OT: Anthony Bourdain dead of suicide

Richard Camembert said:

What?! Why wouldn’t they just refer to a psychiatrist who spends all their time working with this specific type of medication, rather than practicing beyond their competence and involving a PCP who’s equally in over their head, to the probable detriment of the client? Anyways, psychologists absolutely can not prescribe in MA. In your scenario the PCP is the prescriber.

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I have no idea why they do that but I’ve seen it done.

Tunescribe said:

Maybe it's just that your 12 minutes were up and he was trying to get rid of you.

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It was at a fundraising event for a local nonprofit; we were just making small talk. I wonder if that cadence infects every aspect of their lives. "12 minutes are up, if you haven't finished eating breakfast, tough luck!"

This might help answer some of the questions asked here about "So what do I do when...?"

5 Ways You Can Support a Loved One With Depression

Also, this magazine provides a breathe of optimism, if you are so inclined. Their free, every Friday "best of" emails is a nice way to experience them.

A friend of mine called yesterday and he was headed to a wake of someone that enjoyed the highest financial success in his lifetime. This man ran the Asian division of a very large investment firm. And then he hung himself ladt week

This morning I got an email from a lifelong friend I’ve known since the first grade. He is one of 10 siblings. His email stated his brother had passed over the weekend at a rehab in Rhode Island. I’m told he fell down some stairs and went into a coma last week & never recovered.

His name was Ken and he never enjoyed much financial success, but had a huge heart. He was sober the past 6-7 years and took care of his mom until she passed at the age of 94 this past January

Stories of 2 souls with vastly different life experiences but fought the same demons and lost. But for the grace of God, that is many of us.

If you’re fighting any demons, please let go of your pride and tell someone. There is a way out, I know that from ecperience. There are many others just like these two that are now living productive & rewarding lives.

The simple words I spoke many years ago were “I’m really F’d up and I need help...I can’t take this any more”. I have tears pouring out now just as I did almost 30 years ago because this stuff causes pain and suffering like I never want to experience again

Many like me will share our stories and tell you, if you’re like us, then we can help show you a way out.

I just read a friend’s post on Facebook that said;

“Recovery didn’t open the gates of Heaven and let me in...it opened the gates of Hell and let me out”

I'm sad that he is gone. I enjoyed his books and TV shows. I never considered him a celebrity but as someone who I admired and learned from. RIP

betterthanthealternative said:

This is SO true. The entire category of antidepressant drugs is one huge experiment.

I asked a psychiatrist once about how they work. He gave me the usual answer. I asked, "OK, but what's actually going on that makes that happen? What's the chemical process, and why does it happen?" He tried again with a short hand answer. I persisted. Finally, he sighed and said, "Look, nobody really knows, OK?"

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When I was a lead investigator in the pharmaceutical industry, for a few years I worked on antidepressants. The idea was to target the machinery that affects levels of neurotransmitters (serotonin, dopamine, norepinephine), aiming to elevate mood-enhancing substances, usually very subtly.

Prozac, for example, is an SSRI, for selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor. The idea is to nudge serotonin levels a little higher. Why does it work for depression? It's unclear. Are all things that boost serotonin very good antidepressants? No.

You never know how the brain reacts until you try it. You need to "jangle the wires and see the result" as my boss used to say.

Modulating different combinations of serotonin, dopamine, norepinephine give different results- useful in some cases for addictions, OCD, etc.

Brain chemistry is hard.

Palm Beach Pats Fan said:

When I was a lead investigator in the pharmaceutical industry, for a few years I worked on antidepressants. The idea was to target the machinery that affects levels of neurotransmitters (serotonin, dopamine, norepinephine), aiming to elevate mood-enhancing substances, usually very subtly.

Prozac, for example, is an SSRI, for selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor. The idea is to nudge serotonin levels a little higher. Why does it work for depression? It's unclear. Are all things that boost serotonin very good antidepressants? No.

You never know how the brain reacts until you try it. You need to "jangle the wires and see the result" as my boss used to say.

Modulating different combinations of serotonin, dopamine, norepinephine give different results- useful in some cases for addictions, OCD, etc.

Brain chemistry is hard.

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Were you an investigator FOR pharma or did you investigate the pharma industry?

PatriotsReign said:

A friend of mine called yesterday and he was headed to a wake of someone that enjoyed the highest financial success in his lifetime. This man ran the Asian division of a very large investment firm. And then he hung himself ladt week

This morning I got an email from a lifelong friend I’ve known since the first grade. He is one of 10 siblings. His email stated his brother had passed over the weekend at a rehab in Rhode Island. I’m told he fell down some stairs and went into a coma last week & never recovered.

His name was Ken and he never enjoyed much financial success, but had a huge heart. He was sober the past 6-7 years and took care of his mom until she passed at the age of 94 this past January

Stories of 2 souls with vastly different life experiences but fought the same demons and lost. But for the grace of God, that is many of us.

If you’re fighting any demons, please let go of your pride and tell someone. There is a way out, I know that from ecperience. There are many others just like these two that are now living productive & rewarding lives.

The simple words I spoke many years ago were “I’m really F’d up and I need help...I can’t take this any more”. I have tears pouring out now just as I did almost 30 years ago because this stuff causes pain and suffering like I never want to experience again

Many like me will share our stories and tell you, if you’re like us, then we can help show you a way out.

I just read a friend’s post on Facebook that said;

“Recovery didn’t open the gates of Heaven and let me in...it opened the gates of Hell and let me out”

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Wow, man. Powerful stuff. Thank you for sharing that.

Patjew said:

Wow, man. Powerful stuff. Thank you for sharing that.

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Felt like I needed to share PJ.
Someone once asked me why I talk about my experiences when it happened so long ago. My answer is because I never want to forget the depths of despair I experienced. That despair has allowed me to feel joy in the simplest, everyday things.

edkk323 said:

My brother! You are telling my life story through yours. I have accomplished quite a lot since then but all the sudden it hit me like a freight train last yr. (I was 28).

I am working through it. So far so good. I read the book
It Wasn't Your Fault: Freeing Yourself From the Shame of Childhood Abuse with the Power of Self-Compassion.
I started to practice self-compassion.

But the hurtful memory does not have to hurt you all the time. Generally memory serves as a alarm bell against threats and mistakes. You got burned by hot water once, memory warns you once you get close to hot water and you avoid the same mistake. For me, I need to work out how I was abused, why I was abused and how not to be abused ever again. I am working through it. Once I do, I can turn off the alarm bell which is ringing all the time.

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I felt like one of Pavlov's dogs.

...the ones in the randomly shocked trial group, of course...

QuantumMechanic said:

Another scary bit is that the same is true about general anesthesia. They don't know why it works and more scarily, they don't know why you even come back as you when you wake up.

What they do see when you're under is that a strong rhythmic brainwave floods the entire brain and swamps communication between the areas of the brain. Then as it wears off and the brainwave fades they can see parts of the brain begin to fire up again and start to get communications going with other parts of the brain. One researcher says it's like seeing the brain trying to hunt through phase space to try to re-establish a working configuration. That's not a particularly reassuring image!

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I've been under a bunch of times...and I wonder if all my brainwaves made it back in contact with each other...

PatriotsReign said:

Were you an investigator FOR pharma or did you investigate the pharma industry?

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From 1992 to 2005 I worked FOR three different pharma companies as a chemist at the workbench and (as I gained experience) leading a research group. So it was the hard/worthwhile/ethical aspect of pharma research (go find something that works for this disease!) rather than the sleazy PR / marketing / price-gouging aspect that everyone hates.

I got tired of all the corporate mergers, take-overs, and moves. Thus I went into the not-for-profit academic research sector in 2006. It's more work, less pay, super-competitive, but has minimized exposure to the BS. I decide what I want to work on, as long as a panel of scientific researchers put together by the NIH thinks that my research proposals are valid (i.e., in the top 5-10% of proposals that they review). Tough bar to pass, but hey... it's the big challenges that make the job fun.

here's a nice story about bourdain that i ran across today:

The Critic Whose Olive Garden Review Went Viral Remembers How Anthony Bourdain Spoke Up For Her

.

AndyJohnson said:

I’m not saying the quacks who hand out pills are a bigger problem than the undiagnosed and I’m certainly not saying anything critical of those with real depression.
I’m just pointing out that the psychologists (not psychiatrists nearly as much) are actually harming their patients not only by enabling them, and allowing them to blame an affliction they don’t really have but by giving them drugs that ALTER THE CHEMISTRY OF THE BRAIN. Think about that. We have a drug that changes the brain if people with a chemical imbalance so let’s give it to people without a chemical imbalance and see what happens.
I once had a doctor try to give me a drug called Wellbutrin to stop smoking. He described it as “an anti-depressant that didn’t work but they found out people taking it said it was easier to quit smoking”. That doctor should be in jail.

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I take Wellbutrin hahaha. I actually selected it because it's the only treatment that osnti like an immediate "feeling". I didn't want something that'd lead to me chasing a high.

That being said, it was absolute **** for quitting cigs, so goodjob on ducking that hahaha.

And yes, you're right, someone who doesn't absolutely need medication should absolutely not be taking it. I love psychobiology, helps you understand why that is such a **** idea.

Vindicate said:

I take Wellbutrin hahaha. I actually selected it because it's the only treatment that osnti like an immediate "feeling". I didn't want something that'd lead to me chasing a high.

That being said, it was absolute **** for quitting cigs, so goodjob on ducking that hahaha.

And yes, you're right, someone who doesn't absolutely need medication should absolutely not be taking it. I love psychobiology, helps you understand why that is such a **** idea.

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Wellbutrin is approved as a smoking cessation aid because it blocks some nicotine receptor sites. Not sure what AJ’s beef is, but his doctor shouldn’t be incarcerated.

It’s also often prescribed as an AD in part because it doesn’t seem to inhibit sexual desire like so many other SSRIs do, so there’s that.

Depression is serious stuff. I've suffered from it off and on since about 18 years old without knowing it. Would go through cycles (yes, it's often cyclical) and then come out of it after some time over the years ot really knowing it was depression. I "toughed it out" for years that way. Then about 10 years ago, I got into a deep cycle that I couldn't shake. Couldn't get out of bed to go to work and would find excuses not to go in. I had a family so I functioned but I used to imagine putting a gun in my mouth and it would actually make me feel relief.

It was a friend of the family that noticed even though I thought I was hiding it. Told my wife he thought I was depressed. I didn't understand it because I never saw a shrink before so brushed it off for a while. I finally hit a point where I knew I was going to end it if I didn't do something. I got help. Started seeing someone and went on Celexa for about 1.5 years. I know it saved my life because there was no amount of "toughing it out" that was going to cure this cycle. The good news is that I've learned to recognize it and haven't had a deep cycle since that time. I'll have little ones that I quickly get out of so no need to get on meds but if I have another one and the thoughts come back, I would not hesitate to go back on meds.

It has nothing to do with where you are in life. I was and continue to be very successful by societal standards but your thoughts are not rational to anyone but yourself. The only thing that people saying "tough it out" does, is to make you retreat farther into your depression. You do a disservice to them and it makes them want to hide it more.

I look back at those days and realize how close I came and can't understand my own thought process that seemed so rationally grounded at the time. It's real and it's not to take lightly. If this strikes you as familiar and you haven't sought help, take my history for what it is.

FirstAndGoal said:

The only thing that people saying "tough it out" does, is to make you retreat farther into your depression. You do a disservice to them and it makes them want to hide it more.

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This should be plastered on billboards and on doors, and saying that should be made a crime. It's worse than bullying.

Richard Camembert said:

Wellbutrin is approved as a smoking cessation aid because it blocks some nicotine receptor sites. Not sure what AJ’s beef is, but his doctor shouldn’t be incarcerated.

It’s also often prescribed as an AD in part because it doesn’t seem to inhibit sexual desire like so many other SSRIs do, so there’s that.

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Anti depressants alter the chemistry of the brain. The chemistry of my brain was fine. I smoked.
He might as well have prescribed a hand grenade to remove a wart.

bbobbo said:

here's a nice story about bourdain that i ran across today:

The Critic Whose Olive Garden Review Went Viral Remembers How Anthony Bourdain Spoke Up For Her

.

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Thanks for sharing.

"You know, sometimes you go through life and...you think about all the wonderful things that happened to you," she said. "And one of the wonderful things that happened to me was when Anthony Bourdain spoke up for me and wanted to publish my columns in a book."

Palm Beach Pats Fan said:

From 1992 to 2005 I worked FOR three different pharma companies as a chemist at the workbench and (as I gained experience) leading a research group. So it was the hard/worthwhile/ethical aspect of pharma research (go find something that works for this disease!) rather than the sleazy PR / marketing / price-gouging aspect that everyone hates.

I got tired of all the corporate mergers, take-overs, and moves. Thus I went into the not-for-profit academic research sector in 2006. It's more work, less pay, super-competitive, but has minimized exposure to the BS. I decide what I want to work on, as long as a panel of scientific researchers put together by the NIH thinks that my research proposals are valid (i.e., in the top 5-10% of proposals that they review). Tough bar to pass, but hey... it's the big challenges that make the job fun.

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Can you say what companies you worked at before? That’s my exact job now (infectious diseases) and in the hard/worthwhile/ethical component (and I love my job).