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AhhhTheFrench  We will sell no wine before its time  7mo ago (text post)   Edited 7mo ago   4043 thread views

What Caused the Suicide of Anthony Bourdain?

Millions of people connect with his media persona, he was/is a cultural phenomenon. There is a picture of him that is treated like a shrine at my cousin's very good restaurant. Why did a man who seemingly had everything to live for take his own life? Not through an OD or other excess, but by hanging himself from a doorknob? The guy could score drugs in a second, why not ride it out in a heroin haze?

This whole thing is a puzzle to me and it seems wrapped up in his romantic life somehow? I remember seeing a picture of his girlfriend who was obviously cheating on him while "training" MMA etc...

I lose a lot of respect for people that "trade up" after they get famous and ditch their long time spouse that supported them when they were just a normal person, turnabout is fair play? Was it really that he could dish it out but couldn't take it?

Is this someone that people should look up to because he could be a charming bad boy for the cameras? I almost feel like it was too many 3rd world trips, I could actually see the pain he experienced while getting an "authentic" experience over and over again from people that wouldn't make in a lifetime what he made in a day. One or 2 fixers/guides even angled for some wealth or a chance to move to the US and pointed out the extreems, and that is just what they showed us on camera.

Anyhow, I'm a few glasses of wine in. Nowhere in my rambling, incoherent response did I come close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. We are all dumber for having read it. I award myself no points and may God have mercy on my soul.

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The standard conspiracy theory on this is that what killed him was drama with Asia Argento. He saw photos of her dancing with someone else, then complained about how she was reckless with his heart and his life, then killed himself.

The New York Post has an article on it:

The book also chronicles his “last, painful days” when he saw photos of Argento, now 47, dancing with journalist Hugo Clément at a hotel in Rome, the last time they communicated.

“I am okay,” Bourdain texted Argento, who he began dating in 2016, after he viewed the photographs.

...

“I am not spiteful,” the text continued. “I am not jealous that you have been with another man. I do not own you. You are free. As I said. As I promised. As I truly meant. But you were careless. You were reckless with my heart. My life.”

“I can’t take this,” she messaged him back. To which he replied, “Is there anything I can do?”

“Stop busting my balls,” the Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things star responded.

“OK,” he typed.

Hours later, Bourdain hung himself.

So is that really all it took? I could see maybe being upset, maybe it feels worse if you've downed a 5th of scotch, but the corners report said therapeutic traces of a narcotic and nothing else . The dude could find another lover. It takes a lot of willpower to hang yourself from a doorknob sober. Like JFC he wasn't facing life in prison or anything.

I'd heard that Argento leaned on Bourdain to pay off a man who'd accused her of statutory rape. This article in the NYT acknowledges that Argento paid the actor off ($380k), points out that Bourdain and his lawyers were involved, but doesn't explicitly say that Bourdain ponied up. CNN states that Bourdain himself paid Bennett $250k.

That is kind of a crazy twist. But yeah, no reason to die over your gf being a weirdo.

Well, think of it this way. You leave your wife, and immediately start dating this glamorous and sexy Italian. During the relationship, your girlfriend becomes an outspoken #MeToo advocate, decrying a culture of silence in which sexual assault is entirely normalised. You support her in her activism (which has the side benefit of raising her profile dramatically, but whatever) - and take public pot shots against Quentin Tarantino. Meanwhile, largely unknown to the public at large, your glamorous girlfriend is facing her own accusations of sexual assault. She begs you to help her out, so you offer her the services of your lawyer and pay the complainant money to keep quiet. So now you have to cope with the cognitive dissonance of being a prominent activist around sexual abuse in Hollywood - while also paying hush money to an actor who claims to have been sexually assaulted (while underage) by a powerful Hollywood figure who was well over a decade his senior.

Everything's tipping away just fine, you try to put it out of your mind. But over time, you start to notice that your glamorous and sexy girlfriend is becoming more and more distant, missing your calls, won't put out half as often as she used to. Finally it dawns on you - she never really loved you, she was using you for your money so she could pay off this dude she raped. When public photos emerge of her dancing with another man and she doesn't even try to console you or tell you "don't worry baby, he's just a nerd" and essentially just tells you to fuck off and stop being such a big baby - well, I can't even imagine how he must have felt. He'd paid a victim of sexual assault to keep quiet, all to appease a woman - a woman who doesn't like him, who fucks other men behind his back and doesn't even respect him enough to hide it from him or from the public at large. The combination of cognitive dissonance, guilt, shame and humiliation could be enough to drive anyone over the edge - even someone without a history of massive alcohol and substance abuse.

I knew I would get some deep cuts here. Thanks for the analysis, it just didn't seem to make sense on the face of it and I was having trouble googling that deeply for some reason.

Uh wasn't there something about her sleeping with Anthony's underage son or something

You're thinking of this, sounds like.

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