Member-only story
The Ugly Economics of Suicide
A breakdown of the decision-making process in suicide
If I told you that I was thinking about killing myself, would you stop me?
Really, would you try to stop me? Maybe talk me out of it, tell me how beautiful life is and how stupid it is to try to end my own life.
Would you tell me that what I’m about to do is wrong and I’d end up hurting people? Or on the other hand, would you just keep silent and let me kill myself?
This was the dilemma a taxi driver faced on a fateful night in San Francisco.
“Golden Gate Bridge please,” said the passenger to the taxi driver. It was midnight, the city was finally asleep. “What on earth could take a young man to the Golden Gate Bridge at this hour of the night?”The driver must have thought to himself.
But as the nature of being a driver is, you don’t ask questions, you just drive. The passenger after all is a priority, and you don’t want to be the driver that irritates him by poking into his personal life.
Halfway to the destination, the passenger takes a deep breath; the kind of breath that tells you he had been lost deep in thought, and finally summoned the courage to bear his heavy heart to whoever cared to listen. His lips grudgingly open and the words follow.
