The Lesson I Want To Take From Robin Williams' Death

The nation is in shock over the news that Robin Williams killed himself yesterday.

You can see it on the TV, in the newspapers, on social media - the coverage of Williams' death is everywhere this morning and the recurring pattern in that coverage is shock that Williams would take his own life.

But I'm not in shock over the news of Williams' death.

The darkness that lived inside Robin Williams that ultimately led him to hang himself yesterday was evident in his stand-up comedy, his movie performances, his TV talk show appearances.

As someone who comes from a family that suffers from all three diseases Robin Williams suffered from - depression, addiction and alcoholism - I know the darkness that lives within and the struggle to keep the lights on and the sun shining in.

The good news about those struggles is that they often help people to lead extraordinary lives.

I can't psychoanalyze Robin Williams from afar - I know nothing about his life as a child, his growing up, the experiences and physiology that led to his suffering from depression and becoming addicted to drugs and alcohol at different points in his life.

But I can say that those experiences that brought about the darkness and the sadness in him also brought about the comedic talent and skill he shared with us during his life, the mania he displayed on stage that led to his comic heights, the pathos he hit in many of his better film roles that touched film-goers the world over.

Without the darkness and sadness, Robin Williams never would have been the "Robin Williams" we knew.

By all accounts,Williams was a decent man as well, a generous man, a nice man who treated people with respect - those character traits also came in part from whatever experiences Williams had that brought about the darkness and sadness inside him.

And of course the darkness and sadness led to his cocaine addiction and alcoholism, two of the more destructive ways humans can try and numb soul pain and heartache.

Williams was said to have been sober for many years after kicking his cocaine habit early in his career and he used those experiences as material for his stand-up (most notably in Robin Williams at the Met.)

He relapsed in the late 2000's, began drinking again, then entered rehab and got clean again.

He used these experiences as comic material in Weapons of Self-Destruction and seemed, from the outside at least, to have a handle on the darkness and sadness.

The Guardian obituary has this:

In a Guardian interview in 2010, he spoke about a relapse into alcoholism, his rehabilitation and his open-heart surgery.

Asked if he felt happier, Williams replied: “I think so. And not afraid to be unhappy. That’s OK too. And then you can be like, all is good. And that is the thing, that is the gift.”

Last month news came that Williams had entered another rehab, this time for "sobriety maintenance":

Robin Williams is at a rehab facility again ...but his people tell TMZ it's NOT because he fell off the wagon.

Williams is at Hazelden Addiction Treatment Center near Lindstrom, Minnesota.

Robin is in a part of the facility called The Lodge -- there are lots of fancy descriptions, but it's essentially a program to maintain long-term sobriety.

We're told Robin will be staying for several weeks.

I saw that story and remarked at the time to my wife that it wasn't a good sign that Williams was entering a rehab again, even if it was described as a program to help people in recovery "maintain long-term sobriety."

I sent out a little message to the universe - Gee, I hope Robin Williams is all right - then went on with my own life.

But when news came last night that Williams had killed himself, after the initial "O My God!" reaction, I realized that part of me wasn't surprised at all.

Drug addiction and alcoholism are life-long soul sicknesses, they do not go away no matter how successful a person is, no matter how many years somebody has in recovery, and depression is a mental illness that often remains life-long as well - health can be maintained but one must always be vigilant and even then, well, you never know.

Williams covered this himself in an interview with The Guardian in 2010

Williams used to be a big-drinking cocaine addict, but quit both before the birth of his eldest son in 1983, and stayed sober for 20 years. On location in Alaska in 2003, however, he started drinking again. He brings this up himself, and the minute he does he becomes more engaged.

"I was in a small town where it's not the edge of the world, but you can see it from there, and then I thought: drinking. I just thought, hey, maybe drinking will help. Because I felt alone and afraid. It was that thing of working so much, and going fuck, maybe that will help. And it was the worst thing in the world." What did he feel like when he had his first drink? "You feel warm and kind of wonderful. And then the next thing you know, it's a problem, and you're isolated."

Some have suggested it was Reeve's death that turned him back to drink. "No," he says quietly, "it's more selfish than that. It's just literally being afraid. And you think, oh, this will ease the fear. And it doesn't." What was he afraid of? "Everything. It's just a general all-round arggghhh. It's fearfulness and anxiety."

He didn't take up cocaine again, because "I knew that would kill me". I'd have thought it would be a case of in for a penny – "In for a gram?" he smiles. "No. Cocaine – paranoid and impotent, what fun. There was no bit of me thinking, ooh, let's go back to that. Useless conversations until midnight, waking up at dawn feeling like a vampire on a day pass. No."

It only took a week of drinking before he knew he was in trouble, though. "For that first week you lie to yourself, and tell yourself you can stop, and then your body kicks back and says, no, stop later. And then it took about three years, and finally you do stop."

It wasn't, he says, fun while it lasted, but three years sounds like a long time not to be having fun. "That's right. Most of the time you just realise you've started to do embarrassing things." He recalls drinking at a charity auction hosted by Sharon Stone at Cannes: "And I realised I was pretty baked, and I look out and I see all of a sudden a wall of paparazzi. And I go, 'Oh well, I guess it's out now'."

In the end it was a family intervention that put him into residential rehab. I wonder if he was "Robin Williams" in rehab, and he agrees. "Yeah, you start off initially riffing, and kind of being real funny. But the weird thing is, how can you do a comic turn without betraying the precepts of group therapy? Eventually you shed it."

Williams still attends AA meetings at least once a week – "Have to. It's good to go" – and I suspect this accounts for a fair bit of his Zen solemnity. At times it verges on sentimental: he asks if I have children, and when I tell him I have a baby son he nods gravely, as if I've just shared. "Congrats. Good luck. It's a pretty wonderful thing." But it may well be down to the open-heart surgery he underwent early last year, when surgeons replaced his aortic valve with one from a pig.

"Oh, God, you find yourself getting emotional. It breaks through your barrier, you've literally cracked the armour. And you've got no choice, it literally breaks you open. And you feel really mortal." Does the intimation of mortality live with him still? "Totally." Is it a blessing? "Totally."

He takes everything, he says, more slowly now. His second marriage, to a film producer, ended in 2008 – largely because of his drinking, even though by then he was sober. "You know, I was shameful, and you do stuff that causes disgust, and that's hard to recover from. You can say, 'I forgive you' and all that stuff, but it's not the same as recovering from it. It's not coming back."

Williams gets at the crux of alcoholism and addiction here:

"It's just literally being afraid. And you think, oh, this will ease the fear. And it doesn't." What was he afraid of? "Everything. It's just a general all-round arggghhh. It's fearfulness and anxiety."

I've already seen pieces this morning calling for more drug research to find new and better drugs to help people suffering from mental illness and depression to recover but the truth is, often at the bottom of all of that is FEAR and I'm not sure medicating that fear with drugs - even those prescribed by a doctor - really gets to the root of the issue.

Listen, I'm not a doctor, I know that some people have chemical imbalances that need to be adjusted and that doctors, prescribing medication, can do that and help them lead better and healthier lives.

But for many, the kind of depression that leads to alcohol and drug abuse is not a chemical imbalance that can be fixed with more drugs but a soul sickness that needs a more complex treatment than just a drug prescription.

I don't know Robin Williams, don't know his story other than what is in the public record and what he told about himself in interviews and revealed about himself in his stand-up.

But from what I do know about Williams, it doesn't sound like medical treatment alone was enough to heal him of his darkness and sadness.

And that's the point I most want to get across in this post:

We live in a culture that wants the easiest, quickest way to solve problems and we believe that we can ALWAYS solve problems if we just put our shoulders to the wheel and push at something hard enough.

But depression, drug addiction, alcoholism - these are complex things and they cannot be "solved" so easily, perhaps will never be solved so long as we live our mortal lives.

It would be better if we lived in a society and a culture that handled sadness and darkness better, but we do not.

Part of that is because we live in a capitalist society and nothing sells stuff better than sadness and darkness in people.

"Feeling sad? Feeling bad about yourself?"

"Have we got just thing for you!"

"Try this car, house, pill, drink, dress, hair style, diet..."

No, this not a culture that lends itself to letting people be with their darkness and sadness for a bit and understanding just where it's coming from.

Instead we live in a culture and society that has an instantaneous solution for them - for a price, of course.

But this is a false solution.

Williams got at the complexity of this in that 2010 interview:

Asked if he felt happier, Williams replied: “I think so. And not afraid to be unhappy. That’s OK too. And then you can be like, all is good. And that is the thing, that is the gift.”

In the end, that's the message I wish we could take from Williams' suicide.

It's okay to be sad, it's okay to be unhappy, it's okay to be afraid and fearful, these are human feelings and we are simply being human when we feel them.

The key is, to find safe ways to express them, to share them with others, to shine some light on them, to feel them, to accept them and then let them go.

That's the struggle, one which Robin Williams shared with the rest of us very publicly and courageously, with insight, humor and empathy.

And that's the lesson I wish to take from his death.

Defending The De Blasio Family

I'm not sure Chirlane McCray, the wife of Mayor Bill de Blasio, made the wisest choice when she opened up about the following to New York Magazine:

In a lengthy cover story in this week’s New York magazine, Mr. de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray ,opened up about some of the difficulties she faced adjusting to motherhood after her daughter Chiara was born.

“I was 40 years old. I had a life. Especially with Chiara—will we feel guilt forever more? Of course, yes. But the truth is, I could not spend every day with her,” she told the magazine. “I didn’t want to do that. I looked for all kinds of reason not to do it. … It took a long time for me to get into ‘I’m taking care of kids,’ and what that means.”

As Jill Colvin at Politicker reported, the tabloids were just brutal this morning:

The New York Post zeroed in on the passage, slapping the story on its wood under the headline “I WAS A BAD MOM!”

“New York City’s first lady, Chirlane McCray, didn’t much care for her new role as a mother after daughter Chiara was born — and looked for any excuse to keep away from her little girl,” the tabloid charged. “In a startlingly frank confession, Mayor de Blasio’s wife says she was unable to embrace motherhood and initially neglected Chiara, who last year dropped the bombshell that she was in treatment for abusing booze and pot. … The disclosure — bound to horrify most moms — shatters the carefully crafted image of de Blasio’s close-knit family, which helped vault him into office.”

The Daily News offered a similar–though less negative take–headlining its story, “Didn’t want to be a mom.”

Appearing visibly shaken by the remarks, Mr. de Blasio slammed both papers for their treatment of his wife’s comments.

“It really suggests a tremendous misunderstanding of what it is to be a parent, what it is to be a mother. I love my wife very deeply and she is an extraordinary mother. She always has been. She very much wanted to have children, which is evident in the New York magazine article, if anyone cares to read it and not caricature,” he said, heaping praise on her ability to handle intense family pressures.

“I over the years have marveled at her ability to take care of our two kids with such love, while having to do–in the middle of all that–the incredibly difficult work of helping both our mothers as they came to ends of their lives, while oftentimes having to have a full-time job,” he said.

Two things to say here:

First, I'm not surprised by the story McCray told New York Magazine about her troubles adjusting to her parenting role.

When McCray's and de Blasio's daughter, Chiara, announced last year that she had struggled with drug and alcohol problems, you knew then that something had happened in the past within the de Blasio household that was at odds with the P.R. image displayed during the campaign.

As someone who comes from a family where people have struggled with drugs and alcohol, I can tell you that few kids pick up a drink or a drug and begin using compulsively unless there's some deep, deep pain there that they're trying to anesthetize.

That said, I can't think of any family unit I have ever known where there wasn't some mistakes made by the parents that hurt the children and later needed to be worked out.

I dunno, maybe you know the perfect family where that didn't happen.

But I'm not surprised that the de Blasio family wasn't like that nor do I think less of them for it.

In fact, I think more of Chirlane McCray for being open about her flaws and her failures in the past as a parent and I think even more of Chiara de Blasio for getting sober as a teen and trying to work through the emotional and spiritual pain that brought her to addiction in the first place.

That's my human response to this story.

Second thing to say:

Putting my political observer's hat on, however, all I have to say is, Mayor de Blasio has got to get some decent P.R. people hired to keep a cap on the negative stories that spew out of this administration like water at an open fire hydrant in July.

It's great to be open and honest, but I wish Chirlane McCray had chosen a later date to get this open and honest with New York Magazine.

There have been way too many negative stories already out of the de Blasio administration since January, and now here's another one they have to deal with.

These are unforced errors, but they add up to real political damage.

Governor Cuomo Will Fund After School Programs Through Gambling Losses

Come on seven, mamma needs junior to get that after school SAT prep class!

Buried in the Daily News article reporting that Governor Cuomo is funding universal full-day pre-K across the state for the year, attempting to cut off Bill de Blasio's campaign pledge that NYC will fund its own universal full-day pre-K by raising taxes on individuals who make more than $500,000, is this:

In addition, officials say, Cuomo will propose another $720 million over five years in revenues generated by new casinos to fully fund after-school programs statewide.

So, hey, all you grandmas with your cups full of slot machine coins and all you degenerate gamblers who have a habit of spending the rent money at the blackjack table, you're doing the right thing by New York State's children.

It's your gambling losses that will fund their after school programs for the next five years (so long as you lose big, of course - Cuomo has calculated he needs $720 million in "gambling revenue" to pay for this.)

Another regressive tax from Governor 1% forever screwing the working people and middle class of this state so he can cut taxes on rich people.

Chiara de Blasio, Bill de Blasio And The Politics Of Manipulation

I thought the video the de Blasio transition team released of Chiara de Blasio talking about her struggles with drugs, alcohol and depression was on one level an important one.

We live in a high stress society in which many people are suffering from depression or other emotional problems, in which many people are trying to numb out with drugs, alcohol or other harmful behaviors.

I hope that Chiara de Blasio's struggles give the next mayor, her father, the understanding that schools are trying to help many students suffering from similar problems and need much more support in this area than was provided by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his test-centric NYCDOE.

That said, the carefully crafted and edited video itself left me feeling emotionally manipulated, like this was one of those Bill Clinton damage control specials, and makes me wonder what exactly the de Blasio transition team was trying to accomplish with it.

New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez felt the same way:

There was Chiara de Blasio, the 19-year-old daughter of New York’s next mayor, gently baring her battles with depression, alcohol and drugs in a day-before-Christmas YouTube video.

The sincerity and eloquence she showed were guaranteed to touch the hearts of many New Yorkers.

And her message could well inspire countless young people in similar situations to seek help, as she urged them to do at the end.

But Chiara’s startling video, coming eight days before the official start of the Bill de Blasio era, also left you with an eerie sense of being manipulated emotionally.

Those feeling began with the melancholy piano-and-string music that accompanied her every word. It continued with graphics that marked off each section with dramatic headlines like: “Chiara de Blasio tells her story.”

Then there were the statistics sprinkled throughout, such as: “About 28% of Americans drink at levels that put them at risk for alcohol dependence.”

Finally, there was the meticulous editing of her interview to evoke a sense of intimate conversation.
It amounted to a skillfully scripted Madison Avenue commercial that must have been in the planning for weeks — not some young woman’s spontaneous confession the day before Christmas.

It had all the earmarks of the damage-control tactics favored by Harold Ickes, the former Bill Clinton aide who is now a trusted adviser to de Blasio.

Gonzalez goes on to note how Christmas Eve is the perfect time for a politician to dump some information or story he/she would rather not divulge, so the Chiara de Blaiso video coming out yesterday also had that feel of a document dump kind of thing.

Then Gonzalez notes how Chiara reveals something very telling about Bill de Blasio himself:

It’s “the time of the year when these challenges are probably at their sharpest,” the mayor-elect added a short time later, in a brief appearance outside his home.

But Christmas Eve also happens to be the optimal moment for politicians to release potentially embarrassing information, because most people aren’t paying attention.

Even in this carefully choreographed video, however, hints of deeper strains in the de Blasio family surface.

“My mom was trying really hard to help me,” Chiara says at one point, “and my dad was doing the same, but obviously he was really busy.”

Bill, in other words, was spending so much time being a politician that Chiara’s mother was left to shoulder the burden of helping her.

In this, the de Blasios differed little from most American families. The fathers always have less time to deal with their children’s problems.

The average dad, though, doesn’t draft his children into television commercials aimed at winning votes, which is what de Blasio did with Chiara and her younger brother, Dante.

Mayor Bloomberg accused de Blasio of using his kids as political props during the campaign, and while at the time I thought that was an unfair charge, now that Chiara's video has been released, I am starting to walk that defense of the de Blasio campaign back.

They did use the kids in their ads, but only the parts of the story they wanted out there.

Go back and watch the de Blasio campaign videos after watching the Chiara's Story video and see if they resonate the same way with you that they did during the campaign.

Don't they start to feel a little more manipulative?

I come from a family rife with depression and substance abuse.

I wish I did not know the damage and heartbreak that depression and substance abuse bring, the suffering they cause, the strains they heap on the family.

Alas, I know all too well.

As someone with this family experience, I've gotten pretty good with sensing when one of my students is suffering similarly and have tried to be of service in the way I can to point them to places where they can get some help.

I hope that the de Blaiso family experience will give Mayor-Elect de Blasio the understanding that many other families suffer similarly and schools can be a place where they can find help and healing.

So in that way, I am glad the Chiara de Blasio video was released.

But the slickly-crafted Chiara de Blasio still makes me feel manipulated emotionally and gives me just another reason to feel there is something slimy and untrustworthy about her father, Bill de Blasio.

De Blasio made his bones in the Clinton administration and ran Hillary's senate campaign in 2000, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that de Blasio has learned the damage control public relations tactics of his old bosses quite well.

Hard to know if Chiara wanted to tell her story publicly or was forced to tell it by someone close to her, hard to know if they had this video in the pipeline a long time and were ready to go with it at a moment's notice or it just got made recently, but the use of this video in a very political way leaves me feeling like Bill de Blasio is one very manipulative politician willing to use his children in whatever way he needs to in order to advance his own career.

That doesn't take away from the power of Chiara's telling her story publicly or the empathy and identification I have with her, but it does make me wonder why the de Blasio transition team felt the need to get it out there right now and just what they're trying to do with it.

Finally it makes wonder about Bill de Blasio himself - just how much Bill Clinton does he have in him?

Weiner Lectures Public Employees

Sexting Anthony, fresh from hiding from the press on Day One of his campaign to be mayor of NYC, took to WNYC to explain why New Yorkers should vote for him - he'll take on the public employees unions and make them pay for their fair share!

Weiner’s early campaign strategy appears to try to, as the Times put it this morning, seize a “common-sense centrism” that the other Democrats have so far ignored. In dealing with growing mandated costs tied to the city’s municipal labor force, Weiner said he would want to see workers begin paying health insurance premiums, with higher rates for to smokers.

The Bloomberg administration cited both proposals last month as crucial concessions needed to keep reduce healthcare costs, projected to increase by 30 percent in three years.
“So does this position indicate that you will not be competing for public sector union endorsements?” Lehrer asked Weiner.

Weiner said that the message he wants to send to public employees, with whom the next mayor will have to negotiate new contracts, is that money saved through higher health insurance premiums could end up back in their pockets another way.

“That is money we can’t use for raises,” said Weiner, referring to the $2.6 billion that the city’s annual bill for healthcare is projected to increase by over the next four years.

This lecturing of public employees came after Weiner explained away his sexting mess by saying it was "private behavior" and "things that I was doing in my private life.”

NOTE TO ANTHONY: Sexting is no longer "private behavior" when you send the sext to all your Twitter followers.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Weiner's decided a campaign against public employees, including teachers, will be his niche in the race.

He is an opportunist with no core beliefs or principles.

Remember when he used to be a progressive?

Oh, yeah - I remember.

But now he's the anti-public employees union guy.

The way Weiner wants to dismiss the scandal says all you need to know about who this man is at his core.

Weiner's first instinct during the sexting mess was to lie and lie and deny and deny.

That he still has not gotten any help for his behavior (what is called a "process addiction" in 12 step vernacular), that he doesn't seem to be all that sorry about much of anything other than that he was caught, and that he seems to desperately need attention the way an alcoholic needs a drink or a heroin addict needs junk just makes him a very, very pathetic man.

That he thinks he should be lecturing public employees about anything makes him a hypocrite.

Hey, Anthony - go away, get some help, get some therapy, and grow up.

Here are some meetings you might check out:

http://saa-recovery.org/

You're welcome.

Weiner Can't Bear To Be Out Of Public Eye

Why won't this man go away?

Disgraced ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner is considering a run for mayor — and says a return to politics may be "now or never," according to a new report.

In a lengthy interview that ranged from the pervy pol's infamous tweets that wrecked his career to his future prospects, Weiner said he wants "a second chance" and admitted time may be running out for a political comeback.

"It’s now or maybe never for me, in terms of running for something," Weiner said in a New York Times magazine article published online this morning.

"I’m trying to gauge not only what’s right and what feels comfortable right this second, but I’m also thinking, How will I feel in a year or two years or five years? Is this the time that I should be doing it? And then there’s the other side of the coin, which is . . . am I still the same person who I thought would make a good mayor?”

...

 Weiner told the mag he was desperate for attention and approval when he began engaging with his many female fans on Twitter and Facebook, and it started innocently — until he sent the tweet, showing his shirtless torso and wearing only underwear, intended for a young woman but accidentally broadcast to the world.

He's still "desperate for attention and approval," which is why he's very publicly wrestling with whether he should run again for public office this year or wait for a future political bid opportunity.

Quite frankly, this dude needs a 12 step program and some steady therapy to get at a) his desperate need for attention and approval and b) the addictive traits he suffers from because of that desperate need for attention and approval.

He needs to go away, grow up and get a real job.