O.C. Seniors Hear Tips on ‘Final Exit’

“Final Exit” author Derek Humphry came to Leisure World on Monday to teach people how to kill themselves.

About 200 residents of the gated community for seniors attended the step-by-step lecture on suicide in the face of terminal illness--including a lonely 83-year-old woman dying of lung cancer, a frail man with oxygen tubes in his nose and a white-haired man in a bolo tie who scribbled notes on the back of an envelope.

The mood in the roomful of aged people was calm and pragmatic, considering that the conversation was about choosing death. The crowd laughed a couple times at light moments--like when Humphry advised against heavy eating before drug overdoses--and murmured sympathetically when he described someone’s botched suicide try by cyanide.

Given the chance to talk freely about generally taboo subjects--their own mortality, the imminence of death in their lives--the seniors lined up with eager questions about exactly how, what number of pills are needed, where to get them.

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Humphry’s lesson took on a timely bent with Monday’s news that Jack Kevorkian may have attended two suicides in Michigan--his 46th and 47th since 1990--and with the issue of physician-assisted suicide pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Justices are considering whether to reverse two lower-court decisions upholding assisted suicide, leaving the matter to be decided state by state. In California, it is illegal for a doctor or anyone else to help end someone’s life.

Humphry, 66, is founder of the controversial Hemlock Society, a right-to-die group, and a former Los Angeles Times journalist.

He pointed out that the Hemlock Society’s first member--Shirley Carroll O’Connor, who signed up in August 1980, when the group was considered “a crazy suicide club”--was a Leisure World resident.

But the Leisure World crowd Monday was less interested in the group’s history than in learning the nuts and bolts of “death with dignity” from the activist famous for helping his first wife--who was dying of breast cancer--kill herself by drinking a poisoned cup of coffee.

Lung cancer patient Edith Palazzo, 83, stood with her hands on her hips and pressed Humphry for answers. His methods involved assisted suicide; she would have no one to help her.

“I’m all alone,” she said. “I have no family.”

If she’s bedridden at the end, she asked, just who would go out, collect a bunch of prescription pills for her, blend the powder with applesauce and make sure she swallowed it down with a swig of whiskey?

Humphry urged her to join Leisure World’s Hemlock Society, which has more than 100 members, and try to find someone who could help.

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Preparation is key, he said.

And here was his advice: Doctors, lawyers and loved ones must all be informed. Pills must be hoarded, perhaps from places such as Mexico or Hong Kong, where they might be available without a prescription. Try travel sickness pills that soothe the stomach so you don’t vomit up the drug cocktail.

“The essence of taking your own life . . . is speed,” he said. “You’ve got to bolt the drugs, get them down fast.”

As a last resort, he said, if the drugs aren’t working fast enough, keep a plastic bag nearby and attempt death by suffocation.

He rejected suggestions of cyanide, which he said might cause a painful death or not actually kill.

“It’s not like the James Bond films, where you just take it and drop dead,” he said.

One woman begged for numbers: What’s the proper dose? How much of this, how much of that?

Humphry referred her to his 1991 best-selling book, “Final Exit,” for specifics.

These days, the ways of dying are different, said Humphry, who is publishing a new edition of “Final Exit” later this year. In the old days, suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in the car was common. But now, with the advent of catalytic converters, it takes too long for carbon monoxide to work.

Beatrice Bernstein, 75, wanted to know how to get a doctor’s help in a possible assisted suicide at her home.

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“I don’t think Jack Kevorkian would,” she told Humphry, “[but] I’d be willing to pay anything.”

He told her to let her doctor know about her feelings on terminal illness.

Later, Humphry, who speaks nationwide, said that people “want assurance [that] if they are terminally ill, they can check out.”

Robert Goldner, 76, is in good health and bikes and hikes regularly. But he wanted to hear what Humphry had to say, just in case.

“I want to learn what are the important things to do in order to avoid a horrible death,” he said. “I would not want to spend the end of my life in pain.”