"Cowardly, Selfish"

[cleduc]

81. I was thinking about this quote from my post above:

“It’s fun to be brilliant, but who are your peers? Who was his peer?” asked Fisher. “It’s incredibly lonely to be that. And he didn’t have a choice. And that’s why you take drugs, so you can slow up and smell the roses just to know that they are there, and it’s not all you. Drugs for a lot of people kept them alive. Without them they would’ve committed suicide. Not that I think that in any way drugs are positive. But I can certainly understand what drove his need for them, his appetite for them.”

Robin's death has really got to me. Try to be patient with my speculation below.

Bipolar hypomaniacs, that I suspect Robin suffered from, often do get successful treatment with drugs like lithium for example. BUT, a big BUT in Robin's probable case, and a different slant from Fisher's bolded comments above, if Robin took a drug like that to treat his bipolar condition, it would have taken the mania out of him. It would have killed who Robin perceived he was in the public's eye. It would have dramatically subdued his manic, high speed humor. It would have all but killed his perceived ability to do the only thing he was exceptional at in terms of work and creating art. It would have snuffed the endorphin high he talked about. It would have substantially curtailed his ability to put food on the table for his family and so many others he helped through his philanthropy that was so important to this highly empathetic soul.

Tragically, in Robin's case, even if he got diagnosed and good medication prescribed for this condition, and I suspect he did, he couldn't take the conventional nor probably any treatment for the mania or it would have ended or significantly compromised who he was in so many ways. Robin didn't have the choice most folks with this condition do.

Untreated hypomaniacs I've known are "up" a high percentage of the time. Eventually, like the laws of gravity, what goes up must come down. They don't sleep much while they're manic. Eventually, that catches up to them and they get tuckered out. Fatigue kicks in and the high speed mood swings to a real low, depressed mood while they physically recover their energy and heal up.

They can also suffer significant guilt or embarrassment for their out of control behavior due to things like promiscuity or hurt feelings or squandering money.

It appears that Robin lived this way for 40 or more years. Untreated, he would have hit some real lows along the way and it appears, one bad and low depression kicked in that he couldn't seem to get out of and it effectively, having happened many times before and worn him down over the 40 years, drove him to take his own life.

I could be wrong with the above but I suspect I'm probably not all that far off.