Suicide risk: Julian Assange. Credit: Oli Scarff/Getty
They say there’s nothing worse than burying a child. I wouldn’t know, as for two weeks after the suicide of my son Jack in 2015, I mysteriously lost the use of my legs and lay in bed sobbing and starving until I hallucinated — so I wasn’t even at his funeral. On the upside, I lost a quarter of my body weight. On the downside, I lost half of my heart.
Always somewhat detached, I wasn’t broken by the loss of the person I loved most in my life, as is the case with many parents in a similar situation. If anything, it had the effect of making me even more self-contained, or “sociopathic” as unhelpful husbands have invariably put it during domestic squabbles.
I even tried it on for size a few times myself; the onset of tinnitus in the winter of 2017 seemed as good a reason as any, so I took too many sleeping pills before and after Christmas. Evidently, both attempts were unsuccessful. My fabled capacity for taking drugs saw me awaken both times with nothing worse than a mild headache, and a typically immature reaction: what a waste of good sleeping pills, which could have been abused with alcohol to lubricate a few fun nights.
During a Twitter spat a few weeks ago, a number of disturbed people sent me Photoshopped images of my son in various degrees of deathly contortion. In the photos, ranged in age from angelic toddler to the handsome young man he was when he died by hanging at the age of 29. Many of my friends were shocked and reported these people to Twitter. But I felt only mild curiosity at what kind of mind would mistake such a strange action for acceptable behaviour. I even “followed” a few of them in the hope of finding out
I am a robust soul, and not one to throw up my hands, clutch my smelling salts and fall down in a swoon when faced with discussion of suicide. And yet even my cold blood has flared up recently for it seems to me that suicide, the last refuge of the desperate, is becoming the currency of the scoundrel — and a fast way to shut down debate.
Only last week, Julian Assange was saved from the tender mercies of the American penal system when a judge concluded that subjecting him to incarceration in the US could result in his suicide. He has made no attempts on his life during his spell in Belmarsh. But the scourge of the Western war machine and seducer of Swedes has been spared the American system because he claims to have suicidal thoughts ‘hundreds’ of times a day.
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SubscribeJulie Burchill, whether you agree with everything she writes or not, is a phenomenal, extraordinarily brave writer.
So few like her able to put you through the emotional mill in just a few hundred words.
Thank you, G!
I can put myself through an emotional mill. Is she helping anyone though?
Explaining, at the very least.
Not one of your downvoters there, just so you know, but that’s not her job.
Personally, the way she writes makes me think of things I might not otherwise think of or, more pertinently, be comfortable thinking about but should be and that, to me, is the mark of a really great writer.
I am really am sorry you lost your son. The article helped me. I am on a watch for one of my sons being at real risk at the moment. It is always a help to be spoken to by a rational adult as an adult.Thank You.
Putting people through an emotional mill is helping them.
Astonished that JB seems fit to judge Assange as a Diva and emotional blackmailer. He has been kept is solitary confinement for a very long time with a real threat that he will be extradited to the US and imprissoned for life. How would JB cope with that, how would any of us? Very judgmental and inappropriate JB.
I completely understand your point of view and it was not something I was personally entirely in agreement with either.
Along with a good many apparently, Julie Burchill is clearly not a personal fan of Assange, but she was using him amongst other examples to make the point that the threat of suicide on its own should not be enough to stymie due legal process.
As I said, I don’t read these kind of things simply because I know what the author is already going to say or because I assume they’re always going to agree with me or me with them, but in order to have my own views challenged on occasion when I do.
You never come away from her stuff with a tidy, neat conclusion and nor, I suspect, are you ever meant to.
Those who dismiss suicides as weakness or a failure to take responsibility for oneself are simply demonstrating a lack of empathy and a failure to understand the depths of hopelessness a person has to fall to in order to carry that out. If you never know what it’s like you can consider yourself very fortunate. Depression rewires the brain in such a fashion that you can’t see the exits that would otherwise be available to you. Those who paint it as some kind of intellectual or moral failing only demonstrate their own.
Absolutely – and we shouldn’t forget that choosing to end one’s own life is frequently a highly rational choice for those people with terminal illnesses.
If the UK were more open to accepting this conversation, then it might take a more informed and nuanced view of the subject of suicide generally.
Just changing society’s approach to a process of managing the initial onset of peoples self-terminating thoughts as personal choices – with more respect for the individual – may actually prevent “less-necessary” suicides.
This article isn’t about people with terminal illness.You’re changing the subject.
If we can get people to understand living wills/advance decisions it will make it easier to get them to understand suicide
Not my intention – if we can create a situation where suicidal thoughts are considered to be tragic but rational, then maybe others would come forward earlier – and get better help.
Not sure in what sense utter despair leading to suicide could be considered a ‘rational’ response? They do not come forward because they cannot! They have no hope nor are able therefore to think there is anything that can help.
Terminal illness is a very different issue – as is the whole concept of state supported euthanasia
Considering suicide when “suffering from utter despair” is a perfectly rational response if the person involved can’t see another way out from their suffering.
Certainly not all people in despair “cannot” come forward.
We need people to feel more comfortable discussing these suicidal thoughts earlier.
I fully support right to die, a persons body is their own property. I think forcing people to suffer long slow and painful declines and loss of faculty due to illness or old age is barbaric.
The original statement was referring to suicide in the general sense.
I agree – and respect for the individual is key. I was badly bullied as a child, and seriously considered suicide. I got to the point of identifying the building I planned to jump off. And yet I actively decided not to ask for help, because I understood very clearly that as a twelve-year-old I would have no rights, and adults would feel free to lock me up and trap me in a situation I considered worth than death, while telling me it was for my own good.
Even now I’m an adult, if I were to consider suicide again, I don’t think I would ask for help. The risk is too great.
If society were prepared to accept people’s right to take their own life, so that the suicidal didn’t have to fear imprisonment, I wonder how many people could be saved. Because right now it is simply unsafe to ask for help.
This is a brilliant piece of writing so evocative of your spirit, strength and grief. The bigger message, beyond your own awful experiences of suicide, is so beautifully presented. The truth told with bravery and wit.
It’s why I love your writing.
You give us all a piece of yourself every time.
â¤ï¸
Thank you, Janet – what a lovely thing to say!
Your writing is inevitably interesting. You’re a remarkably fine journalist.
I agree with this wholeheartedly! You are an inspiration Julie – your honesty and lack of fear – you don’t beat your breast ever or ask for sympathy you feel what you feel and use your experience to make things clearer for anyone who chooses to read your writings – I just loved this – thank you for it.
We’re going to have an awakening of sorts about suicide because the response to this pandemic is going to cause more of it. It’s occurring in the US and there has been a dramatic spike in suicidal thoughts among the young. In Japan during October, there were more suicides than there have been total covid deaths, and this is a culture in which suicide is not stigmatized.
Meanwhile, I could not help but notice this about the nasty people who made contact with the author: Many of my friends were shocked and reported these people to Twitter.
What, if anything, did Twitter do about it? I can’t prove it but “nothing” is likely more accurate than not. How interesting as we enter the great purge of modern times that a political viewpoint can get you banned, but being the worst kind of human being in attacking a person you don’t know merits no response.
The only reason I haven’t yet is because it would be letting the pathetic quaranteamers win…and I’m not sure that’s enough anymore…
If 75% of suicides were women, do you think an article like this could be written without constant references to the issue of gender and the cruelty of society towards women?
Those evil, horrible people sending those photographs of your son would be rightly vilified, thrown out of their jobs, and very likely be in jail if they had send something similar about someone’s daughter. And that is the problem with suicide: it is treated as a joke, something trivial, precisely because of the gender identity of the victims.
You may be right. But is this topic really a good place to start complaining about feminist bias?
I know one person whose wife walked out on him and his 2-year old daughter when he was jobless ““ and turned up 2-3 years later when he had got into a well paying job, to demand alimony.
And, when refused, coincidentally also ended up demanding sole custody for the now 5-year old she had deserted. After manipulative court cases (which left him penniless and having to quit his job), laughably false allegations of physical abuse, one day he went to the school ground to find his daughter missing.
His wife had accused him of sexually abusing his own daughter, and Social services took his daughter away without even bothering to inform him.
I lost touch years back and hopefully things ended for the better, but cases like him are the reason suicide stats are so skewed in terms of gender.
He is someone’s son too, and the reason this happened was because feminists like this author couldn’t care less and would actually support his wife, every time.
For some people, it’s never a time to talk about feminist bias.
Maybe that’s why we never talk about it.
We are often told that the rate of suicides among young men has increased substantially in the last few decades (“…the leading cause of death for men under 50”). I have never come accross a study which accounts for this phenomenon in a convincing way and I wonder if any serious and determined investigation has ever taken place.
All too often young male suicides are explained from a therapeutic and feminine perspective ““ the well-worn trope: “men must learn to be more open about their feelings” is trotted out as though the problem were understood and a solution had been found.
Yes. Men are not women, men process their emotions differently, but also, ironically, women actually *attempt* suicide more often than men worldwide, they are just unsuccessful, so the suggestion to be more like women and all would be well would seem to be very bad advice. Also, the gender stereotypes are rooted in biology. Men who show their vulnerability in the ‘feminine’ way soon find women are no longer attracted to them. Inability to find a mate is a further source of suffering.
Yes, a female friend of mine was always banging on about how awful it was that men “kept their feelings bottled up” ““ in this patriarchal society of ours. Then one day her husband broke down and cried over some major family tragedy.
She was so shocked that she completely failed to provide the care and support that she claimed any man would earn if only he had “the true strength” to lower his emotional defences. In spite of herself she responded to his tears as weakness not strength.
The moral is that women in general (in spite of their vaunted verbal communication skills) understand action better than words.
The movie Tootsie is a life lesson that what women think they want is not at all what they welcome.
My cousin went to the pharmacy and bought a large amount of OTC sleeping pills. Like the rest of OTC’s snake oil, they didn’t do a thing to suicide her. I suspect the ratio for attempted and successful suicide between men and women is radically different.
A timely article. From this scorched earth, suicide WILL spirit many away; the hell of it being that currently, many truly do not care. The fact that lockdowns make impossible the very things that can lead out of depression – social contact, face-to-face interactions, meaningful work, helping others, makes not a jot of difference to those pressing for harder and harder restrictions. (I’ve been re-reading Johann Hari’s excellent “Lost Connections”, and it’s left me even more depressed due to this realisation.)
Those of us who experience our connection with the rest of humanity denied, our yearning for any human contact spat on as selfishness, and who experience friends who previously expressed much concern for mental health problems turning their backs and saying “Just deal with it”, will find it an increasing temptation.
From my heart; if you are a lockdown zealot, PLEASE consider that continued failure to weigh their potential harm against their benefits may well end with someone you know committing suicide. If you start to think of this, thank you.
Sorry for your loss, and the terrible trolling. Excellent piece, which I hope will be widely read.
Such breathtaking clarity on both grief and the issue of suicide. Thank you
First of all, my deepest condolences for the loss of your son. No one should have to suffer that pain.
One thing that you didn’t mention, but which needs to be at the centre of this discussion, is why suicide is predominantly a problem affecting young men. I can’t help but think that this issue would be taken far more seriously If it were young women dying disproportionately.
But just like other problems that affect men more than women, this issue never gets traction in the main stream press, which is far more concerned with the fact that 2.8% of those who lost their jobs during covid were women, while ignoring the fact that 2 of three people dying from it are men.
The fact that we ignore or trivialize death when it affects men mote than women casts the idea of “male privilege” in rather a harsh light.
Women speak up for women. We have several good reasons for that.
Why don’t men speak up for men?
When men speak up for men, We’re accused of being misogynists. Any man who dares interrupt the continuous harangue from feminism by pointing out that actually, men are also harmed by gender stereotypes, often stereotypes promulgated by the same feminists who claim the moral high ground, are told that they have no right to speak.
Because we are then condemned for oppressing everyone else. Men are all latent, if not actual…but give it time, rapists.
Thank you for an inspiring piece of writing, I have lost 4 people, close to me, to suicide. Perhaps I might volunteer for my local MIND shop, they are a nice bunch of folk.
Good piece. I nearly lost my daughter. I’m sorry you lost your son.
Re Assange…
It could be that the only sure and valid legal way of dis-allowing the extradition to the US was to assert that suicide would be the outcome. Whether or not it actually was/is.
We are all reeling in some way from the effects of repeated lockdowns and other restrictive edicts imposed on us that are having deleterious effects on the mental health of the population.
Now imagine being locked-down for as many years as Assange and with the threat of life imprisonment hanging over you, in effect a lifelong lockdown. Whether you like him or not, would suicidal thoughts have entered your mind?
That might be a sensible legal tactic for a defendant or his legal team, but it should not be the modus operandi of a court judge. The judge can’t lie about the reason for his ruling.
But the unpleasantness of the punishment, whether it’s prison or any other punishment, is part of the deterrent. Do you think Assange was unaware that his actions would be deemed a serious crime in the US, so if he was “unlucky” enough to fall into the hands of the US justice system he was likely going to face a long, long stretch in prison?
My last point about Assange (and I’m not some Assange hater, I have kind of mixed feelings about his whole story, but I just find the legal aspect interesting): you talked about Assange’s many years of “lockdown”, but that was entirely voluntary. It was his freely taken decision to enter the Ecuadorian embassy and apply for asylum. It wasn’t part of any punishment, it was motivated by his fear of punishment. But fear of punishment is part of the accepted deterrent function of punishment.
Lets hope The Donald pardons Assange who has done more to reveal the deceitful workings of the Deep State than just about anyone – I am sure proper judges sometimes manipulate their rulings to give a just result the same way that biased/political judges do for an unjust result although the later do it as a matter of course – It does seem likely Assange’s continued detention is to ensure his availability for the inevitable appeal that the Biden administration will be particularly keen on particularly as they are the epitome of the Deep State.
Trump won’t pardon Assange because that would make him look unpatriotic. No chance at all, in my opinion.
You were right, and for the correct reason.
In any survey of favourite poem’s Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith always appears high on the list.
Surely this is because a lot of people, for whom life may, at that moment, not be a bed of roses, maybe can see that it never was and never will be. They may identify with it strongly, even though many would no doubt fall into the broad category of people for whom when asked: “How’s everything going?” automatically reply “Fine”. Males in particular are always expected to put a brave face on things, even when they consider the situation (life?) to be hopeless.
The assumption that we are asked to accept is always that a suicide is just going through a bad patch and that more understanding and communication from those around (and maybe some happy pills) would have got them through it.
In the case of youth suicides we often hear:”But (s)he [most commonly he] had his whole life ahead of him.” Surely that’s precisely why he did it.
Condolences to JB for her earlier loss – there’s no diminution of that – but what a fine writer she is turning out to be in this later flourish of writing. Frank, bold and fantastically well crafted.
One of the best non academic pieces i’ve ever read on this subject
It’s heartbreaking to read of the author’s loss. It’s hard to imagine how one would deal with such tragedy. I hope she doesn’t try to take her life again. I hope she reads this and knows that her countrymen are here for her x
A profoundly moving article. You and your son are in my prayers.
God poisons everything. For goodness sake, leave her out of it.
A moving and insightful essay, thank you. Loved ones left in suicide’s wake suffer so much. (A suffering never experienced by me).Suicide can, terribly, be a permanent solution to a temporary problem; but it is hard to assist someone in crisis, when their mind is beset. They are so alone, and often in the darkest hours, when the spirit is lowest. The Samaritans are always there, of course, and I’d like to mention http://www.lostallhope.com. That site has no easy answers but is also there 24×7. (It has helped me, once, sleepless in the early hours)
The information on Voluntary Assisted Dying (aka euthanasia in some countries) is incorrect. The article says” ..there are calls in the West to liberalise restrictions on “voluntary” euthanasia ” even though it could be used by waiting inheritors to urge the elderly to do “the decent thing” and die before they become a burden.” This is not in any way backed up by figures from countries were Voluntary Assisted Dying is legal, such as Belgium, Switzerland and in nine US states and the District of Columbia. From 2002 to 2019, 22,000 people have chosen to die this way in Belgium. It will become law in New Zealand in 2021, and in Australia it has been legal in Victoria since 2019 and will be in Western Australia in 2021. In the UK, one person every week (i.e. 52 people a year) chooses to go to Switzerland because they can afford the 10,000SF it costs. If it were cheaper many more would go. This is why the law in the UK needs to be changed. It is a fact that many people die sooner (and some by suicide) because they cannot have legally assisted dying.
Is suicide a rational reaction to intractable problems, or a failure of imagination and agency over one’s own situation? Is it taboo and to be punished, or a symptom of mental illness to be treated? All or none of the above? Mostly as a society we treat it like a herd of Bison watching a fellow being picked off by Lions – ‘thank God it wasn’t me’ before moving on without much further thought.
I would have thought it’s cynical use as a political tool as documented by the author will probably be condemned by most though. It probably won’t stop them unfortunately.
I have had severe depression and suicidal thoughts, twice in my life and I would say it is like being possessed. For me, the suicidal me was not quite the whole person, which is probably why I am still here all these years later. For others, who are ‘successful’ for want of much better way of putting it, I guess there is no chink through which the old self, the more rational, conscious mind can communicate with that part which the devil, for want of a less religious way of expressing it, seems to have taken hold. On the other hand I am a religious person and I would say that in the aftermath of such an episode the deep peace and balm that bathes the mind is God.
I assume suicide is more common among people who use drugs, because it is easier for that possession to take place completely and the chink that allows the old self, the reason and cheerfulness in, to be completely closed off. The sense of the deep peace and love and salvation, of the Lord, I suppose can also be confused with the high of whatever you have swallowed or injected and thereby diminished as a commodity which can be bought.
Many of those drugs are ones that have been prescribed.
I hope you are never afflicted again.
Thanks for your, and Susannahs below, perspectives.
That was an interesting way to view the drugs/suicide connection. I had never thought of it that way, but it does make a lot of sense.
I am one of the world’s eternal optimists. However, back in the early 90s and living abroad, I was being bombarded by disasters and events beyond my control; at a time when my husband was totally absent in terms of emotional support as our marriage was also falling apart. For once, I felt completely unable to cope and just so desperately wanted it all to go away and be left in peace. The hunger for peace became almost overwhelming when, one night, lying restlessly in bed, it began to consume me. Suddenly, there seemed to be a brilliant but beckoning light behind my eyelids urging me towards it. I have never felt such an overpowering urge to follow something before. I could feel the end of all my problems if only I could pass into that light. And I could feel that extraordinary peace already washing over and enveloping me. The intensity of this feeling was incredibly seductive. I realised it meant my death and that presented no problem at all. At that point it hit me that so often suicides are presented as running away from their problems – thus an implied cowardice ““ but what if they were happily running TOWARDS this peace instead? Obviously, I didn’t follow it through, but I came exceedingly close. The thought of the effect on my daughters brought me back from the brink. But I have never lost either that image or the intensity of that feeling. It gave me a completely different perspective into the minds of some suicides. I wonder if anyone else has experienced this.
As a younger man I had to confront death on one occasion, without preparation. My first thought was for my parents and those who loved me, and I felt so sad.
I have. I know how it feels. That longing …
Luckily (my daughter was 12) I managed to stay here.
Against a grim backdrop of rising suicide rates among American women, new research has revealed a blinding shaft of light: One group of women ” practicing Catholics.
https://www.latimes.com/sci…
A thoughtful and thought-provoking article, which only someone who has been enmeshed in suicide has the authority to write. Julie Burchill is one of our best writers, always honest, intelligent and witty. We should nurture and value her!
Only the individual knows the circumstances and sum total of events that leads them to suicide or attempts at suicide. Mocking professionals for rationally considering suicide as a potential outcome in a series of unpredictable events is not helpful, the professional would probably be slated if they did not list suicide as a potential outcome in balanced risk analysis of their patient/client. Please do not judge the virtues of one person voicing suicidal thoughts versus another. There is no hierarchy in suicide.
The point is that certain organisations stare that suicide is a risk without any consideration of the evidence
The very reporting of suicide as a way of dealing with pain is like a beckoning finger to some young and seemingly desperate individuals. We should be very careful what seeds we sow.
What seems to me to be missing from this is the acknowledgement of the hars fact that suicide is a personal choice. The right to end one’s own life is fundamental and must always be respected. Sometimes that means that we should NOT put great efforts into preventing suicide.
A little more rationality is called for here.
More effort needs to be put into understanding a persons thought process, which sometimes makes perfect sense e.g. terminal illness.
A very thought-provoking article, thank you.
The recent ruling by a judge that Assange could not be extradited to the US because he would be at a higher risk of suicide led me to do a little (half-hearted) internet research. I looked for information about the relative suicide risks in prisons in the UK and US. I only found one study, which indicated that the rate of suicide in prisons in the UK is higher than in the US.
Of course, you can make allowance for the fact that Assange is not a US citizen, so that would perhaps add to his mental anguish. But he’s not a British citizen either (as far as I know), and I’m pretty certain he’s not Ecuadorian either.
If I was facing a long prison sentence in the US I would be so terrified of the prospect that I would certainly consider committing suicide. How often and how seriously I would consider it I can’t know (nor could a judge, I’d suggest, unless I had made several highly convincing but ultimately unsuccessful attempts on my own life).
But surely that’s one of the reasons why I wouldn’t commit a serious crime in the US, or anywhere else – because the punishment if I was caught simply outweighs any reason for committing the crime. After all, the idea of spending years in jail is supposed to be scary and off-putting – this is the deterrent function of prison and punishment in general.
Wouldn’t there be an argument that Assange must have known what punishment he would likely face in the US if he was prosecuted there, so he must have weighed up the pros and cons of his actions (it wasn’t a crime of passion, a momentary loss of judgement – buy he must have known it would be treated as a crime in the US) and he decided that it was worth it. Now he’s using the prospect of that very punishment as a pretext for not having to face the punishment.
Or have I missed something?
(Sure, you could say his actions shouldn’t constitute a crime so he shouldn’t be extradited to the US. But that is a different argument from the suicide argument used by the judge.)
You seemed to have missed many things on this issue, Peter – but the one that bothers me the most is how the US seriously believes they could justifiably try an Australian for treason. And you seem to be saying that Assange should take responsibility for the danger his freedom and very life are in due to this travesty of justice being perpetrated by the US.
I have no truck with Assange. Did you know the US jailed, and may still hold IDK, as Israeli for spying on America? I used to be proud of this country, but now I am ashamed and approaching alarm.
Thankyou Julie for writing about your experience in such a n open and courageous way.
I believe that for many who commit suicide there are two deeply existential reasons involved. The first is the question of identity which I think hit men particularly. The drive toward sexual equality has been good in many ways but there have been negative unforeseen consequences. One is that some men have found it difficult to feel secure in their male identity. What was definite in terms of roles is now blurred. Men were wired to be breadwinners, authority figures, decision makers and family leaders. But all this has gone. Most men have been able to navigate this huge change. But some have found it very difficult, and when this has been compounded by unemployment, divorce often leading to unfair settlements including withholding regular access to their children, diminishing sexual ability and loneliness, it has led to suicide.
Secondly there is what is called “cosmic loneliness”- that sometimes terrifying and profound sense of being alone even in a crowd. It’s knowing that ultimately you are on your own in an uncaring Universe and that life is sliding inexorably to the darkest loneliness of all. It’s impossible to comprehend what that feels like for a person driven to suicide unless you have stood in that place yourself. Poets can sometimes put it into words.
“They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars – On stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places”.
Robert Frost.
For some years I served as a chaplain to a psychiatric unit in Liverpool. I was often humbled by the sheer courage and resilience people showed as they lived with psychiatric illness every waking minute of every day. Some times a person would say “I wish I had your faith Father”. In the conversation that sometimes followed I tried to talk about being able to experience in the deepest part of your being the love of God the Father and to know without a doubt that you are His child. In terms of identity there is nothing to surpass knowing you are a child of the living God and that whatever happens you are in His Hands. In the words of Mother Julian of Norwich ” all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well”. That truth will also do a lot to assuage the cosmic loneliness within us. The Universe belongs to God who knows and loves you as His child and it’s filled with His presence so that there is nothing that can separate you from Him, not even death.
Julie Birchill I am sorry you lost your son. Feels a bit small to add that you have been one of my favourite writers for over 20 years – I am one of those readers that think I know you but I don’t. I do however know the impact of suicide and the complete lack of a satisfactory conclusion. Life is rubbish sometimes and thank god we can share it
A moving and insightful piece. Her experience is unimaginable, and distressing try to imagine.
I admired Birchill before this, for her ability to be insightful, incisive and funny (a rare blend). I admire her even more now.
This is an incredibly powerful piece.
i hate the fact i have to debate a superstition..grow up if there is a big man in the sky u can all sit back and relax..its if there isn ‘t u all get up set about , so stop ruling over us or dictating to us and all go to ur gods
Apart from the fact that she can write about suicide and still make me laugh at points, as usual with Julie’s writing I’m struck by the uneasy combination of emotional insight and sensitivity and a kind of caustic cruelty towards people she has no time for. Other people in the comments have taken up the political and legal aspects of Assange’s case but he has suffered in the extreme and deserves compassion as much as Julie’s son does.
I had You Tube on automatic and woke up to a video that I am sure is not in Burchill’s queue, but Assange is struggling. See a video with YanisVaroufakis, Roger Waters and Ken Loach, u.a., called ” What’s next for Assange.” Not too long. And btw, left and right think the media is owned by the other side, so to be sure, we are all being played.
Or maybe none of us are being played?
And even if someone is trying to play us, haven’t we all heard, countless times, the warning: “Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers?” That even applies to stories with no evident political significance, so isn’t it our fault if we’re not more cautious about believing stories with a political slant?
Good article even if sad for you. The Tavistock Institute, BBC and Asange are all a disgrace.
“suicide, now the leading cause of death for men under 50; in part, I suspect, due to … the rise of super-strong skunk”
Very incisive observation.
I feel that the only people who can actually write sensibly, and probably rationally, about this topic are those that have been either”¦.
1)In the depths of despair and felt that it was an appropriate reaction to their circumstances.
2)On the receiving end of a very close one succumbing to it. (me)
Thank you Julie.
its painless and brings on many changes..
Resign my commission?????
its a choice and who r we to debate a choice…religion seems to be the main atagonist
I’ve often wondered if suicide is really about power.
If I believe I have the power to overcome a situation I am in (depression, losing a loved one, or whatever), then why would I contemplate suicide?
On the other hand, if I believe I am powerless to overcome a debilitating and painful illness, for example, then I can see wanting to check out.
How do these changes improve society? They don’t; they make the society more dysfunctional….
Sorry to hear about your son but this has nothing to do with allowing physician assisted suicide which is a matter of freedom for the individual.
.
It is widely known that it’s notoriously hard to kill yourself with sleeping pills, no matter how many you take – and you’re calling Assange a “diva”? [Yes, I have no right to imply you were being a diva in your suicide attempt, but equally you have no right to use a man who faces life-long solitary confinement in a US prison, and the unbearable emotional torture that entails, as a comparable example to the Tavistock/trans ones. Please have some empathy as one who has suffered too]
So, is this woman still working? The last piece I saw of hers was decades ago when she self-described as a ‘Stalinist’ [sic] and went off on a homophobic tirade. Bigoted, boring, bad.
You on the other hand never thought or said anything daft. An example to us all
“Hank Williams said it best, he said it a long time ago;
Unless you have made no mistakes in your life, be careful of stones that you throw.”
Ironic given your previous comments on male suicide. I think there’s a fair chance Jack would still be here if not for you and your toxic viewpoints.
What a deeply unpleasant comment.
It’s always about Julie.
You just log in to find a reason for writing a nasty comment, don’t you?
Have a wonderful day.
There are always a couple like this; not quite on the Twitter scale but odd that people should bother.
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