I grew up watching episodes of M*A*S*H on TV. It still affects me deeply, and for the record, I always liked it but I liked it even more when Alan Alda took over as Director. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, ignore me. People of my generation often argue bitterly about this.) The theme song to the original movie - the music of which but not the lyrics of which are used in the TV series - still runs through my head. I often think of these three lines:

Suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I choose.

I admit that there are times when I'm lying awake at 4am, in pain, chronically tired but unable to sleep and I know that in 3 hours I have to get up, get my kids ready for school and stagger off to work. At these times I seriously think about cutting my throat. In my humble opinion, any sane human being would. But I believe that it is harder for the survivors than for the person who commits suicide, and I love my wife and kids and parents too much to do that to them. Belgian chocolate helps a lot too.

When I was a teenager growing up in Australia, my best friend told me that his father had given him the following advice: "Never do something that you can't undo". I think that's excellent advice, even though my friend and his father lost a lot of credibility with the aphorism "A craftsman never blames his tools" used when I blamed my clapped-out, rusting, rattling 20-year old 3-speed rattletrap of a bike that was stuck in second gear when my friend beat me in a race using his nearly new gleaming 5-speed bicycle. My father's advice was always more along the lines of "Never remove a radiator cap while the engine is hot", and "There are two things you should never turn your back on, a ladder and a woman". But I digress. Suicide is something you can't undo, and for all we know, the movie Beetlejuice may be right - if you commit suicide you may be doomed to eternity as a post-life bureaucrat. And I seem to recall several major name-brand religions having a word or two to say about unappealing consequences in the afterlife too.

Psychologists differentiate between situational depression, which is the kind of depression that I'm talking about here, and clinical depression, which they try to treat with drugs. Beta interferons seem to induce depression for some reason, and your doctor may try to prescribe antidepressants. Some MS patients are all over that like a rash, but I tried a few and didn't like them. My advice is to look your doctor in the eye and tell him/her it's "situational depression", and run like hell if he/she starts talking about antidepressants and/or emergency visits to a therapist, but that's just a personal opinion.

If you have given it careful and rational thought over a long period of time and still think that suicide is the answer, you will probably find it best not to confide in strangers. You see, in most countries (and states of the US) the desire to commit suicide is considered a mental illness. Bad things can happen to you if the authorities get word of your impending demise. Not to mention the fact that a failed attempt at suicide will put a major blot on your credit record. Any attempt to engage people on the subject of a "dignified right to death" will at best have people rolling their eyes and shunning you in droves.

At the time of writing, Oregon has an assisted suicide law (although it is believed to be at odds with the federal law, so look forward to more lawsuits there before everything gets resolved). If you live in the wrong state or the wrong country, good luck trying to emigrate! The only country that appears to allow assisted suicide for foreigners appears to be Switzerland. There's an organization called Dignitas that you can find more about in Now What?. My advice is "Don't". If you're going to shell out all that money to go to Switzerland, use it to live, not to die. See the mountains, drink the beer, eat the chocolate, and smile at the young fraueleins instead.

I hope I haven't given you the wrong impression by being too flippant. I don't think I'm clinically depressed, but if you think you might be, then get professional help. If you feel suicidal, then call a suicide hotline. Now. In the US, call 1-800-SUICIDE to find a suicide hotline near you.