On the Topic of Suicide in Today’s Cuba
HAVANA TIMES – A friend shared with me that she once attempted suicide. In one of those moments when she felt she couldn’t go on, she took an entire strip of alprazolam. She went to bed, hoping not to wake up the next day. To her surprise, the following morning, she found herself opening her eyes as if nothing had happened. Only with the sadness of having wasted her pills, the ones she needed most to endure each day.
I mentioned this to a friend who is a medical student and occasionally visits my house to look at my books and discuss various topics. He told me those pills have a ceiling effect. Beyond two, they have no additional impact on the body. After that dose, there are no further effects. I asked him which pills wouldn’t have such an effect. He told me.
I shared this with my friend and told her that, in any case, we should try to stay sane. “We have to see this through to the end,” I told her. She thanked me for the information. As far as I know, she hasn’t attempted suicide again. But another friend from Matanzas succeeded. He ended his life by hanging himself from a rope.
He had jokingly told his mother that if he died, she shouldn’t put him in a box with four walls. But obviously, once he said goodbye for good, no one found it funny.
In a conversation on WhatsApp, his mother told me that she did as he had asked: she had his body cremated and took his ashes to the bay. She said she told him, “Well, go where you wanted to go now that you’re dead, since you couldn’t while you were alive.”
She shared with me that he had been hoping to leave for the United States through an invitation that never materialized. Of course, we can’t say that the reason for his decision was solely his inability to leave the country. Many people haven’t found a way to leave and don’t decide to end their lives because of it. But it’s still a bitter and regrettable experience that leaves us reflecting on several issues. For instance, what happens when we can’t find a place in our homeland to live with dignity?
Cuba is full of these examples. Among those who attempt suicide and those who go through with it. But these aren’t topics that are addressed. Not on television, not on the radio, not in the newspapers. If it’s mentioned anywhere, it’s in the cold spaces of public health prophylaxis. Because within the official discourse, we’re full of slogans like “we will overcome.” The “we will overcome at all costs,” which those of us living in this country believe in less and less. A “victory” that no longer feels like it did in years past, when we blindly placed our efforts.
This was evident in the weeks without Saturdays or Sundays dedicated to the sugar harvest, the long hours of voluntary work, and the total dedication to sacrifice for the sake of a supposedly better, Socialist, and sustainable future.
No. Those times are gone forever. Now, we are left only to endure. For many, that means consuming pills, such as alprazolam, which are hard to come by and very expensive when they can be found. Pills to avoid collapsing under the challenges that often overwhelm us in our day-to-day lives.