Suicide for Dummies

Feeling all alone? Unbearable pressures at home and at work? Do you feel unloved? In deep pain, with no end in sight? Thinking of killing yourself? 

Go for it.

If you want to commit suicide, that is your prerogative. Maybe you could hang in there a little longer, try some counseling, switch to a new medication. Maybe not. If you really want to end your own life, then no one is going to be able to stop you.

But on your way out, please don't shoot anyone.

This week has seen five school shootings—murder-suicides—in Illinois, Ohio, Louisiana, Tennessee and California, with a total death toll over two dozen. Don't these kids have any manners? Offing one's self is rude enough: someone—probably someone who loves you—is going to have to clean up the mess. But the urge to empty a rifle clip into a crowd full of strangers before you go... that's a whole other sort of unfathomable.

How is it possible that we're left wishing for the "good old days," when people simply slit their wrists in the tub? How is it possible to be nostalgic for the shootings at Columbine, when these things were still shocking, when we could act as though this was uncommon?

If you are contemplating suicide, here are a few simple tips:

1. With a little planning and research, you can self-medicate. You won't even need a gun—which is good, because there's no lawful justification for anyone to have a gun in the first place.
2. If you do decide to use a gun to kill yourself, there is absolutely no reason to load it with more than one bullet. If the first shot doesn't kill you, then you'll probably be bleeding, brain-damaged, in terrible pain, and/or tremendously relieved—and in none of those scenarios will you be in any shape to pull the trigger a second time. If you must have a gun, then one bullet only.
3. Though you are not thinking rationally—you're upset, and that's understandable—still, even you aren't such a fool to believe that you're getting "revenge" on people who wronged or misunderstood you. You know that revenge is when you SuperGlue someone's locker shut, or when you embarrass them by outsmarting them. You also know that you won't look very smart laid out on the coroner's stainless steel table, while people talk about how your stupid school shooting was unoriginal, uninspired, and simply proved everything they already knew and disliked about you.
4. If, after all that, you still do want to kill yourself, it's got nothing to do with anybody else. Leave them out of it. Leave your automatic rifle and your copy of Catcher in the Rye at home, and jump off a bridge. Bridges really work.

Or call a hotline and get help. 1-800-784-2433. (Yes, that really is 1-800-SUICIDE.)