How do you know that the people who kill themselves after getting dumped or because their boss was mean didn't also have serious mental problems? Just because the reason they did it doesn't seem bad doesn't mean it felt that way in their head. Especially if they had mental problems...

Wow, can you not read?
I said I don't care what happens in other countries BECAUSE it happens everywhere else. They have child sex slaves in the U.S., Africa, Peru, Taiwan, hell, I bet there isn't one city in the world where that problem doesn't exists. Comparing a drug user to that of a kingpin or pimp is incorrect. I know that the world doesn't revolve around me, and I'm quite happy it doesn't. All I'm saying is, if you want to think that, fine, I don't care. But don't dishonor a dead person, especially someone on the day they died. (Although technically it was yesterday...but still, you keep dragging it on and on and on.)

I found some of his quotes to be interesting . . . =)

You seem to think that people who are dealing with things like clinical depression and drug addiction have a choice in their behavior. Let me make this clear: THEY DO NOT. Depression and drug addiction are diseases. They are treatable diseases, but sufferers have no more choice in whether or not to be depressed or addicted than a cancer sufferer has in being... well, cancerous (for want of a better word). Let me make this also clear: if a person takes the awful step of resorting to suicide, IT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE "REALLY MESSED UP IN THE HEAD". It is not because they are stupid or weak, it is because they have a serious mental problem, possibly undiagnosed and untreated, and those seemingly insignificant events like getting dumped by a girlfriend or having a mean boss are just the trigger or last straw in their mental decline.
Frankly, no, I don't necessarily respect Cobain, but it has nothing to do with his suicide, I just think he was a terrible artist. What I do respect is the contributions his band made to changing the face of rock music, even if I never liked the music he himself made.

'Drugs are not the way to the light. They won't lead to a fairy-tale life, they lead to suffering.'
'Every article I see is dope this, junkie that, whiskey this - that ain't my title.'
'Kurt and I weren't the closest of friends, but I knew him well enough to be devastated by his death. For such a quiet person, he was so excited about having a child.'
What a complicated man...
Voice like a lark, lol.

He was one of a kind . . . Lots of great talents are gone forever . . . just May of last year, singer, songwriter, getar player Stephen Bruton . . . from down your way I believe . . . =)

Had to google him...
Technically he is from Delaware, but since he lived in Texas the longest, sure, why not. =)

I actually lost my father to suicide in 2008, but despite that I've decided to remember him fondly anyway--though he apparently had no good reason for his action.
I can't help but think that people like lukaszthegreat do a lot of scholarly talking about very personal things.
Sure, if you want to boil everything down to logic and reason, you have a case. Then you remember that actual human beings are affected by this stuff and that nothing is as easy as, "If you live in the western world all those problems are small."
That's actually ridiculous on many levels--including according to some of the worlds finest scientists and psychologists--all the way down to relativistic trauma.
In fact, some studies have shown that there are people who lose their entire family that don't react as strongly as a kid losing his dog. Vice versa there are people who lose their dog and don't care, but are wrecked if they don't get a part in a play, or a movie.
Our traps and fears are singularly ours and trauma is often unpredictable. To assume that because your value set places you above suicide means that everyone else should be above it--well it's exactly the kind of self righteous attitude that creates a schism for people in the first place.
Perhaps I'm a little too close to the subject to talk about this--but it's better than misappropriating the subject and looking like a tool--I hope.

I don't mean to promote the heavy use of drugs, nor am I a drug user myself (unless you consider strong beer or internet drugs, which they are), but...
A friend of mine once told me one of our favorite bands was underachieving lately (I'm not naming the band in question so as to not starting huge forum argument) because they were drug-clean for years now. And guess what? I agree.
You have to wonder wether Layne Staley would sing in such a dark inspiration that made Alice in Chains so amazing if he wasn't fucked up in the head. If he was singing that and still walked around happily smelling the flowers of the path, he'd be a great hypocrite. But no, he was sincere, and died because Down in a Hole was about his actual life.
Staley is just one of many examples. The best creative artists Earth ever had mostly died young because they ran shitty lifestyles with at least one of the following: bad health, bad habits, bad drugs, acute sadness, etc. Not only in music. Of those that managed to survive, most were cured at a certain point in life, and stopped being the same great creative artists they were before. (just like the band me and my friend were talking about from the beginning of this post) ;)

I still think that we shouldn't use the word disease. It carries too many assumed traits in this day & age, most particularly the thought that if its a disease is communicable. I'd probably describe it as a disorder because that sounds like an isolated malfuction.
That said, I'd not describe drug addiction as either. I've always thought of it as a symptom of mental illness and the brain's desperate desire to run away from things it can't handle rather than it being an illness in and of itself

For some reason I'm reminded of Bill Hicks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J10w3FuCwfQ

Disease may not have been the correct choice of words, but I was only using it to illustrate the point that lucasz seems to fail to comprehend, which is that mental disorders like clinical depression are not simply someone having a bad day that they could easily turn around.
I would agree that addiction is most likely a symptom of some other disorder, but some in the medical community do define drug addiction as a disease. In fact, drug addiction and various mental disorders often go hand-in-hand, as undiagnosed sufferers of things like clinical depression will frequently "self-medicate" with their drug of choice.

I have made it a standing policy that I will personally bludgeon to death anyone who tells me to "turn that frown upside down". Nothing to do with the depression, its because that phrase just drives me bonkers

I always respond to that phrase with "C'mere so I can turn that smile inside out".
Not many people say it to me anymore...

I would love to see that play man. Are you doing the whole day or the actual moments leading up to when Courtney Love shot him? (I think she shot him)

Turn that frown the opposite of up. :)