Owen Wilson

[Usivius]

Surprised no one has mentioned this ... apparently Owen tried to commit suicide shortly after having a heated argument with someone.
As usual, details are sketchy (not that I need personal details) but it does seem as if he is in the hospital recovering from an attempted suicide.

WTF?
I know I am not in his shoes and have NO idea what it is like to be Mr. Owen Wilson, but I have to stack things up:
- you are quite a handsome guy
- you are quite wealthy
- you have a very good career behind and ahead of you
- you have dated some of the hottest women
- you have some pretty great (famous) friends...

what the F could drive you to want to die?!!! That's just messed up to me.

I like the guy, this is why I am posting this... just venting my disbelief and anger/frustration....

[Cail]

The world would be a happier place without Owen Wilson and his f'd up nose making movies.

He's a plague on Hollywood. "You, Me, and Dupree" should be considered a WMD.

[Queeaqueg]

You don't know what happens behind closed doors. On he face he was all that stuff but he fame may be driving him mad. Look at Britney Spears, all that fame has made her gone mad.

[Marv]

Who knows. Maybe it was a cry for help, maybe he just lost perspective in the heat of the moment. Personally, I have trouble understanding why anyone would ever commit suicide. You're always capable of changing your situation, regardless of how bad it appears to be.

[Worm of Despite]

WTF?
I know I am not in his shoes and have NO idea what it is like to be Mr. Owen Wilson, but I have to stack things up:
- you are quite a handsome guy
- you are quite wealthy
- you have a very good career behind and ahead of you
- you have dated some of the hottest women
- you have some pretty great (famous) friends...

what the F could drive you to want to die?!!! That's just messed up to me.

I don't think mental health is dependent on taking and getting; it's moreso centered around the everyday struggle of life, whether it be a job, school, religion, or family concerns.

It's like hitting the lottery: most middle-class people, after winning millions of dollars, spend a few months in a euphoric state, and then they go back to normalcy. Some may buy a 500,000 home or a couple new cars, but otherwise, they don't live decadent lifestyles; they remain the same.

Stardom has a similar effect. People get used to having it all: they expect the limos; they ignore constant attention by fans and media; it's like the way many consider freedom: "I'm supposed to have this; it's not a privilege but a right." Often times having everything feels just as constraining as having nothing. Anxiety's a human emotion, and people screw up when they try to erase it completely.

[matrixman]

Whether it's Owen Wilson or Britney Spears, it seems impossible to express an opinion about celebrities without getting flak. It's the "celebrities are people, too" line. Yes, we are actually intelligently enough to discern they are human beings. I think what simply annoys most of us is the fact that celebrity crises are thrust to the news front pages as if they represented dire, global situations. (No, I'm not zeroing on you, LF, I'm making a general statement.)

"Anger and frustration" over Owen Wilson? Nope. Sorry. Now if I found out that a "famous" person like SRD (who is admittedly far down on the ladder rung of international fame), whose work is far more relevant to my life, was experiencing some major crisis in his life, then yes, I would be much more urgently concerned.

[Cail]

I just have a hard time feeling sorry for him and his depression when he's in the position he's in.

[Cagliostro]

So...Cail...umm....the famous and wealthy can't suffer from depression? That seems less than compassionate. Sure, they don't have to worry about making the phone payment next month, but still...

Can I assume you have never suffered from severe, crushing depression then?

Yeah, it seems kinda silly that someone in a position he is in to having "meaningful" sadness. But I don't think it works like that.

[Cail]

Sure they can. But is it news?

And c'mon man, the guy can't act.

[Worm of Despite]

Sure they can. But is it news?

Nope.

And c'mon man, the guy can't act.

I agree, though there were a couple funny scenes with him in Royal Tenenbaums. Especially the one that featured this painting:

[Usivius]

the relevance of the issue has nothing to do whether someone subjectively thinks he can act or not...

however I agree that, regardless of 'mental health' I have a hard time feeling sympathetic for the man when there is seemingly (and I say seemingly) so much he has going for him.
He is not some homeless person or someone who last everything on the stock market, or whose wife was killed ...

anyway, just my 2 cents...

[SoulBiter]

Depression has nothing to do with what you have or dont have. Real depression can occur at any time in life and can affect anyone. Its not something you have control over and its not always caused by a life changing event (death, loss of job, etc etc etc). People that have depression dont know why they 'feel' the way they do. They KNOW they have everything going for them. They KNOW they should be OK with their life.. but that doesnt matter. Sometimes people come out of it without any help at all. Others turn to religion. Some turn to the psychiatric field and others take anti-depressents. But regardless.. until you have gone through something like that..... you really cant sit there and pass judgment on whether or not someone should or should not be depressed.

[dlbpharmd]

Whatever the case may be, it's clear that Wilson has some type of severe mental illness (or else he wouldn't attempt suicide) and success, fame or money can't make him better.

[Fist and Faith]

Cail, you really should... *sigh*

Anyway, there's a difference between depression and having a bad day. People having a bad day don't kill themselves. I've had bad days. Cail's had bad days for the same reason. Neither of us has attempted suicide. (At least I haven't.) People with depression have as much control over it as people with cataracts have over that. Giving them success, money, women, or any damned other thing will not make them happy. No more than it will remove their cataracts.

[drew]

More often than not.. a failed suicide atempt, is not a suicide attemp at all, but more of a cry for help.

That's understanadable, when someone is severly depressed, that they feel like the only way, is to make like they are going to end it al..but in reality, if they really wanted to do it, they'd do it right.

Now when it's a celebrety, it's hard to say if its a cry for help, or more of a cry for attention. (or press, if you will)

His name has ben all you heard on Entertainment shows; and he's got three movies coming out within the next year.

Won't that make a lovely story, how he able to beat his depression, and come out on top, even after a suicide attempt.

I'm not saying it was staged; but I'm saying, if he really wanted to do it, he would have done it; and if he really was feeling so low, he'd want to end it all, he probebly could have been more decreet about it.

[lucimay]

Anne Sexton really wanted to do it...several times, she just wasn't very successful.

except the last time.

i guess she'd learned enough from the several previous attempts over the years.

she left her cigarettes in the potted plant next to the chair in her shrink's office...a major hint that she wasn't going to need them anymore. shrink didn't find them till several days after Anne's death by carbon monoxide poisoning.



Wanting to Die
by Anne Sexton


Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.


Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.


But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.


Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.


In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.


I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.


Still-born, they don’t always die,
but dazzled, they can’t forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.


To thrust all that life under your tongue!—
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death’s a sad bone; bruised, you’d say,


and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.


Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,


leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love whatever it was, an infection.

[Cail]

That's a good point Drew.

Celebrity confessionals are such the thing now.

Fist, I understand what clinical depression is, and if that's really the cause for his attempt, then he's in the right place (a hospital). But clinical depression is only one reason out of many that people try to off themselves.

[Avatar]

Now if I found out that a "famous" person like SRD, whose work is far more relevant to my life, was experiencing some major crisis in his life, then yes, I would be much more urgently concerned.

At least until he finished the Last Chrons...

--A

[balon!]

I dunno. I mean I don't view acting or anything as real work, so anyone who has that much money just thrown at them, I don't count as real people.

I know it's a sort of sick mentality, but seriously. Absolute power (or in this case money) corrupts absolutely.

I dunno what I'm trying to say. Basically that I have no pity for people who make millions of dollars for minute effort, and then try to act like normal people who are attempting to deal with paying rent, food, etc.. on a minimum wage job.

[Fist and Faith]

Fist, I understand what clinical depression is, and if that's really the cause for his attempt, then he's in the right place (a hospital). But clinical depression is only one reason out of many that people try to off themselves.

Maybe so. And maybe Wilson's problem isn't clinical depression. Then again, maybe it is. And even if it isn't, many people probably need to understand the problem with this quote:

I just have a hard time feeling sorry for him and his depression when he's in the position he's in.

From what I have observed in others with clinical depression, I would not take the depression/position combo, even if the position part was King of Earth. None of the things we think "should make someone happy" will make someone happy if they have clinical depression. I know a woman who wrote out a list of the good things in her life; the things that "should have made me happy." And she would read it repeatedly when she felt depressed. But it was useless. It doesn't work like that. Do feel sorry for someone with depression, no matter what they have going for them, just as you might feel sorry for someone with cancer.

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.


There's also a lot of talk along the lines of "If someone really wanted to commit suicide, they would (or wouldn't) do X. They'd do Y. Obviously, they didn't really want to commit suicide." It's possible that they didn't want to die. Maybe they only want the pain to end. Maybe they don't have any idea how to make that happen. Death would do it, but if someone could help them find another way, they'd be willing to try, and the "attempt" was their way of finding out. Sure, it's easy enough for us to say, "Well why don't they just ask, instead of setting up a "suicide attempt" in such a way that they'll almost surely be saved?" Again, rational thinking and depression don't always walk hand in hand.