Episode 28, Eddie Pepitone
Posted: September 21st, 2017, 12:19 pm
Paul said that, to him, the decision to commit suicide is "the ultimate example of ... how the perception of time can distort reality and the truth. Because what is suicide but a reaction to the belief that things are never going to get better?"
That rhetorical question is, in one form or another, sadly common -- sadly because it harbors an invalid and destructive premise. To assume that a suicidal person is acting from a belief that things are never going to get better is a handy way of painting life as never as painful as a suffering person might claim -- that there is no such thing as unbearable, no such thing as a limit to stamina. It disenfranchises people who are in unbearable suffering, and people who've reached the limits of their stamina. To make this assumption about people in extreme suffering comes across, to me, as aggressive -- even, in the broader sense such as in domestic violence, violent.
Given the prevalence of this portrayal of suicidality, perhaps for some people, at least some of the time, it is, in fact, the delusion of knowing the would-be future that paves the way to suicide. That has never been what drove me; for me, every time I've traveled that road, the thinking has boiled down to, "Maybe if I lasted a little longer things would get better, but it doesn't matter. I've squeezed all the extra time I can out of that construct. Today is the day that I must determine whether I'm willing and able to keep trying, waiting, reaching out, hanging in there." Too much was at stake, I was all too painfully aware, to be sloppy in my reasoning. I whittled down the issue, cut out all the factors that weren't central and all the constructs that weren't supportable, and was left with two questions:
Is there anything I can do -- can actually do, not just imagine I might do if I had more life force, more hope, more stamina, if anything were a little different than it actually is -- to make life better?
Can I make the choice to continue under these circumstances?
Before I broke free of religion, the prospect of possibly spending eternity in hell, as a consequence of suicide, was not enough to offset the one factor that I knew firsthand: the experience I was having. "Live in the moment!" people preach, but then criticize when people don't base their decisions on externally imposed, hazy, optimistic ideations about the future. Having suffered and then felt better is not proof of anything about another person's life. Having felt suicidal and later found oneself glad not to have acted on it, or to have succeeded, is not evidence that other people will enjoy the same significant positive shift in mood and/or circumstances. Having made efforts and seen them pay off does not mean that other people's best efforts will be met with similar success. Retroactively recognizing irrationality in one's own unhappy past is not a legitimate basis for assuming that other people turn similarly irrational when they're suffering.
If a person is characteristically impulsive, that would be reason for extra caution; if a person's depression has been of short duration, that would be a factor worth considering. If there is anything a person can refer to -- photos, writings, recollections from friends -- to show that she has ever been at peace, or basically happy, or that her usual experience has comprised anything much more rewarding than a melange of desperate and persistent resourcefulness, misery, and hanging-on-in-case-it-might-get-better, that would justify the discomfort of delay. In cases where there are untried possibilities for treatment -- legitimate possibilities, not just the tired trope of Big Pharma never running out of products to sell us -- and where those possible treatments are actually obtainable, available, without too-high obstacles of money, transportation, or mind-shreddingly dysfunctional bureaucracy, and where a person can summon up sufficient fumes to operate on until such avenues are explored, then that too may be an occasion for postponing the irrevocable decision. Whatever a person's circumstances, though -- and whatever subset of those circumstances bystanders may notice and count as relevant -- it may be a legitimate, rational decision that enough is enough. One person can't know when another person is out of steam. Ideations of possible future shipments of steam are not helpful to the person truly out of steam.
It doesn't always get better. It usually does, I suppose; most people don't commit suicide, and perhaps most people's last moment isn't dominated by unbearable misery. But those for whom it does get better, when they claim to know that it will get similarly better for others, are committing the very error in rationality they claim to see in others, and then criticize. Things get better, then worse, then better ... . That's life. The cyclical nature of emotions and experience doesn't support generalized claims in service of either optimism or pessimism, either hope or despair.
It seems to me that, on average, it makes more sense to consider the claims of a person about her own experience than the claims of Person 1 (especially where there's an apparent agenda having to do with upholding a non-harrowing notion of the range of human experience) about the experience of Person 2, whom Person 1 has never met. Depression can cloud the thinking, but that doesn't mean that everything a suffering person says can be dismissed as delusional. What a terrible way to treat a person suffering from depression, or from simple misery -- to just dismiss the parts of her experience that seem inconvenient, sad, scary, or in conflict with preconceptions.
I find that, if I pay attention over time, the people who make positive claims about the help that's available, or the life-saving effectiveness of meds, are often the same people who, in other moments, acknowledge the difficulty -- the results-not-guaranteed -- of getting better with help, or the eventual failure of yet another cocktail of meds, or the fact of too many side effects, or the inability to afford all the phone calls, appointments, and cash required to constantly monitor and tweak meds.
The ones for whom it doesn't get better don't get much airtime, because they're either dead or too incapacitated or unengaging to write books, or to be sought for interviews. It's important not to pretend they don't, or didn't, exist.
I don't mean to sound angry or unnecessarily negative. I don't want to bring anyone down. But I am brought down by these unfounded claims so steeped in positivism. They deny and erase my own experience, and I prefer not to stay quiet about that sometimes.
Thanks for reading.
That rhetorical question is, in one form or another, sadly common -- sadly because it harbors an invalid and destructive premise. To assume that a suicidal person is acting from a belief that things are never going to get better is a handy way of painting life as never as painful as a suffering person might claim -- that there is no such thing as unbearable, no such thing as a limit to stamina. It disenfranchises people who are in unbearable suffering, and people who've reached the limits of their stamina. To make this assumption about people in extreme suffering comes across, to me, as aggressive -- even, in the broader sense such as in domestic violence, violent.
Given the prevalence of this portrayal of suicidality, perhaps for some people, at least some of the time, it is, in fact, the delusion of knowing the would-be future that paves the way to suicide. That has never been what drove me; for me, every time I've traveled that road, the thinking has boiled down to, "Maybe if I lasted a little longer things would get better, but it doesn't matter. I've squeezed all the extra time I can out of that construct. Today is the day that I must determine whether I'm willing and able to keep trying, waiting, reaching out, hanging in there." Too much was at stake, I was all too painfully aware, to be sloppy in my reasoning. I whittled down the issue, cut out all the factors that weren't central and all the constructs that weren't supportable, and was left with two questions:
Is there anything I can do -- can actually do, not just imagine I might do if I had more life force, more hope, more stamina, if anything were a little different than it actually is -- to make life better?
Can I make the choice to continue under these circumstances?
Before I broke free of religion, the prospect of possibly spending eternity in hell, as a consequence of suicide, was not enough to offset the one factor that I knew firsthand: the experience I was having. "Live in the moment!" people preach, but then criticize when people don't base their decisions on externally imposed, hazy, optimistic ideations about the future. Having suffered and then felt better is not proof of anything about another person's life. Having felt suicidal and later found oneself glad not to have acted on it, or to have succeeded, is not evidence that other people will enjoy the same significant positive shift in mood and/or circumstances. Having made efforts and seen them pay off does not mean that other people's best efforts will be met with similar success. Retroactively recognizing irrationality in one's own unhappy past is not a legitimate basis for assuming that other people turn similarly irrational when they're suffering.
If a person is characteristically impulsive, that would be reason for extra caution; if a person's depression has been of short duration, that would be a factor worth considering. If there is anything a person can refer to -- photos, writings, recollections from friends -- to show that she has ever been at peace, or basically happy, or that her usual experience has comprised anything much more rewarding than a melange of desperate and persistent resourcefulness, misery, and hanging-on-in-case-it-might-get-better, that would justify the discomfort of delay. In cases where there are untried possibilities for treatment -- legitimate possibilities, not just the tired trope of Big Pharma never running out of products to sell us -- and where those possible treatments are actually obtainable, available, without too-high obstacles of money, transportation, or mind-shreddingly dysfunctional bureaucracy, and where a person can summon up sufficient fumes to operate on until such avenues are explored, then that too may be an occasion for postponing the irrevocable decision. Whatever a person's circumstances, though -- and whatever subset of those circumstances bystanders may notice and count as relevant -- it may be a legitimate, rational decision that enough is enough. One person can't know when another person is out of steam. Ideations of possible future shipments of steam are not helpful to the person truly out of steam.
It doesn't always get better. It usually does, I suppose; most people don't commit suicide, and perhaps most people's last moment isn't dominated by unbearable misery. But those for whom it does get better, when they claim to know that it will get similarly better for others, are committing the very error in rationality they claim to see in others, and then criticize. Things get better, then worse, then better ... . That's life. The cyclical nature of emotions and experience doesn't support generalized claims in service of either optimism or pessimism, either hope or despair.
It seems to me that, on average, it makes more sense to consider the claims of a person about her own experience than the claims of Person 1 (especially where there's an apparent agenda having to do with upholding a non-harrowing notion of the range of human experience) about the experience of Person 2, whom Person 1 has never met. Depression can cloud the thinking, but that doesn't mean that everything a suffering person says can be dismissed as delusional. What a terrible way to treat a person suffering from depression, or from simple misery -- to just dismiss the parts of her experience that seem inconvenient, sad, scary, or in conflict with preconceptions.
I find that, if I pay attention over time, the people who make positive claims about the help that's available, or the life-saving effectiveness of meds, are often the same people who, in other moments, acknowledge the difficulty -- the results-not-guaranteed -- of getting better with help, or the eventual failure of yet another cocktail of meds, or the fact of too many side effects, or the inability to afford all the phone calls, appointments, and cash required to constantly monitor and tweak meds.
The ones for whom it doesn't get better don't get much airtime, because they're either dead or too incapacitated or unengaging to write books, or to be sought for interviews. It's important not to pretend they don't, or didn't, exist.
I don't mean to sound angry or unnecessarily negative. I don't want to bring anyone down. But I am brought down by these unfounded claims so steeped in positivism. They deny and erase my own experience, and I prefer not to stay quiet about that sometimes.
Thanks for reading.