Being here, philosophizing suicide
Liz Tascio How Not to Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind, by Clancy Martin, Penguin Random House, 2023.
Not everyone who endures years of alcoholism, drug use, and multiple suicide attempts is lucky enough to survive, let alone to thrive afterward. Clancy Martin takes the luck he was given and makes generous, nearly heroic use of it. After years of stumbling and recovering and researching and facing up to his own failings, he gives the rest of us this book, and it is we who are lucky. How Not to Kill Yourself is sensitive, insightful, and sometimes even funny; it’s a careful, clear-eyed walk through Martin’s own life and his suicide attempts, his alcohol abuse and addiction, his hubris and his struggle to be a better dad. It’s also a thoughtful, comprehensive tour of others’ writings and beliefs on the subject of suicide, on what makes a good life, and a good death. Martin is a philosopher and a professor (at University of Missouri-Kansas City), and he gathers and considers a range of literature and culture—Virginia Woolf and David Foster Wallace, of course, but also Robin Williams, Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, Nelly Arcan, Yiyun Li, Audre Lorde, Dorothy Parker, a 4,000-year-old Egyptian text about whether to commit suicide, and many others. He guides us knowledgeably through an interweaving of thoughts from philosophers, novelists, and people who have survived attempts or lost their lives.
250
B O OK R E V I E W
He shares in detail the events of his own life—a painful childhood and chaotic young adulthood; the end of his first marriage; his abuse of alcohol and drugs to escape “being Clancy;” the end of his second marriage; his limited visitation with his kids because of his drinking and suicide attempts; his third marriage; and the slow, hard work of becoming an adult who can be trusted in the most basic sense—one trying to live a good life, and not trying to solve his problems with a quick death. In his book Martin explores the ways persistent suicidal ideation can be compared with addiction. Both come with compulsive thinking and self-destructive urges; both require management and attentiveness to keep them at bay; both can be exacerbated by similar triggers; both can be soothed, or at least eased, by connection with other people. And like addiction, when someone is deep in the throes of a suicidal urge, beyond reason and logic, reaching for one small distraction can help it pass—as strange as it sounds, Martin writes, you can turn on a movie or make a cup of tea. Tell yourself you can always kill yourself after the movie, or after you drink your tea, or tomorrow. A distraction can ease you gently past the urge, even if you don’t feel much better. After that comes the rest of the work, and the beginning of the rewards: “Sometimes I’m in such a state of despair or panic that reasons simply won’t get through to me,” he writes. “But at other times, when I’m less frantic, I can be persuaded by sound thinking and argument. That guy . . . can still think things through. And I want to raise a question in that guy’s mind: Is suicide a good idea? Because for years—no, decades—he has thought somewhere very deep down that committing suicide was probably a desirable thing to do. And that’s the idea that I’d like to change, because I think it can be changed. To be clear, I
L I Z TA S C IO
251
don’t think I have changed my mind, even after writing this book. But I think I have begun to change my mind. . . . I am now able to question whether by actually living I might do good that I couldn’t do by dying.” As part of his research for this book and for his own understanding of death and dying, Martin reached out to a university colleague and asked to participate in the dissection of a cadaver. He describes thinking he might pass out after holding the hand of the dead woman and dissecting part of it. Afterward, he goes outside to collect himself. “I was lying in the grass, a little cold in the winter sun, listening to the traffic, worrying about my usual worries: the kids, Amie, money, career. I wasn’t sure how real the worries were—or unreal. . . . But I understood that I was still here, living, and she was back inside there, dead. I thought with clarity, maybe for the first time in my life: I don’t want that. I don’t want to be dead.” That flash of clarity is the result of years of work. Of research, of 12-step programs, of introspection; of blowing into a Sobrietor to prove he could visit with his kids; of painstakingly untangling the real from the unreal, and then untangling it again when it inevitably snags. This clarity is also a moment of deep connection with the reader, a moment that feels hard-won together with the writer. The last part of the book is about the changes Martin has made to his life that help him stay detached from the dark impulse to die. He’s learning to experience emotional pain without trying to escape it; he doesn’t drink; he prioritizes his family over his work. He is living a calmer life. When he was a teenager, Martin read Nietzsche on the subject of living well—be careful to live somewhere with good weather, and to eat healthy foods, and to exercise—and the young
252
B O OK R E V I E W
Clancy Martin thought that certainly must be metaphorical, that it could not literally mean that the weather would affect his life and his success as a person. Now, he knows better. “It can and should be read that way,” he writes. “I have come to see, in the past eight or nine years, that it is this simple: I have to think of myself like the plants in my garden, which grow or die depending on the sun, the soil, the water, their location, et cetera. . . . [But] it’s much more difficult to exercise that same care with myself, because I don’t see the results as quickly or as vividly. Plus my garden doesn’t have guilt, shame, or regrets; it doesn’t gossip or have other bad habits; it doesn’t disappoint people or break promises; it hasn’t fucked anything or anyone up.” He offers resources and suggestions to anyone reading the book who might be feeling suicidal. The most consequential, for him, was making personal connections with others who are having the same experiences. “And whether it’s AA or suicide,” he writes, “speaking for myself, those personal connections with real individual people are what has made possible my freedom from addicted and selfdestructive thinking, which is the main theme of my recovery.” He is right, I think. I remember one sunny day not long after my second child was born, my friend and I were walking in a nature preserve with our families. We both had babies strapped to our chests; we were both overtired, living through that impossible time when your children are so young that it seems they need you every second; when you don’t get more than three hours of sleep at a time; when everything about every day is hard and it feels like your life will never be anything other than this, ever again. Someone in our group noted that our hike was taking us along the foot of a tall, grassy dam, and joked about what would happen if it broke. And my dark, tired mind felt a rush of relief at
L I Z TA S C IO
253
the thought of dying in a sudden flood, because then I wouldn’t have to work so hard. Then I laughed at my thought and I shared it out loud, and my friend with a baby laughed too. (The other adults looked horrified.) It was comforting to say it out loud. To recognize that my fragile mind, triggered by exhaustion, produced the clear thought that it would be wonderful if the dam broke and swiftly relieved me of my life. I was not then and have never been suicidal. And yet the thought was there, and it dissipated when I shared it. And then we all continued our beautiful walk, and the dam did not break, and life went on being difficult, then less so as the kids grew, and now I get seven or eight hours of sleep every night and I make time to take better care of myself, and I don’t long for a dam to break over me. Martin is in his mid-50s now. He has survived more than ten suicide attempts. He ends his book with a gentleness toward himself and his reader, and a reflection that came from realizing that he was about to turn 55. He’d made it another year: “Maybe slowly I can let this whole suicide thing go. Maybe I’m starting to learn, if not how to live, at least how not to kill myself. Not to get all sentimental on you at the end of the book, but look at us, here we are together, we made it. We don’t want to die, just yet.”