Kevin Taylor, M.D.
Seduction of Suicide offers a new and radically different explanation of certain suicidal behavior – how suicide can be addictive. This is a powerful book, filled with dark, sometimes shocking, personal stories, but also with the incandescent light of hope. It presents a way out of hopelessness – a path towards recovery – including specific steps that suicidal people have taken to beat their compulsions.
Many people who have attempted suicide will see themselves in the stories presented. Some who have mourned the loss of loved ones to suicide will find closure, easing their bewilderment and self- blame. Therapists who are baffled by cases that have not responded to treatment will, in this book, find a new and promising approach for their clients.
“Something we have all seen but no one has described before now.”
-Patrick Carnes, Ph.D.
Author, Out of the Shadows
“…new insights to those of us who have lost loved ones to suicide deaths.”
-Elsie & Jerry Weyrauch, Founders
of SPAN USA (Suicide Prevention
Advocacy Network)
“A major achievement by one who has been there.”
-James T. Clemons, Ph.D.
Editor, Children of Jonah, Personal Stories of
Survivors of Suicide Attempts
President, Organization for Attempters
and Survivors of Suicide in Interfaith Services
Kevin
Taylor (Pen Name) is an award-winning psychiatrist specializing in addictions.
He received the prestigious Diamond Award for lifetime contributions to the
field of mental health, presented by the Mental Health Association of the
Mid-South.
Dr. Taylor is a Fellow of
the American Society of Addiction Medicine and a founding member of the
American Academy of Psychiatrists in Alcoholism and Addictions. He has dedicated his life to helping
impaired physicians and served on his state’s Physicians Health Peer Review
Committee.
With
his wife, Morgan, Dr. Taylor appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, “Successful
People Who Attempted Suicide.” The
Taylors organized and co-chaired their state’s first-ever Suicide Prevention
Conference in cooperation with Surgeon General David Satcher and their state’s
Department of Health.
Or think of a 25-year-old schizophrenic, who’s gone off his meds and has tumbled into a world of brilliant, terrifying psychosis, full of confusion and chaos. He is deteriorating rapidly. He hears voices telling him to mutilate himself. "If your eye offend you, pluck it out," they whisper to him, and he pulls out his own left eye. "Throw yourself down," they scream to him, "and God will send his angels to bear you up." He jumps from the 10th floor of an office building. Suicide? Definitely. Addictive behavior? Definitely not.
Most suicide attempts are the result of depression or psychosis. This book is not for them, or for people who have to deal with them. But for some people, suicide is not what it seems to be. It is a totally different experience. For some, suicide becomes a mood-altering experience, an escape from pain, a fix as powerful as crack is to cocaine addicts. How it works is complex and not well understood, as we’ll find later on.
But for some people, myself included, with a history of multiple suicide gestures or attempts, diagnoses of depression, personality disorders, or other "conventional" mental illnesses don’t fully explain what is going on. People like us continue to have secret patterns of suicidal fantasies, obsessions, rituals, and attempts, despite all sorts of treatment by well-meaning mental health professionals. Antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, shock therapy, individual or group psychotherapy – none of these can stop our relentless preoccupation with death.
Kevin: For ten years I knew that I would die at my own hands before age 40. I could see absolutely no other way out. Many times a day, I secretly pictured the newspaper headlines: "Brilliant Young Psychiatrist Kills Self. Whole World Mourns." Crazy as it was, the fantasy somehow got me through each day.
How does such a state of mind develop? Why do some people seem to be trapped in suicidal thoughts and behaviors? No one knows. But the stories of about 50 of us who have lived with suicide addiction suggest a possible progression, in definite stages: onset, early, middle, and late stages, each with definite common characteristics.
For us, suicide was our drug. For many of us, the drug of suicide was more powerful than other drugs, than alcohol or sex. We put it at the top of our mood-altering experiences. For us, it was there always, a powerful lover, the way out when we needed it.
Kevin: When all else failed, I knew that suicide was there, that I could count on it, more than the drugs or the affairs. It was all mine. I didn’t have to share it with anyone. I carried it with me at all times, tucked away in a secret place in my head. No one could take it away from me. No one could have it.
Childhood Onset
The onset of suicidal thoughts can be difficult to pinpoint. But for virtually everyone in our group, the problem started sometime in childhood or the early teen years, rarely later. Most of us could remember some precipitating instance early in life, sometimes a very painful experience, but often something quite minor. Whatever it was, we thought to ourselves, "Well, then. If it gets bad enough, I can always kill myself." It was, for us, a comforting thought. But it was also the start of a struggle that would go on for years.
