RainAndSadness
Administrator
- Jun 12, 2018
- 2,083
The media found another topic to talk about. They have once again covered SN, raising the alarm about a "disturbing trend". There have also been some scientific papers[1][2] reporting about SN suicides.
I'm not gonna address the reason why SN is appealing as a suicide method in this thread. That's something that's often left out in these articles, which are written from a natalist perspective. It would be very important to talk about the reason why SN is a preferred suicide method because it helps us understand why it's happening. And sadly, all articles that talk about any methods brush aside the fact that suicide can be a valid choice. That's an uncomfortable thought so let's rather raise the alarm that people decide to exercise their right to die. We don't want people to think too much about the ethics of suicide after all....
I'm just gonna say one thing though: considering SN is one of the more peaceful methods out there, it's not surprising that people decide to go with SN over other methods and you know, people wouldn't need to use that substance to exercise their right to die in the first place if we gave people the option to leave peacefully - we call it assisted suicide in Switzerland, something that's outlawed in almost all(!) countries on this planet, including the US. Maybe we shouldn't treat the right to die as a taboo subject and change the current laws and actually give people some autonomy over their own lives, how about that? If we treated humans with respect and dignity and valued their individual autonomy, they wouldn't feel the need to use that chemical in the first place to escape their pain and quite honestly, we would be one step closer to a better world. Just some food for thought.
But as I said, I don't want to talk about the ethics of suicide in this thread. I want to address the fear mongering instead because one of the articles talked about numbers. Let me quote.
47 suicides in the US between 2015 und 2020 and 28 in Canada between 1980 and 2020. That seems to be the total numbers of people that exercised their right to die with SN. Just to make that clear, the US media is fear mongering about a few dozen suicides that occured in a time span of years. Now, they put these numbers into such graphs to make it look scary and out of control - until you notice the scope of these numbers. They're atually low.
So I'm gonna do what these news articles failed to do: putting these numbers into context. What do 47 SN suicides mean? How does it compare to other accessable suicides methods? I decided to compare these numbers with gun suicides, the most popular suicide method in the US and a method that remains easily accessable, despite the fact that every year, over 20'000 people commit suicide with guns in the US alone and nobody seems to care.
I took all gun suicides from 2020, which is 24'292 and put them next to the SN deaths, which is 47. I thought visualising the fear mongering of the media would speak louder than words. In this image, one pixel height is one dead person, you can donwload the image and zoom in, it's one pixel per person and if you add them all up, it's 24'292 pixels stacked on the black tower for the amount of gun suicides and 47 pixels stacked on the red tower for the amount of SN suicides. I used more width to make the red line visible, otherwise you wouldn't even see it...
In total 45'979 people committed suicide in 2020. 47 people used SN and that's the reaction of the media. And we're talking about attempts to restrict sales through legislation, alright. That's how far it goes. It creates headlines about an "emerging trend", obviously mentioning this forum and calls to restrict the sale of SN. But over 20'000 gun suicides don't cause the same reaction and that's been going on for decades. Even worse, according to the CDC, over 5'500(!) people commit suicide with poisoning each year (SN excluded) and they don't get such alarmist headlines either - none of these substances that are used. SN which made 1% of all poisoning suicides in the year 2020 does. Do you understand my point? Americans don't really care about suicide. No, if people pick peaceful methods, that's definitely concerning and that creates panic and outrage and that's the whole point. This peaceful method received too much popularity. And we can't let people have too much dignity if they want to commit suicide, right? All the other methods out there which end up in violent, brutal and graphic suicides seem rather dismissable compared to SN and that's my problem. They always go for the peaceful methods first because they want to make it as though as possible for us to exercise our individual autonomy and if we decide to go through with it, they want us to suffer.
You could create this graph with any other method, it wouldn't look that much different. So if you ever stumble upon an article again, fear mongering about SN and some dangerous trend, just think about the fact that it's a tiny little percentage of all suicide methods. And unlike guns it's a rather peaceful method too, so maybe it's not that bad when people pick SN over guns... or hanging or trains... just from a harm reduction perspective, you know. But one thing is certain, society doesn't want to give people the option to pass away peacefully and that's why they'd rather go after SN than any other method. And that's why this substance in particular receives so much backlash at the moment.
I'm not gonna address the reason why SN is appealing as a suicide method in this thread. That's something that's often left out in these articles, which are written from a natalist perspective. It would be very important to talk about the reason why SN is a preferred suicide method because it helps us understand why it's happening. And sadly, all articles that talk about any methods brush aside the fact that suicide can be a valid choice. That's an uncomfortable thought so let's rather raise the alarm that people decide to exercise their right to die. We don't want people to think too much about the ethics of suicide after all....
I'm just gonna say one thing though: considering SN is one of the more peaceful methods out there, it's not surprising that people decide to go with SN over other methods and you know, people wouldn't need to use that substance to exercise their right to die in the first place if we gave people the option to leave peacefully - we call it assisted suicide in Switzerland, something that's outlawed in almost all(!) countries on this planet, including the US. Maybe we shouldn't treat the right to die as a taboo subject and change the current laws and actually give people some autonomy over their own lives, how about that? If we treated humans with respect and dignity and valued their individual autonomy, they wouldn't feel the need to use that chemical in the first place to escape their pain and quite honestly, we would be one step closer to a better world. Just some food for thought.
But as I said, I don't want to talk about the ethics of suicide in this thread. I want to address the fear mongering instead because one of the articles talked about numbers. Let me quote.
47 suicides in the US between 2015 und 2020 and 28 in Canada between 1980 and 2020. That seems to be the total numbers of people that exercised their right to die with SN. Just to make that clear, the US media is fear mongering about a few dozen suicides that occured in a time span of years. Now, they put these numbers into such graphs to make it look scary and out of control - until you notice the scope of these numbers. They're atually low.
So I'm gonna do what these news articles failed to do: putting these numbers into context. What do 47 SN suicides mean? How does it compare to other accessable suicides methods? I decided to compare these numbers with gun suicides, the most popular suicide method in the US and a method that remains easily accessable, despite the fact that every year, over 20'000 people commit suicide with guns in the US alone and nobody seems to care.
I took all gun suicides from 2020, which is 24'292 and put them next to the SN deaths, which is 47. I thought visualising the fear mongering of the media would speak louder than words. In this image, one pixel height is one dead person, you can donwload the image and zoom in, it's one pixel per person and if you add them all up, it's 24'292 pixels stacked on the black tower for the amount of gun suicides and 47 pixels stacked on the red tower for the amount of SN suicides. I used more width to make the red line visible, otherwise you wouldn't even see it...
In total 45'979 people committed suicide in 2020. 47 people used SN and that's the reaction of the media. And we're talking about attempts to restrict sales through legislation, alright. That's how far it goes. It creates headlines about an "emerging trend", obviously mentioning this forum and calls to restrict the sale of SN. But over 20'000 gun suicides don't cause the same reaction and that's been going on for decades. Even worse, according to the CDC, over 5'500(!) people commit suicide with poisoning each year (SN excluded) and they don't get such alarmist headlines either - none of these substances that are used. SN which made 1% of all poisoning suicides in the year 2020 does. Do you understand my point? Americans don't really care about suicide. No, if people pick peaceful methods, that's definitely concerning and that creates panic and outrage and that's the whole point. This peaceful method received too much popularity. And we can't let people have too much dignity if they want to commit suicide, right? All the other methods out there which end up in violent, brutal and graphic suicides seem rather dismissable compared to SN and that's my problem. They always go for the peaceful methods first because they want to make it as though as possible for us to exercise our individual autonomy and if we decide to go through with it, they want us to suffer.
You could create this graph with any other method, it wouldn't look that much different. So if you ever stumble upon an article again, fear mongering about SN and some dangerous trend, just think about the fact that it's a tiny little percentage of all suicide methods. And unlike guns it's a rather peaceful method too, so maybe it's not that bad when people pick SN over guns... or hanging or trains... just from a harm reduction perspective, you know. But one thing is certain, society doesn't want to give people the option to pass away peacefully and that's why they'd rather go after SN than any other method. And that's why this substance in particular receives so much backlash at the moment.
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