It really saddens me, as a life coach, who spends endless hours helping the poor and addicted unravel demons and missed dreams to see the recent deaths of high profile, privileged celebrities like Philip Seymour Hoffman, L Wren Scott and Peaches Geldof. The truth is we are all fragile regardless of how much money, fame or success we have and with little modern, updated talk therapy available I see the problem only getting worse.
It is difficult for a psychiatrist or even a behavioural therapist to truly understand the demons of addiction and the inner madness created by confused thinking often embedded through difficult childhood and addicted parents as I believe you have to have been there yourself to even begin to help someone else. Text book therapy in my opinion is like any other exam or qualification, you learn to understand the basic principles but your only method often for recovery is to be prescribed medication.
A psychiatrist will listen and assess the risk factors of a patient's intent to self-harm and most cases are labelled as depression but addiction often, in my opinion is not related to depression but is more about escaping facing the brutal truth and reality of everyday life.
If you look at somebody who is homeless, in the gutter with no hope you can almost sympathise with the need to get completely out of it with either alcohol, drugs or suicide but when you look at the privileged choosing to be out of it in the same way you have to question the fact that it is not money and materialism that drives human happiness.
Obviously I did not know L Wren Scott and can only go by what I read but through my own experience of living life and facing my own brutal truth I can try and analyse her mind in the moments before she opted to hang herself alone in a moment. In middle age women quietly suffer the menopause and it is even more brutal for those women who have not had children or a traditional marriage and family life. Having a long term relationship and being madly in love with an older, hugely successful rock star and self-proclaimed womaniser and singleton with no desire for a traditional family or marriage must have left her feeling hopeless. On top of this her fiercely independent business persona kept her in a pretend state of fulfilment over compensating for her deep inner needs to be fulfilled in a maternal way. Being in debt to such a level would cause incredible stress and compounded with an unfulfilled personal desire for a family would become all-consuming with no way out. In my opinion, having helped many people unravel such complex unhealthy thoughts having someone you can trust with no self-agenda, only brutal honesty can prevent impulsive acts of self-harm. I wish I had had the chance to help this talented beautiful woman in that dark moment.
Philip Seymour Hoffman was clearly a genius, tortured by a life long history of heroin addiction. From what I have read about him, he was a highly sensitive, complex character who found the monotony of day to day trivia so difficult to cope with he preferred to knock himself out completely, almost like using heroin to anaesthetise the pain of life. Heroin addiction in my experience is like Russian roulette, you press the needle knowing at some point the outcome will be lethal.
Peaches Geldof’s life has been well publicised. She was a fun, crazy wild child walking in the steps of a tragic mother who ultimately self-destructed. Pattern behaviour and modelling on your parents, the human condition, is the biggest cause of human addiction and misery. Learning to carve a path out for your own individual dreams and desires is not easy when you are told from the beginning that life is a fairy tale and happiness can be bought in a store with a credit card.
The traditions we have created that keep us on the treadmill of fulfilling, unrealistic and often unattainable happiness must be replaced by the brutal truth that life is what you make it and without someone to talk to honestly and openly without judging, more of us will opt to commit suicide.
It is my dream to get more people who have battled pain and recovered from addiction into life coaching schools across the world helping others to recognise they are not alone.