The same week that Kate Spade took her life, Anthony Bourdain also died of suicide. Like Spade’s passing, Bourdain’s death brought out a great deal of sympathy from the world who have loved his show and were in shock that he took his life.
With two high profile suicides in a week, many of the reports on Bourdain’s death have included information where people can get help if they feel at risk. Many are confused and bewildered by Bourdain’s death, and some are currently trying to figure out what could have caused him to take this tragic step.
The Daily Beast looked back to a 2014 episode of Parts Unknown where Bourdain went back to his former home in Cape Cod, and how he confronted his demons there. As the Beast reports, when he came to Cape Cod, Bourdain “fell in love with two things: food and drugs. Thankfully, it was the former that ended up defining his life.” And it was Bourdain’s past struggles with addiction that made him a sympathetic ear when he went to places in America where the opioid epidemic had hit.
It took Bourdain seven years to quit heroin, telling the New Yorker, “I’m a vain person. I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror.” He also once told a support group, “There was some dark genie inside me that I very much hesitate to call a disease, that led me to dope. I looked in the mirror at that time and I saw someone worth saving, or that I wanted to at least try real hard to save.”
The day the news broke that Bourdain had died, The Daily Beast also had several other headline stories including “Parts Unknown and Demons Too,” and “Bourdain, Kate Spade, & the Fallacy of Success and Happiness.” While we still don’t know the exact reason Bourdain decided to end his life, among the great outpouring of grief and memories from celebrity friends is another strong outcry to the world, pleading for people to ask for help when they need it so that more lives won’t be lost.
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