Better Dying Through Chemicals

Disclaimer: Crank does not take responsibility for any inaccurate or just plain wrong information contained herein. Crank does, however, happily take responsibility for any deaths and/or injuries which are the direct result of making this information available to the public.

Credit: Most of the raw data and anecdotes in this article were taken from the alt.suicide.holidays newsgroup. But I refuse to give them too much credit--it took me days to edit out the bad grammar, banal comments and inferior Brit spellings.

Notes of Methodology: Most drugs, taken in large quantity, will induce vomiting. To prevent this, take one or two anti-histamine tablets (travel sickness, allergy, hay fever tablets, etc.) an hour before on a fairly empty stomach.

If your poison of choice is in tablet form, swallow the first 20% as normal. (A larger quantity may induce vomiting or impede absorption.) Take the remainder with food or a strong alcohol, crushed or dissolved as appropriate; this will help the entire dose to hit your system at the same time. Alcohol helps dissolve the drugs, but don't drink any beforehand! Instead, wash the tablets down with vodka or a similar spirit, and then drink yourself silly while you're still conscious.

To increase your odds of death, secure a large, airtight plastic bag over your head. Also consider securing a rubber band around your neck. This can bring your odds from "good" to "almost certain," in case the drugs don't work as expected.

Friday night is a good time to die, if you live alone--nobody will miss you until Monday morning. Bolt all the doors and windows, and tell your neighbors or friends that you'll be away. If you've got a loyal dog, set it free--you just don't want to be featured on the nightly news as the chump whose dog dialed 9-1-1 and saved his life.

Be aware that people who regularly use painkillers can develop a tolerance. Increase the dosage accordingly.

Alcohol

Dosage: Variable
Time To Die: About 8 hours
Availability: Wonderfully easy to get
Certain Death?: Unreliable
The Savvy Suicide: Drink it all at the same time, as quickly as possible. Will cause liver and kidney damage if 'rescued' before death. Dosage is questionable.
Science Facts: Ingesting spirits as an enema is supposed to be a very quick way of absorbing alcohol; even better, inject it. Dosage varies according to method of ingestion, the individual's tolerance, and the health of the individual's liver.
So They Say: "The fatal dose of pure alcohol in an average adult is 300-400 mL (750-1000 mL of 40% alcohol) if consumed in less than one hour. Apart from the effects of overdosage, death after alcohol consumption can occur as a result of choking on vomit while unconscious...Consequences such as liver damage occur after chronic consumption."

Amobarbital
(amytal, amal, eunoctal, etamyl, stadadorm)
Dosage: 4.5 grams, typically ninety 50mg tablets
Time To Die: Unconsciousness in 5-15 minutes; death in 20-50 minutes
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Very reliable
The Savvy Suicide: More effective when used with an airtight bag over one's head and a rubber band around one's neck. Alcohol accelerates the process and increases reliability.

Aspirin
Dosage: 20-30+ grams
Time To Die: Variable: hours to days
Availability: Easy to get
Certain Death?: Unreliable
The Savvy Suicide: Not recommended. Fatal dose varies wildly, could cause liver & kidney damage instead of death. Too many cause vomiting. Overdose causes strange noises in your ears and projectile vomiting after about 10 hours. Medical help generally effective, so stay out of hospital for a couple of days. May cause bleeding in your stomach and/or upper intestines. To speed up absorption, take with sodium bicarbonate (bicarbonate of soda).

Bleach
(also lye, drain cleaning fluids)
Dosage: One half to one liter
Time To Die: Variable: hours to days
Availability: Easy to get
Certain Death?: Uncertain
The Savvy Suicide: This method depends on your stomach corroding, thereby releasing stomach acids to destroy vital organs. A painful way to go.
So They Say: "I have heard of people throwing themselves through plate glass windows in their death agonies after drinking lye."

Butabarbital
(secbutobarbitone, butisol, ethnor)
Dosage: 3 grams, typically one hundred 30mg tablets
Time To Die: Unconsciousness in 5-15 minutes; death in 20-50 minutes
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Very reliable
The Savvy Suicide: More effective when used with an airtight bag over one's head and a rubber band around one's neck. Alcohol accelerates the process and increases reliability.

Caffeine
Dosage: 20 grams
Time To Die: Unknown
Availability: Easy to get
Certain Death?: Without much data or secondhand accounts, the lethality of caffeine remains uncertain.
Science Facts: An average cup of coffee contains roughly 200 mg, as does one caffeine pill such as Vivarin.

Carbon Monoxide
Dosage: 5% concentration
Time To Die: Minutes to hours
Availability: Easy to get: car exhaust, for one
Certain Death?: Fairly certain
The Savvy Suicide: Causes brain damage to survivors. Skin becomes fire engine red, making the coroner's job easy.
Science Facts: The actual cause of death is asphyxiation, since the carbon monoxide binds tighter to hemoglobin than oxygen does (the oxygen gets crowded out, so to speak).
So They Say: "Urban legend tells of one couple who tried to kill themselves by filling their apartment with carbon monoxide. Unfortunately, the heavier-than-air carbon monoxide leaked through the floor and killed the people in the apartment below."

Chloral Hydrate
(noctec, chloratex, somnox)
Dosage: More than 10 grams, typically more than twenty 500mg tablets
Time To Die: Info not available
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Not effective by itself
The Savvy Suicide: Mix with alcohol and restrict breathing with a bag and rubber band.

Chlorine gas
Dosage: Unknown
Time To Die: Unknown
Availability: Tricky
Certain Death?: Good
The Savvy Suicide: Used in World War One, known to be a very unpleasant death.

Chloroform
Dosage: Unknown (a soaked rag?)
Time To Die: Several minutes
Availability: Fairly easy to get
Certain Death?: Unknown
The Savvy Suicide: Victim will become unconscious first, so steps must be taken to ensure a continued ingestion. Perhaps taping the soaked rag over one's mouth?

Cocaine
Dosage: 1 ounce (?)
Time To Die: 2 to 3 hours (?)
Availability: Possibly difficult; very expensive
Certain Death?: Unknown
The Savvy Suicide: Cocaine overdose induces a heart attack. Along the way, expect severe paranoia and breathing problems. It is not uncommon for drug mules to swallow bags or condoms of cocaine, only to have them accidentally burst in transit, killing them quite handily.

Codeine
Dosage: 2.4 grams, typically eight 30mg tablets
Time To Die: Unconsciousness in 5-15 minutes; death in 20-50 minutes
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Very reliable
The Savvy Suicide: More effective when used with an airtight bag over one's head and a rubber band around one's neck. Alcohol accelerates the process and increases reliability. Be warned than tolerance develops with "normal" use.

Cyanide
(HCN, KCN)
Dosage: 50 mg Hydrogen Cyanide gas, 200-300 mg Cyanide salts
Time To Die: Seconds for gas; minutes for the salts on an empty stomach; possibly hours on a full stomach
Availability: Very difficult to secure
Certain Death?: Very certain
The Savvy Suicide: Instead of ingesting cyanide salt orally, drop 500mg into a strong acid. The fumes will be pure Hydrogen Cyanide, capable of killing within seconds.
Science Facts: Hydrocyanic acid is one of the most poisonous substances known; the inhalation of its fumes in high concentration will cause almost immediate death. Hydrogen cyanide acts by preventing the normal process of tissue oxidation and paralyzing the respiratory center in the brain. Most of the accidental cases are due to inhaling the fumes during a fumigating process. In the pure state it kills with great rapidity. Crystalline cyanides, such as potassium or sodium cyanide are equally poisonous, since they interact with the hydrochloric acid in the stomach to liberate hydrocyanic acid. This poison has been used for both homicide and suicide; in recent history, a number of European political figures carried vials of cyanide salt for emergency self-destruction and some used them. Death resulted from amounts of only a fraction of a gram. A concentration of 1 part in 500 of hydrogen cyanide gas is fatal. Allowable working concentration in most of the United States is 20 ppm. Two and one-half grains of liquid acid has killed. The acid acts fatally in about 15 minutes. The cyanide salts kill in several hours. The average dose of solution is 0.1 cc.
The Savvy Suicide: Stomach acids will react with Cyanide salts to form Hydrogen Cyanide, so an empty stomach is a great advantage.

Diazepam
(valium, apozepam, aliseum, ducene)
Dosage: 500 milligrams, typically one hundred 5mg tablets
Time To Die: Info not available
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Unreliable
The Savvy Suicide: Not effective by itself. Mix with alcohol and restrict breathing with a bag and rubber band.

Flurazepam
(dalmane, dalmadorm, niotal)
Dosage: 3 grams, typically one hundred 30mg tablets
Time To Die: Info not available
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Not effective by itself
The Savvy Suicide: Mix with alcohol and restrict breathing with a bag and rubber band.

Gasoline
(inhaled/injected)
Dosage: 20 ml (?)
Time To Die: Seconds/minutes
Availability: Very easy to get
Certain Death?: With correct dosage, a reliable method.
So They Say: "You can also use propane or butane on a skin surface. Go stick your hand in a bucket of propane and see how many seconds you last..."

Gluthethimide
(doriden, doridene, glimid)
Dosage: 24 grams, typically forty eight 500mg tablets
Time To Die: Info not available
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Not effective by itself
The Savvy Suicide: Mix it with alcohol and restrict breathing with a bag and rubber band.

Heroin
Dosage: 120 to 500 mg for non-users
Time To Die: Unknown
Availability: Difficult (and, like cocaine, expensive)
Certain Death?: Unknown
The Savvy Suicide: Combined with alcohol, a lethal dose might be reduced.

Hydrazine
Dosage: As produced by reaction (see below)
Time To Die: Unknown (2 weeks?)
Availability: Easy to get
Certain Death?: Not known
Science Facts: Commonly produced by mixing a bottle of bleach and a bottle of ammonia. A fairly common way for illiterate cleaning people to accidentally kill themselves.
So They Say: "Several years ago at my high school, one of the janitors innocently mixed together half a bottle of bleach with half a bottle of of ammonia in a small closet where the cleaning fluids were kept. He passed out due to the hydrazine gas released in the reaction between the two chemicals. This man was in agony for two weeks in an intensive care unit in a local hospital with the majority of the inside surface of his lungs damaged and untreatable before he got lucky and died."

Hydromorphone
(dilaudid, pentagone)
Dosage: 100-200 milligrams, typically 50-100 2mg tablets
Time To Die: Unconsciousness in 5-15 minutes; death in 20-50 minutes
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Not effective by itself
The Savvy Suicide: Mix it with alcohol and restrict breathing with a bag and rubber band.

Insulin
(injected)
Dosage: Unknown
Time To Die: Hours-days
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Reasonable
The Savvy Suicide: Rumored to be quite a pleasant way to go.

Iron
Dosage: Unknown
Time To Die: Unknown
Availability: Easy to get
Certain Death?: Good
So They Say: "It seems that iron pills oxidize in the stomach and eat a hole through it. The only reason I know this is that someone at my school just recently overdosed and died from this. It was ruled suicide since no person could accidentally take that many iron pills. They didn't say how many she took or how many it takes to kill yourself though."

Malathion
(insecticide)
Dosage: A few bottles
Time To Die: 2 to 3 hours
Availability: Found commercially at large garden centers
Certain Death?: Unreliable
Science Facts: Dosage to knock off a rat is 1 gram per kilogram of body weight. If that ratio holds for an adult human, then acquiring the necessary amount might be too difficult.
The Savvy Suicide: Parathion is recommended as a better insecti-suicide.

Meperidine
Dosage: 3.6 grams, typically 72 50mg tablets
Time To Die: Unconscious in 5-15 minutes, death in 20-50 minutes
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Not effective by itself
The Savvy Suicide: Mix it with alcohol and restrict breathing with a bag and rubber band.

Meprobamate
(miltown, equanil)
Dosage: 45 grams, typically 112 400mg tablets
Time To Die: Info not available
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Not effective by itself
The Savvy Suicide: Mix it with alcohol and restrict breathing with a bag and rubber band.

Mercury
(salts, soluble)
Dosage: 1 gram of salts
Time To Die: Unknown
Availability: Unknown
Certain Death?: Good
Science Facts: Contrary to popular opinion, pure mercury metal isn't all that poisonous. The soluble salts are, however. The "mad hatter" story refers to brain damage that hat makers used to get from using mercury salts.

Methadone
(dolophine, adanon)
Dosage: 300 milligram, typically sixty 5mg tablets
Time To Die: Unconscious in 5-15 minutes, death in 20-50 minutes
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Not effective by itself
The Savvy Suicide: Mix it with alcohol and restrict breathing with a bag and rubber band. Tolerance develops with use.

Methyprylon
Dosage: 15 grams, typically fifty 300mg tablets
Time To Die: Info not available
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Not effective by itself
The Savvy Suicide: Mix it with alcohol and restrict breathing with a bag and rubber band.

Morphine
Dosage: 200 milligrams, typically fourteen 15mg tablets
Time To Die: Unconsciousness in 5-15 min.; death in 20-50 min.
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Not effective by itself
The Savvy Suicide: Mix it with alcohol and restrict breathing with a bag and rubber band. Tolerance develops with use.

Nicotine
Dosage: 100g (?) extracted from tobacco; 40-60 mg pure
Time To Die: Several hours
Availability: Easy to get
Certain Death?: Fairly certain, given a large enough dose
The Savvy Suicide: Side effects include violent convulsions. The direct cause of death is respiratory failure. Smokers should use larger doses than non-smokers. Coma may set in before death.
So They Say: "Soak 100 grams of tobacco for a few days. You get a brown mess. Strain off the tobacco, then simmer slowly until most of the liquid has gone, leaving about 2 teaspoons of brown treacle-like stuff. Add it to your night-time drink, and never wake up. Someone once said that 150 mg of pure nicotine would be fatal in seconds."

Nitrogen gas
Dosage: Minimum: several liters, uncompressed
Time To Die: Minutes
Availability: Possible through plumbing or welding supplier
Certain Death?: Certain
Science Facts: While the victim dies from asphyxiation, it is not a lack of oxygen; rather an excess of carbon dioxide deals the lethal blow.

Nitrous oxide
Dosage: Unknown
Time To Die: Minutes
Availability: Fairly easy to get
Certain Death?: Reasonable
The Savvy Suicide: Accidental deaths are not uncommon. Probably a pleasant way to go.

Paracetamol
(acetaminophen)
Dosage: 15+ grams; 20+ recommended
Time To Die: Fatal damage occurs in 10 hours, but fatality will not occur for another 2 weeks
Availability: Easy to get
Certain Death?: Fairly reliable
Science Facts: Horrible side effects during the 2 week dying time, including acute toxic hepatitis, renal failure, cerebral oedema, intra-abdominal bleeding, aspiration pneumonia and hemophilia. Insufficient dose causes severe liver damage. Accidental deaths are very common. Besides vomiting and nausea, there are few, if any, side effects before the damage becomes fatal.

Pentobarbital
Dosage: 3 grams, typically thirty 100mg tablets
Time To Die: Unconsciousness in 5-15 minutes, death in 20-50 minutes
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Very reliable with plastic bag and rubber band

Phenobarbital
Dosage: 4.5 grams, typically 150 30mg tablets
Time To Die: Info not available
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Not effective by itself
The Savvy Suicide: Mix it with alcohol and restrict breathing with a bag and rubber band.

Phosphine gas
(From Aluminum pesticide, ALP)
Dosage: 3 grams
Time To Die: About 2 hours
Availability: Difficult to get
Certain Death?: Very good
The Savvy Suicide: After severe vomiting, the victim loses consciousness, the blood vessels rupture and body cavities fill with blood. Some escape death because the efficacy of the gas decreases as the pill ages and is exposed to moisture.
Science Facts: There is no specific antidote to this, so a single 3-gram pill contains enough ALP, which produces lethal phosphine gas when it comes in contact with hydrochloric acid or water in the stomach, to kill quite nicely.
So They Say: "A common method for Indian villagers."
So They Say: "One 3-gram tablet is enough to kill 10 people."

Potassium Chloride
Dosage: Not known (20cc injected in a strong solution is recommended)
Time To Die: Seconds to minutes
Availability: Widely available
Certain Death?: Certain
Science Facts: Causes heart attack, leading to sometimes ambiguous coroner reports.
Science Facts: An excess of K+ in the blood interferes with nerve signals and stops muscles and nerves from working. When it reaches your heart, you're finished.

Propoxyphene
(darvon, dolotard, abalgin, antalvic, depronal)
Dosage: 2 grams, typically thirty 65mg tablets
Time To Die: About one hour
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Fairly certain
The Savvy Suicide: This does not make you unconscious. It is suggested that you combine this drug with a sleeping pill and the bad/rubber band rig.

Secobarbital
(quinalbarbitone, seconal, immenox, dormona, secogen)
Dosage: 4.5 grams, typically forty five 100mg tablets
Time To Die: Unconsciousness in 5-15 minutes, death in 20-50 minutes
Availability: Prescription only
Certain Death?: Not effective by itself
The Savvy Suicide: Mix it with alcohol and restrict breathing with a bag and rubber band.

Warfarin
(Rat poison)
Dosage: Unknown
Time To Die: Hours to fatal damage; days to actual fatality
Availability: Easy to get
Certain Death?: Very certain
Science Facts: According to speculation, this poison functions by causing severe a cerebral hemorrhage, since it kills rats by inducing hemophilia. Medical help is said to be futile; victims are left to die in agony. Skeptics dismiss this as melodramatic claptrap, citing the good health and ordinary lives of human hemophiliacs.