I just had a long drawn conversation with a friend…a tad uneasy but very intense. The subject was suicides by drug addicts.
I wish to raise a very contentious and very debatable topic here and I would appreciate it a great deal if you would leave your comments and views on the said topic.
Take a hypothetical situation where you have a very nice guy. However, he does have an addiction problem. Now, take two scenarios
1. You meet him and have a wonderful time with him. After seeing each other for a fair amount of time, you get engaged. However, he does not tell you about his problem before the engagement and you end up having a kid. Through several complications over the next few years, you finally decide to call it off.
2. He tells you about his addiction but you go ahead believing you can make things better. As an attempt at normalizing things, you get engaged and love him enough to have a kid with him. However, a few years later you leave him, either because you are
a. Unable to take it anymore
b. Hoping to be able to make him see the error of his ways.
Now what happens next is almost horrible as he dies of an overdose of some medicines prescribed. It could’ve been accidental overdose or intentional, in whichever case, the apparent reason would be the fact that you left them.
What I would like to know is whether you would blame the woman in the said situation, through scenario 1 or 2a or 2b. Do you believe that she is responsible for what happened and should live with the guilt of having caused his death? Please do leave your opinion as to what you think and why…
P.S.: My opinion: I would not hold the woman guilty in any case. I hope to argue my views over the comments that might follow. Please do not walk by this post anonymously…
10 comments:
putting both ur blogs in perspective, and thinking frm the woman's pov before i criticize her...
no.
i wld not blame her in any situation.lets analyze each.
1. she didnt knw, but she cld have tried? maybe, but whts a reltn tht doesnt have faith n trust? as good as over. so its not wrong on her part to end it.
2a. can give her credit for trying, and if u think she shld have tried just a bit harder, well dude, remember this: she LOVED him enuf to go into it knowing it. she muct have reached her limit to take such a drastic step.
2b. seperating frm him will give her pain too, but she took tht step only to get him back on the right track. again, she must've tried everything apart frm this drastic step, and not even in her wildest drms wld she have thought tht he was such a dufus to go n suicide.
so its clear tht i wldnt blame her. but i do have something to say for the "wimp"
if a wonderful relationship with a woman he has fathered a kid with, or worse yet, if a kid, his own kid, the biggest joy available to mankind, cld not get him to leave his habbit, thn i think he's better off dead.
wimp.
(sorry if the views r too extreme, but suicide, in any form, for any reason, is NOT the answer. to ANY problem. cowards die a hundred deaths, and suicide is cowardice epitomised)
p.s: i did try to think frm the "wimp's" pov b4 i criticized him, but sorry.
we cldnt see eye to eye.
not on suicide, atleast.
hmmm...interesting.
yes i wouldnt blame the woman but quite honestly, i wouldnt blame the man either. it isnt easy to quit on drugs, not by any stretch of the imagination.
matter of fact, that so many can quit after rehab is a miracle in itself.
and it is impossibly difficult for near and dear ones to see an addict suffer, more so because so much is said that isnt really meant.
what is worse for an addict is the fact that he wants to quit and he cant. there are many options that go through your head especially when you aren't thinking straight...sometimes, you go through with what you have thought when you aren't thinking straight. that's what leads to suicide.
i wouldnt blame the woman and since you have put in several points, i wouldnt add.
although on the contrary you have to wonder if she was really as committed to the relationship.
whether she was or she wasn't, she was definitely beyond her threshold. we all have limits and when they are crossed, we are angry and say and do things we don't necessarily mean. sometimes things that come back and haunt us.
in either case, they are both victims of circumstance, neither might be blamed...but that's just my opinion. please do counter what i have just said...
i believe, if someone can do it, you can do it.
if somebody, even one person in this world can kick a drug habbit, anyone can.
the whole thing boils down to what will i get if i leave this.
motivation.
and if love n a kid cant do it for him, thn, wel..as i said..no sympathies here.
the other part i agree with..a lot of unmeant shit happens in anger..just wish there was a way to stop it...
hmmm... how difficult is it to quit on chocolates?
take that and imagine something a thousand times more difficult. thats how difficult it is to quit smoking...
take that and imagine something a thousand times more difficult and that is how difficult it is to quit on drugs...
it isn't easy dear, don't be so harsh.
yes suicide isn't a justifiable act but you can imagine the extremity under which someone takes the decision...
I think the woman has not to be blamed in any of the case. But there are certain points which I would like to discuss here.
1. To quit on drugs must be a hard task, though i have never experienced it. But if it is really so tough(after "thousand ..thousand" superlatives you have added in your comment) then why did the woman had a hope of making her husband quit post marriage? She should have realized that it wont be an easy problem to solve and in any case she will have to fight till the last breath . In leaving her husband alone, she is also showing an act of running from the situation, inspite of being aware of the prenuptial scenario. So is the husband the only wimp? Or the wife is also a wimp in disguise? Here I would like to make clear that I dont wish to state that the woman is wrong. What I want to express is If quitting drugs is tough ,so is making a person quit them. After all the sufferings and turmoil they may go through, they need to stand by the victim till the last moment. Thats why she would have agreed to marry him even after knowing his addiction. While deciding on marrying him, she would not have set a timeline of till where to support; till a baby arrives or till a second baby arrives or anything else. She must have determined to make his husband quit his addiction. She should have realized, very much analytically, that either she will be succesful or she wont. But to leave him in middle of something was not quite judgemental on her part.
hmmm...
the woman in the story could probably have run out of patience. im sure you are well aware of what an addict goes through, would you like a child to be brought up in that environment? im not entirely sure about that!
but yes, i accept that if you're married, you're in it for the long haul...for better or for worse as they say.
yet, in the same breath i will add, guys have a tendency to promise much and deliver little in relationships. girls take what is said very literally and very seriously. how long would you endure empty promises? moreover, after some time, maybe we decide that love isnt the only way to treat them and maybe we feel the need to be a little firmer.
sometimes harsh words work better than softer ones! and yet it is impossible to know for sure how that approach would work!
if it doesnt, the price to be paid is pretty steep... so are you justified in taking that step? its a personal call...
and yet, despite all of it, whatever the outcome, the fault could never lie with anyone...
it's a multitude of events taking place together that lead to an outcome!
i dont think i could blame either the guy or the woman...just maybe the situation...
The woman must have run out of patience. As this could be a probable scenario. The question here is not about guys being promising much and delievering less or girlstaking things seriously.All these points have been very well discussed in your earlier comments, directly or indirectly. As per the latest one,
if there is a need for some harsh steps to be undertaken, then she could have opted of some other options rather then leaving him alone. I would like to tell you why:
1. Fighting an addiction needs support. If the man had a strong will power he would not have let himself in the clutches of the menace. I beforehand agree that "Will power" is a very hypothetical and a relative term. But Will-Power makes sense. A diabetic fighting an urge to binge on sweets needs will power.
2. "The girls take things very literally and seriously". If this is assumed to be correct, then how serious was she when she opt to leave his husband alone. I agree that it can not be an easy task to face ones husband being grabbed by this so called Drug-Addiction but she at one point of time got frustated with the situation and left his husband alone. She sure must have cried for months after hearing his husband death. No doubt about it but she did not fight till his husbands last breath. Its not wise to blame her as stated earlier,but she herself will feel guilty of the situation that she could not try further on.
3. The case of bringing up of the child - Here the child will be the one who will be suffering maximum, mentally as well as emotionally, may be physically also.
The woman was very much right in the case where the question of her childs future arose. Noone would ever want to raise his/her child in such a scenario. She is the mother of the child , so the child is very much her responsibility. Couldn't she have tried some solution which could serve both the purposes. She could have sent her child to a boarding school while trying to help out his husband. Here, If the child goes through a mental agitation while being bullied by his mates at the boarding school then so will he go thorugh the same situation if he lives along with his mother. School guys dont stop bullying whether a boarding school or a day boarding one.
So, i think there is avery thin line between judging the woman as guilty and thinking of her as a supportive pillar to her husbands fight for addiction.
PS: What do you mean by "im sure you are well aware of what an addict goes through"? Dude dont disclose any secrets here ;)
ha ha ha
ahhh... good ones!
so here goes:
1.> Will power i too believe is a relative term. if you consider the fact that i do not smoke or drink or... (despite having spent so much time with you guys :P ) you might say i have a very strong will power but then again, i have a very weak will when it comes to applying myself academically! so will power isnt something that we might actually be able to attribute the addiction to. probably again, the only thing you could attribute it to is the situation.
2.> Girls do take things seriously and literally but they do not have too much patience either! get a girl (which im hoping you will sometime soon if you havent done so already!) and even if you dont, im sure you understand women better than i do! nonetheless, if women are promised something and they do not get it, tempers flare and the situation sometimes gets over-heated. in the spur of the moment, a lot is said and a lot is heard that probably wasnt even remotely intended! sometimes, the situation simply snow-balls and although the fault cannot be just one person's, i do believe that we guys lose our tempers a little more than necessary often over-boiling things more than necessary...
and must she have cried for months? she is a woman and i am pretty certain, she wouldn't forgive herself for as long as she lives...
she did not stand by him through it but i am pretty certain she did not expect him to take that extreme a step having had known him well enough to decide to have a kid with him.
3:> The kid...it is really difficult to say what was best for the kid. there are some kids who are strong enough to remain untouched despite all the negativity around them, sometimes even growing stronger in the adversity. and yet, there are kids who would be shattered for all that goes around them. you can shelter a kid but who is to tell if you're sheltering or being over-protective?
finally, i do strongly believe that sometimes shit happens and sometimes you can step into it unwittingly. it is difficult to say what could've happened but rather easy to look at those outcomes that seem more desirable as the most probable. life is unpredictable and we all interpret life differently. we all take calculated risks, some pay-off and some dont. i dont believe i could hold either of them as guilty...and like i said, both were little more than victims of the situation...
P.S. DISCLAIMER:
this discussion and the comments that follow were completely fictional, the people involved in the discussion too have put themselves in fictional situations...nothing in this debate was based on true events...any resemblance to anybody, living or dead, is purely co-incidental and unintentional.
hehehe
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