This is gut-wrenching to read and my heart truly goes out to Jake and his family.
My mother-in-law had this diagnosis and same course of treatments although she was able to keep half her tongue before the cancer eventually returned with a vengeance. Only now reading these visceral, gripping diaries do I realize how poorly I understood her physical and emotional experience.
I am very, very hopeful that the coming generations of AI enhanced research will accelerate us quickly out of these almost unbelievably brutal treatments and into therapies that work non-destructively.
It's very hard, and, yes, the treatments we're collectively using are still primitive. FWIW it looks like I'm in a relatively promising clinical trial, and the primary treatment is likely to be less hard than surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, but recurrent / metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (RN HNSCC) kills. It's conceivable but unlikely I'll somehow survive, but my understanding is that most people in the field think that it'll take some combination of treatments to make any substantial progress.
I do not know how people can deal with the reality of their own death - every time I think about deeply or read an article about it it just destroys my entire day. The author is much braver than I am. I am very scared of death, and what happens before (illness, losing autonomy). So far I haven't found a way to accept it.
More then a decade I made the decision to kill myself. Came within a few millimeters from succeeding. My mother caught me in the backyard wearing a sweater and jeans drenched in gasoline with a lighter in my hand. My mother was never really athletic or decisive, but she moved as faster then I'd have ever seen her in my life. Hugged me hard and refused to let go no matter how hard I struggled. Took me longer to realize why she was doing that. For me to burn, I'd have to burn her as well... and she knew damned well I could never do that.
The only reason I'm here is for her sake, but only just. After she is gone that there's little else that compels me to stay.
It's not as if I'm unafraid of dying. It frightens me just as much as it does you. But even now don't find living to be more appealing, for reasons I cannot remember anymore. I'm just here, a clock in the shape of a person that's waiting to die.
> “The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
I hope you can find some joy in your life, find other things that are worth living for. You're on Hackernews, so I'm assuming you're into tech. Maybe you can apply your skills to more altruistic projects. Helping others might help with one's mental health.
Hope this is not too personal, but why did you choose to set yourself on fire? It's a brutal and painful way to go. It's also brutal for the person who would have found you, seeing the disfigured and charred body.
Maybe in a suicidal state of mind it's difficult to think about the after effects and all you can think about is to end the pain of living.
Honestly, it was what was within arms reach that I knew would work. It wasn't as if there were an elaborate master plan to execute. If there were, do you believe I'd be here talking about it?
Though... I won't deny the possibility that spite may have been involved as well.
There's not much of a story to tell that's not been told a billion times over. I wake, go to work, go home, browse, go to bed, repeat. The stress of life is there, tense moments where my teeth grind loud enough to hear. But is that so different then anyone else going through life?
That said I don't know if you and I are two sides of a coin. You ask the question on whether there is meaning in life, and answer that there is none. I look at the question, and find myself unbothered in any case.
How unfair would that be to that someone? Having to bear the burden of being the sole reason for another to live?
I spent years deliberately and intentionally slowly distancing myself from every friend, every acquaintance, until my existence was nothing more then a fading echo of a memory to everyone that would mourn not just a death of a human being, but the my death in particular. I've crossed paths with many of them in recent years, and to them my face is that of a stranger's.
So to answer your question. No. Not without some sort of actual desire to live from myself.
> How unfair would that be to that someone? Having to bear the burden of being the sole reason for another to live?
That's one way to look at it. But it's one viewpoint of many.
Another one is that they may just enjoy being around you and communicating with you without necessarily feeling you or your life is their responsibility. And on your end you might recognize that you bring value to other people just by being you. You recognizing someone as your sole reason to live doesn't place a burden on them automatically.
I've deliberately tried to keep out emotion of this and to keep it transactional just to illustrate a different, simpler, viewpoint.
Also a more concrete example: I don't know you but from the couple of comments you've left I really enjoy the way you write. The cadence, word choice, it's concise and thoughtful. Brief and mostly one sided interaction but already made my life a bit better.
I'll go a different route since I see the arbitrariness of everything, especially with the scope of time, but that scope is also what makes living until the end a more obvious choice.
We have been dead for billions of years. We have no memory of concept of time or ourselves beyond our lives. Similarly, we will be dead for billions of years, almost certainly with no sense of self or concept of time.
The tiny speck of time that is our human lives is so small it seems unimportant if not foolish to rush through it. If the default state for such a large percentage of time is no experience, any experience, even the ones that cause us to suffer, has such a novelty and quickness that surely you should just wait.
---
I also like the song 'Any Major Dude' which is about just going to sleep because you'll feel differently the next day. If you look at things like suicide rates and coal fired stove availability in England[1], it's clear people rush to kill themselves who wouldn't have if they had to wait.
I think you made a slightly poor choice of words; I am waiting. I've done nothing but wait in a waiting place. Waiting in a chair, waiting for a sign. Waiting and wondering when it will be my time.
Pitiable attempt at bad poetry aside, it is not as if my mother is bedridden with illness. Barring the unforeseen, another decade at minimum I think is reasonable. Who knows after that.
Until then I am waiting. And doing nothing else but waiting.
I hear you and I'm sorry -- That is just the tricks I use to fight the calls from the void.
If you're just waiting -- I hope you at least find things you somewhat enjoy to pass the time. Escapism through books or video games or nature or whatever can make the waiting more bearable.
In reality, I think we're all just waiting but most have found some way to distract themselves from that fact :)
Thanks for the chat hope you find some kind of solace.
> How unfair would that be to that someone? Having to bear the burden of being the sole reason for another to live?
Is it really a burden? I've been through a very rough year and basically just live for my two wonderful kids. The only thing worse than the suffering is knowing my kids will remember their dad as being a coward who killed himself, and will have to grow up without one. You could see it as a burden but if I was that person I'd be happy to be there for them and profoundly wish they were happier.
I think it's a terribly fragile thing to tie one's life to.
Say I were to give you cup of water, made of the most fragile glass to ever exist, and asked you to hold it. I'd imagine that it would be fine for a few minutes or even a few hours.
Does that stay the same if I asked you to hold it for days? Or months or years? Forcing you to always have to look tie a hand to it, always having to pause every other aspect of your life so that this glass doesn't shatter from setting it down just the wrong way, or going outside in the wrong temperature? And you do so, but only because of the guilt you know you would feel if the glass did break.
With a parent and child, such a relationship is inherent. To a child, mother and father are their world, their protector, their provider, their everything until they are able to fly on their own.
But what of peers? Do you think such is the basis of a healthy relationship?
Were it me to be the one that would shoulder another's burden as such... I think there would be a small seed of resent that would take root in my heart. One would grow like a terrible weed choking every other plant until nothing else remained. I'm scarcely able to tend to own wellbeing, there is barely a single bread crumb to spare for another.
Yeah. I felt similarly about the importance of the kids when we lost a loved one. They kept us going. Life has phases, and this one will pass, and hopefully you will find the next phase to be better.
Maybe this relates to you, maybe it doesn't. I struggle with lifelong depression and suicidal thoughts as well. A dictionary of mental disorders and an extremely traumatizing childhood.
In order to defend myself against impulsive thoughts I've had to dig deep and discover purpose which made sense to me. In my case that is a duality of contributing to mankind however I can, and devoting substantial time to enjoy the contributions made by others. Slowly synthesizing and contributing to what it means to be human. Learning how to love and appreciate everything just on the merit of its existence. It's not enough to accept life, I have to refuse to die, and mount evidence against the utility of a premature death.
What convinced you that suicide was the right option a decade ago? A specific event? Is there something you want from life which you aren't finding or receiving? Or is there an inability to connect in an emotionally positive way with your experience? Or something else?
Some sort of fight I think, the details of which have long vanished into irrelevancy. Though it was not as if it were a light bulb that was switched off. It was a long road to that junction in my life.
Do you remember your first words that you spoke or the first steps you took as a toddler? Or has speech and stride been just a part of your life since a time beyond your first memories?
To me, the idea of ending my own life has always been there, as constant as the sun rising in the east. There may have been a time when it wasn't so, but I cannot find it anymore. Because of this were were half hearted attempts both before and after; a sliced wrist here, a sloppy noose there. The one was the critical one. The one who's cause was nothing more then a piece of straw that broke the camel's back. But it broke nonetheless.
If you don't know why you feel that way anymore, then it sounds like your perspective is ripe for change. The way to change your perspective is through introspection and experience. Maybe you should exhaust these avenues first; travel, perhaps? Or volunteering, or anything else which places you outside of your comfort zone so that you can encounter new perspectives.
And there in lies a bit of a problem. I could probably be 'cured', if I had any particular desire to be cured. Or perhaps put more into programmer terms; this is a feature, not a bug.
I've had decades to look inward and ponder why it is that I am what I am. And often the line of questioning leads down to one particular core reason; that I do not wish to be not suicidal. I've looked at every friend I've severed from my life, every decision, every opportunity I turned away from, every life milestone I will never experience. No first kiss, no first date, no birthdays parties or Christmas get togethers. There will be nothing to reminisce about at the end of my life, no taste of nostalgia at a life well spent.
And yet every time I ask myself if I regret any of it... I would have to say no, I don't. And if I could go back and do it all over again with what I know now, I wouldn't change anything. Had I killed myself then I think it would have left a terrible pain behind. As is, when I do kill myself, it will be as quiet as leaf falling from a tree.
But to entertain you. I have done international travel and volunteer work. I still do from time to time. But there's no enlightenment in doing so, just busy work for myself.
I'm very good at being completely and utterly predictable in every respect that people will see, even if all they know of me is a false name and a false persona. And thus, having met all expectations, be I become someone less interesting then the task at hand.
I realize this is likely what you didn't wish to hear but I do not know what else can be said. I am who am I am.
There are people who care. You aren't alone, there are other people who feel similarly. I've felt similarly (even today)
When you're in a rough spot emotionally, it's easy to believe things that aren't true. Please reach out for help from someone. And I'm not saying this because it's a platitude or because that's what you're supposed to say. I'm saying it because I know what this type of hole is like, it isn't pleasant, there is another way
Or there aren't. I know for sure that no one cares about me except my family. They care because we have a blood relation - but for anyone else, they literally wouldn't care if I was dead tomorrow. (I know because sometimes I disappear for weeks when things get too much. No one gives a shit, really.)
> When you're in a rough spot emotionally, it's easy to believe things that aren't true.
I generally agree with this, but don't you think that someone can come to a rational decision that life is not worth living for them? I'm curious what your stance on euthanasia is.
Life is hard. We never asked to be born, yet are forced to endure the hardships of life, which can be unbearable to some people. Not only are hardships wildly different for everyone, but our coping mechanisms are also different.
We can never truly understand what life is like for someone else, so saying you understand how they're feeling is indeed a platitude. I know it comes from a good place, but we shouldn't assume that the person is delusional.
My friend, it may be one of the most important lessons you learn. I have Stage IV lung cancer and have had some brain metastases along the way which can thankfully be cleared quickly (mostly due to my proximity to boston).
I do not know how much longer I have in the world. It may be 1 year, it may be 20. What I do know is that for my current mental health, I work to get to a place where I can greet death as a long-lost friend.
> I do not know how much longer I have in the world. It may be 1 year, it may be 20. What I do know is that for my current mental health, I work to get to a place where I can greet death as a long-lost friend
Wise words. None of us know whether today is the day we die, so we develop coping mechanisms, from keeping ourselves busy with other things, to faith in religion or technology, to sobbing at the inevitability of our death and the death of the people we love.
There is also peace in surrender, in truly accepting that we are powerless to prevent it. If we fight it we will fail, like so many before us. Thus, we live, we enjoy the time we have with the people we love, and we die.
Stoic philosophy covers a lot of this, I particularly enjoyed listening to Marcus Aurelius Meditations[0].
Live life, be nice to everyone around you, enjoy the now and be humble. Strangely those ideas are 2000 years old and yet we still don't understand them.
I have been in the same boat and this is a realization that pretty much cured me:
Fear of death is not rational. There is nothing like "being dead" more than there is anything like "not being born". Our anxiety of our mortality is just a cruel evolutionary accident. Feeling scared when facing possible death is an evolutionary function for making animals avoid dangers. Unfortunately for humans we got a brain that can simulate the future very well, and we can understand that we will die. These two generates our fear of death. Again, the fear we feel is not based in anything rational, since we will never experience being dead.
I vehemently disagree. From the human to the amoeba, avoiding death is our primary instinct.
It might not make philosophical sense to fear death, but on a biological sense, it is the utmost priority, and any organism would benefit from having an innate, irrational, all-consuming fear of its life ceasing.
Accepting your death is a learned behaviour, not innate. Either because you know that it will happen shortly, or because of high-order rationalisation such as meditation, reading a lot of philosophy books or believing in abstract concepts such as afterlife.
It all depends on your definition of rationality: if you "think" about it, there's no reason to fear death. But if your entire physical being had a say, as it should, as we are more than just pure thought, death is the antithesis of life itself, and must be avoided at all cost.
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
— The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused — nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says _No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel_, not seeing
That this is what we fear — no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
I don't fear the "being death" part, but there are some other aspects which are more rational:
* I fear the process of dying which is usually far from pleasant (in various ways)
* I fear the consequences of my death. I would leave behind my wife, children, friends who will mourn. I have small children and the idea that they would miss their father gives me the biggest worries.
* I fear the missed opportunities like seeing my children growing up.
I think it's the period before death that scares me more than the big empty void. The big empty of death triggers a bit of anxiety but the process of my health degrading is what I feel triggers the depressed feeling...
I don't understand this line of thinking at all. It's irrational to fear something you can't experience? That very lack of experience is the scary part.
Hi, I came here to tell the exact opposite, so I guess this is a good idea to do this as an answer to your comment. I feel like death is what makes life beautiful and precious. Because if you have an infinite amount of something, this is really not precious at all, is it? This is actually a central theme is Buddhist mythology: the realm of humans is seen as the most worthy place to be born, because it is mortality that gives one the possibility to understand and practice the teachings of the buddha. There are higher realms, where beings live many eons and with very little suffering - nice for the time it lasts, but it makes them unable to really understand the preciousness of live, and ends in bad karma and rebirth in a lower realm.
Knowing my life is finite is what makes me cherish beautiful moments. This actually often a consequence of fatal diagnoses: I could for instance observe how my father in law inceeased his interest in my children pretty much overnight after he was given one year to live by an oncologist.
There are meditation techniques focused on the awareness of death, and they can be very liberating: my favorite is called "the 9 contemplations of Atisa", if you want to look it up. I personally added a few contemplations to it, to take into account the secular setup in which we live: I find it extremely helpful to ponder the fact that we do not, and will likely never, be able to know what death is and what is the nature of consciousness. Maybe it is the end of everything, but maybe it is also the reunion with the great everything, or I will be reborn as a butterfly.
I also find the "charnel grounds" meditation to be very freeing, but some people do freak out there, so take your time.
It's the one thing that's consistently sat in the back of my mind since age 5 and hasn't left
The only response I have is this: the stress from thinking about dying makes life expectancy go down, so logically if you want to avoid death you shouldn't think about it in excess (this whole thing is contradictory, but a contradiction is the best thing I have)
> It's the one thing that's consistently sat in the back of my mind since age 5 and hasn't left
Sounds like my son. He's been having occasional existential crises since about that age (he is 10 now). I don't remember worrying about it myself at such a young age, though I definitely have thought about it too much as an adult. I've learned that lying awake at 2am in bed is the worst possible time for that thought to occur. Just have to turn on the lights in that case, and find something productive to do.
I keep telling myself that I didn't notice the billions of years before my birth, so I won't notice the ones following either. Life is infinitely long, from my own perspective.
My mom has ALS, got it completely out of the blue without any family history, and she had long living parents too. Thankfully in my country the care is okay, the government pays a nurse so she can stay at home and get help when needed etc. But it hurts to watch the degeneration, and I don't understand why more countries do not allow assisted suicide?
I am not afraid of dying really, but more so that I get stuck in a very bad condition that is like hell and I have to suffer a lot. If I had the option of medically assisted suicide, it would somewhat eliminate that fear as I would know that I have that option..
One thing I use to cope with it is that I am only 27 and maybe in few decades there are better treatments, at least one can hope right.. But looking at treatments for neurodegenerative illnesses, it seems they have gotten absolutely nowhere
As someone who does not fear death anymore I would ask you to find out what exactly it is you fear? If you have regrets or something you have not done you want to do you should either go do that or be at peace that you did not do it. Sometimes you also need to realize that what you are regretting you should not be. For example sometimes not taking advantage of an opportunity which you may be regretting actually led to something else much greater.
If you fear for the people around you having to deal with your death you can take precautions and make their life easier.
If you fear debilitating illness you always have the option of going when you decide[1] and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
For me, it is the oblivion and missing out on everything that will follow. I have known so many wonderful people, and seen and experienced as much as I have been able to manage so far, and it's all not even the shallowest mark compared to everything I'll miss out on. I've been driven as long as I can remember by an interest in nearly everything, and one day, it will all be gone for me.
I wouldn't say I fear this, exactly. It's an inevitability. I've had enough close calls that I know peace comes after fear. Still though, it's unsettling, and so far no philosophy or introspection has made it less so, and the only treatment I've found for it is more good people and more life.
Here in Belgium the system is possible the most permissive in the world. People can fairly easily get a doctor to euthanize them due to a loss of quality of life, even for purely mental issues. I recall a rape victim, young woman with a husband and young kids who did this. One of the victims of the airport bombings here in Brussels chose euthanasia because she couldn't overcome the mental trauma of that day. People who are paralyzed for life (but basically stable) ... the list goes on.
Nah. Here in the US the religious people worship other people's suffering. It makes them feel better. (I'm serious, there is this whole story of Jesus suffering were it's the point of everything)
Same for me - I think this is a profound contradiction between the unique ability of humans to think about the future (which enables them to know that they will one day die) and the basic self-preservation instinct which all living beings have.
Have you ever been very ill, or ill for longer periods of time? My guess is that much of a fear of death is a fear of the unknown, and a fear of unknown suffering.
People who have been deathly or chronically ill have less fear of death than those who have been healthy most of their lives, partly because they know suffering, and partly because death can be promise of a future relief rather than a punishment for them.
You will lose that fear if you are miserable long enough. I went through a divorce (and subsequent estrangement from my child) that left me deeply depressed and devastated. The depression eventually lifted, but the bleakness changed me in a lot of ways. I don't fear dying much. In a lot of ways, I feel I've already taken the worst life can offer.
I've had two surgeries where I've had to be put under. It kind of helped, as far as my anxiety for death goes.
I went from counting backwards, to being awoken, in what felt like an instant. No grand dreams or things like that...just waking up and feeling groggy in what felt like a couple of seconds, when in reality 60-90 minutes had passed.
But, what if I hadn't woken up - what if I had died on the operating table? It would still have been lights out and absolute nothingness.
I can only hope that death will be the same. One minute you're there, then nothingness. The process of dying seems to be much worse than death itself, so I hope I'll go quickly (huge aneurism, massive heart attack, etc.) or heavily sedated.
Death does not mean illness or loss of autonomy. Death is where we came from before birth, and where we return when we die again. The particles of our body are composed of others present and past. The self is an illusion, manifesting as ego.
Your feelings are valid but I struggle to understand. I’m afraid of death too but in a visceral way (don’t jump off a cliff, don’t drink poison, etc). I know I’m going to die and think about it sometimes but it doesn’t bother me in the abstract.
You can't think or reason your way to accepting death. Nor can others explain it. You reach that acceptance through having certain experiences. Long periods of suffering being one of those experiences.
I have made peace with mortality because it's something I literally can't do anything about. No amount of doing or worrying or indeed caring can nor will affect my eventual and inevitable death.
I might die tomorrow (or today!) or 50 years from now and I will definitely be dead a hundred years from now regardless of whatever I do. So I don't worry about it, because it's a simple waste of my precious and limited time.
Remember the old saying: Death and taxes are the two guarantees in life.
my impression is that you are closer to accepting death then you think. almost nobody can face death without fear. most people simply deflect this fear by means of platitudes and smart mental constructs. this is all just empty words as soon the time comes.
My aunt - one of 9 kids, and the only one who assiduously avoided alcohol and tobacco - died at 60 from cancer on her tongue. It took about 6 months from diagnosis to death.
You never know when your life will change. Death is possible anytime, but also an accident, injury, death of a loved one, it can be anything. I had an early-to-mid-life crisis in my early 30s where my own mortality became much more real to me and it altered my thinking and behavior.
I honestly can’t say if a quick, sudden, unexpected death is preferable to a long, drawn out, terminal death that gives a long time for careful thinking and study. I think I would prefer the latter despite the indignities and pain that you succumb to, as the author clearly shows. The idea that you can be walking down the street and have a heart attack or aneurysm is deeply disturbing to me, although I know people who died this way and it is a fairly likely way to die.
We should always, always, always be thankful for what we have. If you wake up and you can walk, if your children are healthy, if you have food to eat. So often today we let small grievances and petty issues ruin our happiness. In reality these problems are nothing compared to true suffering.
A friend is a hospice worker for dying children, who helps assemble their memory books and plan their final events and wishes. She does this work week after week with multiple children at a time. Imagining the slow death of my own child, planning memories, explaining to them about heaven, it is an astronomical amount of suffering that I cannot force myself to follow a logical thought experiment to conclusion.
I have followed along with this brave man’s story. It can happen to anyone, at any time.
One idea that comforts me is that every single living creature that existed before me has died, and every creature that exists now will die, and everything in the future will die. You cannot have the gift of life without the curse of death. While we all die alone, we all experience death - it is only lonely in the actual experience but it is something that all of us will participate in.
Both of my parents are simultaneously dying from different forms of cancer. My father the same as yours (it started in his upper gum line). My mother a rare form of bile duct cancer. They’re not the sort to engage in psychedelics, but I suppose in some way their deep religious beliefs and experiences served the same purpose.
Your story and others I’ve read have really helped me understand the turmoil they’re facing internally and externally, and to analyze what I’ve been feeling to this point.
Perhaps a brief trip into the unknown is in my future.
You're welcome and I'm sorry to hear about your parents; some things in life just suck and dying from cancer is among them.
I know extremely religious people who find psychedelics enhance their religious feelings and practice (that said I obviously know nothing about your parents). If you're curious, send an email.
Aside from sympathy, I also feel a sense of awe, admiration, and respect for the fighting spirit this guy has.
He had his tongue removed to increase his odds, is struggling with the basic sensations of being alive, is also acutely aware of staring death in the face, and yet he's talking about clinical trials and the future.
Even if he loses the battle, I feel there is something gained by having fought it.
But of course, no matter how grim the odds, a loss is never guaranteed. I hope he someday writes a post titled "remission".
What a brave man to write this piece. Amazing strength.
The persistent intrusive thoughts about whether this thing, life, is worth it, remain. They’re not questions therapy can help with. They’re questions intrinsic to the damage.
This sucks but I wonder if it’s nature way of making the end easier? At some point one must reason that eternal rest is a better option ?
Assuming the scientific understanding of nature in which the main driver of evolution is successful reproduction, there doesn't seem to be much room for a mechanism to emerge from natural processes that makes dying easier.
That being said, I'm not much of a materialist these days and think there is something more to reality than purely mechanistic physical laws.
childbirth is another comparable situation. By 9 months it’s so uncomfortable that most women who are afraid to have children just want to get labor started.
I know it doesn’t fit in with purely mechanistic laws either but it is a thing.
My brother passed from Multiple Myeloma earlier this year. This was a rather rare instance of that disease as my brother was turning 30 in the year he contracted it. Usually you’re much older if you contract it and it may be found once something else is found.
What he would not be able to explain is how the palliative care went. I expect the author wont be able to unless he is lucky (or unlucky depending on your views on life and death) to last months/years. Unless you set aside a good bit of money/have a fairly good facility near you, you’re probably going to rely on friends and family for care. In the US your insurance should cover the palliative care facility and their efforts but getting a dedicated bed will cost extra. My brother worked for Apple and they did an outstanding job being supportive and had a lot of extra programs and perks to help cover many of the costs.
I’m located on the East Coast but took two months off from work to help care for my brother. He ended up just needing three weeks. He wrote that post right in the in between of a decline that “gradually and then suddenly” would accurately describe. He went from being cleared to drive to unable to do so within two weeks
His actual death was due to chronic kidney disease and the eventual renal failure/body tail spin. Eventually eating and drinking wasn’t a reasonable or interesting thing to do. You’re in a race to consume calories but unable to keep them in your body. Your next thought might be, “drink sugar water” but you’re also limited in how much water you can drink and managing sodium and potassium in your body. Also at this point there is no outsmarting your predicament. This is where your mind goes in alternating cycles. Eventually things go poorly enough that your blood oxygen level plummets and you lose consciousness. From that point what you experience is all a thought experiment for medical professionals and the people wondering if you’re feeling any more pain at this point.
If you find yourself in this situation you need to find good advocates that will help you find some ability to become ready to die and eventually tell you that you’re done fighting and to enjoy the time you have. My brother got a day and a half of not having to think about potassium and sodium and dialysis before he became unresponsive and another few days before he passed. If I am in charge of advocacy again I’d try to extend that to at least the last week. In our case that wouldn’t have been too hard to do because they started warning us that his BP and pulse were marginal for dialysis and they were threatening to decline treatment in several sessions.
Once you get to Palliative Care, and especially the point all treatment has been stopped, your advocates/family will be the ones giving you drugs to keep you comfortable. The palliative care providers train your advocates/caretakers on how to give morphine and other drugs. If you’ve picked people that are particularly well organized they'll take good care of you between the nurse visits.
Keep emotionally unstable people away from the nurses. We almost lost my brother’s care because one of his friends stopped taking his medications and seeing his therapist the week he heard the bad news. This turned into a really bad situation where the nurses were just a moment from walking out the door.
Palliative Care is not fun but I have a hard time imagining a more humane way to go aside from legal assisted suicide.
Unless you set aside a good bit of money/have a fairly good facility near you, you’re probably going to rely on friends and family for care
Yes. It's a challenging situation. In the U.S., we've also made a lot of people, myself included, a lot more financially precarious by creating artificial housing shortages that have in turn caused the cost of housing to soar: https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e....
I'm lucky to have Bess. Without her, I doubt I'd exist right now.
Sure, your 20s is the end of the easy part. Between natural growth of your body, and the hot-house environment of organized schooling, you can't help but grow. You become more capable and aware each year just by living. But you leave the greenhouse in your 30s. Your hormones stabilize, and the impersonal bureaucracies around you are more interested in extracting value than improving you. You miss it because youth is wasted on the young.
As an adult, any growth, or increase in personal capacity will only happen as the result of choices and actions you make. But you might be very surprised how much you can still grow. It is cliche, but I've watched a lot of men turn 40 and 50, and they are either in the best shape of their life, or heading downhill and picking up steam.
It's a lame truism but "life is what you make of it." At first everything is new, mere existence is the act of discovery and growth. As you age more you must have more intention behind your actions.
Learn topics you understand on a surface level more deeply, invest more in relationships and in truly understanding relatives and partners, push yourself physically in directions you hadn't considered.
There are still a lot of ways to continue to grow, even as the novelty of existence wears off and your body begins to age.
Dude, I'm 45 ... 30 is nothing. I had the best years of my life between 20-40. And after that it only deteriorated (depression, substance abuse) because of bad relationships and choices I made.
I was driving up to my country home from work one day at 33 when it hit me. I will never experience anything better than I already have. Beautiful loving wife, a healthy boy and girl, a quiet country home. Peace, security, food, clean water, a comfortable home and friends, boundless education.
I was right. It was all down hill from there. I make twenty times more money now, and it only matters to me as a way to prevent my family from want. The best has come and gone. My remaining mission is to alleviate human suffering and die without suffering myself.
I can't really blame people for the silly shit they do (check Google News for examples). Most have never had or even come close to the privilege and love I have experienced--or maybe someone shielded them from the consequences of their actions, which makes for intolerable adults. For me to judge them using the experience I know would be ridiculous. I remember my consciousness snapping into its current state one day at three years old--like a sudden awakening. Since that moment in that old farm house in Ohio, my existence has left me in awe.
My older brother was aborted. My younger brother was born with a life threatening disease. All the men in my family are dead, save for myself and my oldest cousin, due to the import of heroin following our most recent war (the price of oil is very high). It's lonely now and tough to look forward.
When I was young I looked forward to everything. No matter what, nothing could get me down. I assumed everything was always on the upswing and I was going to live forever. Unbridled optimism. A husk of that still lives on but I'm really stoic.
I can relate but i can also say that there is a good chance that you will dig yourself out of this hole if you don't give up. I did and i enjoy my life now.
>He had no fear. He would always say, “We can’t fight it and eventually we all have to go sometime.” For the several years prior, we’d drive past the cemetary he was going to be buried at, as it was on the way to his doctor’s appointments, and I’d say to him, “That’s where you’re going to lie for an eternity.” And he would say, “Don’t remind me.” The last time I drove him to the hospital and we were driving past, I said the same thing to him. And this time, he said to me, “I think I’m ready.”
That isn't the point of this article or the comments here. It's all about accepting the inevitable and seeing the beauty in it, not fighting against that.
I see your point, but the way it's written is ignorant.
Psychedelics don't give you an easy high, like how drugs do in pop culture work, or like how stimulants do. With psychedelics, users have to actively manage their experience, otherwise, and even then, it can turn into a literal nightmare that you can't wake up from, until the effects go away.
"Broke your animal brain" - no, not really. If it would broke the animal brain just like that, don't you think that you would see the drug everywhere, and in history, widely used?
Getting a grip is exactly what OP seems to be doing. The thing is that while many of the substances are now illegal, and risky, they can give profound experience like nothing else does. Some, even knowing this, consider this cheating, which is why many who take religion seriously don't alter their conscious with substances at all.
You can't be technically addicted to stuff like psylocybin, not in physical way. The more frequently you take it, the less effect it has to the point where there is almost none, losing any reason to take it.
Clearly you have no clue what you write about in your snarky way, there are numerous other incorrect statements in those few sentences, but something tells me there is no point going deeper on those.
Unfortunately I know all too well, both dealing with severe mental illness caused in myself by these drugs, and in others. These drugs are very dangerous and should remain illegal. At most they should be used in extreme situations under strict guidance
How do you expect me to support something that has destroyed mine and others' mental health? I would give anything to go back to having never taken these drugs
I respect your experience in this. If you would like others to understand your point, you need to add your experience, not just sling "get a grip, druggie" to the conversation.
> How do you expect me to support something that has destroyed mine and others' mental health?
I'm sorry to hear that you were hurt by psilocybin and other drugs. Unfortunately I think a recreational drug culture is ill equipped to understand and manage the hazards of powerful hallucinogenics drugs, and that too many people are left with bad and even traumatic experiences.
But doesn't this go both ways? How do you expect people who found a profound benefit from psilocybin not to discuss their experiences? I can understand advocating for caution, absolutely, but you're implying in your earlier comment that you believe they're deluding themselves. Why would your experience invalidate theirs?
Because I personally believe that we should learn to live with our lives as the mind presents it to us instead of trying to fool ourselves into thinking our altered drug states give us some kind of deeper insight into reality, which they obviously don't. They disconnect us more from the universe and our own lives
The synapses in your brain change anytime you experience, learn or remember something. Your "natural" mind changes with time, and mind-altering substances can do the same thing in shorter time spans.
Whether you want to experience this or not is up to you, but you're wrong by thinking that others are fooling themselves. Some people do gain deeper insights of themselves and reality, while others merely do it for recreation. Neither "disconnects us more from the universe"—quite the contrary.
Okay but the brain exists to provide an accurate model of reality. Changing it so as not to do so and then thinking that new model is "real" is fooling yourself.
> Some people do gain deeper insights of themselves and reality
No they don't. Literally anyone who thinks they do is "deluded" (in the Buddhist technical sense)
Well, to sum it up what you wrote - you are a proper mess, you took drugs without supervision despite literally everybody, everywhere, all the time since 50s advising to NOT take any drugs (including alcohol and cigarettes/nicotine) in such conditions.
Then unsurprisingly you got hurt, and now you are sour on whole world and want to tell everybody how to live their lives, since you obviously know what's best for all of us. And of course you understand very well literally every single human being in this world in these ways. Did I miss anything?
With great power comes great responsibility, you skipped the second part. Me, just like many others, had wonderful, enlightening experiences and I've done the best decisions in my life with help of those (but not only those). Those decisions stood the test of time and literally decades after they happened they are still right ones and I am profoundly thankful for them. And it literally doesn't matter what anybody sour writes on internet, you do you and we do us, in both good and bad ways.
I mean, yes, since this quite poorly summarises the situation. (I was not born in a place where I was told not to do drugs, I did drugs in a very safe environment with people I love who were supervising and caring for me, I dosed accordingly and carefully, I thought my mental state was conducive to the experience, etc. etc. etc.)
> Me, just like many others, had wonderful, enlightening experiences and I've done the best decisions in my life with help of those (but not only those).
I mean, yes, it's called being on drugs. When on MDMA people feel very empathetic and happy, similar on psychedelics. In Buddhism we call it "delusion"
> And it literally doesn't matter what anybody sour writes on internet
If you don't care at all, why are you even telling me? Your response does not read like an enlightened person. My Buddhist teacher did not speak in the way that you are speaking
I am responding to what I perceive as incorrect subjective statements, welcome to internet and its forums :)
It may shock you but not everybody strives to be buddhist or adhere to their core values (not everything in that religion is a-OK as per modern moral standards). I don't even care about some enlightenment, its some concept of one specific religion not particularly close to my heart. I like buddhists in their original countries a lot, shiny glowing people regardless of their often hard lives, westerns lost wannabes eternally looking for salvation usually not so much.
Some of us, 'enlightened' by spiritual aspects of psychedelics (just to be clear, I talk about psylocibin, it gave me all I ever needed from it and much more, no need for me to go into MDMA or further) realized that spirituality tells us a lot how humans are wired internally and what happens when you mess with brain's receptors, but absolutely nothing about existence of actual higher power(s).
And I don't need the existence of those powers, since I don't believe in them any more than in Santa claus. I am content with my own death (as extreme sports bring you close to it often), life so far figured out, I know exactly what my purpose in this life is, how to make myself long term content and happy, caring for my wife and kids, have cca good creative work, living in amazing place in Switzerland, taking care of my body. I really don't need anything else, and for none of that any kind of religion or ancient philosophy is necessary.
If you mention the word "enlightenment" then I can only relate it to what I learnt from my religion, Buddhism, since that is where the term has been taken from. I'm aware of no other form of enlightenment than Buddhist enlightenment. I'm not sure how you want me to relate to the word outside of a Buddhist context.
> I like buddhists in their original countries a lot, shiny glowing people regardless of their often hard lives, westerns lost wannabes eternally looking for salvation usually not so much.
You are too ignorant to comment on such things. All Buddhist are "wannabes eternally looking for salvation", that's the whole point of Buddhism, that we want to become a Buddha and save ourselves and others from suffering. Most Buddhists in the world are Pure Land Buddhists, so they pray to Amida Buddha so they can be reborn in his Western Pure Land.
I recommend to just use a different word than enlightenment and avoid getting so involved in something you clearly know very little about.
> Okay but the brain exists to provide an accurate model of reality.
There's no such thing. Reality is subjective for everyone who experiences it, as our senses dictate how we perceive it. The model of reality we agree with is a general overlap of our collective senses, and is not any more "real" than the one experienced when under the influence of mind-altering substances.
And this is fine. The way we all experience life is different, but claiming one way is "real" and the other "delusional" is a mistake.
> There's no such thing. Reality is subjective for everyone who experiences it, as our senses dictate how we perceive it. The model of reality we agree with is a general overlap of our collective senses, and is not any more "real" than the one experienced when under the influence of mind-altering substances.
I honestly think it's a cope to assert that there aren't really existing objects out there. The best you can do is a Hegelian argument, i.e. that everything is undetermined without a pure concept or language, but that doesn't really tell us whether or not there is "stuff" out there.
Here's a question for you: do you think that there was no universe before sentient beings started to see it? Your argument here would mean you should answer "yes"
That's the age old question of a tree falling in a forest.
I'm not disputing the claim that the universe exists even if there is no observer. What I'm saying is that the perception of that universe depends entirely on our senses. After all, to a blind person, the universe appears much differently. In that same vein, altering our senses by taking various substances expands our perception of the universe in a way a person who doesn't will never experience. My point is that choosing to do so or not is fine, and neither is better than the other. So my objection is to your claim that the people who do make that choice are deluding themselves, or not experiencing "true" reality.
> What I'm saying is that the perception of that universe depends entirely on our senses.
And there is a right way to perceive it, and a wrong way to perceive it.
> After all, to a blind person, the universe appears much differently.
And? They still perceive the senses they can still access accurately.
> In that same vein, altering our senses by taking various substances expands our perception of the universe in a way a person who doesn't will never experience.
I agree except replace "expand" with "confuses". It makes our perception of reality incorrect.
> My point is that choosing to do so or not is fine, and neither is better than the other.
One is objectively better than another. Try driving a car on a strong LSD trip. You can't, because it isn't allowing you to have an accurate perception of reality.
> So my objection is to your claim that the people who do make that choice are deluding themselves, or not experiencing "true" reality.
It's far from obvious to me. Drugs have helped me to understand myself, the way my perception works, and the nature of reality. They've also helped me to manage my anxiety and depression.
You can tell me that's an illusion, but you'd be mistaken. And how would you know whether my experiences were false? You couldn't possibly.
> Drugs have helped me to understand myself, the way my perception works, and the nature of reality.
They haven't, you just think they have. There are real ways to gain such insight, but not through breaking your brain's pattern recognition capabilities.
> They've also helped me to manage my anxiety and depression.
Well, they are drugs.
> You can tell me that's an illusion, but you'd be mistaken.
What is an illusion and what isn't? I'm not saying you aren't having those experiences, I'm just saying that they are not actually related to some biological element of yourself, such as you living a human life. Psychedelics breaks our pattern recognition, sense data starts to get interpreted in different ways and we see, hear, and feel sense data in a different way. They just fuzz up the control system of your brain. While it's true that your normal experiences are not somehow "less illusory" than those drug experiences, it is true that they are a more accurate model of external reality.
Your mind is constantly refreshing its own model of reality, according to received inputs. Psychedelics totally mess up your model of reality. The problem is that now you are attaching to this messed up model of reality as somehow real and insightful. It's not, it's just what happens when your brain isn't functioning properly.
It's very strange to me to hear a Buddhist argue that I should forgo something which eases my suffering and advances my spiritual practice because of my biology! Also very strange to hear a Buddhist proclaim they not only understand reality, but reality from my perspective. I'm not a Buddhist, but I've been studying Zen lately (though I understand you may subscribe to a different interpretation), and this really flies in the face of everything I've learned.
There's only one person in this world who gets to decide whether my brain is functioning properly, and whether my understanding of reality is advancing my material and spiritual goals. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine who that person is.
> It's very strange to me to hear a Buddhist argue that I should forgo something which eases my suffering and advances my spiritual practice because of my biology! Also very strange to hear a Buddhist proclaim they not only understand reality, but reality from my perspective. I'm not a Buddhist, but I've been studying Zen lately (though I understand you may subscribe to a different interpretation), and this really flies in the face of everything I've learned.
Well, Buddhism is very strictly anti-drug compared to any other religion that I know of. Of course, Buddhism would argue that it isn't easing your suffering but is actually increasing your ignorance and your likelihood of creating bad karma, leading to a worse rebirth in the future. It is more likely to be reborn in a hell realm if you are on drugs than if you have a clear mind through mindfulness and concentration. If you train mindfulness and good ethics then you can achieve a heavenly rebirth or even eventually exit samsara. Btw, I trained in Soto Zen under an ordained, authorised teacher. Drugs are considered a hinderance, that's why alcohol is a violation of the precepts.
> There's only one person in this world who gets to decide whether my brain is functioning properly, and whether my understanding of reality is advancing my material and spiritual goals. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine who that person is.
Here's a hint: it's not you, since you are, according to Buddhism, an ignorant, deluded being. Those aren't even terms to be rude, those are the technical terms we use. A vast majority of beings are not in a position to judge whether their understanding of reality is materially or spiritually beneficial, because they lack insight.
Whew. That is certainly a take. I'm gunnuh go ahead and pursue my path, and I wish you safe travel along yours. I'm sorry you had such terrible experiences.
Shrooms helped me quit alcohol. Drank for 10 years every night, took shrooms twice in my life, never drank again after the second time. That was many years ago. I guess there are some things more useful than an accurate model of reality?
Some drugs can have positive effects. That doesn't mean they unlock the secrets of reality. It also doesn't mean that we should praise their positive effects without extreme caution.
Ketamine is a great anti-depressant for people who are resistant to all other treatments, yet you don't see people going around indiscriminately praising the effects of ketamine like you do with LSD or shrooms.