Suicide is the cure for life that is not truly living. Suicide is the medicine of death.

Xenophon reports that even upon entering the trial, Socrates “had already decided that death was preferable to life.” Socrates explains:

Now, if my years are prolonged, I’m sure that I shall have to pay the penalties of old age: impaired vision and hearing, and increasing slowness at learning and forgetfulness of what I have learned. And if I am aware that I am deteriorating and find fault with myself, how could I live pleasantly then?

God in his kindness may even have my interests at heart and be arranging for me to be released from life not only exactly the right age, but also in the easiest way possible. I will be able to die … not only [with] the least discomfort, but also the least trouble to friends … For when a person leaves behind in the minds of those around him no blot or ache, but passes away with a sound body and a mind capable of happiness, then it is inevitable that such a person will be missed, isn’t it?[1]

On Plato’s account, Crito pleads with Socrates, now seventy, not to proceed just yet: “Do not hurry, there is still time.” Socrates replies that some may see a benefit from delaying, but “I do not expect any benefit from drinking the poison a little later, except to become ridiculous in my own eyes for clinging to life, and be sparing of it when there is none left.”[2]

Cicero establishes:

When a man’s circumstances contain a preponderance of things in accordance with nature, it is appropriate for him to remain alive; when he possesses or sees in prospect a majority of the contrary things, it is appropriate for him to depart from life …

He concludes: “when life’s last act, old age, has become wearisome, when we have had enough, the time has come to go.”[3]

In 2002, Sidney and Marjorie Croft wrote:

We have thought clearly of this for a long time and it has taken a long time to get the drugs needed. We are in our late 80s and 90 is on the horizon. At this stage, would it be wrong to expect no deterioration in our health? More importantly, would our mental state be bright and alert? In 1974 we both lost our partners whom we loved very dearly. For two and a half years Marjorie become a recluse with her grief, and Sid become an alcoholic. We would not like to go through that traumatic experience again. Hence we decided we wanted to go together. Please don’t feel sad, or grieve for us. But feel glad in your heart as we do.[4]

Australian Angelique Flowers was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease at age fifteen. In May 2008, at age thirty-one, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. Soon after, she entered palliative care, which concedes and awaits death. In August of that year, “Angelique Flowers died vomiting faecal matter after an acute bowel blockage. As her doctors had warned, her death was simply awful and there was nothing to be done. They told her that her death could be shocking, and it was.”[5]

Aristotle treats of events in one’s life that “crush and maim”: “for they both bring pain with them and hinder many activities.” He continues: “Yet even in these nobility shines through, when a man bears with resignation many great misfortunes, not through insensibility to pain but through nobility and greatness of soul.”[6]

Perhaps Aristotle is correct, though perhaps he never vomited fecal matter as the final period to a death sentence.

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[1] Xenophon, “Socrates’ Defence,” in Conversations of Socrates, 41-2.
[2] Crito 116e-117a
[3] Cicero, De Finibus III, 60–61, 247.
[4] Peaceful Pill Handbook, 29-30.
[5] Ibid., 27.
[6] Nicomachean Ethics 1100b25-33