was a notorious high-achiever who, following a meditation-induced breakdown, became addicted to therapy. He has been known to use psychedelics. Two years ago, I attended the funeral of someone I’d known who had taken his own life.
He was 40 when he did it. I’d known him since he was 14, his brother one of my closest friends. The night before the funeral, I had dinner with his parents.
We ate his favourite meal, a beef casserole, at the kitchen table; at one point, his siblings left the room to practise their speeches. None of them had known he was even unhappy. At the service I met his best friend.
Had he known anything was wrong? After the service, we drove off to a pub. We sat around a table with a display of our friend’s life behind us, built from old photographs his father had assembled.
Several of my old friends from university were there. No one spoke at first; we were in shock. An hour and a couple of beers later, however, everyone was talking animatedly – about computer games.
I had little interest in the topic, hadn’t played one since my early 20s (Grand Theft Auto 2, which left me dreaming about chainsaws) so I wandered outside and found the friend I’d driven up with from London. He’d recently recovered from cancer, and we spoke about that before another old friend joined us. Later, we went inside to look at the photographs.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
