In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche writes, "It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night". Beyond Good and Evil, ch. 4, aph. 157 (1886).

Suicide is a topic that disturbs many people largely because of their cultural and religious metaphysical beliefs. A candid discussion of suicide is often seen as dangerous because someone may act upon such discussions.

It is not my intent here to disturb anyone or cause anyone to ever kill themselves- unless sucidide is warranted.

I would encourage almost everyone, save for war criminals and mass murderers, to get help before killing themselves. For war criminals and murderes, (and rapists and the like), please, do the world a favor, and kill yourself. If you can think to yourself, "Yes, I have caused wars and made places on Earth a living hell," then, by all means, get some rope or a shotgun.

Life is precious and existence is precious because it may very well be finite. We can not know. Also, we can not know if there is a nothing or a something waiting for our consciousness upon death, no matter how it happened.

Suicide is a metaphysical gamble. Assumptions abound. Some suicide is selfish. Some suicide is just because it is done by someone who is in a hell that only he or she can understand.

In my opinion, if you are contemplating suicide, and you are not going to hurt anyone else, tell someone and realize that your life is valuable. However, if you are planning to seriously hurt innocent beings, suicide is better than continuing to do so. Suicide to stop internal monsters can be just because internal monsters can not always be chained with denial or drugs or therapy or by prison walls. Even in mental hospitals and prisons, the demons can and often do come out.

It is absolutely true that suicide can and will cause irreparable damage to those who love or are concerned about he or she who commits suicide and this is the primary reason why people who contemplate or attempt suicide should be helped. Most depressions are temporary or, at least the suicidal level of depression is.

Most people would be greatful for a physical or mental state to come about where suicide was not tempting. But, in cases of severe brain damage, incurable physical pain, and, in the rare but real cases of absolute and incurable mental torture from myriad causes, suicide should not be seen as wrong but rather it should be understood and tolerated as a mode of relief for he or she who suffers.

I am in support of assisted suicide for those whose lives are (i) not going to improve and (ii) are exemplary of a living hell. Not knowing what the internal state of a vegetative human mind is makes the problem intrinsically difficult and the wishes of adults should be made clear. I, personally, do not want to live in a vegetative state should I ever end up in one but this is a matter for each individual to decide.

I believe the possibility of suicide allows those who suffer, whether it be from physical or mental anguish, the possibility of relief. I have, as a rather severely mentally ill and severely bipolar person, contemplated and been hospitalized for suicidal ideas and actions. Suicide is the attempt to relieve the state of existence that, otherwise, seems out of our control.

Suicide is the last resort and exercise of free will in the midst of internal or external oppression. Many bipolar people who can not be helped through treatment, kill themselves out of desperation to end the rollercoaster- Kurt Cobain and Hemmingway come to mind. We should not think of these people as necessarily selfish or bad but just humans who were burdened by a cycle of despair they could no longer carry.

The hurt that is caused in others, others that the mentally ill person cares about, is often impossibly difficult to deal with. When one's personality is so infected with illness and malcontent, suicide often seems a way to gain control of forces and actions that are unwanted.

For warriors in many cultures throughout history, suicide was honorable and preferable to defeat or capture. Similarly, for those who are in the trough of mental or physical hell, one salvation seems to be to extinguish life.

That suicide is illegal is a sign that societies do not understand the right of an individual to do to their own being what they please and these laws basically tell the individual, "Kill yourself good and right or you'll be punished".

Perhaps it would be best if mass murderers or war criminals or those who rape and pillage in the corporate world, would just kill themselves upon the stark realization that they have ruined the world, made it darker and more vile. For people who rape others, commit murderous rampages, or lead nations to unnecessary and unjust war, it would certainly be a somewhat redemptive deed to kill themselves rather than go on with the possibility of doing more harm.

For the mentally ill who do not want to hurt anyone but can not control themselves, which fits the definition of a psychopath, it would be much better, in a moment of clarity, to kill the self rather than innocents that may be seen as demons, evil, or part of some hallucination that does not really exist. But, these moments of clarity often do not interrupt those who would gain power or pride through homocidal acts.

Suicide, as Kurt Vonnegut Jr. has written, may one day be rewarded as an honorable and charitable deed if the world ever becomes so overcrowded as to be a living hell.

All I am saying here is that no one should commit suicide unless you are about to bring the hell that lives inside you to the outside world. For example, if you are planning to blow people up for your religious beliefs, please, kill yourself and spare the innocents.

If you are planning to take political power and commit genocide on your perceived enemies, please, kill yourself. If emperors and dictators and warmongers everywhere just would please kill themselves, I and the rest of peaceful society would surely appreciate it.

I can, however, see the justice in the following scenario: A slave goes to his master's mansion and blows himself up, killing the master and the master's family saying, as he detonates himself, "I am free now".

For me, it would be better to die than to live as a slave.