Method Suffocation by a plastic bag ?

[tender]

Do you think a simple plastic bag over head could do the job ?

 

[JVC]

Do you think a simple plastic bag over head could do the job ?

very unlikely. How are you going to let yourself suffocate to death? Your neurotransmitters will go crazy, and your body won't allow you to stay in that state and will react accordingly.

 

[crybarr]

I second with JVC that it would be very unlikely. But might be possible if you take a high dose of sedatives and try to tie the bag over your head before you go unconscious. But that would still be rather uncertain.

 

[tender]

What if i resist and get through these step ? I want to Die , but im affraid of missing too.
Anyway i will try it tonight , im too tired for anyrhing , i Hope it will work.

 

[Talvikki]

The myth of the plastic bag (1)

In theory, the method works as follows: first, you take sleeping pills. Before falling asleep, you pull a loose plastic bag over your head and secure it around your neck with an elastic band or Velcro. While sitting, you hold the bag open at your neck with your hand until you fall asleep. The oxygen inside the plastic bag runs out after about twenty minutes, so you would suffocate in your sleep due to lack of oxygen. But that is usually not what happens. (2)

How does it actually happen? People who were there say that someone falls asleep, but after about ten minutes starts moving violently due to the increase in carbon dioxide in the bag. You struggle to gasp for air, just as you struggle when you are pushed underwater. This causes the plastic bag to shift slightly. Just enough to let air in past the elastic, even if it is secured tightly around the neck. Then the person sleeps on until the sedatives wear off. You wake up with the hangover of a failed suicide attempt. People are ashamed of this, and that is why failures rarely become known.

Chris Docker (2013) advises holding the bag open at your neck with your hand or a cord until you fall asleep. However, this does not prevent failure: the struggle to get air only begins after you have fallen asleep. As soon as you get air again through a small opening at the neck, you fall back asleep. In about half of the cases where an eyewitness was present but did not actively intervene, the method failed. (3)

Three researchers have independently reported that the method was often only effective after others had secured the bag around the neck and held the arms of the person who had fallen asleep. (4) Those present do not dare to talk about their assisting role in the suicide. A confidant who is present and knows how much their loved one longed for death will give in to the temptation to re-secure the bag around the neck and then hold the loved one's hands so that they cannot remove the bag. (5) This can lead to lifelong feelings of guilt, and to lifelong silence, due to the risk of prosecution. Thus, the myth of the plastic bag persists.

In Het Schotse boekje (NVVE, 1996), it was asserted that 'with fast-acting and long-acting sedatives, used in combination with a plastic bag secured over your head, you will die from lack of oxygen'. (6) No attention was drawn to the high probability that this would fail due to involuntary movements, nor to the risk that those present might actively assist out of compassion.

Well, some reason that if it fails, at least no damage has been done. No brain injury has ever been reported following a failed attempt with a plastic bag. Nevertheless, the adage 'if it doesn't help, it won't hurt' is misplaced: every failure is a miserable experience for someone who deliberately wishes to end their life. And a burden for those present. The use of a plastic bag does cause harm. The NVVE has since removed the advice to use a plastic bag for suicide from its website.

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(1) Uitweg 2024 (Boudewijn Chabot)

(2) The plastic bag method made the news during a lawsuit against the care provider Muns. An elderly woman used a plastic bag in combination with sedatives. The care provider thought the bag was properly secured. Half an hour later, she died. But what did the police discover? There was no condensation on the inside of the bag, as there would be if the bag were properly sealed. Blood tests revealed that the sedatives were the probable cause of death, in combination with her poor physical condition.

(3) Chabot 1996 (together with K. Gill) provides rare information from the CBS in Chapter 9 regarding the frequency of deaths caused by the plastic bag method. Chabot 2016 revisits the plastic bag method in light of the study by Magnusson 2002, which confirms its unreliability.

(4) Ogden 1994, Jamison 1996, Magnusson 2002.

(5) Ogden 1994 gives examples of this.

(6) The NVVE discontinued the sale of The Scottish Booklet in 2006. The plastic bag method has not been mentioned on the NVVE's private website since 2018.

 

[bed]

i tried this more than a decade ago now and even tied my hands with duct tape behind my back which was really hard to do properly but it didn't work. forced my hands to break out of the duct tape after a few mins and instinctively took the bag off. i had a bad headache for a few days from what i recall and that was it