Aspirin&Tylenol not a good choice

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http://www.well.com/~art/suicidepge1.html

HOW NOT TO COMMIT SUICIDE

by Art Klein

 

....The two most common types of drugs in suicides,

McKinney said, are those found around the house and

those used in psychotherapy.

Seemingly innocent

aspirin is " one of the messiest, most complicated

overdoses you ever hope to see, " he said. People who

swallow lots of aspirin react first by getting sick to

their stomachs.

Beyond that, it affects nearly every

system in the body unpredictably, and two different

people who took 100 aspirins could get sick in

completely different ways. Aspirin is an acid. It

burns the gastrointestinal tract from the inside. It

changes the blood's pH level which is normally at 7.4

(close to neutral).

It sometimes makes the blood

acidic, but it also accelerates the brains' breathing

control center, which puffs out carbon dioxide twice

as fast as it normally would, and thus makes the blood

alkaline.

 

Either way, it throws off the metabolic

balance among kidney, lung and blood. " It produces

fever, " McKinney said. " The fever, in turn, if it goes

on long enough to overheat the brain, can cause

seizures. You can burn out parts of your nervous

system. " Aspirin also carries a high risk of gastric

hemorrhage. Occasionally people on aspirin overdoses

become deaf or develop a ringing in their ears that

doesn't go away.

 

The pain-reliever acetaminophen, sold as Tylenol, also

makes people sick to their stomachs at first, but then

gets more deadly.

The drug changes into toxic

particles that are usually neutralized by glutathione,

one type of coenzyme found in the liver. In overdose,

if it isn't pumped out in time, the toxic particles

deplete all of the glutathione, causing the painful

death of an hepatic coma.

Even relatively late in the

process surrogate glutathione can save the liver, but

if the organ does become diseased the results can be

similar to those of hepatitis: jaundice, itchy skin,

depression, long-term listlessness, inability to eat

much.

 

" The liver detoxifies poisons that build up in the

body, " McKinney said. " If you destroy the liver it's

like never taking the garbage out. Specifically the

most common build up is ammonia in the blood, which

you know if it goes too far will put you in a very

deep coma, and then kill you. "

 

Both McKinney and Bedard told me about people who took

Tylenol or phosphorous, which also destroys the liver

(and incidentally produces phosphorescent vomit).

In

both cases, they slept off the initial sickness and

recovered for five days -- during which time they

decided suicide was a mistake after all and they

wanted to live. But the liver had been destroyed and

after five days each of them started to feel very

sick, passed into deep coma, and died.