I’m not sure I want to die of a heart attack if I live to old age. I thought maybe I’d use a gun to relieve my suffering so that everything would end quickly, but I’m too scared. Are there any recommendations on how to die without suffering or something like that? Maybe I should leave this world during a happy dream?
Or should I humble myself and go through suffering before I die?
I’m clarifying: it’s not that I want to commit suicide when I’m young or right now, no, I mean when, let’s say, I have one day, a week or a month left to live suffering from an illness, or I know that after a while I’m going to have a heart attack that will definitely kill me.
“Right to die” is a medically assisted death that is available in certain places around the world. If you can’t make peace any other way, moving to a place where this is an option may be the most helpful thing for you.
Whatever way death comes for you, take comfort in the fact that it happens to every one eventually, and has happened to countless others for a very long time. It’s a certainty, and it’s a design, so it’s definitely not something to be afraid of. As for the suffering part, that’s just the human experience. Your brain is more powerful than you think if you know how to control your thoughts. Mind over matter, everything happens at the mind.
So you’re saying that I don’t have to worry too much because the brain has enough masculinity to admit its end? It sounds logical, but how it will actually be?
I don’t know where you’re getting the masculinity thing from. I think what the person was saying was to try to make peace with the way life has always been for all living things. We all come into existence, and then we all return to the universe.
Were you scared before you were born? Of course not. Death is the same as that, it’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s what unifies every single living thing.
I like to remember what Tecumseh said
“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”
If you plan to kill yourself with a gun, drag a billionaire down with you. Make the world a better place for the next to come.
I will probably do the bathtub special
Even in the absence of right-to-die laws, from what I’ve seen with older relatives, once the healthcare providers know what’s what and divert you to hospice care, the drugs take care of the visible pain and, frankly, consciousness. These are generally practical, kind people who understand the odds and don’t want to see suffering.
I still have many years left to live and the mere thought of the finality of life leaves me paralyzed and apathetic to the point where I take sick leave from work. This is my curse. When death does come, I guess I will have changed enough emotionally, physiologically and biochemically to simply give up and cease to exist in a spiritual maelstrom of anger and hate.
Personally, was considering a potent opioid overdose. Bliss out and stop breathing. The end.
Everyone dies. Only certainty of life.
As part of my job in the hospital I often interact with dying people and their families. Palliative care - caring for people in the last period of their lives, in the UK focuses on patient experience and patient priorities. We generally aim for as pain free and as comfortable an end as possible and have medication which can usually make this a possibility.
The dying process for most people is a lot like falling asleep. They get more and more sleepy and spend less time awake. Eventually they go to sleep and the breathing starts changing with bigger gaps between breaths and eventually the breathing stops.
If it’s done well it’s a peaceful process with minimal pain and agitation.
If this is something you are concerned about it might be worth talking to your doctor about it. We have the RESPECT process in the UK which is a guided conversation about things important to the patient around the end of their life with medical recommendations for what is appropriate (not every treatment is appropriate for every patient).
In the comic “The Sandman” the personification of Death comes for a wizard who has managed to avoid her for 5,000 years.
“Well, I lasted 5,000 years,” he tells her. “You must be pretty impressed.”
She shakes her head.
“You got exactly the same thing as everyone else. One lifetime.”
Worrying about dying is a waste of time. Make the most of your life.
He’s not a wizard. He is just a ‘normal’ human who didn’t decay but died of an accident.
The very moment itself is nothing to be afraid of. It’s a moment. How many times have you fallen asleep in your life? How about passed out by other means?
I imagine it’s going to be more like the latter than the former if you’re still in your right mind when it happens, but both ultimately happen outside of conscious control. Consciousness shuts down and then it’s all over.
As you rightly surmise, it’s the indefinite period of time that leads up to that moment of no control that is the most difficult and is what requires the coping, if any.
For that, it’s down to your own beliefs. If you’re not sure what they are, you might want to think about who’d be hurt by your “leaving early”, so to speak. (One of the main reasons I’m still here is that people I care about would be upset by it.)
And don’t think that any decision you make now is set in stone. The day may come where your existence is unbearable. If you think you’re there or about to be there very soon, that would make it an excellent time to seek some kind of help. Therapy. Pain relief. Emergency hotlines. Those sorts of things. (Been there. Done that. Will probably be there doing that again at some point.)
You may also want to take your religion, if any, into account, if your actions before the very moment are supposed to affect what, if anything, happens afterwards. (And if you don’t know your religion, I can’t help there.)
I found this book very comforting - Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs and Communications of the Dying by Maggie Callanan.
I think the scariness comes from lack of familiarity. Getting a closer look at what it’s actually like for dying people can help us face our eventual end.
I would suggest dealing with your death anxiety through counseling so it doesn’t consume your life.
Thing is, you won’t know. How could you?
I’ve been through it once and was at good health as doctors put it (not the trump like good health).
So live your life as you want to, it being over might be unexpected.
Hi deadymouse,
If this really is something that bothers you, perhaps you could discuss it with your GP? They should know what your options are and can probably advice you better than random strangers on the internet.
You seem to have misunderstood the question a little, I meant when you know for sure that you are about to die, in a day, an hour or even a minute from a heart attack, for example, or from hunger, but you don’t want to suffer from this, you want to make this process easier.
You don’t ever know for sure. I’ve seen people with “less than a day left” take months, and people fully healthy drop dead from completely unknown health issues.
Another person said it, but I’ll repeat: you don’t know.
People who provide hospice care will tell you that many people have a “good” day right before they die. After weeks or months of decline, they are suddenly lucid and communicative. Families think this is a sign of recovery, but the workers know it’s a sign of the end. The patient is normally gone the next day.
A good friend of mine died of cancer in April. He was diagnosed a bit over a year earlier, and he went through multiple windows of “you’re cancer free!” to “you probably have a month left.” And there were many days the pain was so severe that he wished he would die already.
Six months before he died, he’d tell me, “I think this is it. I don’t think my body can go on.” And then he’d keep going.
If people could tell, I think our culture and our medical systems would look very different.
I get the point, reduce the suffering when you’re at the moment. This is what I don’t look forward to as well, not death itself, but dying in whatever form it takes. But know that any suffering is also finite, even the long ones, and hopefully you can avoid the few longer versions.
But for now, live for the moment. You get one shot at this, so don’t spend it worrying about something that hasn’t happened yet. Enjoy life, observe the details around you that we tend to block out as noise. Find ways to record and pass them on to others.
To quote Hamlet, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
Everyone has to do things they don’t want to, and dying is just one of those things. But wisdom lies in knowing that it’s not the thing itself that hurts you, but the wanting.
