site banner
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.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I highly recommend the book. It is extremely light and fun and easy, it's a great beach read kind of book. If you're interested in Bourdain's life and mind, I'd say it's a must, because that is the first work he published that made his name, or the last thing he wrote before becoming famous depending how you look at it. So I think it probably offers more insight, or unique insight, compared to his later works which are going to be influenced by his life.

It is true, you never know, that is one reason a gun in the house ups successful suicide rates so much, for some people it must just be a fleeting moment of "this is all too much", it passes for most but some pull the trigger, and a gun makes that easy (I say this as a gun toting red blooded american). But damn, sober doorknob hanging? That can't be a good way to go.

Fascinating Factoid: a high percentage of people who jumped off the Golden Gate bridge and happened to survive said they regretted jumping immediately as they were falling.

The whole idea of placing blame for someone's suicide on a one-to-one basis is always going to end up hackneyed. At best you're talking about an egg-shell-skull on the part of the victim. Even someone like 2arms1head, who wrote a well-reasoned manifesto for why he killed himself, there are people like that still living.

I'd place suicide in general on a spectrum from self-preservation to self-destruction, shooting oneself in the head is one end of it, but something like heroin addiction is pretty close. You know it will kill you. Probably not today, but the odds of an OD add up until one day you don't make it. Bourdain:

...wrote in Kitchen Confidential of his experience in a SoHo restaurant in 1981, where he and his friends were often high. Bourdain said drugs influenced his decisions, and that he would send a busboy to Alphabet City to obtain cannabis, methaqualone, cocaine, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, secobarbital, tuinal, amphetamine, codeine, and heroin.

He always had that self-destructive streak in him.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats