🚀 go-pugleaf

> The open question was something like this:  Does everyone have some
> slight tendency toward suicide, and drugs or booze aggravates the
> tendency?  Or is this tendency generated by drugs or booze?

  This depends strongly on who you ask. If the person you ask has negative
views on drugs and alcohol, they will typically blame all the world's
evils on them. 
  I have been in the position of being a drug abuser. To this day I am
a cocaholic (chronic cocaine abuser), but I no longer take the drug. I have
also had desires to commit suicide. This is, of course, long in the past, and
I am strongly of the belief that drugs and booze do not CAUSE suicide, but 
rather similar combinations of world beliefs and life circumstances can lead 
both to drug abuse and suicidal behavior. I have no doubt that there is a 
correlation, but I don't think it is a cause-and-effect relationship. I think 
that suicide and drug abuse are just different forms of escape from a reality 
that one perceives as unpleasant. The problem is not what escape the person 
wishes to employ, but rather why does he feel that escape is necessary?
The answer, usually, is that the person has developed a set of beliefs about
how the world *should* be, and sees the current reality negatively in light
of that. The trick to getting out of suicidal depression, then, is to first
become aware of making this comparison between reality and some ideal world 
that exists only in the imagination, and secondly to stop comparing.
Suicidal people (including myself) that I have known tend to want the world
to be like their ideal, and refuse to accept the fact that it never can be.
They won't even LOOK at the good and bad aspects of reality, or more
importantly, what they could do within the context of the real world to
make it better for themselves, because they are so stuck on this imaginary 
world they have created. They set impossible goals for themselves (to make
the world like their imaginary one) so that they must fail.
The key to aiding a suicidal person, in my view, is to create an awareness
in them of the comparison between worlds, one real and one imaginary,
that they are making, and that it is in their power to stop making the 
comparison, usually much easier said than done.

--Greg

DISCLAIMER: These represent only my personal opinions based on my own personal
experience with myself and acquaintances. My experience in psychology is 
limited to a B.A. degree and I am not a professional in the field.
--
{ucbvax!hplabs | decvax!noao | mcvax!seismo | ihnp4!seismo}
       		        !hao!woods

CSNET: woods@ncar.csnet  ARPA: woods%ncar@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA

"If the game is lost, we're all the same; 
No one left to place or take the blame"