Why Do People Commit Suicide? | Andy Stumpf & Dr. Andrew Huberman

Understanding the Suicide Crisis

00:00in the larger outside world now uh you know we are seeing much more suicide let's just be real blunt and it's not just men it's women too but it does seem to be higher among men these days you know it raises some really complicated but I think important questions around what is going through people's minds that would lead them them to think that it was or should be the end of the line for them for themselves goes against every bit of adaptive evolutionary biology.

00:31It goes against all religious doctrine in terms of what's adaptive. So, you know, there's no straightforward answer to this. But earlier we were talking about before we were recording perhaps people get into a tunnel of the idea that the way they feel in a given moment is the way it's going to be forever.

00:48So two guys sitting here who are not in that state to yeah kind of wonder about that is uh we can only speculate but what do you think based on what you've observed and you welcome to share if you like this from your book you talk about Dave yeah is there any understanding of of what's going on for people in the in the days weeks months moments leading up to uh those decisions that you know maybe we can do some good here and help people identify if they are starting to enter that it's always going to feel like this mode.

01:22Man, there have been so many conversations about this and there are so many programs that exist to try to help. I I'll say guys because that's the

Special Operations Community Statistics

01:31community that I came from with this. The Green Beret community has now lost more people to suicide than combat operations since 2001. What? Yep. I don't know where the SEAL community is with that, but I bet you they're close. The numbers will eclipse for sure.

01:49So it is an issue that it is an unavoidable issue. Every situation is different to a degree that they share some similarities. The so in speaking specifically of the SEAL teams, I mean there's the biggest similarity, right? They came from that community and they probably had some semblance of shared experiences whether that be deployments, time away from family, the psychological and physiological stresses of the job, but it doesn't seem to impact everybody equally either.

02:20Everybody's experiences differ. You could be in a room I was going to say with six people, but it's unlikely you'll be in a room with six people just because u we don't generally have that many people and we try to solve issues with as few as possible.

02:34Let's say four. I have no understanding why the same shared experience although maybe viewed from a slightly different angle in totality could break somebody but not the other three or why everybody has a different volume of you know somebody's got this much volume versus this much versus a thimble and I don't I don't understand why those experiences seem to break some people or in my opinion I think they can if you put the work can make you an even better version of yourself.

03:06And I also think that you can pour some of the stuff out or drill a hole in the bottom and work through these things. [snorts] Dave being the example, the things that stick out would be, and again, this is me. This is me speaking. I can't speak for Dave.

03:24There was a huge delta, I think, between how he thought of himself and how other people thought of him. And in most of the funerals that I've gone to that involve suicide, the number one question is why? Why didn't somebody reach out for help or and maybe they did because you you know you don't I mean I guess you could look at their electronic device or maybe it was a face to face.

03:51It's hard to say. But the difference in what Dave left behind, he left behind some journals. And I think that there are pros and cons. If you are in a place where you have the opportunity to read somebody's what they have left behind and not, you may not want to know.

04:13It may make it more difficult because I've also seen people attach a a very immense amount of grief because they either think that what was written and left behind was specifically about them or they oh man I was there and I could have you know the could have would have should have which is all hypothetical and doesn't change the fact that it already happened but I've seen people deeply deeply struggle with that.

04:35[snorts] So that would be the negative. The pro could be perhaps I don't know closure. So it really depends on the person. choose wisely. As somebody who has uh experienced that [snorts] um my experience is it was a combination of both. I I felt a deeper level of understanding but also a deep sense I wish I would have done more [snorts] the internal struggles and self-t talk and monologue.

05:05I couldn't read it without crying.

Self-Perception Versus Reality

05:10And I don't think he realized how highly other people thought of him. The gap between the two is just unbelievable. He he and not everybody is. He was isolated at the time. There was alcohol involved to the best of my knowledge, which unfortunately, especially in the community that I come from, those two things are pretty often tied.

05:34Not always, but often tied to alcohol in that decision as well. And the stats are pretty well back about, you know, the alcohol being, you could speak to this, and you know, the central nervous system depressant. It's not like, yay, I'm feeling the best I've ever felt.

05:47It generally will spiral you in the other direction. But when I look at Dave, he was and is to this day what I would consider to be the standard for a team guy. And what I loved about him so much is that not only did he expect that standard from other people, but he held himself and actually more than that.

06:06I think I would say he held himself to a higher standard than he would hold other people to. If you met his standard, you were going to get two thumbs up. Probably not a pat on the back, but you were going to get two thumbs up and you were going to know you did a good job.

06:19If you did not meet his standard, which I tested many times, you were very specifically told where you're deficient in life. and as a human being. And he god, he had a tongue like a whip. He was awesome. And uh I think at the end, and this is me speaking for him a little bit, I think he arrived at a place where he couldn't live with the reality that he couldn't hold himself to the standard that he had expected from other people.

06:51And I think it destroyed him. But I don't know if he shared that with anybody. I don't think so. some of the last people that he spoke with knew that he was struggling for sure. He he had an alcohol addiction issue for sure. And for clarity, I mean, that's Dave would be pissed actually if I didn't mention that cuz he would never tolerate anybody else beating around the bush.

07:13He legitimately had an issue with alcohol, as some people do from that community. They knew that he was struggling. He's the only guy I know who did multiple treatments of I have zero experience in psychedelics, but from listening to people talk about Iawaska and I gain rides that don't seem to be a very good time and often times will instantaneously change the relationship they have with substances whether it's opiates or alcohol.

07:39Not that you would never drink again, but their their relationship with it just shifts. They're like, "You know what? Uh, I don't even have the desire to do so." 72 hours later, 96 hours later, and it's not like he just tried once. He would go back.

07:54He would even facilitate treatment for other people, but it wasn't working for him, but he wasn't he wasn't sharing that. And that isolation and loneliness and that difference between that standard and what he was able to do got him to that place where he put a gun in his mouth, you know, alone, isolated at his family home in Florida.

08:23And when everybody showed up at the funeral, it's like, what could we what could we have done more? And that happens at every nobody's at a funeral saying did everything I could. never have heard that by the way that just God I nailed it. I'm like really exhibit A would like none of us nailed it.

08:41We all [ __ ] up or did we do the best that we could and it's something that we can't stop. I don't know. I have I've started to have pretty deep conversations with friends around from that community around what can be done. I don't think uh an absolutionist approach is good.

08:59I think

Seeking Solutions & Programs

09:01driving to zero is possible is impossible because it's a it's a an affliction that strikes all of humanity. A reductionist approach I think is helpful. But at this point I don't know what else can be done. I mean millions of dollars advocated towards these type of programs things like Ambio you know just south of the border or what Marcus and Amber component are doing with vets which are largely an interface to the there's portals and people and I'm on some of these groups where even the inkling somebody is in trouble or you need help like people are they're trying to get stuff done getting

09:39connected people are getting on airplanes and I was with mutual friend DJ I think it was last week in one of his new guys who had become a team leader who had gotten out just killed himself and both and we we sit there with faces like this with things that are un that we don't know what to say in between us.

10:01I don't know. I don't know what's going on there. Yeah. Well, I certainly don't know either. I think that um if we can borrow anything useful from other areas of uh mental health and neuroscience because it I think ultimately this is a brain issue right I don't think it's like a gut health issue although that could impact it right I might be wrong right it could be yeah I mean that it could be but but I think it's a a thought process that leads to a decision that you know and that's in the brain so if we were to just take like start at ground truths not to try and make this reduction we'd

10:38say maybe suicidality is not one thing just like we know that you can get a fever from a lot of things. I don't want to say no one is immune because I do think that fortunately it's you know not everybody but maybe everyone has the potential to go there and there's certain buffers that we're not aware of.

10:55You might come out of the box immune to it but I think either something psychologically or physiologically can happen that maybe could open a door that had started off closed. Mhm. That's a guess.

High Performers & Isolation

11:07In all these instances they're leaping to mind of unfortunately real life suicides, every single one of the people um was a very high performer at one point, highly very highly regarded, revered, etc. And so I I think you've really um touched on something important which is that this notion of like it's lonely at the top that there's it's true that there's people are busy you know there's not the general public is not so concerned about you know winners and their plight you know but when you hear about something like this you know um you realize that it people can be quite

11:43lonely and perhaps as the number of true peers that somebody has because they're in a leadership position over already ultra high performers the need to impress, the need to not have their their image shattered is it goes up and up and up and up.

11:55There might be something there. I think there's certainly important work to be done, but there aren't real data, I don't think, on the number of people who were kind of veering in this direction, but somebody reached out. Yeah. And then they're 6 months later saying, "Hey, thanks.

12:10You know, I, you know, you really helped me back when, and maybe they weren't right at that edge." Yeah. So, we don't have data on what worked to keep people away from this edge either. So, it's a really tough problem, but you know, tough problems are tractable.

12:24Yeah. I worry less about the guys who are able to verbalize what they're going through. It's the ones who are more quiet. You know, you you talk about, you know, lonely at the top. Dave, I left Dave's military career largely out of it. He originally wanted to go to development group and didn't make it through the screening process.

12:42I think largely more due to a personality conflict with one of the instructors, which totally happens. you get on somebody's radar, you might have to come back through. But he ended up going to another JSOW command that works at an incredibly high level, very less known, oftent times by yourself in adversarial countries.

13:05And he crushed it there, I think, for like 10 years. I mean, he's like the top performer of performers. And then they contracted him to come back and teach guys in their own very long selection course. What I didn't realize is how much he was struggling just holding up that image.

13:24Though a part of their selection course occurs out in Las Vegas. He had more than one incident where he thought his career was going to be over cuz he went out and got shitfaced and got arrested. They work so independently and individually so often nobody even realized he had gotten in trouble until his security clearance came back around and it popped on his security clearance which then you know leads to a whole variety of other things.

13:51But that happened to him while he was active and then after while he was out. But if you were look at the guy you mean you'd say to him how do I match your career exactly? What exactly are you doing to be able to do what it is that you're doing, man?

14:06Behind the curtain. Holy [ __ ] just suffering. You could see it in the writing, just in the the shape and texture of the words. You could you could see it degrading towards the end. It's gnarly. And look, I'm not one of these people that thinks everyone should just go do I gain, which is not a recreational experience, you know, right?

14:33But I was

Ibogaine & Veteran Support

14:35going to say the fact that he did that has worked. I'll just say this on I've said it publicly before, but I'll make sure I hammer this, you know, straight in the middle that I've been very supportive of veteran solutions because um and the work that was being done at Stanford to support them.

14:48the arc of both successful escape from addiction and PTSD or whatever you want to call it through the proper use of ibagane medically supervised as well as the number of just tragic instances of people who didn't make it there happen to know Chad Wilkinson's wife and talked to Sarah you know and you know it's a painful thing to [clears throat] be at these things and hear all these wonderful stories of people that feel like they were rescued their spouse was rescued and then um the spouses that are there saying, you know, it's I'm grateful this exists and I'm

15:22I'm frustrated that it wasn't there in time for their spouse or parent or, you know, so or kid. So many people have benefited, but some people just seem like they're refractory to it. Well, hopefully talking about suicide, frankly, will will um get people thinking about different avenues around it.

15:43That's the hope. Yeah. I don't know the angle. I mean, I've tried to focus sometimes on talking about the impact that it has on those left behind in the hopes that that would I don't know buy somebody a 1% maybe think about that for 1% and it changes literally the trajectory of their life.

16:03I don't understand the choice I I will describe the choice of ending your own life as an irrational decision. That's I can't make any sense of it other than to say like you said it goes against every evolutionary everything that we can understand.

16:18So somehow people are arriving at an irrational decision and considering it to be the only rational solution. Talking about the people that they left behind and the impact it's going to have doesn't seem to have impacted it at all. I don't I don't know what the answer is.

16:41many times, you know, whatever is left behind or text messages, the world's better off, you know what I mean? Better off without me, they feel I'm not going to say they feel as if they're doing the world a favor. That's that's not what I mean to say, but often times the language is close to that.

16:53Like, I'm doing this because you will be better off without me. And again, irrational decision as their only rational option.

Spiritual & Psychological Perspectives

17:02I don't I don't know. I don't know. My mind goes to all these places. Maybe I've uh spent uh more than my fair share of time with uh our mutual friend Eddie Penny where I I actually think and and forgive me cuz I'm a scientist, but these days I talk very openly.

17:14I actually think that evil forces can hijack people's minds. I know it sounds crazy. It sounds like conspiracy, but I believe that inside of our minds we have a susceptibility to positive messaging and we have a susceptibility to evil messaging.

17:29And it can come in in different forms. And I think bad forces can work through us and they tend to come through the places of shame. They come through the things that we don't want to acknowledge. They're like the way it was described to me by someone far smarter than me is it's like a lighthouse that's you know spinning its um its illumination and then there's like there's like some like dirt on the on the lighthouse and it casts this like shard of a shadow and that's where stuff comes in and gets us.

17:57And if we can kind of see that stuff and really acknowledge it, that's kind of what the real trauma proc trauma healing process is about. And once you own it, it's very different. Things can't get to you the same way. Now, I'm speaking in like riddles and metaphors here.

18:10So, so I want to be careful because I'm a scientist. I believe in biology. But I think that hopefully conversations like these will start to open up the the thought and maybe in the dialogue around this cuz I think the mental health community, but really the general public needs to start thinking about this in a real way because the numbers as you mentioned the SEAL teams and other special operations communities are staggering, but it's growing.

18:30I mean, and on and on and I don't believe anyone

Limits of Science

18:36is completely immune just given the the the examples. These are people who had quote unquote everything going for them and then some. So, God willing, this will have some positive impact. You know, I think it's important [clears throat] that somebody like yourself as a scientist is open to other non-scientific answers or possibilities at least because we clearly don't have it figured all out yet.

19:01And I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty sure scientists don't know everything, regardless of how some of them might like to tell you that they do. Definitely do not know everything. And if we don't know everything, maybe let's just keep it open to possibilities because in that journey, hopefully one day we will figure out everything.

19:18But if we lose a bunch of people along the way because we were unwilling to at least even table a conversation about something maybe outside of the science realm, I don't think it's worth knowing everything. [music]