Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
I had a dive buddy who committed suicide.
He was my dive buddy and best friend for the first ten years of my diving life. He was a recreational diver, a blue collar guy in the HVAC trade making good money, his wife was a nurse making great money. Both were divers. They travelled a lot to some pretty exotic dive locations.
He was always type A. It seemed like he was always trying to assert himself and had a weird chip on his shoulder about life.
He had a self confessed history of excessive drug use including a lot of LSD, other psychoactive and hallucinogenic drugs, marijuana, etc. when he was a kid starting at age 14.
He abandoned all the substances and was clean when I knew him. He drank a little socially, we all do, but I never saw him drunk.
He got bored with his marriage and ended up having a fling with a woman he met on a Socal LOB.
His marriage ended up blowing up and things went bad at his work. He withdrew from our diving circles and nobody could get in contact with him. Next thing I heard he moved back to Santa Cruz, CA and moved back in with all his old drug buddies from 45 years prior into the same house doing the same drugs. Nothing had changed.
His ex wife came into our LDS one day many months later and dropped the news that he committed suicide. He was 60 years old.
I watched Larry completely self destruct and there wasn’t a damn thing any of us could do about it.
When we would go diving was when he seemed the happiest. But some of the conversations to and from the coast were a little alarming. I always wonder and beat myself up that I should have seen the signs and been more aware.
Man, I miss that dude!
He was my dive buddy and best friend for the first ten years of my diving life. He was a recreational diver, a blue collar guy in the HVAC trade making good money, his wife was a nurse making great money. Both were divers. They travelled a lot to some pretty exotic dive locations.
He was always type A. It seemed like he was always trying to assert himself and had a weird chip on his shoulder about life.
He had a self confessed history of excessive drug use including a lot of LSD, other psychoactive and hallucinogenic drugs, marijuana, etc. when he was a kid starting at age 14.
He abandoned all the substances and was clean when I knew him. He drank a little socially, we all do, but I never saw him drunk.
He got bored with his marriage and ended up having a fling with a woman he met on a Socal LOB.
His marriage ended up blowing up and things went bad at his work. He withdrew from our diving circles and nobody could get in contact with him. Next thing I heard he moved back to Santa Cruz, CA and moved back in with all his old drug buddies from 45 years prior into the same house doing the same drugs. Nothing had changed.
His ex wife came into our LDS one day many months later and dropped the news that he committed suicide. He was 60 years old.
I watched Larry completely self destruct and there wasn’t a damn thing any of us could do about it.
When we would go diving was when he seemed the happiest. But some of the conversations to and from the coast were a little alarming. I always wonder and beat myself up that I should have seen the signs and been more aware.
Man, I miss that dude!