A considerable portion of my friends know at least one or two people that have OD’ed or killed themselves since the flood. Hell, one of my friends knew someone that was murdered and then eaten by her boyfriend. I’ve recently been informed that two people that I knew first-hand, have checked out in the last month. I wasn’t want you you would really call friends with either of them, as in I didn’t know either of their last names or favorite colors. The first I found out about was Eric, who trained me as a barback at Lafittes last Southern Decadence. I had originally met Eric a few years ago, playing NTN at Good Friends. I brought him home from the Quarter once back when I had a car. It was late and it was raining and he said something about having to walk since the busses weren’t running that late. It was like, 2am and he lived like, 5 or 6 miles away so I gave him a ride since it was in the general direction of my apartment. Eric always struck me as weird and kind of unsocial and I don’t think he remembered me after that.

I heard (in classic After-School-Special form) he had been trying to give some of his stuff away for three weeks before killing himself, but no one wanted anything he had.

That’s even more depressing.

My friend Danny then told me his friend and ex-coworker, whom I knew in passing a few times, was shooting drugs in his bedroom two weeks ago, rolled over while high and suffocated in his mattress.

Horrible.

I don’t know what to make of all this. In one way, it doesn’t affect me directly because I didn’t know them. But yet, it does because I would have never expected this of this from either of them. Eric didn’t seem suicidal, the other didn’t seem like a junkie. I guess you just cant tell. It makes you wonder… who’s next?