As someone who wants the legal option to exit this hellscape for serious mental health reasons I view the vehemence with which politicians and others are fighting this as another hard kick in the teeth for those who suffer a life of agony - be it physical or otherwise. I'm sure they mean well but it feels like being locked in a burning building.
People are gonna off themselves anyway and it's on the fuckin' railway every day pretty much. I don't have to explain how thoroughly nasty that is.
Let's get real ....the amount of mental suffering in the 21st century is absolutely immense and it's going nowhere. For whatever reason we now have a society / world that has become incredibly individualist and Darwinist and the consequence of failure is now an "existence" of cruel punishment where you are going to have nothing while you get to witness so many others having what you never will. I'm sure some will see it as a way of culling the "less fortunate" but I'm afraid as one of those I do not care , I just want to escape this cruel fate life handed me (autism, severe depression, unpleasant childhood, sexual abuse etc) and as I've said before even the option would make it easier to live knowing I'd always have a painless method of exit and wouldn't have to resort to a violent one that may not succeed and leave me severely disabled.
I am so sorry to read what you are going through and thank you for enlightening me on this wider aspect of ending life in a scenario that is not deemed as being imminently life limiting.
I have always just thought about this in respect of people who literally have no other alternative as they cannot be cured so it allows them to go peacefully on their own terms.
My dad had Parkinson’s and would have liked to have gone when he wanted rather than being bed ridden and no real life for at least a year before he passed. Thankfully he ended up in hospital in the weeks before passing rather than being in his care home as I dread to think how they would have managed his end of life care even when the cost of staying there was £6k a month.The hospital were amazing and after we were told there was nothing that could be done for our dad we were given the option of withdrawing a lot of his meds and sadly not providing food as he could no longer swallow without choking.
I naively presumed that would mean he would last a couple of days and we could all say goodbye. He lasted nearly 2weeks with nothing other than pain medication which we as a family had to anticipate to see if he needed extra doses. It was awful and I honestly considered at times putting a pillow over his face at times to ease his suffering. I presumed they would know how he died and wouldn’t look into it too much. I am glad I didn’t as they still did a full post mortem and ended up sending his tissues off for samples for suspected asbestosis which led to a 9 month wait register his death.
My dad and selfishly we as a family would have benefitted from these changes.
My wife’s friend suffered from mental illness which we were unaware of the severity of until after she jumped off Barton Bridge a few years ago which was incredibly tragic and only her partner and close family knew how bad she was.
PinkFinal, it seems you are able to take some comfort that a legalised option could be available to you at some point, I would hope that soon there is some treatment available to you that will really help your mind and help you to be happy in yourself. It sounds like you have had a torrid time but there will be lots of people who think the world of you, unfortunately people do not show it enough and unfortunately it is only when someone passes, people show their emotion and if they showed it before perhaps they could have saved their friends life.
Just keep reaching out to people whether you are in a high or a low, tell people how you truly feel and try lots of options for help even if you feel you have tried something similar before. You probably don’t realise it but you will be making a positive impact on people everyday, no matter how small.
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