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2026-02-09

My plan to avoid suicide

Disclaimer

• Quick Note
• This plan is very strictly for me only. I don't want to be blamed if someone else uses some or all of this plan on themselves and faces bad consequences.
• I may or may not have additional notes in private on this. Don't assume that what is written below is my full and complete plan.

What is this post?

• I seem to be currently running a low probability of becoming clinically depressed. I think it's worth actually having a plan for what to do, just in case I do become clinically depressed. This is my plan for my future self.
• A lot of this plan is informed by my past experience with getting depressed. I have become clinically depressed and suicidal multiple times in my life. It seems likely that if future Samuel become depressed or suicidal, this situation will have atleast something in common with past Samuel

When does this plan trigger?

• If you have atleast some serious thoughts that suicide is among your top 3 best options in life right now, you should trigger this plan. It doesn't matter if suicide is not yet your literal number one priority. The fact you're considering it as a serious backup option or similar, as opposed to a random research curiosity, is the thing that is important.
• Apart from this, I can't define an exact trigger but a cluster of things to track.
  • Two weeks of literally enjoying not even one thing even a little even for a short period of time.
  • Two weeks of zero work output. (Random ramblings on your blog do not count as work output in this context, because it's possible you no longer have the ability to track if you're actually being productive or not.)
  • I also want to say something like, "when it happens, you'll know". When you're actually depressed, a lot of your thoughts will look more like "I am in pain right now. How do I stop the pain in any way possible?" and less like "I want to achieve long-term goal X. How do I achieve X?" You won't have to make an intentional choice here, to switch attention in this way, your brain will already do it for you.
  • Multiple months of persistent failed attempts to fix sleep, diet, sunlight, exercise.

What is the plan?

• The most important thing
  • I think you should more-or-less mindlessly follow this plan, and not think too much about whether it will work or not. Think a little but don't think a lot.
  • Your brain is endlessly creative at inventing both reasonable and completely unhinged reasons for why any given plan may or may not work. This is even true while you are at an average happiness level, but it is especially true when you are depressed.
  • When you are depressed, you tend to only make lots of pessimistic assumptions (while also being somewhat blind to how many pessimistic assumptions you are making) and you tend to run into circular and repeated thought patterns (while also being somewhat blind to how many times you have looped already). You also tend to be in a lot more pain while doing this thinking.
  • The difference between thinking a lot and overthinking is what I wrote above. Thinking a lot is not inherently a problem if you're normal. Thinking a lot is inherently a problem because you're depressed.
  • Try to recall the last time you were depressed. You probably do still have actual memories of noticing your repeated thought loops while you were depressed. It is hard to notice them while you are depressed, but it is possible. (I definitely have some real memories of this as of 2026-02, but I can imagine losing or inventing fake new versions of these memories as the years go by.)
• The second most important thing
  • Contact one of your friends and ask them to let you stay at their place full-time for the next 1-2 weeks at minimum.
  • Strongly prefer video calls and irl meetups, over just cold messaging them.
  • Ask them politely at first, sure. But also, be ready to actually go fucking harrass your friends if you have to, until one of them says yes. All your normal rules about how to message people politely, go out of the window. You have to get one of them to say yes by hook or crook, or you might actually fucking die. The absolute worst case is you will be left with no friends, but even this is better than dying soon.
    • Spam them if you have to. A message with hundred pages of spam is better than no message.
    • Be rude if you have to. A rude message that offends or insults your friend is better than no message.
    • Cross boundaries if you have to. Cold message people even if they've explicitly told you in the past that they don't want cold messages from you. What they told you back when you were not depressed, all of this no longer matters. If they are actually your friend, there is some chance they will forgive you for all this, because they also understand you are depressed. But also, it doesn't matter if they forgive you or not. Not dying is more important than all this.
    • You might be making wildly incorrect guesses of what is actually going on. See "the first most important thing". That is another reason I am encouraging you to just go contact people however you want, and not think too much about doing it the right way.
  • (I have a private list of people I will prefer to reach out to.) But also, the list doesn't matter much, literally anyone is better than no one.
  • Do not tolerate online only interactions, instead of in-person interactions.
  • Do not tolerate a shorter meeting frequency like once a day or once a week like a therapy meeting or some shit.
  • Also schedule a paid therapy session weekly, but don't let this be the only person on Earth you are talking to.
  • It is highly likely that most people won't immediately say yes, but will try to find other sources of support for you, like your family or a therapist. This is fine, and should ideally end with them either successfully connecting you to this person, or understanding why this person can't help you. It is also highly likely that many people will say no, or get offended, or say something weird or stupid. Ignore of all this. Keep going till you find one person who says yes.
  • I think the following are unlikely edge cases, but I am writing about them anyway.
    • Atleast one message you send or one sentence you say should clearly spell out the sentence "I am clinically depressed, possibly suicidal, and I want to stay at your house for a week. Is this possible?" It is bad if you are so incomprehensible that the other person doesn't understand that this is what you want. The remaining messages can say whatever you want. I think I am more comprehensible than this even when I am depressed. But I have seen other people with manic episodes where this is an issue.
    • If you really manage to successfully burn through every single person you have known, including close friends, acquaintances, work contacts, family, etc, and you don't manage to get even a single yes to this question, you are actually in deep shit right now. There's probably something you are doing to systematically distance everyone, but also you may be too depressed to accurately diagnose what that is. (Accurately diagnosing these sorts of things is hard enough to do while not depressed.)
    • For instance, it is possible that some people said yes, and you literally did not understand this.
    • At this point, if you have the energy for it, I would recommend just cold approaching male strangers living near you (could be neighbours, could be ), and asking them. Atleast while normal, you have successfully made friends by cold approaching people this way. (Getting them to let you stay with them is harder.)
    • Approach men not women, because men are less likely to care about physical safety issues of inviting some random, possibly dangerous, possibly hard-to-deal with, stranger to their house.
    • Again, make sure to have atleast one sentence that is extremely clear that "I am clinically depressed, possibly suicidal, and I want to stay at your house for a week"
• The third most important thing
  • The single biggest reason you will fail at the plans listed above, is lack of trust in other people. In particular, there might be some specific information you don't want people to know, or some specific person who you think is likely to actually hurt you (even worse than you already are) who you need to fight with, or some specific thing you care about which would be destroyed if you shared too much information about it.
  • And like, there's a possibility this is actually true? I don't know what exact situation future Samuel will face, but there totally exist situations where if you share a lot of info publicly, you will immediately get retaliated against, hard. If this is actually the case, as opposed to just your speculation, it makes the problem harder.
  • See also: Enemies are rare, most people don't care about you. Try to recall the full context that inspired this post, not just read the words of this post.
  • There is an interim zone of "unhappy but not clinically depressed" where you might actually be able to make non-zero progress on fixing your issues while in isolation. If you are clinically depressed however, trying to fix your issues yourself in isolation is basically hopeless, and you should go re-read the first most important thing and the second most important thing.
• The fourth most important thing
  • Once you have gotten a second person in the loop, the next thing to do is to actually fix sleep, diet, sunlight, exercise.
  • You should actually be willing to endure a bunch of pain to force yourself to atleast start fixing these issues.
  • Make the lowest possible effort to actually get started. Getting started is probably way harder than maintaining flow once you have started. You might have to start, maintain a flow, stop and restart multiple times until all this is fixed.
  • The lowest effort way to start fixing diet is to ask this person or gpt-5.2 for atleast one restaurant near you that makes healthy food, and order every single meal from there. This is expensive but who cares. Most restaurants in Delhi have too much fat and not enough protein.
  • The lowest effort way to start fixing sleep is to shift your alarm by one hour every night, until it is fixed. Give yourself exactly seven hours of sleep (when normally you sleep eight or nine). The single best reason you will fail at this is substance use. I don't have an immediate answer for how to fix that.
  • The lowest effort way to fix sunlight is to ask this person or gpt-5.2, for nearest park or terrace or similar, with good sunlight. Then spend atleast an hour there, atleast a couple of days a week. Find a place where you won't feel social anxiety. Staying indoors at a terrace or similar, is significantly less effort than travelling to another place multiple times a week.
  • The lowest effort way to fix exercise is to do atleast 10 min of the jumping exercises I do, atleast thrice a week.
• The fifth most important thing is to figure out what to do next.
  • Not having a clear plan is just likely to cause you to consume substances again, which is bad because see above.
  • But also, I am not keen on recommending any specific plan here. It seems very situation specific.
    • I am not keen on recommending any hobby, because I don't actually have any hobby right now while normal, so why would I be able to successfully start one while depressed?
    • I am not keen on recommending fixing your issue full-time, because this will cause more pain, and you might still be biased and so on. Maybe this is the right move here, but it is situation-specific.
    • I am deinitely not keen on recommending getting a job, because getting a job you don't want and then consistently staying in it, can both be significant efforts that cause pain and suffering of their own. I think I am basically correct in having a strong aversion to getting a random ass job. Many people can just do a job they don't like while on autopilot, but you are not one of these people.
  • Listen to music. This is low effort and you tend to enjoy it even if you're depressed.
  • Eventually yes, you probably do have to figure out some sort of solution to the problem that caused you to become depressed in the first place. (Atleast in your case, there probably was an actual problem, and you didn't randomly get depressed one day because "chemical imbalance" or whatever.) The actual path to fixing this problem could be very non-linear.

How to actually commit suicide

• Here is the most efficient way to commit suicide, without either stopping yourself at the last moment, getting stopped by other people, or injuring yourself without dying.
  • Ask gpt-5.2 for the gps coordinates to a nearby mountain in a smaller town. Finding a tall building in a big city that you can jump from, is probably harder, because some people may have jumped from there already, and countermeasures may already be in place.
  • Buy a ticket the very same day.
  • Jump on land not water, ideally at the terminal velocity height (450 metres) but atleast 100 metres for sure.
  • You can probably remember some potential places for this already, at the top of your head, but maybe don't use those. Also don't use the literal nearest mountain. You've posted this plan publicly, so if anyone suspects you of committing suicide, they already know where to find you first. So you have to randomise atleast a little.
  • lostallhope.com used to have good resources on this, atleast back when I read it some years back.
• I wrote the above mainly to earn trust of future Samuel, that actually I have first hand experience with all this, and I am not just making random shit up. I currently think the upside of earning trust of future Samuel is larger than the downside of giving future Samuel a ready-to-go suicide plan.

Half-lives worse than death

• Before you actually successfully kill yourself, you will probably enter a half-life worse than death, where you would consider it mercy if someone killed you, but still actually fail to kill yourself. I have first hand experience with this, and many other people have also reported the same thing in their suicide notes. You can go read suicide notes online to confirm this.
• You actually have a very strong will to live, and you might underestimate how strong it is until you actually start pushing at its boundaries.
• Many people online who tried to commit suicide but ended up injured instead of dead - later regretted their suicide attempt.
• Some people seem to just spontaneously not become depressed anymore, after some months of living in this half-life.
• Some people seem to become even more resolute in their decision to commit suicide, after some months of living in this half-life, and they eventually succeed. In particular, this seems to be true for atleast some of the people with terminal illness.
• Here is my speculative IFS-flavoured theory for what is actually going on.
  • Parts of you want to commit suicide and parts of you don't. There is no actual machinery left to have these two parts engage in a rational discussion, so it is basically two parts consistently yelling the same thing at each other but louder and louder.
  • One main way to actually succeed at suicide is to make an impulsive move, where one part has control of the steering wheel for a short time duration, and other parts don't. This short time duration is not actually enough to invent a suicide plan from scratch, consider all failure modes, read research online, test run the plan in-person, and then finally execute it.
  • The other main way to actually succeed at suicide is to live in this half-life for very long (often more than six months) such that even the parts that want to live actually get the message, and give up too.

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