Anthony Bourdain dead at 61

He was popular all around the world with his travel/food shows.
Death by suicide, which is up 25% since 1999, says CDC.
Just a few days after the suicide of Kate Spade the designer.

1 Like

Why ? Seemed to have so much to live for.

The 2 websites I’ve read about his suicide mention nothing about any potential reason for it. Perhaps the same reason for why Robin Williams and many others have also decided to end their lives. Liked his shows, because they were about traveling with food/drink mixed in, good conversations, etc.

Williams had Lewy body dementia. It remains to be seen if Bourdain had a terminal disease (will show up in autopsy if he did).

1 Like

He always seemed to be cracking jokes about colonoscopies, so…

Depression is a savage beast. Sometimes it doesn’t take a tragedy to push you over the edge, but just an imbalance in seretonin levels.

This one hurts. A foodie, and lover of travel and culture, I felt a kinship with him. I think many other expats feel the same.

1 Like

Even my Taiwanese wife was like “oh my gosh”, as we’ve watched countless episodes of his show (both on the travel channel and cnn). One of the funniest characters/friends he had on some episodes is the short (sort of fat) Russian guy.

My Taiwanese wife broke the news to me on LINE after I had just finished teaching a class. At first I thought she had fallen for a hoax again (it’s happened before), as I I just couldn’t process it. But then I checked CNN and that was a gut punch.

We both loved his shows, and were planning on watching a ‘Parts Unknown’ ep of Singapore I downloaded just yesterday, since we have a trip planned there for next month and wanted to see what eateries and sights he visited. Don’t think I can watch it now. :pensive:

Just read bout it now
Sad, thought he had it going on in life. One never knows another’s secret demons

Wife mentioned Kate Spade’s suicide

She has several of her bags

You should watch his shows in his honor

I wonder if he would’ve done it if he knew how well liked he was by the viewing public

Rest in peace, Anthony Bourdain
:frowning:

1 Like

Well, now that everybody’s had 24 hours to process …

I liked Bourdain when he was on the Travel Channel, I never saw his CNN shows. I liked him because he wasn’t overly fond of The Man in a way that, as a peer age-wise, I can relate to. He had the good grace to spend his young working life among people who profoundly lacked the advantages he’d had as the son of NYC intellectuals, and he used that to become a regular guy. I liked and respected him for that.

But he had a daughter, aged 11, who will have to survive without her father to help her through the tragic, selfish death of her father. That’s a big black mark on Bourdain’s reputation.

In the end he went broke in my book. His leaving his daughter to fend for herself outweighs the Travel Channel shows and the respect I’d had for him then.

Sad death, and even sadder that in the end he managed to lose all my respect to boot. Feel sorry for his kid.

3 Likes

I don’t want to enter into another debate about suicide, but I no longer consider it to be a ‘decision’ as such. I view it as a crisis point in an illness and as such nobody is to blame.

As I say, I have no wish to debate it and nobody knows for sure.

5 Likes

It seems to be an illness where people left on their own can snap all of a sudden. Travelling so much wasn’t good for his mental health as he mentioned in recent interviews . Chris Cornell killed himself in a somewhat similar sudden fashion in a hotel.
Maybe there is something wrong with living in hotel rooms with no companions . Semi serious here. Then the lifestyle of drinking too much can get people down over time.

1 Like

I always saw it as people who jump to their deaths from windows in a burning building. Where the pain and hopelessness of the fire was worst or just as bad as jumping off and ending it. I’ve had to many young friends take their lives in their 20s. Sometimes signs show up in drugs and alcohol, isolation, depression, but other times…no one had any idea.

3 Likes

I also have no idea.

All I can say is I considered suicide to be selfish until a mate of mine hanged himself. His suicide note was all about not letting people who loved him know that he had taken his own life. He wanted it to be an accidental death.

It’s sad because after Chris cornell killed himself, Chester from Linkin Park also committed suicide on the birthday of Cornell the following months. We do know from evidence that suicides seem to happen in clusters.

I’ve had many friends who committed suicide, too. My best friend committed suicide in 1992, and it was very difficult. He had no wife or kids, but his life had become very hard. A very bad time.

This one, though. I just can’t get over that he would leave his 11-year old daughter to get through this on her own. To me it’s a clear case of suck it up, buttercup. Can’t get past his betrayal of a daughter at that age.

I really don’t think suicide works like that.

2 Likes

I don’t think it works like that, you wouldn’t say that to someone suffering from clinical depression or other mental illnesses. We don’t know what he was thinking and what his body and brain chemistry was doing. There could be a lot of things wrong in his brain like those athletes with CTE. We know so little about the brain even today, psychology is still relatively primitive compared to any other medical profession.