Poison
Suicide can be committed by using fast-acting poisons, such as hydrogen cyanide, or substances which are known for their high levels of toxicity to humans. For example, most of the people of Jonestown, in northwestern Guyana, died when Jim Jones, the leader of a religious sect, organized a mass suicide by drinking a cocktail of diazepam and cyanide in 1978. Sufficient doses of some plants like the belladonna family, castor beans, Jatropha curcas and others, are also toxic. Poisoning through the means of toxic plants, is usually slower and is relatively painful.
Read more about this topic: Suicide Methods
Famous quotes containing the word poison:
“I was the poison breather.
I was a professional,
but you saved me
from the awful babble
of that calling.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“The vulgarest tool that Tyranny could want,
With just enough of talent, and no more,
To lengthen fetters by another fixed,
And offer poison long already mixed.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“I expect a time when, or rather an integrity by which, a man will get his coat as honestly and as perfectly fitting as a tree its bark. Now our garments are typical of our conformity to the ways of the world, i.e., of the devil, and to some extent react on us and poison us, like that shirt which Hercules put on.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)