Stu's Blog

but some people never learn this - they think it's wrong to go back there or going back there will be too painful or its not worth it.... or when they learn then it's too late because the depression, the anxiety or the addiction is too overwhelming.

That person scrambles around looking for tools ...the tools they might have picked up years ago but the whole situation just seems so overwhelming and so the addiction overtakes them...or the suicidal thoughts overtake them. Society thinks that drug addicts and alcoholics have failed morally however in my experience most addicts and alcoholics desperately do not want to be that way...definitely depressed and anxious people do not wish to be that way....but process addictions like use of humour (comedy), work addiction, business addiction, addiction to love and sex and porn, gossip, negative thinking, food, sugar, money, physical appearance, reputation, cosmetic surgery, mood stabilisers, anti psychotic medications, anti anxiety tablets and anti depressants.....are all examples of the ways people are trying to deal with "Lifeache" using bandaids thinking they are curing the problem but this works only for so long and the consequences in the end are usually like this...a fantastic man with loads of talent who achieved so much dies alone through drugs or suicide not because there is something wrong with him but because he did not have all the tools and skills required to overcome the challenge. And in many ways the same goes for Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Heath Ledger, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Brittany Murphy, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, and people from my own circle my naturopath, my friends Bobby, Fadi, Christian, Ross, and at least 10 others from the last 10 years. In May three men living in my little country town took their own lives in the same week and two weeks later I was talking to a footy team at Lorne when one of their club members took his own life too. My two uncles took their own lives violently because of depression - one at 45 and one at 65.

I used to watch Robin Williams being interviewed and he was talented for sure but the interviews were so completely full of humour and speed and what seemed to be his massive discomfort or anxiety with himself I always wondered what was really going on for him beneath the surface of this very well constructed and clever outward performance.

I have seen many people come back from the edge of death because they have been simply given the tools. I would say that I am one of these people. The world pours money into all the wrong places ....probably this is driven by Lifeache itself - people trying to get enough money, enough validation or enough pleasure to stay alive and community health services and the like get their funding cut and so to reach all these people to offer them the tools and skills to beat Lifeache. But sadly this often just doesn't happen. Maybe my thoughts are too simplistic here...maybe I don't know the whole story yet...but I'm pretty sure there is some truth in here somewhere.