What are your thoughts about suicide by train?

[constellationmind]

Hey guys, we are curious about what this community thinks about suicide by train. If you're comfortable sharing it would be really appreciated!


(We are a Dissociative Identity Disorder system who uses plural pronouns such as "we" and "ours" because it helps us to express our experience of being a dissociative system)

 

[violetforever]

im saying understandable mostly bc its an accessible method to me and i want to use it

 

[KlixxFoxe]

Well, I'm appreciate this CTB option because it's free and easy. Probably it's selfish, but I think all ways to CTB are selfish to some extent. So it doesn't really count at this point

 

[ShadowOfASelf]

I almost got killed by a train when I was younger because I had headphones on while jogging and didn't realize that it was a 2 track crossing and a 2nd train was coming on the other side when the first one was finishing, I started moving forward when a nearby cyclist screamed at me to stop or I would probably have been paste. I often wonder if I would have felt anything. Maybe briefly. Maybe not at all. The body goes into shock when traumatic stuff happens. I remember I once got my hand dragged into a drill press in elementary school and I just remember being very calm and remembering to press the emergency stop button like I was taught, and then I looked around and nobody had noticed and I was like "um I need some help?" The back of my hand was a bloody mess but I remember not feeling any pain at all. I often wonder if maybe that would also be the feeling for jumping when you hit the ground, assuming you die, you might not feel very much pain at all right before you die.

It's probably not great for the train driver though. They would be going through a lot of therapy after that. It kinda sucks that society a) won't allow easy access to euthanasia or other assisted dying where it would be safe, peaceful, and you could be surrounded by friends and family and 2) they keep restricting anything that even has a slight chance to be used in suicide, leading to violent and horrifying methods that scar many more people.

 

[blumen]

cant decide between understandable and selfish and understandable. would certainly be traumatic for the driver and other people involved as its pretty graphic but its also accessible and easy to go through with.

 

[Forever Sleep]

It's a tricky one to answer I find. For me personally, I think it would be selfish- because I feel like there are other methods I could opt for instead. Ones which would at least (hopefully) limit the amount of distress/ trauma/ responsibility on others. Personally, I would try to avoid making others unwillingly directly complicit in my death or- witnessing it if possible.

I suppose really honestly- I feel like some of these other methods are available to other people too. I would probably choose jumping from height over jumping in front of a train. Just because it doesn't involve others quite so directly. There's no real control of how much the driver will see and, how they'll react to it. It can't be pleasant to be picking up body parts off the track either.

I suppose I was tempted to vote 'selfish' but then- that feels too cruel really. I think for someone with very limited options- it borders more on being 'selfish but understandable'. After all- we likely would choose more private, non impactful methods if they were accessible. It's not exactly our fault that they're not and, we're still desperate to escape. It's like cornering a rat- you can't really blame it for going on the attack when it feels so desperate to escape.

I suppose just generally though. Suicide is often portrayed as this mindless, selfish act. I think by making efforts to limit its impact- we are demonstrating that we thought about it meticulously. So- I prefer other methods because of that too. That they demonstrate that suicide can be thought about and planned in detail to cause as least disturbance as possible.

Of course, some people may lean towards the more public methods because they make a statement. Also, this feeling that no one considered them much as they suffered during their lives so- why should they consider others when they die? I suppose it's that whole thing of: Two wrongs don't make a right. By contributing to the world with more disturbing acts- do we really change anything?

It's not exactly a targetted statement either. We have no idea who might witness a suicide. They may not necessarily be the type who made our lives worse. They may be a very sensitive, pro- choice type who mistakenly got traumatized.

 

[NameOfAction]

I've always felt pretty disconnected from the idea of hurting the driver. If not me, then someone else. A dog, a child, a drunk. A train driver ought to expect that eventuality, it comes with the job. Doesn't make it any easier, but that's hardly the fault of the meat in that particular meat grinder

 

[FuneralCry]

No, all that's selfish is forcing life into this horrific, dreadful world in the first place, there's so much selfishness in how humans cause all this harm and suffering by imposing this terrible, tortuous existence and doing all they can to force others to be tortured in this existence where there is no limit as to how much one can suffer for as much as long as possible.

The fact that the option of painless, guaranteed death is denied and people have to resort to brutal methods like this is such a terrible unacceptable crime, the only selfish ones are those who deny others the option to cease existing painlessly. It's so cruel to me calling those who cease existing in this way selfish when humans have made guaranteed, painless methods illegal, I always suffer so much from how I cannot just access Nembutal, anti-suicide is just so evil to me, all that's anti-suicide does is just cause way more harm and suffering.

 

[ShadowOfASelf]

No, all that's selfish is forcing life into this horrific, dreadful world in the first place, there's so much selfishness in how humans cause all this harm and suffering by imposing this terrible, tortuous existence and doing all they can to force others to be tortured in this existence where there is no limit as to how much one can suffer for as much as long as possible.

The fact that the option of painless, guaranteed death is denied and people have to resort to brutal methods like this is such a terrible unacceptable crime, the only selfish ones are those who deny others the option to cease existing painlessly. It's so cruel to me calling those who cease existing in this way selfish when humans have made guaranteed, painless methods illegal, I always suffer so much from how I cannot just access Nembutal, anti-suicide is just so evil to me, all that's anti-suicide does is just cause way more harm and suffering.

I agree with you but I also think there's like a limit where we can blame everything on society even though in the macro sense our effed up society does extremely limit our options to control our bodies, our lives, and our deaths. And society also encourages and exacerbates all sorts of mental and physical health conditions through neglect, abuse, punishment, capitalism, etc however you want to frame it. But at the same time we're also humans with free choice, even if society limits our choices to awful ones, we can't entirely give up our autonomy and intelligence. We know we'd be inflicting trauma and pain on a train conductor and possibly others watching, we can't pretend that we aren't aware of that even if society "is to blame".

It sucks that society has limited our options to CTB to mostly violent ones, and the structural and systemic issues are definitely in the macro "to blame" and need to be torn down/reformed/whatever. But I think we still need to acknowledge our own decisions and free will and knowledge of what we are doing. So I would say it's understandable but selfish in that we're prioritizing escaping our pain over adding trauma to other people's lives (which, who knows, might cause them to want to CTB in the future). But lots of things that people do in our society are selfish but understandable. People prioritize themselves and their families over strangers all the time, and often to much worse fates even.

 

[LetMeOut67]

It's a common method in Britain.
When it occurs you'll get comments about how "selfish" it is underneath the story.
I'd say that it's possible that sometimes it's spontaneous, people traveling by train who just decide to do it on the spur of the moment. Also if you are calling them selfish you're just underlining how callous society is, and therefore giving people the motivation to give one last f**k you to society in the shape of a rail suicide.

 

[raikko]

Hey guys, we are curious about what this community thinks about suicide by train. If you're comfortable sharing it would be really appreciated!


(We are a Dissociative Identity Disorder system who uses plural pronouns such as "we" and "ours" because it helps us to express our experience of being a dissociative system)

I can't say the same for other countries, but Japan is used to it and I've been affected by people jumping onto the track before. 「人身事故」 announced, people will gasp and other people will look at their watches and stop their feet. after fourty minutes or so everything goes back to normal, and the staff will smile and go about their day.

for me it's reassuring, i'm sure for everyone else, it would be a slight inconvenience at most.