The movies always get it wrong, so I thought I'd give the correct procedure to you fellow noders. Just something to think about when you feel you have contributed all you can to everything.

1. Before you embark on your new journey, you must first be in the proper frame of mind. Ask yourself the following questions:
   1. Are you feeling suicidal?
   2. Do you feel there is no other way out of your misery?
   3. Is there nothing at all you'd rather be doing?
   4. Do you have a very sharp straight razor?

   Make sure you answer these questions honestly and carefully, because you won't get a chance to change your answer later on. If you did answer 'yes' to all the questions listed above, then you are ready to slash your wrists.

2. In the 24 hours preceding your suicide, drink several glasses of water. This will help enlarge your veins and make it easier for the blood to escape when you make your cuts.
3. Go and get your straight razor. If you do not have one, I strongly recommend going out and buying one. Use your credit card. A scalpel or fresh X-Acto knife will also work. The important thing here is that we are looking for a sharp object. You are going to be cutting your own flesh here, and if your utensil is not sufficiently sharp, the cut will be painful, and you won't have the inclination to do a proper job.
4. Fill a tub with hot water. You want your water to be hot enough to plump up your veins and keep them open as your blood escapes, but not so hot that you will have trouble relaxing. Bath oils will also help here.
5. Now you're almost ready to slash your wrists. Strip down, lay back in the tub, and try to relax. The hardest part is coming up, so be sure to think of all the pain and suffering in your life, and how much better you'll be when you end it all.
6. As soon as you are ready, take your right arm and turn it palm side up. Hold your razor in your left hand. If you are left-handed, reverse these instructions. It is important to make the first cut with your bad hand, because otherwise, in two steps from now, you'll need to slash your good hand with a hand that is both unfamiliar and draining of blood.
7. Place the tip of the razor on your forearm, about two thirds of the way from your wrist to your elbow, with the blade facing your palm. Now slash down, along the vein, towards the wrist. Make sure you slash straight down. You don't want to sever any tendons for your hand, since you'll need the use of that hand in the next step. Too many hollywood movies these days get it wrong and show suicide victims slashing across the wrist. This is impractical, because
   1. It is harder for the blood to escape your body, and you will die more slowly, and in more pain.
   2. If you slash as deep as you should in this way, you'll sever your tendons, and you won't be able to perform the next step.
   (You might want to print out this writeup and keep it next to the tub as you do this).
8. Quickly place your razor in your right hand and repeat the last step for your left forearm.
9. Congratulations! You have successfully slashed your wrists! Place the razor next to the tub and lie back into the warm water. Don't think about how you are now going to die, since that will only make you panic. Instead, focus on the growing peace and tranquility inside your body as the loss of blood makes you steadily weaker.

Other issues to keep in mind before you slash your wrists:

1. Have you written a proper suicide note?
2. If you do use bath oils, make sure they aren't the kind that use aromatherapy to make you feel better about yourself. That would be counterproductive.
3. If you live in a dorm, or if you have any family members in the house, make sure that you have locked the bathroom door. This is not the kind of procedure that your friends can help you with.
4. And above all else, remember: have fun.

Useless real-life anecdote:

When I was just a tyke, 8 or 9 or so, my mother told me how to slash my wrists. "Down, not across", she told me. I am not making this up.

Mom: "If you cut across, it doesn't work. you bleed a lot slower, and it's a lot more painful. You're supposed to ALONG the wrist, so you cut open all these veins."
Me: "But.. Mom.. how do you know that?"
Mom: "Well.. I tried to kill myself a couple of times when I was a teenager..."

Observations:
1. Although I, as a child, was told how to go about slashing my wrists in an effective, painless (or less painful) manner, I'm still alive now.
2. Had my mother known how to slash her wrists in this way, she probably would have died, and I would not be here.

The moral implications of this make my brain hurt.

No, seriously, trust me on this. There are many other, much more effective ways to achieve the same purpose, and you should go for one of those instead. Pulling this particular way off is a lot more difficult than you'd expect-- you have to hit the artery to have the slightest chance, that's deeper down than you'd expect, and the cutting is difficult. Ask anyone who knows and they'll tell you the same thing.

Using this method will almost certainly result in failure, which in this case will only make things worse-- really its only use is if you're just faking it to get attention, in which case you're disgusting.

A friend of mine recently tried to kill herself. Alone in the house for a couple of hours, she experienced a brand of clinical depression that was more painful than her fear of death, so she consumed three-quarters of a bottle of Advil.

A couple hours later, the family returned. They found her on the floor and called the ambulance. Dramatic prose escapes me, so I leave the specifics to the reader's imagination. Later, she experienced almost exactly what the author of this story writes about: a two-way (down, then up) activated charcoal milkshake, nurses who didn't even pretend to care, a terrifying psych ward, a subscription to powerful anti-depressant, and a gradual recovery.

Thank God this story has a happy ending: she is alive and recovering rapidly. But it wasn't warning signs that saved her. It wasn't well-meaning but misguided advice to suicidal teenagers ("Make a list of why your life sucks and then realize that it's salvagable after all"). And it certainly wasn't a trite, self-satisfied song like "Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem." No, what saved her life was a simple miscalculation: she took Advil and her family arrived home too quickly. Had she chosen Tylenol instead, she wouldn't have had a chance in hell. Apparently Tylenol ravages your liver that much faster. And here's the kicker: The two medicines were literally right next to one another in the cabinet, and it was only the incorrect preconception that Advil must be more powerful since it is traditionally a more adult medication that caused her hand to lift the left bottle rather than the right. Else, she would have died on the floor within the hour.

Misinformation saved my best friend's life less than one month ago.

Let's imagine that she had picked the other popular alternative to pill-popping: wrist-slashing. The common notion of wrist-slashing is a single, lateral cut on each wrist. As this node reminds us, said cuts do maximal damage to the tendons and minimal damage to the veins, thereby minimizing the victim's ability to make further cuts and maximizing the probability that the wounds will close before she suffers lethal blood loss. The node then helpfully outlines the exact procedure to follow for maximum likelihood of death with minimal discomfort. If you read this node as it currently stands and then try to kill yourself with a razor blade, odds are you will succeed.

I'm not spouting flames or submitting nuke requests or writing angry letters to the editor. I am simply asking... pleading... that before you write, you consider the implications very, very carefully. Information often means the difference between life and death. The freedom of speech is a profound and fundamental right, and it deserves to be treated with all the responsibility that such power demands. One ought to handle information like any other potential weapon: with care. It could save someone's life.

Think before you node.