It's easy to criticize Anthony's choice from a comfy chair and possessing a relatively intact brain. Unless you've really known the blackest depths of real clinical depression you should take great pause before pronouncing anyone a coward or selfish in some way.
Most people who've struggled with addiction in it's many forms are self treating various underlying mental conditions.
He was a lot of things, but to me he was a dishwasher. Most would hide this from a resume, but Bourdain spoke to it frequently. At 16 (a difficult year) I was too, spending late nights in a hot, steam filled 4 star restaurant with the most dysfunctional people I’ve known in 35 years of life. I learned more about alcoholism, drug addiction, and mental health in 12 months than I ever needed to know, especially as a teenager. It was completely miserable time. It also taught me everything I needed to learn about work ethic. Even today, in the back of mind it’s “don’t f*#k this up because I’m never going back to that.” Bourdain, even George Orwell, spoke of similar lessons from dishwashing (good read: “Down and out in Paris and London”). Feels like we lost a brother.
Your bullying and this horrifying post asking a poster to off himself is HEINOUS!
STOP!
No bullying eKat. What drFailed said was sooo insensitive. His expectations that the homeless should be offing themselves b/c life was sooo sh**ty?? They don't have honor? You on-board with that reasoning?
I didn't ask him to go-off to the dark. It was a pointed attack at his reasoning.
My buddy Sir Loin's b-day was the other day and I Still really miss him.
This is about deep depression and trying to understand why? Not culling populations
Bourdain was a role model to me and seemed to have life in the cup of his hand. Why??????
pretty saddened by this. i always put him on a similar page as hunter s thompson, the school of gonzo. i cant stand almost any other food critic, they are either shallow wankers or lacking in depth, where AB just used the food industry as a lens on the world, no different to how HST used drugs and guns.
suicide? it is what it is. im sure he would have chosen ANY other option if hed seen it open to him. it may be like hemmingway, he tried every other avenue he could and exhausted them all. the coke, the travel, the insight, the ideas, the people - all that kept him going beyond the easy option that was to end it decades ago.
and I was impressed that he was eating the one food I hate more than any other
German Food - stewed meat with a big slab of fat with over cooked potatoes on sauerkraut with that barfy vinegar smell
Yuk
Several people, family and friends have called me to talk about Tony's death. I am not sad or surprised. It is a tough business. Overworked, under-payed, and under-appreciated, but sharing that with some of the most amazing souls I have ever encountered.
I have not read his famous book nor will I. It hits too close to home. My older brother hung himself so there is that anguish too. And then there are the Mexicans, whose plight I am all to familiar with. This is no tragedy but a life well lived by an honest man unafraid to suffer the realities of soulful living.
Please don't take food or the gathering for meals shared for granted.
That was very well written. He hit the nail on the head about addiction and depression - from my personal experience anyway.
The "alone" someone feels while they are the center of attention in a huge crowd. That alone. That cold-alone that is more alone and cold than you'd be if you were strapped to Voyager One like a dark frosty vacuum-dried interplanetary hood ornament of freezer-burned meat. That alone that isn't even black – because at least you can lose yourself in blackness. Blackness and darkness at least has quiet and tranquility.
Thanks for posting that. He sheds some light on stuff that is out of my frame of reference. Things I don't understand and so never would have thought about without reading that.
Let us know!