Dying of Old Age - Is it Actually Peaceful?

[BlueButterfly19]

I often hear a lot from people or the general public that they wish to die of old age and essentially go to bed one night and just never wake up again. It's usually around the subject of hoping they don't end up having to endure a painful death like a freak accident or cancer or something along those lines. And I do wonder, let's say you're an active, relatively healthy, very old 70+ year old person: if you die of old age, essentially in your sleep, is it actually free of pain/suffering? Does the dying process due to old age differ in any way from other causes of death due to illness or accidents or suicide? From doing research on different suicide methods, it seems like no matter what there is some sort of pain or discomfort in dying. Also how do we know what pain/suffering feels like to ones that actually die as opposed to accounts from failed attempts? Like for instance euthanasia has been standardized as humane for pets/animals as offering the least/no amount of suffering, but how did they objectively come to that conclusion? They can't ask how their pet is feeling while and after they die. I'm also aware I'm not very informed on how the actual dying process works biologically and just trying to learn what happens. If dying in your sleep is actually as peaceful as people think it is, there would be an incentive to stay alive until the very end. But if dying in old age no matter how we die there's always going to be some kind of discomfort/pain, wouldn't it be better to be able to have agency over WHEN it happens instead of just sitting around waiting and waiting? I mean of course if you are like almost everyone on the planet you won't mind waiting until your time comes naturally, but for a lot of us on this forum where life feels like suffering, if dying in any way no matter what is painful might as well get to choose when it happens right?

 

[Worndown]

Dying of old age might not be terrible, but there are no guarantees you will enjoy the journey. Stuff stops working right. Things hurt that didn't before. You do not move as well as before.
Getting old is not for the meek.

 

[Darkover]

No dying of old age is not peaceful in most cases

Heart disease: A leading cause of death in the UK and US. Ischemic heart disease was the leading cause of death in England and Wales in 2022.

• Cancer: A leading cause of death in the UK and US.
  
  
• Accidents: The fourth leading cause of death in the US, and the leading cause of death for people aged 1–44.
  
  
• COVID-19: A leading cause of death globally.
  
  
• Dementia and Alzheimer's disease: A leading cause of death in England and Wales.
  
  
• Chronic lower respiratory diseases: A leading cause of death in the UK.
  
  
• Stroke: A leading cause of death in the UK.

 

[Abyssal]

I spoke with my grandmother who worked in a nursing home about this. She says many go out screaming while others pass in peace.

She also followed it up with some bullshit about the screaming ones burning in hell or whatever lol

 

[LapseInTime]

Some lucky people die in their sleep while they're still able to take care of themselves. That's a minority. It really is; I'd hate to die going in-and-out of hospitals, doctor's appointments, with a stash of medication for all those ailments Darkover cites, not being able to do the few basic things I still can, alone, in a dirty bed soaked in my own urine or some nursing home, much under the same circumstances. The older you are, the higher the chances of you dying in a horrible condition. It's not like the movies where it's all matter of a scene cut.

 

[everydaythesame]

Dying of old age is a complete no no. I was waiting at the doctors yesterday and it was full of old people bless them. They looked so miserable and none of them could without some help. I want to keep my dignity by being able to wipe my own ass and not have the doctors number as the only number on my phone. When you get to a certain age half your time is spent on the phone trying to get an appointment and the other half is waiting to see the fucker.

 

[doneforlife]

I often hear a lot from people or the general public that they wish to die of old age and essentially go to bed one night and just never wake up again. It's usually around the subject of hoping they don't end up having to endure a painful death like a freak accident or cancer or something along those lines. And I do wonder, let's say you're an active, relatively healthy, very old 70+ year old person: if you die of old age, essentially in your sleep, is it actually free of pain/suffering? Does the dying process due to old age differ in any way from other causes of death due to illness or accidents or suicide? From doing research on different suicide methods, it seems like no matter what there is some sort of pain or discomfort in dying. Also how do we know what pain/suffering feels like to ones that actually die as opposed to accounts from failed attempts? Like for instance euthanasia has been standardized as humane for pets/animals as offering the least/no amount of suffering, but how did they objectively come to that conclusion? They can't ask how their pet is feeling while and after they die. I'm also aware I'm not very informed on how the actual dying process works biologically and just trying to learn what happens. If dying in your sleep is actually as peaceful as people think it is, there would be an incentive to stay alive until the very end. But if dying in old age no matter how we die there's always going to be some kind of discomfort/pain, wouldn't it be better to be able to have agency over WHEN it happens instead of just sitting around waiting and waiting? I mean of course if you are like almost everyone on the planet you won't mind waiting until your time comes naturally, but for a lot of us on this forum where life feels like suffering, if dying in any way no matter what is painful might as well get to choose when it happens right?

This was exactly my question as well. I would also like to add some more points. Even if old age is difficult, there are people who love you and are ready to take care of you and have the financial resources to do so. But what about the one's who have no one else ?? Government programs can just help with finances , provide nursing homes at less cost (that too not all countries do this) . But you can't force someone to take care of you. It comes out of love. Paying doesn't help. There needs to be a bond. For people who have no one, they should atleast have an option of painless exit post a certain age. May be 60. This shouldn't be construed as everyone post 60 should use it , but it's a much needed option for people who have no one.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

No, dying through old age is brutal and the process to getting there sounds even more brutal. It makes me surprised at how euthanasia isn't legalised for old people in most places of the world due to how brutal old age can be. It just goes to show that people's pro life and pro suffering mentality really is infinitely deep

 

[Gustav Hartmann]

Dying of old age seems in most cases not painful but living when you are old becomes painful at a certain point in time, I know from my own experience.. As far as I know from my relatives, who died when they were old, it is peaceful. I guess the fear of death and SI lowers when you feel that death is inevitable, they accepted death as a salvation.

When I was put to sleep prior to surgery, it was a pleasant experience. If I would have died during the surgery it would have been a really peacefull death.

 

[bitofftoomuch]

No, the lie that it is, is 100% cope. In most cases it is painful and scary. Old people should be allowed to seek a peaceful way out. The way we force them to just stick around and suffer is cruel. I personally don't want to live past 70 even if my life drastically improves.

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

this world is the freaking matrix. . i worked in a nursing home. old age is hell.

there is nothing that is objectively important ,good or valuable. also what will matter in a 1000 years. nothing matters.

to me the only things that matter are avoiding extreme suffering and unbearable pain. we all die anyway.

no one can prove there is an objective reason why i should have to live another minute or to want to live another minute or to do anything

below is an excerpt from this article written by a doctor worked in a nursing home. i saw much worse by a billion times than this:

Who By Very Slow Decay

[Trigger warning: Death, pain, suffering, sadness] I. Some people, having completed the traditional forms of empty speculation – “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, &#8220…

slatestarcodex.com

If you are like the patients I see dying, then here is how you will go.

You will grow old. When you were young, you would go to institutions and gradually gather letters after your name: BA, MD, PhD. Now that you are old, you do the same thing, but they are different institutions and different letters. Your doctors will introduce you to their colleagues as "Mary Smith, COPD, PVD, ESRD, IDDM". With each set of letters comes another decrease in quality of life.

At first these sacrifices will be minor. The COPD means you have to breathe from an oxygen tank you carry around wherever you go. The PVD will prevent you from walking more than a few feet at a time. The ESRD will require three hours dialysis in a hospital or outpatient dialysis center three times a week. The IDDM will require insulin shots after every meal. Not fun, but hardly inconsistent with a life worth living.


Eventually these will add up beyond your ability to manage them on your own, and you will be sent off to a nursing home. This will seem like a reasonable enough idea, and sometimes it goes well. Other times it gives you freedom to develop a completely new set of morbidities totally unconstrained by what a person in any other situation could possibly be expected to survive.

You will become bedridden, unable to walk or even to turn yourself over. You will become completely dependent on nurse assistants to intermittently shift your position to avoid pressure ulcers. When they inevitably slip up, your skin develops huge incurable sores that can sometimes erode all the way to the bone, and which are perpetually infected with foul-smelling bacteria. Your limbs will become practically vestigial organs, like the appendix, and when your vascular disease gets too bad, one or more will be amputated, sacrifices to save the host. Urinary and fecal continence disappear somewhere in the process, so you're either connected to catheters or else spend a while every day lying in a puddle of your own wastes until the nurses can help you out. The digestive system isn't too happy either by this point, so you can either have a tube plugged directly into your stomach or just skip the middleman and have an IV line feeding nutrients into your bloodstream.

Somewhere in the process your mind very quietly and without fanfare gives up the ghost. It starts with forgetting a couple of little things, and progresses until you have no idea what's going on ever. In medical jargon, healthy people are "alert and oriented x 3", which means oriented to person (you know your name), oriented to time (you know what day/month/year it is), and oriented to place (you know you're in a hospital). My patients who have the sorts of issues I mentioned in the last paragraph are generally alert and oriented x0. They don't remember their own names, they don't know where they are or what they're doing there, and they think it's the 1930s or the 1950s or don't even have a concept of years at all. When you're alert and oriented x0, the world becomes this terrifying place where you are stuck in some kind of bed and can't move and people are sticking you with very large needles and forcing tubes down your throat and you have no idea why or what's going on.

So of course you start screaming and trying to attack people and trying to pull the tubes and IV lines out. Every morning when I come in to work I have to check the nurses' notes for what happened the previous night, and every morning a couple of my patients have tried to pull all of their tubes and lines out. If it's especially bad they try to attack the staff, and although the extremely elderly are really bad at attacking people this is nevertheless Unacceptable Behavior and they have to be restrained ie tied down to the bed. A presumably more humane alternative sometimes used instead or in addition is to just drug you up on all of those old-timey psychiatric medications that actual psychiatrists don't use anymore because of their bad reputation.

 

[donwhitman]

Dying of old age in your sleep is a unicorn. Most probably you will have some sort of health condition that you sucuumb too.

Dying of old age seems in most cases not painful but living when you are old becomes painful at a certain point in time, I know from my own experience.. As far as I know from my relatives, who died when they were old, it is peaceful. I guess the fear of death and SI lowers when you feel that death is inevitable, they accepted death as a salvation.

When I was put to sleep prior to surgery, it was a pleasant experience. If I would have died during the surgery it would have been a really peacefull death.

Me too, I just went to sleep like that when they gave me the anaesthetic . I would never know if I didnt wake up . Its a shame I did.

 

[Myforevercharlie]

No Idea. I'll tell you in a few years:)

 

[KillingPain267]

A study showed that only 1/5 deaths in old age were peaceful. The rest were often protracted painful and confusiing processes.

 

[Unspoken7612]

So this is probably apparent to most people, but not everyone: "old age" doesn't actually kill you.

There are many age-related illnesses which can kill. Some of these can be quick and peaceful, others slow.

 

[ctb2soble]

I've yet to see one old person die with dignity. All my family members who died at 65+ years old died either in a hospital or in a care home with daily aches and pains and a ton of medicine to keep their living corpse still breathing for a little while longer. I refuse to let that be my future. If I don't kill myself while I'm still relatively young, I'm definitely doing it once the doctors say I have to go on some medicine long term or start trying to put me into a care home. I'd rather just exit this life while my body is still in good working order than suffer for 10-30 years because society says that's what your supposed to do.

 

[BlueButterfly19]

I've yet to see one old person die with dignity. All my family members who died at 65+ years old died either in a hospital or in a care home with daily aches and pains and a ton of medicine to keep their living corpse still breathing for a little while longer. I refuse to let that be my future. If I don't kill myself while I'm still relatively young, I'm definitely doing it once the doctors say I have to go on some medicine long term or start trying to put me into a care home. I'd rather just exit this life while my body is still in good working order than suffer for 10-30 years because society says that's what your supposed to do.

After all of the discussion in this thread about how shitty life is when you're old, I'm definitely considering CTBing once they tell me I have to go in a nursing home if I haven't already done it before then.

 

[Praying 4 a Miracle]

Thanks to modern medicine, we are keeping people around much longer, which is great for those who can stay healthy the entire way through their lifetime. But for 80% to 90% of people, this will not be the case. According to Forbes, only 10% to 15% of us will drop dead of natural causes. Other statistics show that only one in five will die peacefully in the end.

Dying of natural causes is no longer a peaceful way to go. This is why the world has got to (and will) change it's attitude on medically assisted dying. The world is actually right on the edge of a tipping point on this issue. It just needs a nudge, and I believe that medically assisted dying will be available to all adults who feel they are suffering intolerantly.

The word is getting out quickly that this issue is not going to just affect a fringe group of people, it's going to affect the vast majority of us. 80 to 90% of us are going to end up suffering chronically at some point in our lives.

 

[pariah80]

I guess it depends on someone's health. If their health remains relatively 'okay', then I guess it can be. However, with the American healthcare system going the way it's going, and Gen Z will be the caretakers, fuck growing old in this. Pro-lifers can have ALL of that!!!

 

[ctb2soble]

After all of the discussion in this thread about how shitty life is when you're old, I'm definitely considering CTBing once they tell me I have to go in a nursing home if I haven't already done it before then.

Nursing homes are just coffins you pay to live and suffer in until they put you six feet under. No one can convince me otherwise after the BS I've seen my family go through living and dying in them. My grandmother had lived independently until she had a stroke in her late 80s. My mom and her siblings promptly threw her into a nursing home and had a surprised Pikachu face when she gave up on life and quickly died right after that. I saluted her for not staying in that crap hole any longer than she had to, and giving up and dying instead.

 

[Elenysium]

Can't really tell from experience, but just from observing some older relatives (90+ years old) I can see that being old is a tough experience, both physically and mentally.

"Dying in your sleep" does sound peaceful, but that doesn't happen exclusively to old people...

 

[MatrixPrisoner]

Even if it was, the world just keeps getting exponentially worse. So it is going to be suffering regardless.

The Data Says This Is How You Will Die

Just try not to die from a selfie accident.

www.vice.com

 

[Leiot]

I'm 66 so I'm approaching that age pretty rapidly. I have chronic pain from an accident some 40 years ago and some other health issues. I made peace with my demons a long time ago. When life gets to the point there's no sense in staying here I'm gone. I want to die being able to recognize my friends and say goodbye and not in dementia or hooked to a machine. I think it's cruel to make someone feel guilty about sticking around just so the family can feel better about itself. Think of the families that have gone bankrupt paying for some shitty assisted living facility when their loved ones don't even know who they are or where they're at. To me, that's a crime.

 

[dust-in-the-wind]

this world is the freaking matrix. . i worked in a nursing home. old age is hell.

there is nothing that is objectively important ,good or valuable. also what will matter in a 1000 years. nothing matters.

to me the only things that matter are avoiding extreme suffering and unbearable pain. we all die anyway.

no one can prove there is an objective reason why i should have to live another minute or to want to live another minute or to do anything

below is an excerpt from this article written by a doctor worked in a nursing home. i saw much worse by a billion times than this:

Who By Very Slow Decay

[Trigger warning: Death, pain, suffering, sadness] I. Some people, having completed the traditional forms of empty speculation – “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, &#8220…

slatestarcodex.com

If you are like the patients I see dying, then here is how you will go.

You will grow old. When you were young, you would go to institutions and gradually gather letters after your name: BA, MD, PhD. Now that you are old, you do the same thing, but they are different institutions and different letters. Your doctors will introduce you to their colleagues as "Mary Smith, COPD, PVD, ESRD, IDDM". With each set of letters comes another decrease in quality of life.

At first these sacrifices will be minor. The COPD means you have to breathe from an oxygen tank you carry around wherever you go. The PVD will prevent you from walking more than a few feet at a time. The ESRD will require three hours dialysis in a hospital or outpatient dialysis center three times a week. The IDDM will require insulin shots after every meal. Not fun, but hardly inconsistent with a life worth living.


Eventually these will add up beyond your ability to manage them on your own, and you will be sent off to a nursing home. This will seem like a reasonable enough idea, and sometimes it goes well. Other times it gives you freedom to develop a completely new set of morbidities totally unconstrained by what a person in any other situation could possibly be expected to survive.

You will become bedridden, unable to walk or even to turn yourself over. You will become completely dependent on nurse assistants to intermittently shift your position to avoid pressure ulcers. When they inevitably slip up, your skin develops huge incurable sores that can sometimes erode all the way to the bone, and which are perpetually infected with foul-smelling bacteria. Your limbs will become practically vestigial organs, like the appendix, and when your vascular disease gets too bad, one or more will be amputated, sacrifices to save the host. Urinary and fecal continence disappear somewhere in the process, so you're either connected to catheters or else spend a while every day lying in a puddle of your own wastes until the nurses can help you out. The digestive system isn't too happy either by this point, so you can either have a tube plugged directly into your stomach or just skip the middleman and have an IV line feeding nutrients into your bloodstream.

Somewhere in the process your mind very quietly and without fanfare gives up the ghost. It starts with forgetting a couple of little things, and progresses until you have no idea what's going on ever. In medical jargon, healthy people are "alert and oriented x 3", which means oriented to person (you know your name), oriented to time (you know what day/month/year it is), and oriented to place (you know you're in a hospital). My patients who have the sorts of issues I mentioned in the last paragraph are generally alert and oriented x0. They don't remember their own names, they don't know where they are or what they're doing there, and they think it's the 1930s or the 1950s or don't even have a concept of years at all. When you're alert and oriented x0, the world becomes this terrifying place where you are stuck in some kind of bed and can't move and people are sticking you with very large needles and forcing tubes down your throat and you have no idea why or what's going on.

So of course you start screaming and trying to attack people and trying to pull the tubes and IV lines out. Every morning when I come in to work I have to check the nurses' notes for what happened the previous night, and every morning a couple of my patients have tried to pull all of their tubes and lines out. If it's especially bad they try to attack the staff, and although the extremely elderly are really bad at attacking people this is nevertheless Unacceptable Behavior and they have to be restrained ie tied down to the bed. A presumably more humane alternative sometimes used instead or in addition is to just drug you up on all of those old-timey psychiatric medications that actual psychiatrists don't use anymore because of their bad reputation.

You can opt for no feeding tube in your health care proxy. Then VSED your way out.

 

[TheBroken]

I'm 66 so I'm approaching that age pretty rapidly. I have chronic pain from an accident some 40 years ago and some other health issues. I made peace with my demons a long time ago. When life gets to the point there's no sense in staying here I'm gone. I want to die being able to recognize my friends and say goodbye and not in dementia or hooked to a machine. I think it's cruel to make someone feel guilty about sticking around just so the family can feel better about itself. Think of the families that have gone bankrupt paying for some shitty assisted living facility when their loved ones don't even know who they are or where they're at. To me, that's a crime.

Agree to all of this.

 

[Fate]

You can opt for no feeding tube in your health care proxy. Then VSED your way out.

Not If you're known to have mental illness issues and suicidal ideation, they'll do anything to save you against your will

 

[heatdeath]

If things turn around, I'd want to die at like 50 at the absolute LATEST if I don't do it myself way before then (I'm 37 I think).

For my generation, dying of old age requires TONS of money and family. Both of which I don't have. Family, maybe, but they like my little sister WAY fucking better. Fuck her.

 

[ringo99]

Dying of old age is pleasant only if you pass away in your sleep through a heart attack or something similar. The vast majority of old people today die suffering until the very last second

 

[Leiot]

You can opt for no feeding tube in your health care proxy. Then VSED your way out.

Not always. The family can just about always overrule your wishes as far at the medical profession is concerned. I would personally come back and curse that person's family for generations if someone did that to me.

 

[J&L383]

It's a crap shoot. If the brain could be ordered to shut down the body instantly (N will do that!) it would be easy but things deteriorate differently. Your best hope is that the lingering can be minimized with palliative care.