Desultory Life

A conversation in a bar concerned the vacuum that is music today. Today is not the 60's or 70's. Pathetically, it is not even the 80's. Society has been dumbed down. The musicians of the 40s and 50's appear today as savants, as geniuses. Or simply, they devoted the time to learn a craft. Loss is a four letter word, but eventually loss compounds and the desire to go on ceases. As a society we are confronted with a staggering amount of loss. Quality, integrity, deep relationships, contact. In its place we have mobility, wide networks of weak associations, and a consumer economy. As a society, we are bound for a fall. Yes, there is a slice of people, mostly in universities, that challenge their perceptions of life. Aging takes its toll on creativity. I know, I can barely think anymore. Compound this with the lack of a sympathetic environment, not encouraging mastery, not encouraging transformations of material goods, or if so, not teaching the arts that drive that transformation. Yes, I can boot up my computer and make music with the help of software. This process will not teach me music however. Will not say when to go the 7th or the minor 3rd, and never, never, will drive the saxophone solo.

God help us all. The end is near.

Men 85% -- Women 15%

The ratio of male to female suicide is 85/15. This seems to hold in all age brackets, from the most likely time to do yourself in 15-24, to the it's all over anyway except the pain so why don't I pull the plug elderly opt out.

Why this ratio? Consider that men are jailed at even a higher rate for homicide, typically in the mid 90th percentile. Men are more violent than women. It could be argued that men have more societal pressure to succeed, more financial burdens: these take a toll, especially when failure is involved. Genetically (and all is genetic here, perhaps) men are more likely to have mutations than women. So on the fringe, those suicides of genetic instability will skew towards men, simply because men express more genetic variations at the fringes. (why? women's more complex reproductive systems select against variability). Though this accounts for only a few percentage points off the norm.
Perhaps men in general have fewer deep intimate ties to other people. Certainly pregnancy, carrying a child, etc, is wildly influential in women, and absent in men.

And of course, deep down, men know they are expendable. So they act like it.

CDC Statistics

In the May 14th post I referred to a CDC stat page on suicide. Just to begin to touch on it - (I hope you read it, if not, go to May 14th and click on the Title, that takes you to the article.) - the first bit that leaped out at me was that women attempt suicide 3 times the rate of men! Who knew? And are rarely successful! Why? Because often these are the proverbial cry for help, not a serious attempt to end a life.

When you have already decided to go, you go. These are the shotgun people. These are the tall building people. There is no chance of failure. Young teen female suicide, on the other hand, hopes for failure. For salvation. Of course, and we all agree.

From my own experience: I suspect this rate of female attempted suicide (mostly young) is still underreported. I know quite a few women - rather a large percent of the women who tell me all - when through prolonged periods of not eating as teenagers. This perhaps is the male equivalent of driving too fast. I will to this test to see if I deserve to live. To see if anyone notices, if anyone cares. Yes, it may kill me. That's why I'm doing it. To some degree, that thought is part and parcel of all eating disorders. Self-starvation.

Notes on State By State Rate

okay, so read the post before this. And what do you see? That the West has double or triple the suicide rate of the east. That those bastions of evil, New York and Massachusetts are dead last. Why is the East the least? Because of the proliferation and complexity of interpersonal relationships in a dense living environment. Simply put, you know more people out east. And if everyone is miserable, at least we're all miserable together. Out West you are by yourself. No one cares. You may have moved from your family. Your neighbors are very far away, or somewhat isolated. They keep their distance. If you screw up, it's your fault, not the systems fault. It is very easy to be lonely out West, and I'm not talking about Fallon Nev, I mean Denver, Phoenix, Los Angeles. Their isn't that petty relief you get just walking out of your building in New York where you know the people in your building (who has a house in Manhattan?) the people in the deli, etc. You just have to deal with more people. And they infect you with their joy, their potentialities, they smile at you and you are engaged in the carnival of life.

Out west, yes God lives out West, but God does not speak to you much, you have to listen a lot, and God rarely listens to you. And you know, even if you are gone, God will still be there in the rocks. You are not needed. In fact, you're an intrusion.

USA Suicide Rates by State

Rank of states, and number of suicides per 100,000 residents
Total suicides, US, 2002, 31,484 average 10.8/100,000

Like, how obvious is this?


1 Wyoming 21.8
2 Montana 19.6
3 Nevada 19.4
4 Alaska 19.1
5 New Mexico 18.3
6 Oregon 16.6
7 Colorado 16.0
8 Idaho 15.9
9 Arizona 15.1
10 West Virginia 14.7
11 Utah 14.3
12 Kentucky 13.8
13 Arkansas 13.7
14 Oklahoma 13.6
15 Florida 13.5
16 Vermont 13.4
17 South Dakota 13.4
18 Washington 13.1
19 Tennessee 13.0
20 North Dakota 12.8
21 Kansas 12.7
22 New Hampshire12.3
23 Iowa 12.0
24 Missouri 11.9
25 Indiana 11.9
26 Wisconsin 11.8
27 Mississippi 11.7
28 Alabama 11.6
29 Deleware 11.5
30 South Carolina 11.5
31 North Carolina 11.4
32 Georgia 11.2
33 Virginia 10.9
34 Pennsylvania 10.8
35 Texas 10.7
36 Maine 10.5
37 Hawaii 10.4
38 Louisiana 10.3
39 Michigan 10.2
40 Nebraska 10.4
41 Minnesota 9.8
42 California 9.6
43 Ohio 9.4
44 Maryland 8.9
45 Illinois 8.0
46 Connecticut 7.8
47 Rhode Island 7.8
48 New Jersey 6.8
49 Massachusetts 6.7
50 DC 6.4
51 New York 6.1

Click here and read this

Click on the headline and read this CDC factsheet on suicide. We'll be discussing it in some detail later.

Salvation at Hand?

Last night I was up at Nicola's with Dennis and Nicola's friend, Lisa. As always, people get the ying when the word suicide is mentioned, much less that this blog exists. Lisa was no exception. Bless her.

She was, in a way, attempting my salvation by provide a list of what there is to be living for. But as I suggested, that list was the list of a much younger person: sex, alcohol, friends. Of course, I either don't have those experiences or have any interest in them. So what is there to live for? That is a good question. The answer - as a bottom line - might be to live for other people. There simply aren't any of those people around. Not to mention that for a minority of people, those that have strong ties (children, spouses, dependents) these ties to other people are not strong enough to sustain them.

Are other people worth it? As Jonathan Swift said "I love Dick and Jane, it's mankind I can't stand." The truth of that statement stands. Do I have some connection to Dennis, Nicola, and Lisa - in descending order of how long I have known them? Or is the declining order of the world - from allocation of resources, to the general directionless of the efforts of our species the trump card?

Either way, those thoughts are merely the back story. As I told Lisa, the last person I met who slept with someone to save them: She was 13 and he was 14 when she tried to save him. She got pregnant and dropped out of her genius high school program. They got married, he went to college at 16. When he got out he started working on the MX missile. A few years later she went back to school. The a few years later she discovered he was sexually abusing both the 8 year old girl and the 6 year old boy. When she confronted him, he kidnapped the kids and disappeared for 8 years. Reunited with her kids, all three are in therapy. Great. Nothing like trying to save someone.

Just as the Dave Reimer story illustrates, suicide is not a child of the moment. Rather it is the apex of a period of time, perhaps a quick time for teen suicides, in some cases, but for adult suicides, no doubt the duration of one's life. Just as there is no quick cause of the circumstances that drive suicide there is no quick solution, either.

A Sex Change and Two Suicides

John Colapinto was our subject at work today. He has done a very thorough reporting job on the case of David Reimer. David was born in the 60's and they botched his circumcision. So the remedy at the time was to do surgery right away, pick a sex and hack away. In this case, they cut off David's penis and testicles, and voila, tried to make him a woman. It didn't work. To make matters worse, all the doctors talked like it had.

John described a life of being lied to, of disturbance, of sensing something is quite amiss as David's daily experience. In the end, as David reached 40, he committed suicide. What is most interesting are those two revelations: David had tried to kill himself many times before, and David's twin brother, Brian, basically drank himself to death. Colapinto explained that David's other suicide attempts were meant to be found and thwarted. The last one was not. People who really want to kill themselves don't fail. Colapinto elaborated that David had taken "the steps one takes when one wants to succeed." He used a gun. A shotgun. He cut the barrel off so he could handle the weapon properly. He emotionally separated himself from everyone he knew.

Let me say this: I'm too close to hearing all this to write well. But imagine the totally shitty life that David lived from early on. His suicide wasn't because of one event: it was the culmination of a lifetime. David had come out and spoken about everything too, well before the suicide.

David was described as being angry. That rage fueled his suicide. That this man, strong enough to carve out a life, to flip back to being a man, to having kids, to being married even if he only had a penis that didn't work-- would fly off into periodic fits of rage because is was all too twisted. This point is a point to be considered. That many suicides are not this feeling of desperation alone, but are driven by rage and anger, at oneself, at one's circumstances. Yes David thought he was a failure, especially to his wife, but that only fueled the rage.

We could go on about bad medicine. About the doctor's not taking responsibility, for a plethora of other mistakes. Intuitively we know these, so let them only be mentioned.

As for the brother, the full one, the working one, but also the neglected one, the not special one: just how common and where have we heard of that drinking to death?