Would "A First-Rate Madness" be selling so well had the author Nassir Ghaemi not thrown in some juicy tales of suicide? Today, it ranks 5230 on Amazon.com. Part of that popularity might be due to the word of mouth coming from people who are shocked when they read that those profiled in the book were not only emotional messes but had tried suicide, sometimes more than once.
For example, Martin Luther King jumped out of a window twice. Both times he somehow survived. Mahatma Gandhi tried it once in his teenage years. JFK might have attempted it passively since he was, Ghaemi tells us, a classic biopolar. Often JFK felt that longing for death. He might have tried to accomplish it through his wild risk-taking.
Suicide also turns an audience for a talk into all ears. This week at a 12-step meeting, a speaker told the group that first his father, then his brother checked out. They used shot guns. One day, after his wife had left him, he himself sat with a shot gun. He noticed the dog shaking. Funny, what provides suicide prevention. The room was silent, during and after the talk. It was a while before the audience got up from their chairs.
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