'He Never Stopped Drinking': Anthony Bourdain Struggled With Alcohol Addiction Leading Up To His Tragic Suicide
Anthony Bourdain was never able to recover from his alcohol addiction before he took his own life in a French hotel room in 2018, RadarOnline.com has learned.
The shocking revelation was made by author Charles Leerhsen in his upcoming and unauthorized biography of the late celebrity chef, Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain, which is set to hit bookshelves on October 11.
According to Leerhsen, although Bourdain was successfully able to overcome his addiction to drugs, the 61-year-old Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown star continually struggled with alcoholism until the very end of his life.
“He became someone that he hated,” Leerhsen recently explained while promoting his new book. “By the time he realized that, he was too physically exhausted to straighten things out.”
“He thought it simpler to seek what is famously called ‘a permanent solution to a temporary problem,’” the author continued. “Recovery, you might say, was one of the few things he couldn’t go all the way with.”
“If he did something, he did it all out, whether it was comic books as a kid or fascination with the JFK assassination. But he pulled up short with recovery; he never stopped drinking.”
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Bourdain himself wrote about his addiction to drugs and alcohol in his 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential, when he described the kitchens he worked in regularly throughout the 1980s as “drenched in drugs and alcohol and accompanied by constantly loud rock-and-roll music.”
Bourdain further admitted he and his coworkers would regularly take drugs: including everything from marijuana, LSD and cocaine to codeine and heroin.
Although Bourdain kicked his heroin addiction in the 1980s, many of his friends reportedly continued using heroin into the 2000s.
As RadarOnline.com previously reported, the 61-year-old celebrity chef ultimately hanged himself in a Kaysersberg, France hotel room on June 8, 2018 after fighting with his ex-girlfriend, Asia Argento.
When Bourdain confronted Argento over a photo of her dancing with a French journalist in Rome, the Italian actress reportedly told Bourdain, “Stop busting my balls.” He replied, “OK,” before taking his own life a few short hours later.
Other text messages between Bourdain and his ex-wife, Ottavia Busia-Bourdain, further revealed the American chef’s unhappiness with his life leading up to his death.
"I hate my fans, too. I hate being famous. I hate my job,” he wrote. “I am lonely and living in constant uncertainty.”