Damned if I Do

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Book: Damned if I Do Read Free
Author: Philip Nitschke
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close to me and helping me with my schoolwork—but it was help I didn’t need.
    You hear a lot about this kind ofsexual harassment now, but it was an undiscussed subject back then. Like many people who’ve had this experience, I didn’t know what to do and was frightened. I felt trapped. I’d argued so strongly with my parents to get me out of the Lutheran boarding school and I’d thought the new situation was going to be great, only to find it was worse. As a way of escaping from an intolerable situation, of making a cry for help that couldn’t be ignored, Ikilled the ­family’s pet with my hunting knife.
    In any event, I was lucky and unlucky. Lucky, in that my father realised quickly that using a knife to kill a pet dog was unacceptable and dangerous and took me to a psychiatrist to have me psychologically assessed. He knew I would then have a better chance of escaping any kind of juvenile ­criminal penalty, which is exactly what happened. I was unlucky, in that The Advertiser picked up the story. As something indelibly on the public record, this story has been used ever since by those opposed to my work as a campaigner for ­voluntary euthanasia.
    It isn’t argument, it’s mud-slinging, but it can be effective. Related to this are the slurs that have been levelled at me because of my name: so German-sounding, so like that of the philosopher Nietzsche, so suggestive of Nazism. I’d have avoided much of this if I’d been a Richardson like my mum.
    As a result of starting school early and keeping pace with the older students, I was qualified to enter university when I was not yet sixteen. Under the old South Australian system—modelled, I think, on an aspect of English school arrangements (South Australia being a very Anglophile society then)—you could qualify for university entrance after your fourth year of high school. So I’d made it, made university, on the basis of my year atConcordia, despite my problems with the boarding school. My year atHenley High was the one called ‘Leaving Honours’ and my earlier results stood, despite the disruption caused by killing the dog.
    Quite early in my school career, it was obvious that maths and science subjects were where I performed best. My matriculation results—mostly As and a few more Bs—were good enough to get me a Commonwealth scholarship, which paid the university fees and included a small living allowance.
    A little naïve perhaps, but not as green as some of those around me, I prepared for university in January 1964. I’d had to deal with a lot of dislocation and a trauma as I moved through adolescence. And, on the positive side, I’d had my first sexual experience with a girl named Trenna when I was thirteen and still at high school in the country and had, at least technically, lost my virginity. Farm girls knew a lot about sex. I felt I was ready for what university had to offer.

THREE
    In Adelaide—stormy weather
    I soon chose to study physics, the subject I was best at. I did not study hard …
    Philip Nitschke, 2004
    P hotographs from the 1960s show me with very long hair and a hippie look, a typical left-leaning university student. In those days, my black beret gave me the highly fashionable Che Guevara look. I was never much of a general reader—images interested me more than the written word. As a kid, I was more likely to read comics than books, apart from ones about science. Just as some people have a knack for languages or music, I have a talent, or a knack, for maths andphysics, ­particularly of the more hands-on, ­experimental variety.
    I passed science exams with ease, which is not to say that I found exams easy. I was always anxious, and those three-hour sit-ins when you have to perform under pressure, and your future depends on your performance, stressed me, causing me sleepless nights.
    There were ups and downs in myundergraduate years. I was

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