Disproving the MASH theme song
Nearly two weeks ago, there was a post at intueri, Suicide by Overdose Is Not Painless, that I’ve been meaning to link to, but kept forgetting. It’s a good overview of what overdosing can do to a person, since so many people assume that taking an overdose of nearly any drug will make you unconscious instantly and dead soon afterward, which is of course not the case.
It is also nice for someone to recognize that many people who overdose haven’t done their research and think that overdosing on pretty much anything has a good chance of killing them. There are plenty of health care professionals who assume that since they know that a particular dosage of a particular drug has no chance of being lethal, the general public must know this as well. This leads them to believe that all suicide attempts with low chances of lethality can’t possibly be “real” suicide attempts, that they’re all “cries for help,” manipulation, or pleas for attention, and that these people don’t really intend to die. Some people who take what seem to be obviously non-lethal overdoses truly do intend to die, though, and the only thing saving them is their own ignorance. If they were taken seriously and provided with proper help, maybe it would lessen the chances that they would attempt suicide again.
On the other hand, there are also doctors who have no idea that the amount of drugs a patient overdosed on is likely to be lethal. Or at least there is one doctor like this, because I saw him. That’s a story for another day, though, when I have time to tell it. Since I often seem so down on mental health professionals (and I have seen some good ones, although I’ve seen more bad ones), I’d like to be an equal-opportunity whiner and mention that he was not a mental health specialist, but an emergency room doctor.
May 14th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
That was an interesting link. It sheds some light on some of the things that can happen from a medical perspective. Suicide is “messy” from a lot of viewpoints. I just got out of the hospital (psych ward) and had some interesting talks with suicidal patients. I mean, that’s what drove me there even though (this time) I didn’t make an attempt at taking my own life.
However, I do know that overdosing on, shall we say, more “conventional” meds generally does not work. The worst that happened to me after two of them was that I actually *did* lose consciousness fairly quickly but there were numerous factors involved. And I’m not going to mention them all because this isn’t a suicide instruction manual. And bottom line was that it didn’t work anyway.
But I was out of it until the morning and woke up attached to oxygen, a heart monitor and with a catheter inserted so it was serious enough–but not serious enough to kill me or do any lasting damage. And that’s another thing…worst case scenario if you really mess up is you can possibly do some organ damage and that’s not pretty at all. But even that may be stretching it. Chances are if you OD, it’s serious enough and you get help, you’ll be fine medically.
May 14th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
[…] this post on Polarcoaster reminded me of an Emergency Room experience we had awhile […]
June 3rd, 2007 at 7:20 pm
“There are plenty of health care professionals who assume that since they know that a particular dosage of a particular drug has no chance of being lethal, the general public must know this as well.”
I think this is a true/problem as well, but thanks to the internet people are finding out mortality rates from different forms of suicide.(people who have access to the internet)
On one website, specific numbers were cited and I felt really troubled on that information being displayed. Is it better we don’t know? Should we know?
June 3rd, 2007 at 11:23 pm
For the most part, I think that whatever people do with information that they have received is their own damn responsibility… but I still never provide people with information about lethal dosages of anything. Before my near-fatal suicide attempt in 2000, I researched methods online without finding anything particularly useful. The information that I actually used to help me nearly kill myself came from a book on suicide prevention aimed at mental health professionals. There was a table of lethal dosages in the back.