Today is National Suicide Awareness day. As someone who has struggled against depression for much of my life, suicide is certainly an issue I have had to deal with on a personal level [1]. This particular day is not well known, which is a shame because our appetite for self-destruction in our society goes well beyond the mere act of a dramatic suicide to the sort of mundane activities that lead to death through the destruction of our health, our relationships, and our lives, even if we never jump off the bridge or pull the trigger to end our lives in one mistake.

One of the saddest literary suicides (and even more tragically, an apparently accidental one) that I have read is the death of Lily Bart, a decent young woman caught up in circumstances beyond her control, who becomes addicted to sleeping medicine. Sadly, this is not merely a fictional way of self-destruction, as the actor Heath Ledger himself died in large part due to his own addiction to sleeping medications. This appears to be a particularly large problem given the extreme popularity of sleeping pills and other remedies in the midst of our rather troubled mental and emotional lives. Given our need for sleep, it is very easy to be dependent on anything that causes us to relax.

Alcohol is one of the major forms of self-medication, perhaps the most common of any substance that people use to allow them to relax. It is also an extremely dangerous one for people to abuse, leading alcohol to be among the most common instruments of self-destruction. Alcohol is readily available and socially acceptable in moderation (and sometimes far above moderation, depending on one’s environment), making it very easy to indulge in for those who wish to do so, and making it a very easy avenue for self destruction that often masks or enables other self-destructive behaviors as well. Sadly, sometimes abuse makes it very difficult to enjoy alcohol even in moderation for some of us.

As a writer, even if I don’t consider myself a particularly artistic personality, given my rather grim realism, I see self-destructive tendencies particularly heavily when it comes to creation. Creation often involves the transgression of social norms, and it can be a very difficult task to determine a consistent approach (particularly if one is a Christian) between social norms that are directly hostile to the right way of living, those which are neither godly nor ungodly but that may be worth respect because they make life more pleasant and preserve worthwhile relationships, and those norms that are worth defending and practicing on their own terms because of their goodness. It is very easy to err both in being caught in harmful and evil traditions as well as rejecting good traditions because of a desire to break free from the past. None of us, and certainly not I, are perfect in this regard.

There are so many reasons for our appetite for self-destruction that the problem is overdetermined. It is difficult for us to know and to act in our best interests, to be willing to spend the time and expense to choose that which is good for us instead of that which is convenient for us for the short term. All too many of us have destructive habits which can easily destroy us in times of trouble, bad patterns of behavior that we have not yet fully overcome. Sometimes success in one part of life exacerbates our weaknesses in other areas, and leaves people unable to avoid the road to perdition. In seeking to avoid such self-destruction ourselves, let us look with sympathy on those who have failed, recognizing that the same potential for both great genius and self-destruction lie within us all. Let us therefore live wisely.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/i-am-no-better-than-my-fathers/