Bobcat Goldthwait, who was close to Williams, did an episode of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast that, unfortunately, happened to have been scheduled on the anniversary of Williams’ death. Goldthwait was clearly pretty affected by the anniversary, and talked about Williams a fair deal. I don’t recall that Goldthwait knew about the diagnosis before Williams died, but he recounts being able to tell that he was off for the last year or two they knew each other - not as quick with the jokes, had a lot of trouble remembering lines, sometimes couldn’t keep up in conversations. Even without a diagnosis, it was apparent that something was wrong.
I tried to. The PI Courtney hired to investigage Kurt, Courtneys dad, Courtneys lawyer, etc. all say that is what happened. The ex-head of the Seattle police said the case should be reopened.
Anna Quindlen’s article after Andy Rooney’s rant after Kurt Cobain’s suicide rang true to me (bolding mine).
“A lot of people would like to have the years left that he threw away,” Mr. Rooney said of Kurt Cobain. He went on to ridicule the young, many of whom found enlightenment of a kind through Nirvana’s music. “What’s all this nonsense about how terrible life is?” he asked, and he added, speaking rhetorically to a young woman who had wept at the suicide, “I’d love to relieve the pain you’re going through by switching my age for yours.”
I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be 17 again on a bet. I’ve known a number of young women of about that age who seemingly had everything to live for and yet who somehow wanted to die. Or perhaps not to die so much as to rest. You could lecture them about their future and their good health and fine homes and nice schools, and they would understand the rightness of the position but not, for the life of them, feel it in their souls. They would tell you that they felt always as if they carried a backpack full of bricks. And some of them can figure out only one way to put that pack down.
I suspect that there are as many reasons “for suicide” (what kind of thinking comes up with the idea that suicide can be ‘explained’?) as there are suicides.
At least we now acknowledge suicide - for my parents generation (b 1915), it simply did not exist.
It was never mentioned in the newspapers, and the people on the radio (then television*) would NEVER mention the word.
And the word ‘rape’ was never mentioned. Women were sometimes ‘assaulted’, but never ‘raped’.
It would be interesting to see an alternate Earth in which suicide was considered an everyday occurrence, with no moral or religious overtones.
Would people still try to ‘explain’ the ‘reasons’ for each individual?
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- for those amazed by the WWW - imagine what TV did for the previous generation(s).
Because we want to know how things work or why they stopped/don’t work. We know a lot more about suicide and the reasons behind it, then we did just a few decades ago. We still have a lot more to learn and we may never know what it was that did it for a particulate person, but we will keep trying in order to help them.
That said…
This is my reason for attempting suicide, that I still want to do, but I made some promise after this past April.
But nothing has changed, I still want this life to be over.
The comedian is rarely the happiest person in the room.
I also think that for many (most?) people who are truly suicidal, there comes a point where it is no longer a question of building up the force of will to kill yourself but rather a constant force of will to NOT kill yourself.
I think the survival instinct is always there, it is just a point where either you have an intense acute trauma or long term lower intensity chronic trauma end up overwhelming the survival instinct.
It seems like a lot of comedians end up committing suicide. (Robin Williams being the most recent example, but there are many others.) I think the unfortunate truth is that many comedians are deeply unhappy people, and the comedy is just a coping skill to help them deal with it.
No kidding. The divorces, the drug abuse, the arrests at airports for gun possession, the fits of rage that lead to some innocent bystander’s car being smashed with a golf club, the mental abuse of one’s children… Fozzie Bear is one fucked up Muppet.
You are a fool if you believe that he was murdered.
I’m intrigued enough to want to hear more (although I go into this doubting your belief). Is this worthy of a Great Debate, or can we continue the discussion here?
Please leave personal insults out of this forum. Thanks.
Depression is a Demon. A beast inside you that constantly tells you you’re a piece of shit. It destroys your accomplishments, shits on your success and constantly reminds you of every little failure you’ve ever had in your life, often inexplicably without any context to what you’re doing or thinking at that given moment.
I can be having a great time, then some random memory of me doing something stupid or shitty FIFTY FUCKING YEARS AGO will pop into my head and bring me down.
It tells you that you’re worthless, that the people around you think ill of you, that you can never be as good, that you’re a completely broken, useless, failure of a human being.
And yeah, living with that in your head, your entire life, and never being able to turn it off can be extremely wearing.
Courtney’s dad and the PI are total nutcases.
This. When I was suicidal, the question wasn’t if I would kill myself, but when. And what everyone else said… depression, weariness, longing for any relief. Add that to physical issues and it’s obviously a deadly combination.
I always wonder what really happened whenever the olde time newspapers said someone died of “melancholy.”
I haven’t done much digging, but it was pretty easy to find info to confirm your opinion about Courtney’s dad.
Let’s see: estranged from Courtney and his granddaughter, selling a book, drug user, a self-described “sociopath”, no actual evidence that she killed him…I’m going to agree that this guy is a loon with little to no credibility.
And the PI is basically just a starfucker trying to sell books. There is absolutely no proof that Cobain didn’t kill himself. If anything Courtney and his daughter prolonged his life.
Oh…I thought that you were talking about Courtney…