There is a poster visible from the Richmond train station, it turns to reveal one side and then the other. “Alcohol does not cause violence” it broadcasts as it spins. An unequivocal statement I recognise as familiar, being from the “Guns don’t shoot people” genre.

The annoying billboard creates a squall in my head by claiming there is no causal relationship between alcohol and violence. I thought alcohol use was associated with all kinds of violence, but I could have assumed wrongly, or maybe I have listened to too many news story beat ups attributing social problems to alcohol use or perhaps it is convenient to explain away problems by blaming something. I ask my friend Google for clarification and Google provided a review of the scientific literature on the relationship between alcohol and violence.

I know, I know I can’t believe everything I read on the internet – or a billboard for that matter – and this review is well credentialed, coming out of the Presley Center for Crime and Justice Studies, and Department of Sociology, University of California, Riverside, California

The researchers, Robert Nash Parker and Kathleen Auerhahn, conclude that “… consistent finding that we can report from this review of the empirical evidence is that when violent behavior is associated with a substance, that substance is, overwhelmingly, alcohol. Study after study indicates that,even in samples containing relatively high baseline rates of illicit drug use,violent events are overwhelmingly more likely to be associated with the consumption of alcohol than with any other substance” They don’t make a causal link between alcohol and violence, more empirical tests and data are needed. “Much work is yet to be done, but the prospects for greater understanding of how and why alcohol and drugs contribute to violence have never been brighter.” Maybe I should have searched for further other studies but as I am debating with a billboard I have sufficient information to doubt its veracity.

…and the billboard spins around “Blame and punish the individual.” it says. That’s when I start to get anxious about when my train will arrive and put some distance between me and the billboard. That is quite a statement and presumably the anonymous body or individual responsible for the billboard are suggesting that violent, and intoxicated and violent, individuals are blamed and punished, the intoxicated non-violent and sober individuals are off the hook for now.

I don’t know enough about the psychodynamics of addiction. I doubt blame and punishment will address the implied problem, and the idea that this be used as an approach bruises my empathetic heart. Back to Google and a search on “blame and punish the individual”. No matches from the Academics at the Presley Center but I am relieved to find local support from others who have posted about being affronted by the same billboard.

As well as collective outrage it has prompted thoughts about collective responsibility around alcohol and violence. I am smiling now…and my train is pulling in.

We are born with 300 bones, and I was also endowed with 300 or so blog posts.

From September 7 2009 – February 1 2012 I have written 300 posts here. Wonderersheart is a body of work I am, for the most part, pleased with. Two years and fours months of wondering and exploring, and now in post number 301 a chance to reflect…
- what else to say/read/note/honour/explore or address?
- a chance to stop this incomplete work knowing it will always be incomplete?

So many thoughts and so few answers.

I read some blogging advice a long time ago and recall someone advising that blogging is not therapy. Piffle!

I have found writing blog posts to be fabulous therapy, just don’t tell my therapist – although she would probably agree.

Blogging also demands a writing practice is cultivated. Thank you, dear readers for reading, bearing with me and for forgiving the typos and my lack of editorial nous. I have taken pleasure in clambering onto my own soapbox, a platform that has, at times, been challenging to balance on. I have been slowed many dilemmas: how much to reveal and what to with-hold, which side to take up, and how much might be too much. Now that I have developed a writing practice, it seems there is always another post, even if it is about the posting itself.

There is more to say, I have more resources to link to, more opinions to air, stigmas to address, and more paint balls to lob. I take heed that Wikepdia states that 300 ft/sec is the maximum legal velocity of a shot paintball. Warning noted and, nonetheless, I don’t think I am quite done yet.

If not stupid Joey Barton’s view is uninformed and ill-considered. Before anyone concludes that suicide might be a selfish act I need to say; it is simply not possible to rationalise a death by suicide with an everyday logical mind. Suicide is far removed from normal experience and we struggle to comprehend the act. It is too easy, it seems, for the way someone dies to change your memory of how they lived. The accusation of selfishness highlights the lack of understanding and the related depth of stigma surrounding suicide. I feel compelled to continue to rally against the apparently widely held view that suicide is selfish. I have explored that perspective and argued against the selfish view again and again, in other posts.

I am repeating a short excerpt from May this year as evidence I hope will convince any cynic. Scientific American described suicide as “an attempt to escape from oneself”. The suicidal mind is described as “unbearable”, burdened with a “crushing intolerable weight”. The same article says “Feelings of worthlessness, shame, guilt, inadequacy, or feeling exposed, humiliated and rejected leads suicidal people to dislike themselves in a manner that, essentially, cleaves them off from an idealized humanity. The self is seen as being enduringly undesirable; there is no hope for change and the core self is perceived as being rotten.”

Here in Australia it was recently reported that “Beyondblue has had success in raising awareness about depression and anxiety, but it has largely fulfilled that purpose.” Beyondblue was setup in 2000, as a not for profit organisation established to to erode the shame surrounding depression and anxiety. It is premature to suggest Beyondblue, or any similar initiative, has fulfilled its purpose while suicide is widely regarded as the most selfish act a person can enact. There are more stories to tell, more work to do, more tweets to twitter, and more compassion to bring…

…made me smile.

While I am confessing to searching for myself on-line, I should come clean and admit it is something I do from time to time. Google is one of my favourite things…

Talking also seems insufficient, its a passive sort of activism.

A couple of days ago someone mentioned they had read my blog, and that he was surprised. “You have something to say”, he said “most blogs are about nothing much”. Oh?

I am drawn to do more than simply talk/write and I’m trying to work out where to start. In the meantime talking the talk.

Simone Back died by suicide on Christmas Day. She posted a note on FaceBook, where she was linked to more than 1,000 friends, she wrote “Took all my pills be dead soon so bye bye every one.” Nobody tried to make direct (as opposed to on-line) contact with Simone until the next day. It was too late.

I have been thinking about Simone all day since reading about her death. I am troubled and deeply saddened by her death and her FaceBook posting.

As Albert Camus wrote in The Fall, his last complete fiction work, “People aren’t convinced of your sincerity, your motives, and the depth of your sorrows except by your death. As you long as you are alive, your case is uncertain, and you are entitled only to their scepticism.”

Sadly many of Simone’s friends were sceptics, and apparently not convinced of her sincerity. I can’t know anything beyond the newspaper report and what does it matter now if anyone believed her or not? She will not know their reactions, their sorrow or shame, she is unable to experience her own funeral.

I am sorry there was no-one to hold her hand and be with her through a dark night.

Crisis counselling is available around the world. In Australia Life Line 13 11 14.

I came across an incredible article published in Scientific American last month. Incredible because it gave me insight to what I had witnessed from the outside. The article affirmed what I have been thinking that I can not judge the thinking of a suicidal mind by the standards of a non-suicidal one, and to do so is flawed.

The article draws on the work of Florida State University psychologist Roy Baumeister and his 1990 Psychological Review article , “Suicide as Escape from the Self.” In that article he described six steps that, culminate in a probable suicide if all of the criteria are met. He noted that if any of the steps are avoided the outcome is unlikely to be a suicide:

* 1. Falling short, of standards. Almost paradoxically the better things are; the higher the living standards, the better the weather, the smarter the student the greater the risk of suicide. As high achievers know, high expectations can lead to bitter, even if only perceived, disappointments. Evidence supports the premise that preceding suicide is failure to attain expectations and standards.

* 2. Internal attributions. People who die by suicide blame themselves,for outcomes. Self loathing and self condemnation take hold. On Mottsu’s last day he commented on my goodness for buying Wally, our dog, a Birthday present. It was obvious to me that his own badness was at the fore. I tried to reassure him, Wally didn’t know it was his birthday or that he had a gift. I had only bought a present, a drizabone raincoat, hoping to make Mottsu smile. Mottsu beyond smiling was, at that late stage, convinced he was no good.

* 3. Uncompassionate and high self-awareness. At this stage there is a heightened and relentlessly unforgiving self awareness. In comparison to others the suicidally depressed person assess themselves as chronically deficient of the expectations of others.

* 4. Negative Affect. Feeling marginalised because there is something wrong with you is the next step. The emotional distress and anxiety of depression can bring on feelings of shame and other acute negative emotions, a downward spiral. Mottsu’s journal entries confirm a negative affect.

* 5. Cognitive deconstruction. “When preparing for suicide, one can finally cease to worry about the future, for one has effectively decided that there will be no future. The past, too, has ceased to matter, for it is nearly ended and will no longer cause grief, worry, or anxiety. And the imminence of death may help focus the mind on the immediate present.” I have heard anecdotal evidence that in the immediate lead to suicide people seem less depressed than previously, relief that’s apparent with the decision can be mistaken for a start of recovery.

* 6. Disinhibition. Any inhibition about killing oneself is gone. In this final stage, there is no optimism left, no sense of living. “Alternating between being numb and feeling very bad is not a good thing,” Dr. Baumeister said. It is perhaps unsurprising that the oblivion of suicide is sought to make it all stop. Living has become intolerable and disinhibition is what allows

It’s all information and I find it helpful in trying to comprehend what is most difficult to understand I’ve written a lot and plan to keep writing on difficult topics. I am learning.

Some related posts:
Hope can be learned
The hardest thing in the world to do is live
Depression can huddle like a sick ape in the back of your mind
Depression is nearly incomprehensible to those who haven’t experienced it
Someone will hold your hand
You can recover from depression
There are things you can do if a friend is in crisis
This is a topic we should talk about more and report more

Tough topic.

Here’s a little more fuel for the discussion with an indepth article from the New Yorker:

“These days, swift catastrophic illness is the exception; for most people, death comes only after long medical struggle with an incurable condition—advanced cancer, progressive organ failure (usually the heart, kidney, or liver), or the multiple debilities of very old age. In all such cases, death is certain, but the timing isn’t. So everyone struggles with this uncertainty—with how, and when, to accept that the battle is lost. As for last words, they hardly seem to exist anymore. Technology sustains our organs until we are well past the point of awareness and coherence.”

Gawande, A. “Letting Go: What should medicine do when it can’t save your life?” The New Yorker, 2nd August 2010.

Life is precious, no argument.

There’s a time when you will throw your arms around me and a time when you help me to go. There’s a time when when I will throw my around you and a time when I will help you to go.

I’m asking for a choice about my end of life, that’s not promoting suicide. It is not.

To mark the occasion the picture is my favourite it’s the big picture of the blog banner.

I hope you’ve probably read some of the other posts. This blog is about loss trauma and grief particularly in relation to depression and suicide, all topics not discussed often enough. Things we don’t talk about and I believe we need to talk about more.

I have ideas, I have opinions – strong ones as it turns out. I discover myself as I write. It is interesting to encounter oneself in a blog, and your own history; just as you wrote it, but sometimes hadn’t quite noticed.

Good or bad, right or wrong, normal or abnormal. I have a particular interest about how I judge and label. I’m trying to judge less, and I’m learning how to approach the world differently. My blog is helping me to see people, conditions, and issues not as good or bad, nor right or wrong, no normal and no abnormal, less at least. A different me in the world.

“I spent my whole life being scared, scared of not being ready, not being right, not being who I should be.” Peter Krause as Nate Fisher, Jr. in Six Feet Under

We soon learned the Turkish consulate a few streets away had been bombed that night. So it was a bomb rather than emotion that moved us. Even so our lives were changed when we met, as a couple of me people became a we.

We were a fabulous we, particularly he:
*we went to the supermarket together after gym
*he played eye-spy while we were horse riding
*we held hands at the movies
*he was a punter
*I loved him
*sometimes I was horrible to him and other times I just didn’t think
*he was a journalist and writer, who briefly kept a journal about his depression

This is my own journal. Suicide is hard, hardest on those left behind, that’s the story of Mottsu and me.

Left behind and on my own I am keeping it together. Sometimes surprise myself and I just as often disappoint myself. I keep on talking, writing and dreaming…