TL;DR save yourself the hospital stay or possible life-ruining complications and pick another method or decide to live.
Been lurking here for a while looking for info but first time posting. I feel the need to share my experience with partial suspension failing and what I found out about complications during recovery. Anything you read saying partial suspension (or any other form of strangulation) is an easy method is incorrect. it gives more than enough time for survival instinct to kick in, and in a lot of cases is unlikely to result in a clean death even if nobody else intervenes.
A failed strangulation attempt, even if you don't reach the point of passing out, can cause cardiac issues and vascular damage that increases your risk of stroke dramatically or can cause acquired brain injury. it's not necessarily visible or noticeable without specialist medical imaging even immediately afterwards, and can come without pain, to the point where emergency medical guidelines say to practically ALWAYS do a neck CT for strangulation patients: https://ifas.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Guidelines_AcuteEmergency_Jul25.pdf
Another instructive point on consequences of failed attempts is cases associated with strangulation and choking on the kink scene, which is intended to be non fatal and often even specifically made "safer" (such as by avoiding the windpipe, in the way some do by placing objects between the ligature and their neck to target veins in partial suspension attempts) but come with known complications that can include lifelong debilitation and messy, painful deaths: https://www.evilmonk.org/a/breath.cfm
when I made my attempt (in a moment of extreme stress and having given up fully on the world having any good in it), Survival instinct (pre-unconsciousness) got me out the rope and the panic and shock from it was enough to debilitate attempts to proceed and lead me to call an ambulance. Once I got to the ER they wanted to take CT scans of my head and neck but I was too panicked to cope with the procedure. They got me in contact with crisis mental heath support, and told me to come back if I had any more concerns.
A few days later I started having more pain in my neck, difficulty swallowing and lightheadedness, and went back to the ER. Got another CT done (for which I was given lorazepam for the procedure, to make sure I didn't panic, which helped a lot). the radiologist thought that I had vertebral artery dissection and moved me to inpatient care for more diagnostics. I got extremely lucky that on a recheck of the scans by a specialist neuroradiologist they didn't find any lasting damage (they had flagged a benign artery anomaly as dangerous - and were being on the safe side).
While hospital experiences always suck (because medicine is messy and complicated), nobody involved judged me, everybody showed me compassion and that they genuinely cared about my life being as positive as it could be. Medical professionals (at least in my country and likely elsewhere) won't call the cops on you for seeking help after an attempt. The ER doctors put me in touch with a mental health crisis team who have been genuinely supportive, and a specialist therapy team for the complex trauma and complex needs I have. They all wanted to help, and it gave me some hope for the world that there is so many people who will see a stranger who has tried to ctb and help them to make the rest of their life better.
I got lucky on the physical complications side. You might not, but failed attempts are something emergency doctors handle fairly frequently and it's worth getting checked out - no matter future plans, it is worth avoiding nonfatal permanent injuries, and I'm doing better now having been through the hospital and having got both physical and mental help than I was knowing that my failure might lead me to having a stroke but not knowing if I had that damage.
Even though I now know that there is no physical lasting harm, I'm still shaken. The mental effect of a failure has fucked me up. The symptoms that made me go back to the ER were the result of mental trauma that does not heal as fast as physical. I was a shibari rigger and a BJJ fan, and it's going to take a long time after what happened to be comfortable with doing those things again due to how close they are in part to what nearly killed me. I'm thankful, seriously, for the people who helped me post-attempt and the genuine care they showed me.
From now, I've decided to live. Between the support shown to me by the ER doctors and crisis team and the shock of discovering how close I was to permanent nonfatal harm from my most accessible method failing, I'm no longer planning anything. if there is one message I want to get across with this post, it is that going to the doctor after a failed attempt is worth it, even if being in the ER sucks while you are there, and that any method that is accessible and people say is "easy" may very well not be for you.
Been lurking here for a while looking for info but first time posting. I feel the need to share my experience with partial suspension failing and what I found out about complications during recovery. Anything you read saying partial suspension (or any other form of strangulation) is an easy method is incorrect. it gives more than enough time for survival instinct to kick in, and in a lot of cases is unlikely to result in a clean death even if nobody else intervenes.
A failed strangulation attempt, even if you don't reach the point of passing out, can cause cardiac issues and vascular damage that increases your risk of stroke dramatically or can cause acquired brain injury. it's not necessarily visible or noticeable without specialist medical imaging even immediately afterwards, and can come without pain, to the point where emergency medical guidelines say to practically ALWAYS do a neck CT for strangulation patients: https://ifas.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Guidelines_AcuteEmergency_Jul25.pdf
Another instructive point on consequences of failed attempts is cases associated with strangulation and choking on the kink scene, which is intended to be non fatal and often even specifically made "safer" (such as by avoiding the windpipe, in the way some do by placing objects between the ligature and their neck to target veins in partial suspension attempts) but come with known complications that can include lifelong debilitation and messy, painful deaths: https://www.evilmonk.org/a/breath.cfm
when I made my attempt (in a moment of extreme stress and having given up fully on the world having any good in it), Survival instinct (pre-unconsciousness) got me out the rope and the panic and shock from it was enough to debilitate attempts to proceed and lead me to call an ambulance. Once I got to the ER they wanted to take CT scans of my head and neck but I was too panicked to cope with the procedure. They got me in contact with crisis mental heath support, and told me to come back if I had any more concerns.
A few days later I started having more pain in my neck, difficulty swallowing and lightheadedness, and went back to the ER. Got another CT done (for which I was given lorazepam for the procedure, to make sure I didn't panic, which helped a lot). the radiologist thought that I had vertebral artery dissection and moved me to inpatient care for more diagnostics. I got extremely lucky that on a recheck of the scans by a specialist neuroradiologist they didn't find any lasting damage (they had flagged a benign artery anomaly as dangerous - and were being on the safe side).
While hospital experiences always suck (because medicine is messy and complicated), nobody involved judged me, everybody showed me compassion and that they genuinely cared about my life being as positive as it could be. Medical professionals (at least in my country and likely elsewhere) won't call the cops on you for seeking help after an attempt. The ER doctors put me in touch with a mental health crisis team who have been genuinely supportive, and a specialist therapy team for the complex trauma and complex needs I have. They all wanted to help, and it gave me some hope for the world that there is so many people who will see a stranger who has tried to ctb and help them to make the rest of their life better.
I got lucky on the physical complications side. You might not, but failed attempts are something emergency doctors handle fairly frequently and it's worth getting checked out - no matter future plans, it is worth avoiding nonfatal permanent injuries, and I'm doing better now having been through the hospital and having got both physical and mental help than I was knowing that my failure might lead me to having a stroke but not knowing if I had that damage.
Even though I now know that there is no physical lasting harm, I'm still shaken. The mental effect of a failure has fucked me up. The symptoms that made me go back to the ER were the result of mental trauma that does not heal as fast as physical. I was a shibari rigger and a BJJ fan, and it's going to take a long time after what happened to be comfortable with doing those things again due to how close they are in part to what nearly killed me. I'm thankful, seriously, for the people who helped me post-attempt and the genuine care they showed me.
From now, I've decided to live. Between the support shown to me by the ER doctors and crisis team and the shock of discovering how close I was to permanent nonfatal harm from my most accessible method failing, I'm no longer planning anything. if there is one message I want to get across with this post, it is that going to the doctor after a failed attempt is worth it, even if being in the ER sucks while you are there, and that any method that is accessible and people say is "easy" may very well not be for you.
