On Tony
About the smoking, drinking elephant in the room
Content warning: The following contains discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know has expressed the desire to hurt themselves, or have said the world would be better off without them, contact 988 Lifeline. You’re needed and wanted.
Also, the second posted video might not be suitable for animal lovers, snake-phobic folks, or the squeamish.
Seven years ago today, chef/author/TV host/bon vivant Anthony Bourdain hung himself in his room at Le Chambard Hotel in Kayersberg-Vignoble, France. He left a young daughter, two ex-wives, a brother, friends, and a world of people who adored him and the life he lived.
I would be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to write about Tony and his impact on my life. He’s been on my mind since I started this project, as his spirit is at the heart of it.
Shortly after I finished culinary school in the spring of 2001, I was at a loss for what to do next. I felt too old (28) to go back to the brutality of a restaurant kitchen. I’d gone to culinary school to learn about food and dining so I could write about it, but I had no clue how to break into the business.
I didn’t know that, by year’s end, I would have a monthly column in a new dining publication and would be planning the curriculum of my first cooking classes which would lead to my first catering job.
It was a lonely time, a time of being lost. I spent a lot of time cooking to soothe myself, reading cookbooks, and watching Food TV. I also watched Oprah just about every day, and one day a guest cracked open my whole head:
This guy was cooking professionally and had a book that was growing into an industry-changing smash hit: “Kitchen Confidential.” I took note.
But it was a year later, crawling over myself and screaming and laughing in my living room while watching a video of him eating the still-beating heart of a cobra that I was changed.
Before the cobra, Anthony was one of the many writing chefs I admired, who inspired me as I pieced together a career in the food world.
After the cobra, Anthony was an inspiration to a fearful young woman battling almost daily panic attacks. He did the scary things, not with macho bravado, but with visible courage threaded with his own terror. He was real.
He didn’t let his fear stop him when there were incredible experiences to be had. In those experiences, he found his joy.
I have never known what I’m doing, and I have always flown by the seat of my pants. Even with PTSD, treatment-resistant depression, panic disorder, and agoraphobia, I keep doing what scares me, even if it’s just walking out of my house to go get a coffee. Because I can let fear stop me from that benign of a task. It prevents me from finding any of the joy I might experience, pushing me deeper down depression’s well.
In my collection of mental illnesses, agoraphobia is the most surprising. I got that diagnosis postpartum when I was unable to stay home alone with my baby, CJ.
“But Robin,” you ask, “isn’t agoraphobia when you can’t leave the house?”
For many people, yes, but not everyone. At its root agoraphobia is more generalized than that. It’s about avoidance, a fear of being in situations where something bad could happen.
In postpartum 2004-5, two years after watching Anthony eat the snake, my agoraphobia made it impossible for me to be in my house alone without feeling the terror of what could go wrong. I was responsible for a helpless new human being. My beloved 17-year-old cat was nearing the end of her life, the first of my adulthood pets to pass. I couldn’t handle the idea of being alone should the kid or cat have an emergency, so the kid and I spent days away from home.
We’d drive CJ’s dad to the train station so he could go to work. Then we’d go to the little strip mall diner I loved. CJ would nap in their car seat on the counter while I drank countless cups of coffee and got parenting advice from the retired old dudes who were also regulars. We’d go to the grocery store, the mall, Target—any store with bright lights and colors and people to stimulate CJ’s little brain. Parks and libraries and coffeehouses, or driving around listening to The White Stripes, Wilco, Modest Mouse, and Franz Ferdinand until it was time to pick Brian up at the train station at the end of his workday.
Then I’d have a panic attack on the drive home, convinced we would find a dead cat inside.
Goddamn, therapy is a miracle. It saved my life when I finally got through the fear of making the appointment. By then I had my plan in place. I knew how I was going to do it, but not when. I only knew it had to be done before CJ turned two. I didn’t want them to have any memory of me or my death.
I’m better now, but mental illnesses are chronic. They show themselves in smaller, more manageable ways now. When I don’t have any trips scheduled, I’m more prone to depressive episodes fueled by the last dregs of agoraphobia making too much time at home feel suffocating.
My brain was not designed for survival in captivity.
So I go. When I start getting lost in my head, I go someplace where I’m only responsible for myself and my own terror or joy. Places where I can do things that terrify me but lead me to the brilliance of connecting with myself and knowing what I am capable of.
Yeah, I struggle with my brain when I travel. It’s pretty common for me to have to force myself to go to new places and do new things. Sometimes I need to cancel plans and go to bed for a day when I’m traveling. I hate it, but I know what my brain needs to be healthy. I work with what I have.
Anthony Bourdain taught me that the chef-writer career is possible. I enjoyed my combo career so much. I had to leave cooking for health reasons and I do miss it. Often. I don’t miss the stress, though.
Okay, that’s not entirely true. I miss the adrenaline a lot. And there is no sleep as great as the night after pulling off a huge dinner event.
I wonder if Anthony missed the adrenaline when he left the kitchen to focus on TV and books. Probably not, since he could replace it in his travels. Isn’t that what I’m doing, too? It is. All the good brain chemistry happens when I’m traveling, often after I’ve had that disappointing bed day.
I don’t speculate on why Anthony ended his life. It’s futile and depressing. But I somewhat understand. The adrenaline … that’s a sign. Without it, whether it’s from risky behavior, working the line during dinner rush, or finding the perfect spot at the perfect moment in a strange city, it’s easy for some of us to fall into despair. Even if we have to push through wanting to disappear to get there.
We are the people with big feelings, the too-sensitive kids who still want to try everything, experience everything that might offer the thrill and the joy that make life worth living when the pain and hurt are too much to bear.
Sometimes, for some of us, it does become unbearable. I don’t begrudge Anthony’s final act. I’m just sad that, for all the joy he experienced and brought to people like me, the pain still won.
I’m as sad for that now as I was seven years ago today. But then I think of Anthony eating oysters with his brother on the French coast where their dad grew up. Or I imagine him in his Manhattan apartment, Modern Lovers on blast, knife honed, a slab of some beautifully marbled beast sizzling as Tony removes the cigarette from his mouth to slug back some red wine and I know, he lived the best way a big feeler can live.
May we all move through the world like that in his memory.
