Does the collision of beauty, attention, drugs and promiscuity always lead to suicide?

This was a question that came to me after reading a few reports in the news about adult entertainers who were committing suicide. I’m not sure if it is that their suicides are remarkable or rather that sensationalist reporting is to blame for concentrating the reports in the popular media. It seems to be a common thread in the adult entertainment industry. That people who appear to have everything have personal wreckage that they are carrying around and eventually they just can’t cope with what is unfolding in their lives and they shoot or hang themselves.

If its a natural extension of their lifestyles, an extension of the Hollywood dysfunction, where fame, power, money, attractiveness, and drugs collide in ruined lives then this post is just a subset of that, but to me it seems that this sort of thing appears to happen to adult entertainers with remarkable regularity.

I suppose the adage of the candle that burns twice as brightly lasts half as long. In it may be a lesson against the Adonis complex. Working so very hard to look like the people you see in the movies or on TV (or in more prurient forms of entertainment) is actually one more thing that is, in the end, bad for you. The best way to be is to be who you are. Don’t try to be like anyone else, just be the best you that you can be. If that best you carries around weight, or some other not-in-the-ideal characteristic it is likely best to celebrate that feature of yourself. If the Hollywood “clone machine” is any lesson, when you get what you think it is that you want, you find that it’s actually nothing and eventually that makes you sad. Does it lead to suicide? Probably not, but it probably isn’t good for you either.

This gets me thinking that fame should be listed as a negative life event, kind of like a self-defeating Trojan Horse. It looks good on the outside, but it’s jammed with disaster on the inside. Perhaps the feelings of “not being enough” is a healthy warning against the false gold of the object of your pursuit.