She recently pointed out that when Anthony Bourdain killed himself, no one was talking about his abuse of alcohol. It was one of of the missing pieces of the puzzle. If you watch some of the past episodes of his show, you realize that alcohol makes an appearance in almost every episode. Drinking to excess is not a bug, but a feature in almost every show.
It's sort of painful to watch. Once you are aware, and look for it, you can't miss it, and you begin to think that the abuse of alcohol could have been a major factor, if not the major factor in Bourdain's demise.
The cameras were rarely on the morning after, but sometimes they were, yes, and Bourdain would often refer to feeling lousy, down, and yes, even suicidal. That isn't unusual for some one who abuses alcohol. What's amazing is that almost no-one even noticed. Alcohol abuse is so pervasive, so accepted, folks can watch his show and not even notice. All that drinking was just someone living "the good life."
The great writer David Simon writes eloquently about his good friend Anthony Bourdain in this amazing post simply titled "Tony." It is a beautiful portrait of an amazing human being:
"A lot of people will tell you that on meeting Tony – despite how extraordinary a being he was – they somehow felt as if they’d known him for years. In part, this was the natural result of having so much of his wit and intellect bleed across our television screens. But just as elemental, I believe, was the man’s almost unlimited capacity for empathy, for feeling the lives and loves and hopes of others. He listened as few listen. And when he spoke, it was often to deliver some precise personal recollection that was an echo or simile on what was still in his ear. He abhorred a non sequitur; for him, human communication — much like his core ideas about food and travel and being – was about finding the sacred middle between people."
But even Simon's post ends with a night of prodigious, nearly black-out drinking. And afterwards Bourdain, deeply hung-over is on an airplane winging to another destination. Sounds exhausting, and debilitating, and problematic.
Why am I thinking about Bourdain and excessive drinking, and suicide and recovery this morning? You know, it's that Judge in the news now, hoping to be named to the Supreme Court. Alcohol figures in his story too. A young, repressed, Catholic, "virgin" drinking in high school, drinking in college, he joins a fraternity and undergoes and an extreme program of alcohol abuse.
Demon alcohol again rears it's ugly head, and it's almost not even a back story to the story, but probably should be. Here's one of the Judge's roommates from Yale:
Does the Judge's excessive drinking then, disqualify from this prestigious job now? I'm not sure. Maybe. But certainly it seems like the Judge isn't being fully honest with us or with himself. And no one seems to be trying to get to the nub of the issue: the abuse of alcohol and the lizard brain in all of us. Sexual repression, sexual aggression, alcohol, and a macho, frat-boy environment. A potently bad concoction. For sure. And really, the Judge is giving us a "holier than thou" schtick, which seems like the worst hypocritical kind of lie. This moralizing conservative is not being honest. Does he really deserve to judge anyone?
I keep flashing on Animal House, one of the great comedies of our time. It pretty much exposes and celebrates the life of crazy inebriation. Unfortunately probably most folks see the celebration, not the life of dysfunction. Another brick in the wall of the mythology of Demon Alcohol. And the wildest, craziest, character in the saga? John Butarsky played brilliantly by John Belushi. At the end credits, the film reveals that Butarsky goes on to be a United States Senator. Funny. Right?! Maybe he could have been a Supreme Court Judge too?! Of course, the real-life Belushi, didn't get to live a life like his fictional character, instead, he went over the cliff of extreme substance abuse. Ended up as another casualty of the "good life." Another divergence from the myth. The Demons + our Lizard Brains = Death & Destruction, one Brain Cell at a time.
