Like Suicide (edit)

This post I'm about to write has everything.  It has real life-and-death drama, gossip and innuendo, sex and violence, seedy characters and village idiots, media patsies, medical diagnoses and law enforcement figures.  It's going to feature some extra-harsh pronouncements from me, some of which are definitely unfair since I don't know any of these people.

It's a pity, then, that many of you will be turned off by who it's about.  And some more of you will be turned off by the environment involved. 

It's a real shame, because this post I'm about to write is something everyone should be able to identify with.  It might just open your mind a little (if it's not opened already) to a serious issue that in one way or another touches all of us during our lives.

Yes, Knoll.  I'm finally going to talk about Terrell Owens. 

For those of you who don't follow sports (or don't follow American football), Terrell Owens is the archetype of the arrogant, me-first athlete.  He is one of the most talented football players alive, and he knows it.  On the field, he is respcted.  Off the field, he is reviled.  He has a gigantic chip on his shoulder.  He openly criticizes teammates, coaches, and anyone else who fails to coddle him with constant and unwavering respect.  The character Leon from the Budweiser commercials is patterend after him.   His antics are the stuff media feeding frenzies are made of.

Terrell Owens also may or may not have tried to kill himself last night. 

And both he and his...publicist? -- both deny that anything like that happened. 

On the one hand, you have a leaked police report.  In it, authorities describe a 911 call and a scene that had Owens telling his...publicist that he had taken 35 prescription pain medications, having her try to pry his mouth open to prevent him from swallowing two more, the publicist telling authorities that Owens was "depressed", and the EMTs asking Owens if he tried to harm himself...and Owens responding, "Yes."

On the other hand, you have Owens and his publicist claiming that owens did not try to commit suicide, the publicist claiming she did not say Owens was depressed, Owens claiming that he doesn't know waht he said...because he had a foul allergic reaction to his painkillers mixed with his battery of natural supplements. 

So if you're still reading, I bet you are wondering why I'm writing about this.  I bet you're also wondering what I think. 

I think Owens tried to kill himself.  And I think that everyone in Owens' world has it in their best interests to believe otherwise.  I could be wrong, of course.  But that's my opinion until I hear the 911 call -- which should come out within the next day or two.  I feel this way for the following reasons:

1. As much as certain police departments have given us reasons to mistrust them, police in general do a good job of recording information.  In fact, this is the main job of police departments.  If this were a situation where it was in the department's best interests to lie, I'd be a lot more skeptical.  But what motivation would they have to make this up?   This isn't the Rodney King case, where lies covered up police brutality.  Nor was it the mistaken killing of an innocent terror suspect in London, where a coverup had similar motives.  In this case, the police had nothing to cover up for.  Not believing the police department would bequate to an assertion that an internal, leaked police report containednot one, not two, but three huge, glaring mistakes that wrongly painted what happened was a suicide attempt.  That's very hard to swallow. 
   
   


2. Owens and his handlers have every incentive in the world to lie.  The Dallas Cowboys football team doesn't want the distraction, so their website is spinning like crazy to play this down.  His publicist doesn't want her client humiliated (but it's far too late for that, and she didn't help).  Owens, the big, bad pro athelete, certainly doesn't want to show weakness.  Nobody else in Owens' life wants to think they missed any 'warning signs', even though there aren't always warnings before things like this happen in people's lives. 

And reason number 2 brings me to my reasons for creating this post.  As soon as you bring the words 'suicide' and 'depression' into a conversation, it turns serious.  Or maybe I should say that it should turn serious.  It should turn serious because suicide and depression are serious issues; as an undergraduate and graduate student of psychology, it behooves me to pinpoint this issue.  Unfortunately, what I'm hearing are sportscasters untrained in psychology or psychiatry attempting to offer diagnoses on Terrell Owens' mental state when this incident occurred. 

Sadly, this has resulted in journalists who I typically enjoy and respect sounding like completely ignorant assholes. 

Asshole number 1: Dan LeBatard.  He goes into great detail about why he "believes T.O." in this article.  None of his detail indicates the slightest inkling of knowledge about how depression and suicide actually play out in the real world.  The crux of his argument seems to be 'I'm around T.O. a lot, and he doesn't seem depressed to me, he seemed happy - so no way would he try to kill himself.'  Brilliant.  Thanks for your absolutely meaningless opinion, Dan.

Asshole number 2: Michael Wilbon.  On the sports show Pardon the Interruption today, he displayed the exact same ignorance of depression and suicide that LeBatard did.  Fortunately, he hasn't (yet) had the opportunity to write it down.  [Oh wait - yes he has.  He said on the show that his first reaction to the story was that he didn't believe it.  And of course he contructs his observations of the day's events around that belief, just as I am...onlly without taking into account the possibility that he is wrong, and that what he observes might not tell him squat about psychological ailments.]

Asshole number 3: Owens' so-called publicist, Kim Etheridge.  In that press conference, she sounded less like T.O.'s publicist...and more like T.O.'s assistant, plus part-time ho.  The Dallas Cowboys' employee seemed confused about what to call her when he introduced her to the podium, uncomfortably settling on "T.O.'s assistant".  Does an assistant/publicist say things like "When T.O. came home..." over and over again -- almost as if it were a natural thing for her to say?  Was it T.O.'s house...or do you consider his house your home also, for some reason?  Gee, isn't that an odd choice of words? 

But the last thing she said was the worst thing anyone said: "T.O. has 25 million reasons why he should want to live."  Keep in mind, this is the same person who placed the 911 call.  I can't think of a more disgusting thing she could have said -- especially since income and suicide arre totally unrelated.  In fact, I wouldn' t be surprised if income level was positively correlated with attempted suicide.  This woman may have been a professional...but not at PR, if you know what I mean.  You may think this is an evil thing for me to imply.  But Etheridge did such a godawful job at PR today that calling her a glorified prostitute might be a compliment in this case.  If it's true, at least there's a chance that she's good at her job.

Those of you who have had someone even remotely near them commit suicide understand what I'm talking about when I call these guys assholes.  Actually, I'm being harsh.  What they are doing is very typical of the human condition.  As humans, we want to compartmentalize things.  We want to make issues that are incredibly difficult to understand more simple, more observable, so we can pretend to understand them.  No matter how many times we see that the truth doesn't match up with our simpler worldview, we try to fit our teeny square pegs into gigantic round holes. 

When Wilbon and LeBatard simply say they "didn't believe it,"  and that we all jumped on the bandwagon too soon, and that T.O. would never try to kill himself, they echo the words of thousands of people around the world who actually lost a loved one to suicide. 

What they seeem to forget is that just as often as people show outward signs of being clinically depressed, they just as often do NOT show outward signs of being depressed or wanting to commit suicide.  Just as often as people see it coming, as many people have someone in their lives kill themselves where nobody saw it coming. 

When I was in high school, a kid in the class below me who seemed happy, had many friends, was thought of as cool and well-liked stayed home one day, unwired his parents' gun, loaded it with bullets he had obtained and shot himself in the head.  Some of his friends were so stunned they refused to believe it.  At least one went so far as to insist there was foul play.  This was in spite of the fact that no one else was home, no one else had a motive to kill him, and he had left a suicide note in his own writing.  Since the incident defied his friends' ability to comprehend it, their brains allowed them to experience nothing but denial.

And no profession facilitates denial quite as well as being a pro athlete.  Everyone in their lives tells athletes how much better they are than everyone else, even though it's not true.  A lot of people try to exploit their naivete and riches, as well as do anything in their power to cover up and excuse their wrongdoings.  Society practically deifies them, no matter what their backgrounds may be.

Owens was a troubled kid.  His mom conceived him with a man across the street, and either left him or died when Owens was young.  When a teenaged Owens started to flirt with a girl across the street, an acquaintance told him 'you can't flirt with that girl.  Why not?  because she's your half-sister."  That was how Owens found out who his father was.  From a neighborhood acquaintance -- at the same time learning that the man cared so little about him that he couldn't be bothered to ever acknowledge his son living across the street from him.  By his own account, Owens was always picked on and bullied in school, and his perhaps-alcoholic grandmother who raised him basically kept him locked up in the house most of the time, raising him away from most human contact.  As a result, Owens has always had trouble relating to people, trusting people, and accepting guidance and authority.  He has constantly battled with belittled and humiliated teammates and coaches wherever he has played, seeming to crave the spotlight at all times.  Anything to draw attention to himself. 

Is it any wonder the man is disturbed?  And should anyone really be surprised when they hear he was depressed and/or suicidal?  If I couldn't relate to people, I'd be depressed too. 

More and more pro athletes are being brave, standing up and telling their stories about battling depression.  Deion Sanders, the former flamboyant and cocky two-sport athlete, wrote a book and described his mid-career depression and subsequent suicide attempt in his own words.  Deion ran his car over a cliff to kill himself, but he and the car only took minor damage.  He reported it as a single-car accident, brushed it under the rug and acted like nothing happened -- until after he became born-again.

Terry Bradshaw, the seemingly-indomitable four-championship quarterback of the famed Pittsburgh Steelers, has become a national spokesperson for depression.  He used to cry himself to sleep at night.  Nobody knew.  More importantly, nobody could even imagine it.  That's mostly because athletes must maintain an aura of invincibility while they play.  Not so much when they retire.

See a pattern developing?  A pattern of denial, covering-up and completely plausible explanations?  I'm not calling T.O. a liar.  he might be telling the truth.  Of course, that doesn't mean for sure that he didn't try to kill himself -- only that he doesn't believe he did, and was groggy and incoherent when questioned by the authorities.  Since attempted suicide isn't a crime in Texas and his story is believable, they let him go.

An equally damaging notion is that a person 'becomes somebody else' when exposed to drugs.  Whether the drugs are alcohol, serotonin adjusters, or whatever, a person never really becomes somebody else.  This is, again, our simple human attempt to compartmentalize behavior that we don't understand.  I have some upsetting news: everything you do in an altered state is still YOU.  You don't become "someone else."  you stay who you are, only on whatever you are taking.  It's an easy way for us to distance ourselves for our uninhibited, socially-unacceptable behavior during these periods. 

An increasing amount of evidence suggests that male athletes are among the highest risk groups for depression -- and at the same time, one of the least likely groups to have it diagnosed and to seek treatment.  Here's an excerpt from that link:

"Take Bradshaw, who led four Pittsburgh Steelers teams to Super Bowl titles and won the NFL's MVP Award in 1978. He was the picture of calm on the field, but when the game ended, he would hemorrhage sweat and dissolve into tears. "People say, 'You couldn't have been depressed--I saw you throw for all those touchdowns,'" says Bradshaw. "Shoot, the football was the easy part. I could concentrate for three hours, and the games were an escape. It was the rest of my life that was going to hell in a handbasket." Despite a jovial public persona that splinters the stereotype of how someone who's depressed acts, Bradshaw grew more melancholy after retiring from football."

Are you listening, sportswriters and talking heads?  I know I've offered a lot of innuendo here.  I know it sounds like I'm talking consipracy here, but I''m really not.  Most people deny they have these issues until they can't anymore.  Most people go the Deion route. 

I know it's possible that we are wrong about Owens.  It's possible the 911 calls and events at the scene may indicate a misunderstanding by authorities.  I know it's possible that we may never find out what happened to him last night.  But in the end, that's not really the point I'm trying to make.  This isn't about what happened in this one case to this one person; rather, this is about our reactions to concepts involving mental illness.  That's what needs fixing. 

We can still take this opportunity to shed light on a shadowy yet serious problem in both professional sports and society as a whole.  No matter how famous you are, no matter how much money you make, depression and suicide are real.  They haunt and stalk thousands of the best of us every day.  Denial and/or disbelief won't enable anyone to overcome it.  I'd like to see a few more people in the media remember that before this story plays out completely. 

Maybe then they'll be able to find something more useful to say beyond "No way this particular person tried to kill himself." 

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