I was shocked to read this - seemed like the guy had a great life. https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/08/us/anthony-bourdain-obit/index.html
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainmen...n-cnn-host-and-celebrity-chef-dead-at-61.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/08/business/media/anthony-bourdain-dead.html I'm shocked about this. I really liked Anthony Bourdain (even though I hated his politics for the most part). He had a pretty racy career in his younger days (a lot of drugs and was pretty much on a collision course with death), but cleaned himself up on his own years ago. Some of his stories about it were so unapologetically honest. He cursed like crazy (always a plus in my book), and was more or less unapologetic about most everything. Sheese, what's in the water these days? I said shocked, but at the same time, I can also see someone with his personality suffering from depression. He either had something physically wrong with him and checked out, or was just . . . suffering. And yes, depression is suffering. I guess I should say I'm more surprised than shocked, that's far more apt. He seemed really happy with his gf Asia Argento. All pure speculation at this point. Anyway, RIP.
Mods please merge with NotSatoshi. My apologies. I starting posting over a half hour ago, walked the dog, and realized that I didn't hit submit. The new thread/post was open so I didn't see his. Thanks.
^Heh, the best thing would've been if either one of us had said, 'Anthony Bourdain Goes to Parts Unknown'. Look on the bright side. We both said we were shocked. I think people very often become desensitized to suicide when it involves 'celebrities'. I totally get it. I mean, it's not like we know these people or anything; but there are so many layers to the onion when it comes to the subject of suicide, people we know (knew), ourselves, and it's a very complex and loaded subject at that. Broad-brushing it is stupid, as well as the wreckage it can leave in its wake (anger, guilt, blame, grief, helplessness), but who are we to judge if someone makes an informed decision if they're terminally ill, for i.e. Again, a very complex and loaded subject. That aside, melancholy is so misunderstood. "What's wrong with you? Smile! It's never that bad!" OK. "Suicide is a sin!" OK. "People who commit suicide are cowards and they're in Hell!" OK. Not religious (that's an understatement), but after sitting through forced shitty CCD classes when I was young with my arm held behind my back, I formed my own opinion about Judas hanging himself. It wasn't the opinion I was supposed to take from it, I'll tell you that. I felt empathy for him. Anyway, Hitler, however, now that's a suicide I can get behind!
So here's my Suicide Story. Not my OWN suicide, because how the hell would I be typing, but it's completely relative to the subject. My Daddy used to have a saying: If you can count your true friends on one hand, you're the luckiest man alive. So, yeah, suicide. My childhood friend, who I loved with all of my heart, stuck a pistol in her mouth and aimed upwards. '96 - '97 were the two most f'd up years I ever lived through. Death after death, tragedy after tragedy, and then more death with some more death mixed in. It was like a movie that no-one would ever believe. I had just gotten home from the hospital (my Mom was in the final stages of cancer and I was making arrangements to bring her home/hospice to die). I was so TIRED. I got home close to midnight, tried to shovel some leftovers down my throat that tasted like sawdust (I wasn't hungry, but knew I had to eat because I was withering to nothing from stress). The phone rang, so my immediate thought was my Mom died after I left. No, it was a mutual friend telling me the news. I folded like a cheap suit. "Jody ate a bullet." I had talked to her two weeks before (she lived in another state) and she sounded so happy and optimistic. I tried calling her in between that, and for whatever reason she was avoiding me. I realized sometime later that she was 'happy' because she was at ease with her decision to kill herself and that our last phone conversation was actually an I love you, good-bye. How did I not see? What could have I done? Why didn't she talk to me? I questioned myself for a long time, but the thing is, she wasn't the melodramatic type. She wasn't dramatic at all. Ever. Sweet, kind, honest, very upbeat all the time. She didn't threaten to do it, she never even mentioned being depressed. At her funeral, I felt bent in half with a heart full of dust. I managed to somewhat forgive myself eventually because I came to the conclusion that when people are determined to off themselves - especially without attention seeking - they're going to succeed. She had a tough hardscrabble upbringing. Her Mom suicided at 33 when Jody was 9 so she was raised by her trucker father who later remarried and his second wife legally adopted her when she was 20 as a birthday gift, lol. Her father was so broken over her death I thought he was going to physically collapse at her service. Jody's Uncle said to me afterward, "She was murdered." At first I thought he was in denial that she took her own life, but there's a lot more to it than that. It came out from family members and the mutual friend that Jody was prescribed Prozac. She was having some not over the top marital troubles, and they were working it out; but she was very down for other reasons and went for counseling, just for talk therapy. Guess what? Out comes the prescription pad within 20 seconds. She kept repeatedly calling the Dr. saying she was feeling worse and worse and worse, that she didn't feel like she was in her own body, that she was having tremors, that she felt like her brain was upside down in her skull, that she couldn't sleep for days at a time, then she couldn't STOP sleeping, that she kept thinking about killing herself when she never had those thoughts before, that she was being followed, that she wanted to join her mother. Guess what that fukker did? Advised her to keep taking it. More pleading and desperate phone calls. No, no, just keep taking it. So she trusted that asshole and kept taking it, after becoming more and more erratic. Jody killed herself at 33 on the same day that her mother killed herself. Yes, suicide runs in families. Yes, she was probably in more trouble than she let on, but that fukking Dr. should only get run over by a bus and then backed up over on again. What a POS. I wanted to choke the life out of that motherfukker when I found this out and I'll always remain angry about it. Yet another jerkoff who was getting kickbacks from Big Pharma. I'd like to think this fukking idiot who should be stripped of his medical license really thought he was helping her, but I'm jaded. And yes, psychotropics are not for everyone and can directly cause the suicide it's supposed to prevent. It's a very real scary thing. So that's my Suicide Story, which has more to it, but I think I've made everyone's eyes bleed enough with copious text for now. EDIT & ADDENDUM after much eye-bleeding and copious text: Jody was a grease monkey and an amazing mechanic (although it wasn't her day job, it could've been). I can't tell you how impressed I was when was she fixing the engine of her banged up first car at the ripe old age of 17 (trucker father). We met in elementary school a couple of months after her mother suicided and her Dad moved them from VT to NY. She always said "idear" instead of "idea". "Who talks like that?" "I don't know. How about who tawks like that. People who drink cawfee in New Yawk and have dawgs." Fast friends and thick as thieves. The majority of her family were from New Hampsha (how she pronounced it) and Maine. RIP, Jody Read.
I'm sorry for your loss. For the third time, suicide is a very complex and loaded subject. No gun puns intended. Women don't traditionally shoot themselves to death. That's far more a guy thing, 100%. Jody blowing her head off wasn't even an F you, it was an F me, as in I hate myself. That someone so lovely inside and out would so violently destroy herself, I think that's what bothered me the most. But yeah, Prozac. If she did the far more traditional female suicide thing (sleeping pills or hanging), I would've been so much better with it in some odd way. What I left out in the copious text post was that an old boyfriend of hers that she dated for a couple of years when she was in her early 20s shot himself in the face in front of her. "You or me!" She plead with him for hours to put the gun down. He had no intention of killing her, he just fukked with her until his brains were splattered on the wall. He was a coke addict, and typical Jody, she was only trying to help a wounded bird. She had a series of emotionally manipulative and emotionally abusive boyfriends since HS. I don't know, I just don't think she ever felt truly loved, and was always trying to somehow fix unfixable people. Then after Jody blew her head off, her husband (whom I really didn't like for a variety of reasons - he just coldly said to me she was no longer in pain when I had a fistful of her ashes in my hand and was about to toss it into the wind), blew his own head off a year later. I guess he was in pain. I suppose I should've felt more badly about it than I did. Anyway, you can't make it up. And just to re-iterate, yeah, Prozac.
Yeah, and not too long ago he said that she was the reason he didn't commit suicide. I guess it's been on his mind for a while - no wonder after spending decades ingesting everything he could find whether it was black truffles, black sea bass or black tar heroin. Now he hangs himself like a fresh load of charcuterie in a smokehouse. I would have liked to sit down with him as a couple of my family members have - they said he was very down to earth and a great guy to spend a couple of hours with.
Suicide should never be glorified, but there are exceptions to the rule. I'm surprised Dierking didn't call Bourdain an hero. He's off his game.
I mean what was so bad for this guy that he just couldn't take it anymore? A lot of people would have traded their lives for his in a heartbeat.
Call me crazy. I read somewhere that he had to sleep in hotels majority of his time. I had a few years of traveling experience with my old company. I was traveling for business constantly. From India to Netherlands to England to Singapore to South Africa to Brazil. I was the Supply Chain SAP consultant. There were mornings when I woke up it took me a few seconds to understand what country I was in. And this traveling and loneliness led me to drink a lot. I was flying Business Class, staying at 5 star hotels eating at fancy restaurants on company dime but I was unhappy. This fucking Gang Green Forum was one of the few bright spots on my day. That said, I never thought about suicide because of my little ones but I was seriously depressed. Eventually I quit and ended up resigning from my dream company. not saying this is the reason but he traveled a lot and he was lonely in hotel rooms a lot. Funny story. When I felt lonely and depressed on my travels I would curse at our CEO. I would say he is now sleeping at his own home with his own kids and I am the one leaving my loved behind. Oh well. Past days. I now work probably twice as much but I am feeling much better since I don't have to travel as much as I did before.
