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Sad news comes our way today about the passing of a fellow traveler. Others have written far more eloquently than we can at this time…I’ll just sum it by saying that, as with so many of us, his was a life drowned by abuse, addiction, and alienation. Though through it all he kept his sense of humour, as witnessed by his Twitter feed.

If you are so inclined (and have the intestinal fortitude) I’d encourage you to read his suicide note, then reflect on his life for a bit, and then commit some thought-out act of kindness and courage to make this world a bit less crappy than it currently is. That last part is actually the easiest of the three things I suggest – his farewell address is both brilliantly written and heartbreaking.

From metafilter.com:

It’s with great sadness that I have to share the passing of Bill Zeller, known as null terminated around here.

He leaves behind a ton of pretty amazing computer science work. He wrote an original hack for iTunes (MyTunes) that let you share your library of music with anyone and I used it myself in cafes and college campuses to get new music (when I’d open my laptop at a college, 5-10 people would connect to my iTunes library and download songs using this). He wrote the SQL web front-end to the MetaFilter infodump (among many other projects) and he wrote papers in the CS dept at Princeton on security, including one where he exploited the sites of NYT, ING, YouTube, and MetaFilter (we fixed soon after he notified us of it). He was also wickedly funny on twitter.He was a nice kid who used to IM with me often, sharing links and asking if they were ok for MetaFilter. Over the years we’d chat about once a week for a few minutes. Sometimes I was busy and would try to brush him off. I remember one time he was asking about graduate schools and I was up to my neck in work and I thought as a way to blow him off, I’d mention the most prestigious possible CS program I could think of “You want to do computer security, why don’t you try working with Ed Felten, the guy from the freedom-to-tinker blog?” I was impressed and a bit amazed when he IMed a couple months later saying he was accepted into the lab and moving to Princeton.

From what I can piece together, it seems he went online early Sunday morning, checked MeFi until about 4am EST, went to facebook an hour later and wiped out his entire profile, just leaving his suicide note (warning, it’s intense and describes abuse but it is really well written). He then emailed a copy of the note to a large number of friends and acquaintances at 6:57am EST (that’s when I got it and first found out what happened), then he began to hang himself.

From what I can gather, ten minutes later someone found him and he was rushed to the hospital but ten minutes is a long time to go without oxygen to the brain. He suffered damage and his brain was showing very little involuntary activity and no voluntary activity. He was induced into a coma to prevent swelling but eventually it was declared he’d be in a permanent vegetative state and tonight at 8pm his respirator was removed and he passed on.

I’m sorry Bill never got the help he needed, if I’d known what he had suffered through in his life I could have connected him with abuse survivors I know. He was a great contributor here, a fantastic CS student, and did good work. RIP Bill Zeller. You will be missed.

Friends and family are encouraged to post remembrances here as well.

A few forum comments in the wake of this tragedy have also struck a chord with me and I would like to repeat them here:

When Tim Robbins won the Oscar for his work on Mystic River, the event organizers feared this famously political individual would use the moment to derail the broadcast with an out-of-context political diatribe.

Instead, he went over his allotted time by saying this, and it bears repeating:

In this movie I play a victim of abuse and violence, and if you are out there and are a person that has had that tragedy befall you, there is no shame and no weakness in seeking help and counseling. It is sometimes the strongest thing that you can do to stop the cycle of violence. Thank you.

From another forum:

An amazing, poignant, heartbreaking reminder that the true meaning of life is in the relationships we have with others. Hug your kids, hug your spouse, your parents, your dog, etc. Tell them you love them now, tonight, tomorrow.

Some important questions, suggestions and thoughts from another poster:

I had a very dark period in my life where I thought it was over and just a matter of time before I worked up all the courage I needed to say goodbye.

These things are more common than you realize. If you have these feelings, you may feel as though there is no way out. No other future than what you feel *now*. The truth, whether you believe it or not, is that it can get better. Maybe not your life, or the terrible things around you, but your ability to cope.

A normal person may never be able to see how these things can get to this point, but they can very quickly spiral.

Save a life. Don’t assume someone you love can’t do something like this. Don’t be afraid to ask the tough questions: “Are you going to kill yourself? Do you want to hurt yourself?”

You may be surprised by the answer.

Do not assume you can fix everything with a one-time talk, or with a threat. These things are fixed with love and intervention. Not “I’m going to talk some sense into him” one-way conversations.

I thought it would never end, but it did….and here I am. Not what I was, but different…with resolve…and okay. Not perfect, but okay. Not the same, but okay with the world. It’s pretty amazing to walk away from that feeling and say “I survived”.

Most people look at mental illness like a weakness and not a disease…and that is very unfortunate. Perhaps with time these things will change. The brain, like so many other things in the body, can just kernel panic as fast as your PC does without antivirus.

In my case, it turned out that the very pharmaceuticals that I was ordered to take to “fix” me were the very things that made it so bad. Now my Army career is over and I have to try civilian life. The answer may not be in a pill bottle. Find a good doctor and sort through it. They really do exist and I was fortunate enough to find one in no fewer than 6 tries. She has been nothing short of a blessing.

I hope this article saves a few lives through awareness.

and perhaps most succinctly:

And the world is made less than it was. Peace, Bill. And light.

RIP, null.

Related articles

• People Who Died (learnaboutrehab.com)
• In Memoriam: Gerry Rafferty (bradblog.com)

There are a number of catch-phrases, cliches, and mottoes you will hear while in recovery or working with someone in recovery. Perhaps the most famous is “One Day at a Time.”

It’s easy to repeat them, or to mindlessly spit them at people trying to cope with the arena of addiction, but to really benefit from them we feel it is important to fully comprehend them, to do a thorough examination of the words, as few and simple as they may sound, and to revisit them regularly to further gain insight and strength from them.

One of my favourites of late is “We’re only as sick as our secrets.” The first few times I heard that phrase, it struck me funny – more funny odd than funny haha. I heard it in a meeting, of that anonymous club to which I belong, and it struck me funny because we were in a room where one of the core principles is that anonymity – it gives us the freedom to be open and honest.

But on further reflection I realised that there is a big difference between anonymity and secrets. The principle of anonymity means that each of us respects our fellow addicts, and the friends, family, and loved ones of them, by honouring their privacy and anonymity. The principle of no secrets means that we recognise that part of our addictive activity requires us to minimise or hide what we are doing – hidden bottles, secret stashes, pre-drinking before social engagements, and all other sorts of secrets to keep others from realising the depth of our despair and depravity.

And for many of us, our addictions are horribly flawed attempts to find coping mechanisms to “deal with” (avoid, more honestly) other secrets. These can include past abuse – physical, sexual, psychological, or other; emotional hurts that we fiercely embraced and internalized and now struggle to process through; feelings of loss and deprivation over things we had to give up; failed, flawed, or just plain fucked-up relationships that may have started under dubious enough circumstances, but then were made scores times worse by our using – using of substances, of gifts, and of people; and other various things we would prefer to leave in the dark though we know they will only fester there, where exposing them instead to the light of day would help begin a true healing from them.

So for those of you dealing with a recovering addict, try to bear in mind that if they are joking or talking openly and honestly about their issues and struggles, that’s actually a good sign. It’s when we clam up, and become secretive and sneaky, and when we are obviously making pathetic efforts to appear “normal” that we are most likely back in the throes of our addictions.

Put another way, “If you don’t laugh, you cry.”