The Revolutionary Ketamine - Chapter 3 excerpt
Talking With Strangers - Sylvia Plath
Malcolm Gladwell eloquently illustrates suicidality in his book, Talking With Strangers. He points out that suicide is closely tied to the physical environment: when we look at a person as an individual, we cannot see their whole story. Instead, we need to be looking at the entire picture, in a broader cultural and environmental context. Suicide is multifaceted, and people get to that endpoint in many ways. Suicide might seem like a real solution to an immediate problem. They view their situation as a mechanical or engineering problem and see specific methods of how to ultimately fix it.
Gladwell highlights the example of suicide rates in 1960s Britain coupled with the availability of the commonly used "town gas." After the Second World War, many British homes were heated using "town gas," a deadly mixture of hydrogen, methane, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide. During this time, "town gas" suicide victims were frequently found with their heads wrapped in a blanket or a coat and a tube underneath pumping out the gas. Nearly 6,000 people committed suicide in Britain in 1962, with 2,500 using the town gas method. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Sylvia Plath was perhaps the most well-known case of this type of suicide.
Case: Sylvia Plath
American poet Sylvia Plath struggled with depression her entire life. Looking for a new start, she moved to England. In 1962, a period of sub-zero temperatures settled in England. Pipes froze solid, power outages occurred throughout the country, and many workers went on strike. That Christmas, she was sitting with her ex-husband having a glass of wine when they began arguing. Shortly after, she dismissed her maid, gathered her children, and went to stay at a friend's house. She soon returned to her apartment with her children. Later that night, she left some food and water in her children's room, opened their bedroom window, then affixed a paper containing only four words, "Please call Dr. Horder," on the baby carriage, and concealed the gap around the kitchen door with towels. Turning on the gas of her kitchen stove, she placed her head inside the oven as far as possible, fell asleep from the carbon monoxide, and took her own life.
The Sylvia Plath example shows the phenomenon of coupling as it relates to suicide. Sylvia Plath constantly wrote about suicide and attempted it many times. People are not actively looking to kill themselves. Rather, they have a reason to believe that by killing themselves they can escape from pain. When people are looking for a way to kill themselves, and not just any method will do. Sylvia Plath had all her conditions met at a vulnerable moment, and she died the way she wrote about it in her poems. In the example of Sylvia Plath, the method of using "town gas" was right there in front of her and fit all her requirements: with the ultimate result being death, it was clean with no grotesque mess, and she could lie in an unchanged state. It was said Plath went out "in a woman's way."