“I should have died in my 20’s. I became successful in my 40’s. I became a dad in my 50’s. I feel like I’ve stolen a car -- a really nice car -- and I keep looking in the rearview mirror for flashing lights. But there’s been nothing yet.” -Anthony Bourdain
I awoke this morning to a text message from a close friend. As the words from that message play over and over again in my head, I’ve been struggling to untangle the knot they’ve left deep inside my stomach: “Anthony Bourdain passed away from suicide.”
Anthony Bourdain took the white caps and aprons off of the restaurant industry and revealed a punk underbelly full of tattooed, passionate, erratic restaurant rats and bakery brats. He travelled the far corners of the world, showcasing the idiosyncratic tastes and styles of the people in each city he travelled to while simultaneously highlighting their human similarities. Whether laughing over a bowl of Pho in Vietnam or slurping spaghetti at a boxing match in Rome, Anthony Bourdain welcomed us to join his table and enter into a conversation that transcended the food he ate.
Bourdain’s table was a place to talk dirty politics, make pointed jokes, get a little shit faced, and ultimately take a closer look at the way that shifting cultures shape the food we currently know and enjoy. To back of house kitchen riff raff like myself and my close friends, Bourdain was a kind of father figure -- someone who proved you could be a highly successful food genius and still get down and have a good time. As my friend Natalie, a young chef at a farm to table restaurant in San Marcos poignantly explained, “He experienced the real shit… [He saw] the drug problems… the sexism, [and he] came out on the other side and started trying to fight against all of it.” For those who struggled with drug addiction, for those in the culinary world who felt marginalized, Bourdain taught us to confront ourselves, to confront our industry, and to suck the marrow out of life.
This week, Anthony Bourdain joined Kate Spade as yet another number in an ever expanding suicide statistic, opening a national dialogue on suicide prevention and mental health issues. According to the National Institute for Mental Health, the percent of deaths from suicide has increased since 1999 to 28%. The world health organization reports that more global deaths are caused by suicide than by wars and natural disasters combined. Something’s gotta give.
In an interview with the Kansas City Star, Reta Saffo explained that her sister, Kate Spade, suffered from a “debilitating mental illness” that went untreated for years due to her fear of a possible media frenzy that could ruin her brand and, consequently, her career. While other family members deny Saffo’s claims, they merit our attention. In a nation that still broadly stigmatizes mental health issues (where most insurance plans still fail to acknowledge psychiatric care as a serious form of medical treatment that merits financial aid), those struggling with mental health crisis are reticent to seek help. While we may never know why Anthony Bourdain chose to end his own life, one has to wonder whether the same fear that drove Kate Spade away from therapy may have also deterred the world traveller.
It’s time to put an end to the stigmatization of mental healthcare. It’s time to stop thinking of those who seek help through psychiatry and therapy as weak or incapable. Confronting mental health issues does not make you weak. As someone who has struggled with both anxiety and depression in the past, I know what it’s like to be drowning in a vast ocean -- to believe I was too far gone to sea for anyone to be able to save me.
But I was, in some regards, one of the lucky ones. My father’s struggles with depression and anxiety, and his ability to identify patterns of mental instability throughout his family history, paved a foundation for us to discuss mental health. I was probably about 15 the first time my dad warned me that I might experience a mental crisis in my early 20’s. He described how, when he was 23, he thought he was dying - how his life didn’t feel like it was his own - how his heart suddenly felt like it might explode out of his chest. I more or less dismissed what he was saying at the time, but he succeeded at leaving a lasting imprint on my mind.
These conversations prepared me for the day I eventually had my own breakdown. I was dissociative. I felt like my life was happening all around me, but I had nothing to do with any of it. I passed through my days like a dream. I stopped sleeping and would wander around my college campus at all hours of the night, not meeting anyone, not going anywhere in particular, just drifting from place to place hoping something would happen that would wake me up. I drank at parties to cope with the emotional war raging inside of me. As I drank more and more, I became increasingly detached from my actions. My heart raced at all hours of the day and night. My stomach aiked like it was going to explode. I was afraid of everything. My entire future seemed to hinge on a series of decisions I had to make by May of my senior year. I felt trapped. I was suffocating. And no one had any idea that there was anything wrong. Why? Because I was high functioning. I made the top grades in my program. I was outgoing and generally fun to be around. But secretly, I would have done almost anything to make my mind stop, to stop feeling trapped, to stop trying to find all the right answers, to stop having to think about where I was or what I was doing. I was trapped in my mind and my mind was my own worst enemy. My thoughts turned against me, so I contemplated putting an end to all my thoughts.
It wasn’t until a very close friend died, that I realized how much my mental state was deteriorating. Luckily, I had a support system. I remembered the conversations I had with my dad. I called him and started describing everything I was feeling. He had felt it all too -- down to the angry inner narrator that seemed to hate all my waking actions. He had felt like there was something so wrong inside of him that he couldn’t be saved. I talked to my brother who was pursuing a degree in psychiatry. He had felt it too. Together, my brother and my father helped me to find a highly recommended counselor and I’ve spent the last three years of my life building better coping mechanisms, processing emotional traumas, and learning how to swim out of an ocean I once thought would undoubtedly drown me. My therapist didn’t pull me out of the water, she coached me on how to be a stronger swimmer for the next time that a storm came along. She didn’t coddle me, she made me confront my weaknesses so that I could develop better habits. Through therapy, I’ve been able to be more open with my family and friends about these issues. I realize now that I was never alone; that I wasn’t the only one struggling to stay afloat.
Sadly, not everyone is as lucky as I have been. My family helped me to pay for the counseling sessions my insurance company deemed superfulace. Many of my friends in the food industry suffer from similar problems, but lack both the internal and external financial support to make mental healthcare a possibility. Other than a smoke break here and there or drinks after work, few industry workers are afforded a way to seek serious help. I’ve watched too many of my friends spiral because they simply lacked the medications and coping skills necessary to defeat their issues. In the absence of honest conversations about mental health, those who are struggling point their fingers back at themselves thinking, “there must be something wrong with me. I don’t deserve the life that I have. I don’t deserve a better life. I’m alone in this. And there is no one here who can help me.” And to drown those thoughts out, there will always be drugs and alcohol.
We can’t change the health system overnight. But we can change the way we talk about mental health issues and suicide.We can start by teaching our children that they are never alone. We can help young people to identify their safety nets - the people that they can feel safe talking to when they’re feeling alone, or sad, or just generally down. We can talk about panic attacks, anxiety, and depression, in terms of experiences that everyone may struggle with at some time or other and we can start equipping children with ways to deal with these emotions. We can teach children how to meditate. We can teach them that everyone has the ability to be healthy and that there’s a direct link between our mental and physical health. Let’s teach kids that they aren’t alone and that even when they feel alone, they have everything they need inside of them to just keep swimming. And when someone can’t keep swimming, when death seems to them their only choice, let’s be someone that our kids can confide in. Absent of condemnation, may we no longer fear talking to our children openly about the struggles they may face in life. And in talking about our lives openly, may we no longer fear the questions children may have about death.
Every child should know that there are resources out there, helplines that they can call when they feel like they can’t keep dealing with everything life is throwing at them. And it’s better they learn from us now, before they succumb to the ocean. It’s better to know that there’s help before the situation is dire. Every child knows how to dial 911. How many children do you know who can dial a suicide hotline? When I was 20, I knew who to call if someone tried to climb through my window. But I had no idea who to call when the person I feared the most, was the person I had become, trapped inside my own head.
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