Across his various interviews, TV shows, and books, he references suicide by hanging 19 separate times between the years 2000 and 2017, 15 of which specifically reference hanging oneself in the shower (the method and setting he would eventually use himself). He also spoke openly about long-standing and severe depressive episodes. In one account, he described being “utterly depressed … in bed all day, immobilized by guilt, fear, shame and regret … heart palpitations, terrors, bouts of self-loathing so powerful that only the thought of diving through my sixth-floor window onto Riverside Drive gave me any comfort and allowed me to lull myself into a resigned sleep”(1). In another, he wrote: “I was aimless and regularly suicidal … foot on the gas, the cliff edge coming up at me fast … (and) at the last second, turned away from empty air, laughing and crying at the wonderfulness and absurdity of it all, diverted from what I very much felt to be my just desserts”(2). Taken together, these recurring references to suicide by hanging and his own description of chronic suicidal ideation can’t have been a coincidence.
1 - Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Anthony Bourdain
2 - Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook, Anthony Bourdain
1 - Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Anthony Bourdain
2 - Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook, Anthony Bourdain
