Two soldiers can serve the same tour of duty, in the same unit, walk into the same firefights side by side, suffer the same wounds, and one could come off tour mentally and emotionally unscathed while the other suffers full blown PTSD. There is no hard and fast rule as to who gets PTSD and who doesn't. Just as there is no hard and fast rule as to who can cope with depression just enough to fend of suicidal urges and who can't.
People who think Robin Williams was stupid, pathetic, selfish or cowardly for killing himself: you really think he wasn't aware that suicide inflicts horrific emotional carnage on loved ones left behind? This man who talked to the public candidly and knowledgeably about battling his demons? Who checked himself into rehab voluntarily as recent as a few weeks ago?
Instead of condemning the man, I come away thinking he must have been experiencing excruciating psychic pain if he still killed himself despite knowing how much he will hurt the people he loves.
A little compassion folks. And be thankful that no matter how little of it you have today, it will in no way affect the quality of care that you will get from the mental health profession should you someday find yourself needing their expertise and compassion.
And if you still feel like bashing Robin Williams, read this and hang your head in shame you little, little man.
There are no character flaws required for suicide; just the world.
Suicide is still a personal decision, no matter one's mental or physical condition. It's different from murder in that way. People may not like or understand why he did what he did, but at least it was his choice.
Suicide is a complex thing. If you were being tortured and were offered the chance to kill yourself, would you take it? Would it be right? Is it a fair choice?
Fortunately, for you, you have no idea what you are talking about.
Well, if I did I would probably be in the same place as he is right now. Which doesn't change my opinion in the slightest - he had a loving wife and kids; NOTHING in this world justifies taking your own life like that, particularly when so many people love, care about and depend on you.
After all, suicide is the ultimate act of selfishness and cowardice - you get away from this world without even caring about those left behind.
So please spare me from your condescending crap about depression as if it were just a "chemical imbalance" - nobody tied the rope for him; he was perfectly aware of his actions and did it himself, to the despair of his loving family. So whatever.
So you're saying that Robin Williams didn't care about those he left behind. You're speaking on behalf of a dead man who can't exactly speak for himself.
You say it's the ultimate act of selfishness and cowardice. He could be going from hell to heaven or from hell to hell. Bit of a gamble.
Anyway, it is not “perfectly okay” to kill yourself, regardless of the situation.
Why is it any different from doing anything else? It's your life, I say it's your choice what you do with it. You're not a possession or accountable to anyone for your own existence.
he had a loving wife and kids; NOTHING in this world justifies taking your own life like that, particularly when so many people love, care about and depend on you.
Financially, the family should be ok - he even set up trust funds for his kids. They're losing emotional support but if he had died of natural causes, that would have been the case anyway.
Everybody dies, taking your own life is just moving the date forward.
What I find interesting is people's reactions to suicide when it comes to how they perceive individuals. There was a celebrity children's entertainer who turned out to have abused women and children over a long period and jailed recently:
"Yep he should commit suicide"
"Well if he wants to commit harry carry then let him get on with it, it would save the tax payer a lot of money keeping in prison"
If he had killed himself before they found out about this abuse, he'd have been getting the same tributes as Robin Williams.
Tributes poured in when he died of natural causes but then as the years went on they uncovered a huge amount of abuse (abused hospital patients, dead people, children) and then the reactions change:
When it comes to good characters like Robin Williams, that's when people say taking your own life is never justified but when it comes to abusers, that gets completely thrown out so it can't be a definitive statement.
I don't think it's an action that has to be justified by anyone. It's a personal choice about someone's own existence and that existence will come to an end all by itself no matter what choices people make.
trapped (træpt) adjective
unable to escape, as from a situation
I used that word in the analogy because a state of mind is similarly inescapable. Mind-altering chemicals give a temporary escape.
Why is it any different from doing anything else? It's your life, I say it's your choice what you do with it. You're not a possession or accountable to anyone for your own existence.
Financially, the family should be ok - he even set up trust funds for his kids. They're losing emotional support but if he had died of natural causes, that would have been the case anyway.
Everybody dies, taking your own life is just moving the date forward.
What I find interesting is people's reactions to suicide when it comes to how they perceive individuals. There was a celebrity children's entertainer who turned out to have abused women and children over a long period and jailed recently:
"Yep he should commit suicide"
"Well if he wants to commit harry carry then let him get on with it, it would save the tax payer a lot of money keeping in prison"
If he had killed himself before they found out about this abuse, he'd have been getting the same tributes as Robin Williams.
Tributes poured in when he died of natural causes but then as the years went on they uncovered a huge amount of abuse (abused hospital patients, dead people, children) and then the reactions change:
When it comes to good characters like Robin Williams, that's when people say taking your own life is never justified but when it comes to abusers, that gets completely thrown out so it can't be a definitive statement.
I don't think it's an action that has to be justified by anyone. It's a personal choice about someone's own existence and that existence will come to an end all by itself no matter what choices people make.
Your philosophy is warped and dangerous. Teaching others that suicide is wholly appropriate is a sign you may be involved in some screwed up cult.
It is your life but you have a responsibility to humanity and loved ones. Robin Williams suffered a mental illness and may not have been fully aware of the consequences of taking his own life. More needs to be done to find improved methods of helping people with mental affliction. If there is anyone afflicted reading this, always remember that "if you've lost hope then have faith hope will eventually return. It may only involve finding the right medication that works best for you."
Teaching others that suicide is wholly appropriate is a sign you may be involved in some screwed up cult.
I would say it's screwed up to consider that life will always eventually have a Disney ending and that pro life is always the best option. There's a kid here who had a condition where his skin fell off leaving him with sores over his body. Every day he had to live in bandages and pain. I consider forcing someone to live like that to be torture:
There was a girl here travelling as a passenger in a car, hit by a drunk driver and she ended up with severe burns, no hands:
A woman here wanted to enhance her figure and ended up getting an infection and having her hands and feet cut off:
"I didn't think about losing my children. I didn't think about leaving my mother," she said. She thought instead of how death would feel. "Although I will be dead, I will not be in pain anymore."
There was a guy here killed himself because he was sentenced to 16 years in prison:
A criminal on the run here shot himself because he obviously realised that his life ahead was one behind bars and not worth it:
In all of those cases, it is no one else's place to say that their lives are worth living for the sake of satisfying their own misguided world view.
It is your life but you have a responsibility to humanity and loved ones.
What if someone already betrayed humanity and loved ones by being a criminal and prolonging life will keep betraying them? What if someone is so physically disabled and incapacitated that they can be nothing but a burden to humanity and loved ones. To satisfy your own statement and personal responsibility, it would promote taking their life because other people's lives would be better without the burden.
It seems Robin Williams was suffering from early stages of Parkinsons:
More needs to be done to find improved methods of helping people with mental affliction.
It's a positive statement but an empty one. The outward symptoms are going to be trivial e.g sadness and that's it and as I've shown earlier, people don't care if you're sad, they only care if you die and by then it's too late. Take George Michael for example who has become reclusive and isolated:
Sure signs of depression. What are people doing about it? Nothing because there's nothing anyone can do about it. You can't turn up at his house with a bunch of people who want to be his friend. He became isolated after splitting with his partner. The solution to that problem is for them to get back together.
The same was true of Owen Wilson, he tried to kill himself over Kate Hudson. They then got back together but then split up again:
The feel good statements like 'chin up, there's more fish in the sea' don't work. If someone wants to be with one particular person, what is your solution for them? Drugs aren't the solution.
If there is anyone afflicted reading this, always remember that "if you've lost hope then have faith hope will eventually return. It may only involve finding the right medication that works best for you."
Hope-restoring medication you say. Do they keep this in the back of the pharmacy? Medication doesn't give you hope, it just makes you forget you lost it. When you're off the medication again, the reason for the suffering doesn't go away. The plan is that it just becomes less important. This can happen but sometimes it won't.
...I think it's perfectly ok to kill oneself regardless of circumstances but to invalidate the statement of 'killing yourself is never the answer', you just need to consider if you were on fire and there was a gun nearby. Would you burn to death painfully or use the gun?...
Actually, in both the case of gunshots and fire, the pain receptors will typically shut off in cases of extreme pain. The affected areas just go numb.
Sorry, but with your so-called ready army of links accompanied by defeatist reasoning and false assumptions to back your argument that suicide is wholly appropriate, I can only conclude you are part of screwed up cult.
Humanity has thrived because of our ability and willingness to overcome adversity.
Sorry, but with your so-called ready army of links accompanied by defeatist reasoning and false assumptions to back your argument that suicide is wholly appropriate, I can only conclude you are part of screwed up cult.
Humanity has thrived because of our ability and willingness to overcome adversity.
You are aware that people are not immortal, right?
You're trapped in a burning building though so rolling means rolling in more fire. You'd have to choose the gun.
Or leaving the building.
trapped (træpt) adjective
unable to escape, as from a situation
I used that word in the analogy because a state of mind is similarly inescapable. Mind-altering chemicals give a temporary escape.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Anyway, it is not “perfectly okay” to kill yourself, regardless of the situation.
Why is it any different from doing anything else? It's your life, I say it's your choice what you do with it. You're not a possession or accountable to anyone for your own existence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by brlawyer
he had a loving wife and kids; NOTHING in this world justifies taking your own life like that, particularly when so many people love, care about and depend on you.
Financially, the family should be ok - he even set up trust funds for his kids. They're losing emotional support but if he had died of natural causes, that would have been the case anyway.
Everybody dies, taking your own life is just moving the date forward.
What I find interesting is people's reactions to suicide when it comes to how they perceive individuals. There was a celebrity children's entertainer who turned out to have abused women and children over a long period and jailed recently:
Tributes poured in when he died of natural causes but then as the years went on they uncovered a huge amount of abuse (abused hospital patients, dead people, children) and then the reactions change:
When it comes to good characters like Robin Williams, that's when people say taking your own life is never justified but when it comes to abusers, that gets completely thrown out so it can't be a definitive statement.
I don't think it's an action that has to be justified by anyone. It's a personal choice about someone's own existence and that existence will come to an end all by itself no matter what choices people make.
What you describe is an atheist's creed.
An atheist owes no-one anything, and is free to kill his own life or anyone else's with no consequences (or so he thinks).
A Christian owes his life to God and has a responsibility to God. One of the Ten Commandments is, 'Thou shalt not kill.'
"Atheists" don't believe they are free to takes anyone else's life without consequences. Psychopaths do. And there are plenty of religious psychopaths, including many that identify as Christians.
As an atheist I'll defend to the death my right to take my own life. If that sends me to hell (it won't) then so be it.
"Atheists" don't believe they are free to takes anyone else's life without consequences. Psychopaths do. And there are plenty of religious psychopaths, including many that identify as Christians.
As an atheist I'll defend to the death my right to take my own life. If that sends me to hell (it won't) then so be it.
An atheist is free to do whatever he can get away with; he has no reason to do otherwise. He can make up rules for himself to suit himself, as you are doing with suicide.
So there'd be no crime if everyone had empathy? Got it.
I get the feeling you're trying to be sarcastic and dismissive, but actually you're pretty much on the money. Maybe not no crime, since "crime" is quite a broad thing, but the world would certainly be a better place with more empathy. I believe your Bible preaches it (though there's no way you get to claim it as uniquely Christian).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Benjamin Frost
We all have a choice to be good or bad. For an atheist, there are no boundaries. For a Christian, the path is narrow.
The paths are exactly the same width. A good person is a good person, whether or not they believe in a magic old man in the clouds. And the Christian path hasn't always been straight in the direction of goodness, it's had a number of chicanes and 180s.
There are lots of very horrible god fearing people out there, so enough with this narrow path supremacist horseshit.
Just once why can't you keep it respectful and honour Great actor It is sad when somebody dies for them and family my heart goes out to His family. Rest in peace
Actually, in both the case of gunshots and fire, the pain receptors will typically shut off in cases of extreme pain. The affected areas just go numb.
The comedian Richard Pryor tried to kill himself by pouring alcohol on himself and lighting it:
"When that fire hit your ass, it will sober your ass up quick! I saw something, I went, "Well, that's a pretty blue. You know what? That looks like... FIRE! Fire is inspirational. They should use it in the Olympics, because I ran the 100 in 4.3."
It's slow and painful. The specific options aren't important, the point was if it was between a slow, painful, inevitable, natural route or a quick self-inflicted route, the latter is the better option as they both end the same way.
Anyone with a painful or terminal illness can offer their experiences to the advancement of better care and finding a cure or vaccine.
You can say that about anyone without a terminal illness. Would you volunteer to undergo medical experiments to help cure ailments? Why limit it to victims? Christopher Reeve who was close friends with Robin Williams had to live for 9 years in a wheelchair:
"Reeve later told Barbara Walters that he ‘wanted to die’ until his despair was lifted by an unexpected visit from his old friend Williams.
Reeve recalls how Williams showed up at the hospital pretending to be an eccentric Russian proctologist who was going to perform a rectal exam on him.
‘I lay on my back, frozen, unable to avoid thinking the darkest thoughts,’ wrote Reeve.
‘Then, at an especially bleak moment, the door flew open and in hurried a squat fellow with a blue scrub hat and a yellow surgical gown and glasses, speaking in a Russian accent. He announced that he was my proctologist and that he had to examine me immediately.
‘My first reaction was that either I was on way too many drugs or I was in fact brain damaged,’ wrote Reeve.
‘For the first time since the accident, I laughed. My old friend had helped me know that somehow I was going to be okay.’"
"You look out the window, and you can't believe where you are," he said. "And the thought that keeps going through your mind is, 'This can't be my life. There's been a mistake.'"
But despair turned into determination, and Reeve's will to live prevailed. With the support of his wife, he became America's leading advocate for spinal cord injury research, raising money, writing books, testifying before Congress and giving motivational speeches all over the country."
As you rightly said, people can do some good even in those circumstances but the vast majority of people can't. Reeve did some good because of his celebrity status. A random person with the same injury couldn't have done that and wouldn't have the same level of support. Also, it doesn't mean a cure will come along.
What you describe is an atheist's creed.
An atheist owes no-one anything, and is free to kill his own life or anyone else's with no consequences (or so he thinks).
A Christian owes his life to God and has a responsibility to God. One of the Ten Commandments is, 'Thou shalt not kill.'
An atheist is free to do whatever he can get away with; he has no reason to do otherwise. He can make up rules for himself to suit himself, as you are doing with suicide.
Everybody picks and chooses what rules they follow. Elevating man-made rules to the status of authority from an unaccountable deity causes this to happen:
As an atheist I'll defend to the death my right to take my own life.
The fortunate thing is that you don't have to as long as you are physically able. Having a right to do it doesn't matter when someone does it because they can't be punished for that choice. Fictional after-life punishments are used to control people's actions in the present. Unfortunately, people who aren't physically able to do this continue to suffer because of the lack of compassion from other human beings.
Comments
Thank you for your wise post.
Suicide is a complex thing. If you were being tortured and were offered the chance to kill yourself, would you take it? Would it be right? Is it a fair choice?
Tough questions. No easy answers.
So you're saying that Robin Williams didn't care about those he left behind. You're speaking on behalf of a dead man who can't exactly speak for himself.
You say it's the ultimate act of selfishness and cowardice. He could be going from hell to heaven or from hell to hell. Bit of a gamble.
trapped (træpt) adjective
unable to escape, as from a situation
I used that word in the analogy because a state of mind is similarly inescapable. Mind-altering chemicals give a temporary escape.
Why is it any different from doing anything else? It's your life, I say it's your choice what you do with it. You're not a possession or accountable to anyone for your own existence.
Financially, the family should be ok - he even set up trust funds for his kids. They're losing emotional support but if he had died of natural causes, that would have been the case anyway.
Everybody dies, taking your own life is just moving the date forward.
What I find interesting is people's reactions to suicide when it comes to how they perceive individuals. There was a celebrity children's entertainer who turned out to have abused women and children over a long period and jailed recently:
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/387510/EXCLUSIVE-Suicide-risk-Rolf-Harris-Max-Clifford-jail
"Yep he should commit suicide"
"Well if he wants to commit harry carry then let him get on with it, it would save the tax payer a lot of money keeping in prison"
If he had killed himself before they found out about this abuse, he'd have been getting the same tributes as Robin Williams.
This actually happened with another TV presenter:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15507826
Tributes poured in when he died of natural causes but then as the years went on they uncovered a huge amount of abuse (abused hospital patients, dead people, children) and then the reactions change:
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/18/jimmy-savile-abused-1000-victims-bbc
When it comes to good characters like Robin Williams, that's when people say taking your own life is never justified but when it comes to abusers, that gets completely thrown out so it can't be a definitive statement.
I don't think it's an action that has to be justified by anyone. It's a personal choice about someone's own existence and that existence will come to an end all by itself no matter what choices people make.
It is your life but you have a responsibility to humanity and loved ones. Robin Williams suffered a mental illness and may not have been fully aware of the consequences of taking his own life. More needs to be done to find improved methods of helping people with mental affliction. If there is anyone afflicted reading this, always remember that "if you've lost hope then have faith hope will eventually return. It may only involve finding the right medication that works best for you."
I would say it's screwed up to consider that life will always eventually have a Disney ending and that pro life is always the best option. There's a kid here who had a condition where his skin fell off leaving him with sores over his body. Every day he had to live in bandages and pain. I consider forcing someone to live like that to be torture:
There was a girl here travelling as a passenger in a car, hit by a drunk driver and she ended up with severe burns, no hands:
A woman here wanted to enhance her figure and ended up getting an infection and having her hands and feet cut off:
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/01/health/diy-plastic-surgery/
"I didn't think about losing my children. I didn't think about leaving my mother," she said. She thought instead of how death would feel. "Although I will be dead, I will not be in pain anymore."
There was a guy here killed himself because he was sentenced to 16 years in prison:
A criminal on the run here shot himself because he obviously realised that his life ahead was one behind bars and not worth it:
In all of those cases, it is no one else's place to say that their lives are worth living for the sake of satisfying their own misguided world view.
What if someone already betrayed humanity and loved ones by being a criminal and prolonging life will keep betraying them? What if someone is so physically disabled and incapacitated that they can be nothing but a burden to humanity and loved ones. To satisfy your own statement and personal responsibility, it would promote taking their life because other people's lives would be better without the burden.
It seems Robin Williams was suffering from early stages of Parkinsons:
http://news.sky.com/story/1318797/robin-williams-had-parkinsons-disease
so perhaps that contributed to his decision.
You can't diagnose people without even talking to them.
It's a positive statement but an empty one. The outward symptoms are going to be trivial e.g sadness and that's it and as I've shown earlier, people don't care if you're sad, they only care if you die and by then it's too late. Take George Michael for example who has become reclusive and isolated:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/george-michael-shut-himself-world-3919444
Sure signs of depression. What are people doing about it? Nothing because there's nothing anyone can do about it. You can't turn up at his house with a bunch of people who want to be his friend. He became isolated after splitting with his partner. The solution to that problem is for them to get back together.
The same was true of Owen Wilson, he tried to kill himself over Kate Hudson. They then got back together but then split up again:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-565663/Owen-Wilson-wed-Kate-Hudson--year-tried-kill-dumped-him.html
The feel good statements like 'chin up, there's more fish in the sea' don't work. If someone wants to be with one particular person, what is your solution for them? Drugs aren't the solution.
Hope-restoring medication you say. Do they keep this in the back of the pharmacy? Medication doesn't give you hope, it just makes you forget you lost it. When you're off the medication again, the reason for the suffering doesn't go away. The plan is that it just becomes less important. This can happen but sometimes it won't.
...I think it's perfectly ok to kill oneself regardless of circumstances but to invalidate the statement of 'killing yourself is never the answer', you just need to consider if you were on fire and there was a gun nearby. Would you burn to death painfully or use the gun?...
Actually, in both the case of gunshots and fire, the pain receptors will typically shut off in cases of extreme pain. The affected areas just go numb.
Humanity has thrived because of our ability and willingness to overcome adversity.
Sorry, but with your so-called ready army of links accompanied by defeatist reasoning and false assumptions to back your argument that suicide is wholly appropriate, I can only conclude you are part of screwed up cult.
Humanity has thrived because of our ability and willingness to overcome adversity.
You are aware that people are not immortal, right?
If one has contracted Ebola, should they have the right to commit suicide?
Or leaving the building.
trapped (træpt) adjective
unable to escape, as from a situation
I used that word in the analogy because a state of mind is similarly inescapable. Mind-altering chemicals give a temporary escape.
Anyway, it is not “perfectly okay” to kill yourself, regardless of the situation.
Why is it any different from doing anything else? It's your life, I say it's your choice what you do with it. You're not a possession or accountable to anyone for your own existence.
he had a loving wife and kids; NOTHING in this world justifies taking your own life like that, particularly when so many people love, care about and depend on you.
Financially, the family should be ok - he even set up trust funds for his kids. They're losing emotional support but if he had died of natural causes, that would have been the case anyway.
Everybody dies, taking your own life is just moving the date forward.
What I find interesting is people's reactions to suicide when it comes to how they perceive individuals. There was a celebrity children's entertainer who turned out to have abused women and children over a long period and jailed recently:
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/387510/EXCLUSIVE-Suicide-risk-Rolf-Harris-Max-Clifford-jail
"Yep he should commit suicide"
"Well if he wants to commit harry carry then let him get on with it, it would save the tax payer a lot of money keeping in prison"
If he had killed himself before they found out about this abuse, he'd have been getting the same tributes as Robin Williams.
This actually happened with another TV presenter:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15507826
Tributes poured in when he died of natural causes but then as the years went on they uncovered a huge amount of abuse (abused hospital patients, dead people, children) and then the reactions change:
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/18/jimmy-savile-abused-1000-victims-bbc
When it comes to good characters like Robin Williams, that's when people say taking your own life is never justified but when it comes to abusers, that gets completely thrown out so it can't be a definitive statement.
I don't think it's an action that has to be justified by anyone. It's a personal choice about someone's own existence and that existence will come to an end all by itself no matter what choices people make.
What you describe is an atheist's creed.
An atheist owes no-one anything, and is free to kill his own life or anyone else's with no consequences (or so he thinks).
A Christian owes his life to God and has a responsibility to God. One of the Ten Commandments is, 'Thou shalt not kill.'
"Atheists" don't believe they are free to takes anyone else's life without consequences. Psychopaths do. And there are plenty of religious psychopaths, including many that identify as Christians.
As an atheist I'll defend to the death my right to take my own life. If that sends me to hell (it won't) then so be it.
"Atheists" don't believe they are free to takes anyone else's life without consequences. Psychopaths do. And there are plenty of religious psychopaths, including many that identify as Christians.
As an atheist I'll defend to the death my right to take my own life. If that sends me to hell (it won't) then so be it.
An atheist is free to do whatever he can get away with; he has no reason to do otherwise. He can make up rules for himself to suit himself, as you are doing with suicide.
It's one way to live.
An atheist is free to do whatever he can get away with; he has no reason to do otherwise.
Empathy.
Apparently you need a supernatural being and the threat of an unpleasant afterlife to feel kinship with your fellow human beings. Others don't.
Plus, y'know, society and community and all those things that exist perfectly fine without any manifestation of a divine being too.
An atheist is free to do whatever he can get away with; he has no reason to do otherwise.
Empathy.
Apparently you need a supernatural being and the threat of an unpleasant afterlife to feel kinship with your fellow human beings. Others don't.
Plus, y'know, society and community and all those things that exist perfectly fine without any manifestation of a divine being too.
So there'd be no crime if everyone had empathy? Got it.
We all have a choice to be good or bad. For an atheist, there are no boundaries. For a Christian, the path is narrow.
Quote:
So there'd be no crime if everyone had empathy? Got it.
I get the feeling you're trying to be sarcastic and dismissive, but actually you're pretty much on the money. Maybe not no crime, since "crime" is quite a broad thing, but the world would certainly be a better place with more empathy. I believe your Bible preaches it (though there's no way you get to claim it as uniquely Christian).
Quote:
We all have a choice to be good or bad. For an atheist, there are no boundaries. For a Christian, the path is narrow.
The paths are exactly the same width. A good person is a good person, whether or not they believe in a magic old man in the clouds. And the Christian path hasn't always been straight in the direction of goodness, it's had a number of chicanes and 180s.
There are lots of very horrible god fearing people out there, so enough with this narrow path supremacist horseshit.
keep it respectful and honour Great actor
It is sad when somebody dies for them and family my heart goes out to His family.
Rest in peace
The comedian Richard Pryor tried to kill himself by pouring alcohol on himself and lighting it:
"When that fire hit your ass, it will sober your ass up quick! I saw something, I went, "Well, that's a pretty blue. You know what? That looks like... FIRE! Fire is inspirational. They should use it in the Olympics, because I ran the 100 in 4.3."
It's slow and painful. The specific options aren't important, the point was if it was between a slow, painful, inevitable, natural route or a quick self-inflicted route, the latter is the better option as they both end the same way.
You can say that about anyone without a terminal illness. Would you volunteer to undergo medical experiments to help cure ailments? Why limit it to victims? Christopher Reeve who was close friends with Robin Williams had to live for 9 years in a wheelchair:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2722888/Closer-brothers-Robin-Williams-extraordinary-friendship-Christopher-Reeve-penniless-roommates-Hollywood-highs-helping-save-friends-life.html
"Reeve later told Barbara Walters that he ‘wanted to die’ until his despair was lifted by an unexpected visit from his old friend Williams.
Reeve recalls how Williams showed up at the hospital pretending to be an eccentric Russian proctologist who was going to perform a rectal exam on him.
‘I lay on my back, frozen, unable to avoid thinking the darkest thoughts,’ wrote Reeve.
‘Then, at an especially bleak moment, the door flew open and in hurried a squat fellow with a blue scrub hat and a yellow surgical gown and glasses, speaking in a Russian accent. He announced that he was my proctologist and that he had to examine me immediately.
‘My first reaction was that either I was on way too many drugs or I was in fact brain damaged,’ wrote Reeve.
‘For the first time since the accident, I laughed. My old friend had helped me know that somehow I was going to be okay.’"
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=101123
"You look out the window, and you can't believe where you are," he said. "And the thought that keeps going through your mind is, 'This can't be my life. There's been a mistake.'"
But despair turned into determination, and Reeve's will to live prevailed. With the support of his wife, he became America's leading advocate for spinal cord injury research, raising money, writing books, testifying before Congress and giving motivational speeches all over the country."
As you rightly said, people can do some good even in those circumstances but the vast majority of people can't. Reeve did some good because of his celebrity status. A random person with the same injury couldn't have done that and wouldn't have the same level of support. Also, it doesn't mean a cure will come along.
Of course. You're saying they should be made to suffer against their will? The symptoms are horrible:
I don't get why people think the more compassionate route is to force victims to suffer.
Everybody picks and chooses what rules they follow. Elevating man-made rules to the status of authority from an unaccountable deity causes this to happen:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/14/robin-williams-britain-first_n_5678587.html
The fortunate thing is that you don't have to as long as you are physically able. Having a right to do it doesn't matter when someone does it because they can't be punished for that choice. Fictional after-life punishments are used to control people's actions in the present. Unfortunately, people who aren't physically able to do this continue to suffer because of the lack of compassion from other human beings.