In a comment left to M. Simon's earlier post about the death of actor David Carradine (who was found naked and hanging), Captain Ned opined that it was not suicide, but auto-erotic asphyxiation, and pointed to this post by Ace.

Looks like Ace was absolutely right:

David Carradine could have died from suffocation or heart failure after an auto-erotic sex act went tragically wrong, Thai police said today.

The star of the iconic Seventies TV show Kung Fu, was found dead in a Bangkok hotel room yesterday in bizarre circumstances.

Police said the 72-year-old American actor had hanged himself, using cords from curtains in the room.

A hotel chambermaid discovered his naked body hanging in a wardrobe with a cord around his neck and genitals.

Thai police said they could not no longer treat the case as a simple suicide.

But police commander Lieutenant General Worapong Siewpreecha emphasised it still remained unclear whether he killed himself or died from suffocation or heart failure.

'There was a rope tied around his neck and another rope tied to his genitals, and the two ropes were tied together and they hung in the closet, ' he said.

'Under these circumstances we cannot be sure that he committed suicide.'

Anyway, it's a real tragedy, as I was a fan of David Carradine, and his father, and his brother. My heart goes out to this very talented family, and while I do not want to be seen as making light of a tragic situation, I have a few thoughts. Please bear with me, as I have a dark sense of humor and a non-judgmental attitude about sexuality.

First, I don't judge the man any more than I judge anyone else for his sexual tastes. It matters not in the least to me how anyone gets off. (Save harm to others, such as sex with children or people who don't consent.) While I'm not into auto-erotic asphyxiation, I'd like to think that if I was, I'd be careful, though, not only because I'd prefer to live, but because sudden deaths are very hard on relatives. That is why practitioners of this particular fetish need to be especially careful. Like any high-risk activity, they should never do it alone. (Something any SCUBA diver knows.)

Not that having another person present makes it 100% safe, but it certainly increases the odds. A close friend worked as an emergency room nurse in California, and he told me about a couple who were both found hanging -- both of them dead from joint (as opposed to auto) erotic asphyxiation. (He also told me that another man he knew who tried it told him that until he tried it he had never imagined that any activity could be so pleasurable, and he was warned not to try it.) The couple that was found had made the mistake of enjoying their moment of hypo-oxygenated orgasm together.

Common sense suggests that this is not the sort of thing you'd want to do together, and certainly not at the same time, for obvious reasons.

I realize it sounds a bit silly to use the blog for a "public service announcement", but I don't expect the CDC to go around putting up posters saying something like this:

Kids, if youre going to play around like this, play safe. Don't do it alone.

And if you're a solitary practitioner, don't try it at all. You might like it, and it might very well kill you.

No orgasm is worth dying over.