What People Don’t Tell You About Suicide

The willful taking of one’s own life is an act that is so extreme that humankind is the only species ever to practise it not just as an individual state of self-annihilation, but also as a function of society. There have been several pagan traditions that honour the sacrifice of the human body — the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Egyptians, and several others practised it in a rather ritualistic fashion. Most of the time, these shamanistic rituals were conducted with mutual consent. Perhaps, it stems from the uniquely human state of being self-aware. The consciousness separates the human from the rest of the animals, and it is this sacrifice that was seen as the most they could give to their ‘God’ — their perception of reality.

Semantics

Before all that, let’s get the semantics out of the way — what is suicide? That seems like a fairly simple question to answer — the willful taking of one’s life, right? Well, if that is what suicide is, then there are several instances of animals taking their own lives.

Dogs are quite famous for starving themselves to death when their owner passes away. Bees use their stingers as a weapon and attempt to kill animals that get near their gives even though they would die in the process. A certain species of ant found in parts of Malaysia and Brunei are known to explode themselves at will under imminent danger, producing a sticky substance that would potentially dissuade other invading ants/insects. Honeybees will willingly remove themselves from their hives and die elsewhere if they have an infection that may potentially endanger the rest of the bees.

Are these cases of suicide? While some people argue that it is, I disagree. These animals do not have the cognitive ability to understand that their actions can lead to their own demise. It is an innate encoded mechanism that kicks in as a function of their social responsibility as part of the hive/colony. Even in the case of the dog, it is not clear whether the dog is aware that its avoidance of food will lead to its death.

From this you will have understood what suicide is — it is the willful taking of one’s life with the conscious knowledge that their actions will inevitably lead to their demise. Now that we have the terminology in order, let’s move on.

Social Connotation

No culture or era was devoid of instances of suicide, whether it was the West or the East. With the invention & evolution of organised religion, the way we perceived suicide changed. Manmade connotations started being attached to it. Sacrificing yourself towards a cause started meaning something. However, it didn’t necessarily mean that suicide had to be good. For instance, in the famous example of Rani Padmavati, the women who refused to be captured by Allauddin Khilji are seen as valourous and inspirational in the face of an imperialist supremacist invading force. However, the very same act was condemned as cowardice when Hitler killed himself in a bunker after his inevitable loss in World War II.

Today, suicide is socially viewed through the lens of disapproval, disdain, and fear — especially in a conservative country like India where social taboos are a looming reality. Suicide has slowly turned into a silent epidemic. 1,64,033 people died by suicide in India in 2021, the largest number of suicides in a single country. Compared to the global estimate of 8,00,000 suicides per year, that’s 20% — one in five suicides in the world is an Indian. The primary confirmed factors behind suicide were family problems (32.4%), illness (17.1%), drug/alcohol abuse (5.6%), marriage related (5.5%), and so on. 10% of all suicides in India were deemed “causes unknown”, but it’s pretty safe to say that they would probably easily fit into these categories.

Why Do People Suicide?

Suicide appears to be such an elusive topic of discussion. Almost everyone irrespective of social stature has contemplated the thought before, even if not taking any steps towards achieving it. However, it is not something that is discussed openly. It is frowned upon, mocked and shunned as being cowardly and irresponsible behind closed doors.

The main problem with understanding the motive behind suicide is the fact that people assume it is layered and multifaceted. They construct complex castles around an incident with so much unwarranted speculation that they do not see that all suicides are essentially the same. Yes, the essence of all suicides, whatever the reason or lack thereof, can be distilled into a single quality of their life — control.

For a person who hasn’t actively taken any step to experience it, this wouldn’t exactly make sense, but there are lots of people reading this who will relate to what I’m about to describe.

Everything around you is falling apart, and you have no idea why. No aspect of it seems to be within your grasp, and you can’t make sense of any of it. It’s a vicious cycle of psychological pain, intrusive thoughts, regret over having these thoughts — and it all starts over from the start. This cycle soon feels like a spiral, almost like a noose, tightening by the passing day. It gets harder and harder to justify in your head why you need to live. You close your eyes and imagine what the “other side” would be like, and instead of terrifying you, it calms you. No more pain, no more regret, no more…. human condition. You slowly disassociate in real time, you almost feel like your body is limiting you, that it’s something you need to shed to be free. In that moment, you make an impulse decision — I’ve had enough, I’ll end this.

You go somewhere remote and you stand on a high ledge. There’s hardly any place to stand, but you don’t need it. Not for long. Adrenaline kicks into your bloodstream, and you start to feel the rhythm of your life pulse through you. Everything seems to slow down, a second feels like an hour. Time itself seems like it’s on hold, almost as if a life support system kicked in unknowingly, egging you on to reconsider. There, at the edge, something strange happens.

Every feeling of resistance towards self preservation sort of fades away, and it is replaced by something else — a sense of confidence, a feeling of serenity. At that moment, you realise you control every aspect of your life. For the first time in your life, you feel like each and every aspect of your life is within your grasp. The only way you would die is if you took the active decision to jump. It seems counterintuitive on the surface, but it is a feeling you’ve never experienced before.

Ever wondered why people who jump off bridges take so long to jump? It isn’t because they want to be seen, it isn’t because they need attention — it’s because they’re feeling the sense of control coming back into their hands, possibly for the first time, and they’re stretching that moment as far as they can feel it.

The Method

Contrary to what regular people think, most suicides aren’t spur of the moment decisions. Suicidal people will play that moment over and over countless times inside their head before even thinking about its execution. The process of deciding how to do it is in itself a sort of ritualistic practice.

Each possibility is considered, each option weighed with surgical precision. The pros and cons of each method are studied extensively — it’s almost like planning a trip in its own dystopian way. Each person arrives at that decision, the decision as to how they should do it, in their own unique way. Most often, it involves a mixture of their life experiences, who and what they’ve liked & disliked in their life, and the extent of their mental degradation. A person who wants to immolate themselves alive will not be having the same life experience that led them to take that action as compared to someone who decides to hang themselves.

How to Help

Helping a suicidal person is not a simple task. A recommendation to a psychologist or a psychiatrist isn’t going to change things. It may work for people who aren’t suicidal, so A person who is contemplating suicide sees that as the only way they will attain peace of mind. At that moment, the call of the void seems like the only call worth answering, and to them, it isn’t scary — quite the contrary. It is one of the most gratifying experiences a human being will ever experience — it is this same feeling that religious people get when they “submit themselves to God”. It involves one strong decision, following which there is absolute complacency towards that entity. This is also why a lot of people who have attempted suicide turn towards religion as repentance — it isn’t because they’ve suddenly found God, it’s because they’ve found a way to prolong that high.

The help we can offer suicidal people is giving them the gift of time. Giving someone a moment of your time is giving someone time out of your life — something suicidal people take very lightly. Giving them your time is equivalent to giving them a reason to live. That’s how simple it is. The reason behind this is also easy to understand — time builds trust. If a suicidal person even acknowledges the fact that they don’t feel good, you should see that as a sign of reaching out.

This doesn’t mean you pester them with invitations — just make sure that they feel safe to reach out to you, and make sure you’ll be able to provide some kind of support when they do. It can be something as simple as a conversation over coffee, or something as melodramatic as them sharing their life story — whatever it may be, just go with the flow. You don’t have to babysit them, just be there for them.

Another thing we can do is to stop using the term ‘commit’ suicide. This comes from the presumption that suicide is a crime. It is not. Mental health issues are not even considered reasonable grounds for committing murder, so why are we using the same terminology in something as sensitive as a health issue?

This is the End

If anyone suicidal is reading this, just know that it’s a completely normal response to life. Life isn’t black and white, it’s an entire plateau of grey. I’m not going to sit here and candy coat it and say it’s going to be alright. Quite the contrary, life is going to be mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausting. It would be a surprise if you don’t contemplate suicide. The only thing I have to say is that once you die, you’re gone. There isn’t a respawn, there isn’t a reallocation of the soul, these few years of your existence, the combined sum of your experiences — that is what you are. If you end it today, I would completely understand it, but I would also feel sorry for all the things you would miss. As it is, life is unpredictable. We’re all one freak accident away from death. Why not experience everything anyway and see what happens?

Here is an exercise you can try — imagine yourself outside of your body. There is no materially comprehensible way of doing that, you cannot begin to understand what that is. Here’s another thought experiment — try to comprehend what going to sleep forever feels like. No dreams, no movement, no sensory inputs, no stimuli, just…. an absence, forever. That’s what death is. There’s a popular saying among suicide survivors — “Stare into the void long enough, and the void will stare will back at you”. Most people don’t experience that, most of the people who do turn away, and those who don’t, don’t make it. That’s it. That’s all folks.