of a guy who lived in Severy and decided to kill himself.  He put the shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger.  YEP - shot his chin off - but the rest of him is just fine, last I knew.

[srkruzich]

I can't imagine anything bad enough to leave your family with the sadness and guilt of committing suicide.
That's the ultimate in selfishness.

I have been through Open heart surgery twice. The depression that follows it, will drive you to suicide.  I can't describe how bad it is but its not selfishness at all.  Your in so much pain and sadness that you wish to leave period.  Until you go through that kind of sadness and pain you can't really relate to or understand the act. Losing all hope, all desire to live, believing no one cares, no one would even notice you were gone is part of what thought process that goes on in your mind. 
Usually it is a culmanation of bad events that triggers a person to act.  Sometimes its medication that causes it.  I was taking a anti-depressant and it made me so numb that i could have walked in front of a semi going down hyw 400 and not cared.

And I understand that mental illness is a big part of suicides and that just breaks my heart. You always wonder if someone..somewhere ..could have maybe helped.

You forget too that its not just mental illness. It can be physical illness too.  Cancer is one.

I am sure that we all have had times when you just are so tired of everything that all you would like to do is escape and never be found.. but to kill yourself?? That is very very desperate.

I see no difference between suicide and when folks just quit living.  I know of older couples that one dies and the next one is gone within six months.  When you lose all hope or purpose to live, then you die. 

[srkruzich]

not to make light of anyone who has taken their own life or anyone who has lost someone to suicide, but Teresa mentioned if the gun isn't positioned just right, ouch and pain . . . this reminded me of a guy who lived in Severy and decided to kill himself.  He put the shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger.  YEP - shot his chin off - but the rest of him is just fine, last I knew.

Goes to show that if God isn't ready for you to die, you won't.

[Wilma]

My grandparents died within 6 weeks of each other.  Grandma died of abdominal cancer.  Grandpa was already bedfast with lung cancer.  He just gave up and 6 weeks later died.  We always said he died of a broken heart.  Grandpa was 1/4 Indian and you know the old Indian saying, "It is a good day to die".

[dnalexander]

Steve thanks for your post on depression\suicide. Past work for the county hospital and personal life experience make this a special very important topic for me. If anyone wants to know more about this topic or donate money to help I post a good place to start:

http://www.nami.org/

The National Alliance on Mental Illness.

David

[srkruzich]

Steve thanks for your post on depression\suicide. Past work for the county hospital and personal life experience make this a special very important topic for me. If anyone wants to know more about this topic or donate money to help I post a good place to start:

http://www.nami.org/

The National Alliance on Mental Illness.

David

I didn't tell ya, this past october i went through open heart surgery and it took 2 months for that depression that open heart patients get to hit me.  I am going to tell ya, if you go through it its one of the worst depressions you can get. Its not mental its a physical trigger. 
But i got one med that would probably have caused me to kill myself eventually while on it so i stopped taking it.  It took antoher 6 months for the depression to get bad enough to where i wanted to die then.  But a good friend of mine saw it and said ok enough, your going to the doc. LOL  I got celexa and though i hate its side effects it does take the depression away.

[dnalexander]

I know we are off topic but as with all conversations in a coffee shop what people say makes the topic change. Sorry to the original poster.

Steve, this is my most important cause\topic in life. I would drop all other things I trumpet to solve this problem of depression, suicide, etc. This is one of the last areas that medicine doesn't understand. While it has improved, medicines' understanding of brain disorders is still the wild frontier. From personal experience I know this is a hard topic for people. If anyone wants to talk to someone who understands depression\suicide in a private way and wants to know what resources are available to you please feel free to privately contact me at dnalexander@hotmail.com This has been an increasingly important topic to me over the past 25+ years.

David