RIP Anthony Bourdain at 61 (suicide)

Started by bayonetbrant, June 08, 2018, 06:28:53 AM

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Staggerwing

Quote from: mirth on June 08, 2018, 09:08:13 PM
Well, as someone who has tried to end his life several times, I can assure you reason or logic has nothing to do with it. When you are hurting enough to contemplate suicide all you want is to end the pain. People can sit back and debate that pain, but it is real and it drives people to difficult ends.

It's very brave of you to share that with us Mirth. I usually have to be more than a few drinks in.

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this before but my paternal grandfather took his own life when my father was still young. In one of those nature/nurture uncertainties I don't know how much that event influenced my father and how much of who he became was also due to DNA passing on tendencies toward melancholy and depression. Trees, fallen acorns, and the distance between them...

Vituð ér enn - eða hvat?  -Voluspa

Nothing really rocks and nothing really rolls and nothing's ever worth the cost...

"Don't you look at me that way..." -the Abyss
 
'When searching for a meaningful embrace, sometimes my self respect took second place' -Iggy Pop, Cry for Love

... this will go down on your permanent record... -the Violent Femmes, 'Kiss Off'-

"I'm not just anyone, I'm not just anyone-
I got my time machine, got my 'electronic dream!"
-Sonic Reducer, -Dead Boys

Sir Slash

Almost 36 years in Mental Health and one of the things I remember most vividly was a girl that hung herself the night I was working as her ward nurse. No reason, no warning to anyone, scarcely a word to anyone all night. Later I realized THAT was probably the warning we should have seen. Someone probably knew this guy was hurting inside and just didn't think it was that bad. Easy to understand at the time but hard to forget about later.
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

SirAndrewD

Quote from: mirth on June 08, 2018, 09:08:13 PM

Well, as someone who has tried to end his life several times, I can assure you reason or logic has nothing to do with it. When you are hurting enough to contemplate suicide all you want is to end the pain. People can sit back and debate that pain, but it is real and it drives people to difficult ends.

I can understand.  I've had, well, a long time ago issues with that myself.  I also had to stop my mother many times when I was a kid due to her own problems, only to lose her to cancer in '97,  which led to a lot of my own issues after. 

I can say though, I'm glad that all of your attempts weren't successful. 
"These men do not want a happy ship. They are deeply sick and try to compensate by making me feel miserable. Last week was my birthday. Nobody even said "happy birthday" to me. Someday this tape will be played and then they'll feel sorry."  - Sgt. Pinback

mirth

Quote from: Sir Slash on June 08, 2018, 09:48:36 PM
Almost 36 years in Mental Health and one of the things I remember most vividly was a girl that hung herself the night I was working as her ward nurse. No reason, no warning to anyone, scarcely a word to anyone all night. Later I realized THAT was probably the warning we should have seen. Someone probably knew this guy was hurting inside and just didn't think it was that bad. Easy to understand at the time but hard to forget about later.

You know what, life sucks. Fame and money may or may not make it suck less, but we all have to deal with it. Rich or poor, life sucks.
"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

Sir Slash

Sometimes. Not always. When life is at it's shittiest, then it can only get better. Nothing stays bad forever. And there's always some poor bastard somewhere that has it worse and can use a sympathetic ear a time or two. Nobody ever promised me Life wouldn't suck. I'm happy as shit when it doesn't but not surprised when it does. Nor am I defined or controlled by that Life suckage.
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

Arctic Blast

Man, this one really sucks. We never really know what's really going on in a person's life. :(

I have a friend who suffers from depression. When it hits, he basically can't function. He's a completely different person. Talking to him about what he goes through was a real eye opener for me.

Steelgrave

#21
Quote from: mirth on June 08, 2018, 09:08:13 PM

Well, as someone who has tried to end his life several times, I can assure you reason or logic has nothing to do with it. When you are hurting enough to contemplate suicide all you want is to end the pain. People can sit back and debate that pain, but it is real and it drives people to difficult ends.

Love you, brother. It's very real when you're going through it and at times you can only imagine one way the pain will end. Fortunately most push through, but when someone doesn't it's hard to understand what led them to their choice. But we're not walking in their shoes and people who are facing that dark path often don't share out of shame or even fear that someone will stop them. I had a very close relative who was suicidal for years but was seeing a psychologist. He pulled through and by his own words has a good life now. When I knew he was in a dark place, it was scary and I felt helpless. Depression is real and has very little to do with income or lifestyle.   

SirAndrewD

^ Steelie said it.  Don't know why I admit it here, but yeah,  there were tough times in my life I faced a wall and felt like ending it.   My father abused me, brutally.  My mother died at 48 in an awful way.  I inherited a lot of issues from them that made me doubt my self worth and think I wasn't really best left, well, alive. 

Things changed.  My wife changed me, a lot.  My Step-father, who I call my Dad has kept me straight.   Getting in a classroom, seeing some kids that looked at me like a mentor made a difference.

I don't know what caught up with Borudain.  I wish it didn't.  I really loved his work, and how he commented on the world.

But I get that even the best of times can't mask a lifetime of demons.  I've got them.  I was horrifically, terribly physically abused by my biological father.   His abuse almost drove my my own mother to suicide.  He turned my brother into a lifetime heroin junkie. 

I just guess I say, fight, get help, and depend on who loves you.   I think Bourdain had a lot of those support structures, so even then I don't know it always helped.

But, it helped with me.   I have my issues, but I can come on here and call Mirth a nerd and Gus short, and do what I do in my life, which is not financially great, but my wife and I have fun and we face things with excitement.

Even though my own fears of mortality are always there.   My mother died at 48.  My grandfather 33.  I'm 41.  It's...creepy.

But, keep on keeping on I guess.   It's a messy world.  But we all are better being in it.
"These men do not want a happy ship. They are deeply sick and try to compensate by making me feel miserable. Last week was my birthday. Nobody even said "happy birthday" to me. Someday this tape will be played and then they'll feel sorry."  - Sgt. Pinback

Staggerwing

You just have to get through today because tomorrow might be better. It might not, but it might.
Vituð ér enn - eða hvat?  -Voluspa

Nothing really rocks and nothing really rolls and nothing's ever worth the cost...

"Don't you look at me that way..." -the Abyss
 
'When searching for a meaningful embrace, sometimes my self respect took second place' -Iggy Pop, Cry for Love

... this will go down on your permanent record... -the Violent Femmes, 'Kiss Off'-

"I'm not just anyone, I'm not just anyone-
I got my time machine, got my 'electronic dream!"
-Sonic Reducer, -Dead Boys

jamus34

This article from Wil Wheaton really hit home for me and made me realize I probably do suffer from at least low level depression and anxiety.

http://wilwheaton.net/2018/05/my-name-is-wil-wheaton-i-live-with-chronic-depression-and-i-am-not-ashamed/

Much like Wil I do not have a particular reason to have it. I would never say I was close to being abused. I was bullied in school but nothing that I would say would be chronic or hateful, more just being a fat kid.

Reading that article made me realize that there very well may not be a reason for having depression or anxiety but it doesn't change the fact that when it hits you turn off and withdraw.

I think a lot of it comes from the John Wayne attitude of if you ain't bleeding there's nothing wrong.  Hell how many decades did it take for people to acknowledge that PTSD is a thing.

The thing that really scares the shit outta me is I see some of these traits in my kids.
Insert witty comment here.

JasonPratt

Best if saddest thread this week.  :notworthy:

Having dealt with suicidally depressed people on occasion, the causes can range a lot, and I think there's an argument in favor of all people being prone to depression to various degrees and for various reasons, whether acute or chronic (or both!) I've never considered killing myself, but apparently I suffer from chronic depression which has been offset by my neural system in some way that produces lucid dreams every night, all night (for 40 years or so, ongoing). Sometimes depending on exterior mental and emotional stresses, it kicks over into conscious psychosomatic torment. For me the reasons are understandable if not always escapable; for others the reasons for triggering the conscious suffering can be more masked.

My Christian faith helps me a lot, but that doesn't always help other people. I'm (relatively) fortunate to be in a position where, when the storms of consciousness trigger off, I can weather them by reference to a rock I've already built (so to speak), but being in the middle of ongoing pain isn't the time to rationally establish things! -- you can't argue yourself out of an irrational fit, just hold on until it passes, maybe find a way to constructively redirect it. I pour the pain on my selfishness, when I can remember to do so, and I have never once been disappointed by the result, but I also know without proper mental discipline beforehand, that tactic can lead to very bad ends instead! -- so it isn't something I recommend as a sure-fire treatment for everyone.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
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Gusington

I did not know about what mirth, 'Wing and others posted above.


слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

airboy

I read medical & demographic statistics regularly.  Suicide is now the 10th leading cause of death in the USA.  Why?  Nobody knows for sure but I have some educated guesses both professionally from my training in marketing and business and personally.

Today it is much easier to compare your life to everyone else.  The internet, social media, reality TV, and the constant news about celebrities makes this far easier than ever before.

The "social media" life that people project is often a "happy picture" of the most positive things going on.  People usually don't discuss the day-to-day trials of going to work, paying bills, suffering through regular low level pain, how much their kids/spouse/co-workers/roommate/neighbors etc.... drive them nuts. How many people post a picture of "I have a nasty zit on my face" or "my hair really is awful" or "I spilled food on my clean shirt" or "I did not accomplish much of anything at work today except getting frustrated."  The "social media" life that most people put out there is very positive stuff.

As a college prof, I have had students complain about their parents making them turn off their phones when they visit.  I try to (eventually) work the conversation around to "did giving up your phone for a while lower your stress?" and they usually say "yes."

As a society, that in turn can breed envy or just general disgust that "my life is a lot worse than everyone else's" which is sometimes true but is often not the case.  We can also get deeply involved in squabbles on the internet that are frankly not all that important and obsess over them.

Although I suffer from depression, the meds I've been on for 25+ years keep it in check.  I also try to count my blessings.  My life is good, in part because I try to think of the positive and also try to avoid envy (coveting other people's things including spouses).  Like everyone else, my life is not perfect and I fall short of my goals.

I do know from the literature that heavy social media use is correlated with depression.  So is having no religious life, having few friends, and having little face-to-face interaction (as opposed to social media/email/phone) interaction with friends and family.  Oddly, having a lot of money is strongly correlated with being a lot more happy.

JasonPratt

Well, having a lot of money does help remove some stress producers (through financial security) and can help add stress relievers (Via, y'know, whatev. ;) )

But what has to be done to get a lot of money can add a net balance of more stress; and not only can bad spending habits destroy financial security adding acute and chronic stress (possibly much magnified in various ways, e.g. the stereotype of stockbrokers jumping out windows and off bridges), but purchased stress relievers can end up adding more stress in the medium and long run, or shifting stress to less psychological bearable areas. (To pull an example from a hat, visiting prostitutes can relieve stress in the short run, but if you end up with syphilis you may find your life unbearably stressful!)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

bayonetbrant

Mike Rowe's reaction

Quote"Hello Darkness, My Old Friend"

On a hot night in 2005, after a long day of spelunking through the septic tanks of Wisconsin, I retired to my suite at the Motel 6, to wallow in the perks of my chosen profession.
First, there was the tepid shower, followed by another. Then, there was the tepid beer, followed by another. Then, I logged into the Dirty Jobs Mudroom, where I planned to chat with fans of my show while watching myself on television, (a narcissistic but mostly harmless habit that eventually got out of control and turned into this Facebook page.) But that's another story.

On this particular evening, stretched out on a suspicious comforter held together with the DNA of previous guests, I stumbled across a smart-aleck on The Travel Channel eating fermented shark meat in Iceland, and telling his producer he'd be dead by morning. I had to laugh. Just a few hours earlier, I had been eating a fermented hoagie in an open sewer, and lodging a similar prediction with my own producer.

Naturally, I was intrigued by what appeared to be a kindred spirit, Forrest-Gumping his way around the world, pushing the bounds of non-fiction television. The show was called "No Reservations," and no – I didn't think it was better than Dirty Jobs. But I did think it was every bit as good, and the more I watched, the more I grew to appreciate this subversive chef's naked contempt for all the fakery of traditional production. I loved the way he went out of his way be seen as a "traveler," not a tourist. It reminded me of my own attempts to be seen as a "guest," and not a host.

From that moment, I was a fan. I read his books, and enjoyed them all. But what I enjoyed even more was the way Tony pushed The Travel Channel into some very uncomfortable territory. It's not that I think bad language and drinking on camera are cool or edgy; I don't. But I loved the fact that Tony pushed the network to let the show evolve around his point of view, and his personality. In those days, that almost never happened. It's still very rare, mostly because the shows are the property of the network, and the network almost always has an opinion about how their hosts should and shouldn't behave. But Bourdain was his own man – a man on a mission to produce a show that was authentic to him. I admired that. I also admired the way he pushed back when his name and likeness were used to sell Cadillacs without his permission. https://bit.ly/2Jt0EWB He had integrity, and was unafraid to walk away from a steady gig when he believed he was in the right.

I think my favorite thing he ever did was an episode for Parts Unknown. Tony goes scuba diving for octopi in Sicily, with the help of a local producer. But when there are no octopi to be found on the sea floor, the producer starts dropping them off the side of the boat.

Imagine the scene. Bourdain is twenty feet down with his cameraman, when store-bought, frozen octopi begin to float slowly by. It's absurd, but precisely what a typical producer in my industry would do to do "salvage" a scene. Bourdain however, is appalled, and does the only sensible thing he can - he drinks through the rest of the episode, heavily. Later, in voiceover, he reveals the botched attempt to fool the viewer by airing the raw footage. It's the most honest thing I've ever seen, in a genre that stages 95% of what it presents as real.

Full disclosure - I don't know Tony well enough to eulogize him. We met a few times, here and there, shared a few drinks, and complemented each other on our respective careers. We disagreed on plenty, but we approached non-fiction television the same way. We both looked askance at rehearsals, scripts, executive oversight, and most of all, second takes. And we both tried to use our platforms to do more than entertain.

A few years ago, at an event in New York, we traded war stories over some better than average bourbon. I asked Tony about the warthog anus he ate in Namibia, and whether or not the subsequent antibiotics did the trick.

"Hard to know," he said. "By then, I'd developed a kind of natural immunity. What about you? Still keeping the Hep-A at bay?"

"So far so good," I said. "My problems these days are mostly with PETA."

Tony laughed. "Don't get me started. They've got a file on me the size of a phone book."

We talked about the importance of showing people where their food comes from. He told me about the petition against CNN that arose when he removed the beating heart from a snake. I told him about the boycott against Discovery when I shot a cow and butchered it on camera. We talked about the difficulty of producing a truly authentic show with sponsors and advertisers and millions of viewers with competing agendas, and how grateful he was for the chance to deliver the show he wanted to deliver. I told him about the night I saw him choking down the fermented shark in Iceland, back in 2005, and asked him if he ever imagined a scene like that would lead to a Peabody Award. He told me that awards were nice, but never part of the plan.

"I was mostly trying to amuse myself," he said. "I just wanted to do a show that I could be proud of."

Yesterday, when I heard he'd hung himself, I thought about the first time I saw "No Reservations," while I was stretched out on that suspicious comforter in a Motel 6 outside Madison. I just found the clip on You Tube, and watched it again - this time from the comfort of a leather sofa, where the only DNA present was my own. I couldn't help but notice the title of the episode - "Hello Darkness, My Old Friend."

Old friends, it seems, have a way of reuniting.
Tragically, in this case.

My sympathies to his loved ones, and to his millions of fans trying to make sense of the inexplicable. His was a truly unique voice, and I'll be among those who miss it.

Mike
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers