The M*A*S*H theme song about suicide

I remember as a kid finally learning that the M*A*S*H theme song had lyrics and they were… dark as hell, about suicide. I was so fascinated by this weird morbid song from a hugely popular TV show that I recorded it on a tape recorder and played it back for my parents, and they were, uh, not amused by my interest in this song.

Of course, they dropped that song pretty quickly from the TV show and it became a generic instrumental. Did you know the song was written by 14 year old Robert Altman’s son, and was stipulated to be “the stupidest song ever written” during composition? It’s true!

Suicide is a bad idea. Let’s get that out of the way to start with, so we’re 100% crystal clear. If you have any relationships with other human beings, the cost of suicide on those relationships is, to put it mildly… dire. I actually think this Cracked article on it is one of the best I’ve read. It’s downright inspiring.

http://www.cracked.com/article_15658_the-ten-minute-suicide-guide.html

But, you know, life is a process. One thinks about things.

I met a guy once, one of my wife’s friends, who later killed himself. I was wearing a Sam & Max t-shirt when I met him, and he remarked that he loved the game. He was babysitting this small dog that was perhaps the best behaved dog I’ve ever met; I remember the dog’s name. Bailey. He seemed like a perfectly nice guy. I only met him that one time, and now he no longer exists. He’s just, y’know, gone forever. This bothers me on an abstract level, but I barely knew this person.

I appreciated The Leftovers extended take on this, the residual trauma of sudden disappearance on your relationships, where you don’t even know what happened to the person, or why. They’re just gone. That seems, to me, to be remarkably similar to suicide. There’s no form of closure, no saying goodbye – one day you suddenly find out that person is gone forever. And that’s it. That’s all you get. It kinda … breaks people.

(You should absolutely watch The Leftovers. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and it had many powerful moments in 3 seasons.)

I don’t think there’s any way to responsibly end your own life, except perhaps when you’re 80 years old, on life support, and maybe already a vegetable. Everything I’ve ever read, watched, or experienced indicates the effects of suicide on your relationships are devastating. I can see why suicide is considered a mortal sin in many religions, because what you’re really saying is, my suffering is more important than any of you, and now you have to emotionally (and physically) clean up after me when I’m gone. And now the people left behind are debilitated, demoralized, maybe even completely broken people as a result. At its deepest level, suicide is selfish, isn’t it? No wonder religions would want to outlaw this, from a moral perspective.

I guess the only exception is people who have no other relationships with other humans. But how many people like this exist? Is it even possible not to have relationships with other humans? Maybe if they are only superficial relationships? But everyone has a mother, right? You gotta get born. And that alone is a profound relationship, a deep connection. Maybe the deepest connection that there is, to create a person and raise them from a baby to kid to adult. Maybe if your parents are already dead, and you have no siblings? No outside love relationships, ever? I really struggle to come up with even a contrived scenario here that could possibly make sense.

Thus, I have questions.

  • I am curious, what are your experiences with suicide? Has it happened to anyone you know? Did you ever feel that it “made sense”, in any circumstances? Like living with real, long term medical complications or birth conditions or something like that, where the person’s suffering was too great and the calculus of life didn’t add up, even factoring for relationships?

  • Does engaging in long term risky or self-harmful behavior that results in your early death count as suicide? If not, why not?

  • Does disappearing, leaving, walking away and leading a different completely disconnected life from your old one count as suicide? If not, why not? If you are alive, but nobody knows you are, does that count?

Well, let me start by saying I loved the song, ever since first hearing it during the original MAS*H movie, where it seemed to fit in pretty good. And I always wondered why the TV show changed it after a season or two, it became “jazzier” and more upbeat.

I have never personally known anyone who committed suicide. I know people who have had behavior I would call suicidal, but that’s not the same thing.

Just FYI you’re gonna have to write M\*A\*S\*H because otherwise Markdown thinks you are trying to italicize crap.

A coworker killed himself recently. I didn’t know him well. He was a voice on the other end of some conference calls. My best friend in high school killed himself. I don’t usually get into the supernatural thing, but the night he killed himself I had a dream about him. He wanted me to know he was ok now. Weirdest fucking thing that has happened to me.

The sudden disappearance thing I’ve noticed a lot in online games, and you’re right. There was a guy I played EQ with back in the day. Good friend. We talked one night about a guild event the next night and never saw him again. Always wondered what happened to him.

I’ve always thought there is a market for the online generation where you maintain a list of emails / forums / facebook / etc with log-in credentials and you can prepare a note in advance to let them know something has happened to you. This would require you to log-in at some pre-determined n-days user-defined cadence to postpone it for another n-days. If you failed to log-in and reset the flag, it would send out notes to a list in priority order - like spouse / parents / siblings / friends / facebook / forums.

Because it is weird when someone just disappears that you’re used to interacting with.

Oddly enough my middle school chorus sang that song with lyrics back in …74 or 75. Times have changed. A teacher would be fired for that today. I could probably still quote you the lyrics.

Suicides that I have known In chrono order…

In 1978 a fellow two seats up from me in one of my classes was found dead alone in a car in a secluded park. Piecing the story together years later many of us believe he committed suicide over being gay. Oddly enough I can name several of his classmates who were also gay (I went to a very large school) and I never would have guessed that the apparent suicide was gay without others filling me in.

One of the ushers at my wedding drifted apart from all his friends. After graduation we scattered and he needed another class to complete his degree. He never completed that class and drifted from job to job. 10+ years later we had an awkward conversation where he went on about how meaningless life was where I was a new father full of direction. About 10 years after that doing low pay dead end work and living with his parents, he killed himself. I miss him.

I spent a lot of time singing with a fellow who was in tremendous back pain. He was a retired lawyer and while not wealthy beyond the imagination, he didn’t have to worry about money anymore. Additional medical ills left him depressed in addition to his back pain and his wife walked in on his body hanging from the rafters. Given the pain he was in and that he knew his body was failing, I won’t judge him.

I insisted that my children go through a Christian confirmation class. My youngest went through a class with a troubled young adopted boy. The teacher of the class called the young man out on some of his anti-social behavior thinking this would help the boy see how his actions were affecting others. Within two weeks the young boy had pulled a trigger and his behavior wasn’t a problem for his confirmation class. Of course…they now had to talk about larger things. Within a year that teacher had left that church.

And now for something completely different.

I have a a neurological condition called trigeminal nueralgia. You can google it if you want, but it’s known as the suicide disease because of the pain involved. Meds have kept my symptoms under control for the last 10 years.They recently stopped working and we are looking for alternate drug therapies and if those don’t work there are a couple of operations, but the path COULD BE such that everything fails. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot to live for, but If the pain got bad enough and consistent enough to the point where all I could do is stay in bed whimpering in pain 24/7…I can understand putting an end to suffering. Don’t get me wrong I’m a long way from that point now, but I think everybody with this condition is at least aware of how things could end.

Sure, I knew a fair number of people who killed themselves, along with a few who tried but didn’t succeed. The details of how aren’t really important, but you always wonder about the why. Personally, I think each person has the right to end their lives on their own terms. Not that it matters what I think, someone who decides they’re done, for whatever reason, is going to find a way to end their life.

Now, as for me, I’ve mentioned in your other thread that I think about death a fair amount. Maybe an unhealthy amount. But naturally enough, that extends to suicide. Just to keep things short and sweet, I have decided that yes, there probably are circumstances that would lead me to take my own life. I’ve even thought about the best way to go about it. Does this make sense? It does to me. I can’t talk about it with my wife, she’d freak out. Maybe rightly so. I don’t know, I am just going with my gut.

Now your second bullet point, that one I think about a lot. Not to be too coy about it, but I have extensive experience with this one and I dwell on it a lot. I ask myself the same question, did engaging in lifelong self destructive behavior constitute an effort to commit suicide? Even subconsciously? Or did they think they’d beat the odds? Or did they just not think about it? I wish I knew.

Also, I mean, most of us knew (in an internet kind of way) Mink Staccato, right? He’s still on my Steam friends list.

There is a topic about it

Wow. That is nuts. My wife’s high school senior class graduation song was Seasons in the Sun, and I thought that was morbid (and it is! it’s a song about dying, for fuck’s sake!) and I always give her crap about it. Listen for yourself:

Seriously that’s like dedicating a spin of REM’s This One Goes Out to the One I Love to your girlfriend. Just a stunningly superficial understanding of the lyrics. Like… did any of you Iowa highschool kids actually, oh I don’t know, listen to the song? The words? What they mean in context, as complete stanzas? This ain’t rocket science, people!

But that, THAT, as bad as it is, has nothing on a room full of middle school kids literally singing the actual words, “suicide is painless”. Holy tapdancing Jesus H. Christ. That’s mental. Zero chance of that happening in any school today. Zeeeerrrroooo.

Geez man. I hope the drugs work out, and/or the operations. I can’t imagine living with pain, and describing your pain as the “suicide disease” certainly puts the scope of that pain in context.

The idea of someone you care about walking in on your body is just horrifying. It’s horrifying when people die naturally. I mean really, walk yourself through this. You wake up one day, and the person next to you in bed… doesn’t. What would that feel like?

I think a responsible suicide – again if such a thing even exists – is more like “went out to sea and was never seen again”. But then you’re back to The Leftovers scenario where nobody really knows for sure, and that haunts people.

There is no winning at this game.

For most of my life, I thought about killing myself nearly every day. Because I didn’t, I thought of myself as a coward and hated myself even more. It wasn’t until several years ago that I dug myself out of that hole. I think I started digging myself out of that hole when I got a new job and met a co-worker who was as messed up, if not more, than me. I took a look at him, and thought, “If I am half as bad as he was, I really needed to get help.”

I went to a bunch of shrinks, who were worthless. They gave me all sorts of pills that didn’t help and in many cases made things worse. A therapist would have probably been much more helpful. In the end, what really did the trick (this was a long process and not a simple, single thing I did), was self-examination and self-awareness. The fundamental question of , “Why am I depressed?” with the basic answer, “I do not know. I just am.” was not good enough. I started looking and looking. Some of the root causes were bullshit, some where not. A huge part of it was a lack of self-acceptance. I really didn’t like myself. I spent time working on that along with other things as well. I also spent many hours talking about this stuff in detail with my co-worker. In a way, I guess that was therapy. Anyway, I do not think about suicide anymore. Now I am working on this “happiness” thing, trying to understand it and recognize it.

I also had a close friend named David, commit suicide when I was younger. He was a very creative individual and was the GM in a Champions PnP RPG. I planned on spending my much of my life hanging out with this individual. However, he turned out to be schizophrenic. He heard voices and stuff. He was living with his parents in his 20s and eventually got baker acted (a way to force an adult into a mental facility). He was put on suicide watch a few times, but eventually let the facility. He then moved in with his brother in CA, and just one day out of the blue, his brother came home and found David with a plastic bag tied around his neck.

I was really pissed off at David at first, and then after a while, just very sad.

I have seen that happen several times. Often it comes with a change of jobs or a job locking out certain sites. Since I almost never post on weekends or after work (unless I am stuck in a game) I usually only deal with other people who are at work as well.

I do hope you find something that helps.

I have, over the course of my life seemingly had a relative in a convalescent home at all times. The last was an aunt who spent 15 years in one after having a stroke that was supposed to kill her. I have sworn to myself that I will never end up in one. I could never normally think of ending things, but spending my last years in a home like that is like the one great irrational fear of my life now.

Granted most likely I would have a stroke or heart attack or break a hip and wake up to find myself there. Kinda Twilight Zoneish.

Yeah, if you’ve spent time with a loved one in a nursing home for dementia or are otherwise unable to look after themselves, I think you’ll find there are far worse options available to you than death.

TBH wumpus i’m a bit uncomfortable with you continuing talking about this. Are you sure you’ve spoken to your spouse about your feelings on this? Ever thought about going on one of those Buddhist mediation retreats? I think we’d all like to see you get some professional help. Remember everyone talked with Troy on TNG, it was just part of the job.

Sometimes i need to just get away for a week or two… i wish i could just get away for half a year sometimes. I do believe we are reaching a saturation point intellectually with modern social media and internet access, that we really can’t handle the flood of information, even if the information is highly tuned to our interests and accurate. I feel like the “hipster” desire to strip away the edifices of plugged-in life and go back to some analog past has some sorts of psychological roots in a subconscious technology fatigue. You have the ability to just go to Europe/Asia/Australia/Scandinavia, kick your feet up for six months, and recharge. That’s something i’d definitely look into.

And DeepT, i’m glad you’ve found a way forward.

Quitting Twitter for a good long while has helped my mental state a LOT.

I felt an overwhelming immediate sense of relief when I pushed the delete button (it is not really a delete for verified accounts, then I realized deleting all your stuff is kind of a jerk move, so I switched to permanent log off and random password reset). It kinda surprised me how strongly my body reacted to leaving Twitter, it was so immediate, as if this giant oppressive daily ongoing weight of current news outrage (much of it justified, to be clear) and people yelling at each other, was lifted. It is kind of like quitting a job you didn’t really like. You suddenly realize what you had been carrying was not worth what you were putting into it, and just how much it was weighing you down.

And it continues to feel good. I do miss some of the useful things I would get out of Twitter, having 230k followers has its perks. But those perks are vastly outweighed by the deleterious effect it had on my mental state. I think I will try again in 2018.

Holy crap, there is so much you’ve written that i want to comment on, but it’s far past my bedtime, so I’ll just comment on this for now, and read your post more closely later, along with everyone else’s.

While I agree with much of that paragraph, I have always had a problem with the thought that suicide is ultimately selfish, or “the coward’s way out”. I believe that when people are feeling that utterly hopeless and black (for lack of better descriptions), they can be incapable of thinking in those terms. Or in fact thinking in any terms that most of us can relate to.

Having never experienced those exact feelings myself, I have gotten close in the past, and thankfully, rational thought has always prevailed in my case. But I can at least sympathize with people that do this. I think that somehow, these people really believe that the world would be a better place without them. And if they really believe that, it’s difficult to judge their motivations, and I refuse to judge them.

Now, I freely admit I could be totally wrong about this, and everyone is different, but that’s my current thought on the matter. It’s a very difficult and complex topic, and my hope is that anyone who feels that kind of despair can somehow find the help they need, whatever that may be.

I’ll bet. I thought it was so funny, all the commotion over 140 vs 280 or whatever. It doesn’t matter. Cruelty and snark and casually cast out insults that add nothing of value to civil discourse will survive either way.

Facebook I quit (for the most part), but Twitter I kept. Twitter has better mute and filter options. I also tend to group people into lists. A lot of Artists I follow post WIPs, so I just have a list I add them to rather than follow.

Granted, every month something gets the Twitterverse in a tiffy, but the format makes it easy to scroll past.

I’ve got my Twitter ‘following’ down to 60. Getting it that low has been hard work, but it’s starting to pay off. Politically I’ve rid myself of federal or national news or columnists (even ones I find witty and politically aligned), and sticking with municipal politics only, which is mostly announcements and cool projects. That and interest-based topics that are healthy-ish like cycling and investing. I think I’m going to get it to 40 - which should be plenty for two checks a day at 5 mins each.

I remember I posted some years back about how awful I found my Facebook experience and what relief I felt in killing my account, and some dude jumped all over me saying it was how he kept in touch with his uncle in Russia or some such. Like my experience had anything whatsoever to do with him. But some people have irrational attachments to their social media, I don’t know. Anyway yeah, I have also found that ditching that crap helps to keep a more emotionally even keel. Maybe I should blacklist P&R next.