Why do successful people commit suicide? In memory of Dr. Ben Shaffer

Just now I discovered that Dr. Ben Shaffer, a very successful orthopaedic surgeon, committed suicide in 2015. It’s been nearly 27 years since I last spoke with Ben, and yet… I am still devastated. Why? Why would anyone so successful commit suicide? The really weird thing about it is that I was just thinking about him. An article about ACL injury prompted me to search “Benjamin Shaffer orthopaedic”… and I discovered he had hung himself.

A few days ago I was going through a chest where I had stored, amongst other things, “memories.” Old letters, pictures, programs, journals. In it I found his business card. I don’t remember taking it, or saving it, but I recognized the name. Benjamin S. Shaffer, MD. He was my orthopaedic surgeon in 1993, when I had ACL replacement surgery. He gave me the card pictured below.

I don’t remember ever noticing that he had penned in his private phone number. But it wouldn’t have surprised me. He had called me, at my apartment in Henle Village, when I was a senior at Georgetown University. That didn’t surprise me either… Well. It did surprise me, so much that I couldn’t say anything coherent, and didn’t have the wits to say yes I would like to get together. I’m thinking coffee was hinted at, or a drink, but the hinting was subtle enough to ignore without fear of offense. And I was… Well. His patient. Someone else’s girlfriend. Infatuated with a third person.

Some backstory.

On January 5th, 1989, I was skiing in Andorra. In a mini-blizzard, in ski bindings that I had forced that morning (too anxious to ski to stop and fix the problem). For once I was going slowly, snow-ploughing, when I fell, and the binding did not release. My tibia broke instead. That healed… but the accompanying ACL injury did not.

I cannot remember when I started to see Ben Shaffer, but it was probably around 1991, during my sophomore year at Georgetown University. I had an MRI with my orthopaedic surgeon at home that I followed up at GU. Ben Shaffer was at the GU Medical Center at the time, and reportedly the best I could get for ACL issues. I did not want ACL surgery, so we tried a brace. By my senior year, the brace wasn’t working. An MRI showed a total lack of ACL. Ben Shaffer went over the MRI with me, showed me how everything worked on a plastic model of the knee, and told me about my options.

I rather reluctantly admitted that ACL replacement, with a section of my patellar tendon held in place with corks, would be the best option.

The reluctance was more about timing than anything else. The surgery would be in April, and I would graduate in May. I planned to go to Spain afterwards for a year (supposedly) of galloping racehorses before returning to reality.

Of course it wasn’t about the move to Spain…

The reluctance wasn’t really due to not being able to ride horses. By that time I was feeling ambivalent about my decision to go to Spain to live with the boyfriend I had left there the previous summer. It’s not that it was really out of sight, out of mind… well. Anyway, it probably wouldn’t have been, had I not been about to graduate. But as anyone who has truly enjoyed their college experience knows, graduation can be traumatic. I rearranged “Those were the days” and went around singing my adapted version. (Except at The Tombs. There I sang the original with everyone else.) I loved everyone… all the everyones that were graduating with me.

I did not want to spend my last weeks in a knee brace. Especially because I knew from an acquaintance–I can’t remember her name, just her red hair and knee brace–the ACL replacement was not fun.

But Ben Shaffer convinced me it was necessary (it was). And in the series of office visits, we came to admire each other. Partly because he was smart and attractive (and I could tell he thought the same of me). Mainly because of The Fountainhead.

Yes. The Fountainhead.

That objectivist-egotist-evil of evils. A confession? I loved it. Not because it’s well-written (it’s not), not because I agree with all of it (I don’t. Except for the part about second-handers. That’s a real thing, and it’s not good.) But the archetypes are wonderful. It’s a great story.

I was reading The Fountainhead in spring of 1993. Because I didn’t have a lot of leisure reading time, I took advantage of waiting for the doctor to read. Ben noticed my book and we talked about it. At some point before my surgery, I was sitting in the waiting room reading Howard Roark’s monologue of self-defense in his trial.

For some reason, when telling this story, I have always said “Gail Wynand’s” monologue, but of course it wasn’t Gail. When I started to write about it just now, I realized of course it was Roark speaking… Gail was listening. I was seeing Roark through Wynand’s eyes. Possibly my favorite part of that book was the relationship between those two men. I never really believed the relationship between Dominique and Howard, even my 23-year-old self knew that wasn’t going to happen. Howard Roark was incapable of love. Of course, so was I, at the time. That’s why The Fountainhead is more appealing when you are young–it makes sense to see the world through Roark’s eyes, and to a lesser extent, Dominique’s. Later… well you realize at some point that my-way-or-the-highway is not ultimately productive. Success does not mean happiness. (not that Rand would argue that point).

It’s been too long, now, for me to recall much of the book, but I remember very clearly Ben Shaffer’s eagerness to talk about it. I also remember his willingness to let me read. When he came in as I was reading the courtroom monologue, I waved him away with my hand. “Come back in five minutes,” I ordered. Very Dominique, or perhaps Howard.

Dr. Shaffer smiled and left the room with a “Come find me when you’re done.”

I did, when I’d finished the book. And we talked about knees (I suppose) and philosophy (I remember). Now of course I realize that it’s a rare pleasure to find someone halfway educated who is willing to admit they enjoy anything about Ayn Rand.

Was it that day that he gave me his phone number? Or before? I don’t recall.

I don’t know when he called me, either.

Of course, I didn’t give him my number personally, but it would have been in my file. It was the shared phone we had at Henle, where I lived in an apartment with four friends. I must have spoken about Ben before he called, because I don’t remember anyone being surprised.

I was. So much so I didn’t really know what to say, and the conversation petered out rather quickly. I believe I replied something along the lines of “I’m not sure if I’ll have time” when subtly asked to get coffee. Or maybe it was a drink. I don’t know.

I do know that as soon as I hung up the phone I really wished I’d said yes, and that I had been more eloquent. Because yes, I found him very attractive. He’d never have called if it hadn’t been mutual.

I don’t know if he was married then. I didn’t know then that he was 12 years older than me. Of course, I could have guessed, based on relative career paths. But I’ve never noticed age when it comes to men. For me, it’s mainly about the insides of their heads (added to that basic chemistry that’s either there or it’s not). And the little I knew of the inside of Ben Shaffer’s head, I liked.

But I had a long-distance boyfriend with whom I was no longer in love, a much closer boy with whom I was fairly infatuated (I wonder if he knew?), and many girlfriends whose company I was not going to forego for any man. Not when we were soon to be separated by graduation.

Now of course, I wonder…

Would it have changed my life, or–more importantly–Ben’s, if I had said yes? Because I strongly suspect that the darkness was already there.

Things like that–the good and the bad–are. They accompany that inner spark that never changes, that you carry from birth to grave. That nothing can ever truly touch, and only you are responsible for tending, ignoring, heeding, or bending to your will. And yet… the people that surround you make a difference. Sometimes that difference is a matter of life or death.

Why do successful people commit suicide? Because material success cannot touch that inner spark. Only love, of friends, family, lovers, can come close. Even then, it’s not your loved ones that touch that spark… it’s you, with their support, that can heal the pain and feed the joy.

So Ayn Rand is right… it’s down to the individual.. but she’s also terribly wrong. Because without love, the individual is nothing.

Not to say love can cure all pain, because in the end, it’s up to the loved individual to accept that love and integrate it into his or her self in a way that alleviates the suffering.

One of my favorite quotes ever since I read it as a teenager in Gardner’s In the Suicide Mountains:

We human beings glimpse lofty ideals, catch ourselves betraying them, and sink to suicidal despair — despair from which only the love of our friends can save us, since friends see in us those noble qualities we ourselves, out of long familiarity, have forgotten we possess.

John Gardner

Why did Ben Shaffer commit suicide? I don’t know, probably no one does. Some seem to blame it on the system. I found this on Facebook when I searched his name (amongst many many google results):

But I don’t think it’s right to blame the system… It’s not the fault of his retired psychiatrist, or the new one. It’s not his wife, it’s not society and the stigma of mental illness. Not to say there’s not stigma, there is. But this man was intelligent enough and educated enough not to let that be a major factor. No. Ben Shaffer was the type of person whose biggest critic and only source of shame was most likely himself.

The one voice that no one, not even those of us with the strongest walls***, can shut out is the inner critic, the running monologue that is hardest to silence because it follows you everywhere.

***I do mean walls, that keep the voices of other people out. But you could say wills as well and not be wrong.

The reason successful people commit suicide is that this inner voice probably isn’t talking to them about success, at least not material success. It’s talking to them about happiness. It’s wondering about love, sought, given, and taken (or not). This voice might be able to ignore retirement funds, sports cars, prestige, and income… Maybe. But it’s more likely to notice these things and say, so what? What difference does it make, anyway? In light of Beethoven, Michelangelo, Einstein, climate change, political fragmentation, and entropy?

I don’t know why the Ben Shaffer I knew, very briefly, years ago, would commit suicide. But it’s a tragedy. There are not many people who have been able to look me in the eye and see who I am, inside. Ben was one of them.

It’s a strange thing, this knowing another person, even when you don’t, not really. And I could get all Recognitions about it and say we can only know whom we create out of an instant’s first impression. Even if that’s true, does it matter? All we ever know of any person depends on our relationship with them, and that is mediated by our love (admiration, respect, attachment, feelings) for them.

And to be Ayn Rand and not to be Ayn Rand:

The individual is fully responsible for the attachments s/he forms with people. Our friends and lovers and fleeting acquaintances are of our own creating; relationships are only as mutually fulfilling as we allow them to be. But without them we are nothing. Every time we lose someone, be it through death, dissension, time, space, forgetfulness, we lose a part of ourselves, that part that bound us to them. I suppose that if you never form bonds, then you have less to lose… but then, you are less, period.

I’m sure that there are many people who were close to Ben Shaffer that are less now, without him. That too is a tragedy, in some ways the greater tragedy, as he is beyond pain now. But the fact that anyone could find themselves so alone that they would take their own life…

The question is not why did Ben Shaffer commit suicide, it’s why do we take such notice when people as successful as he was take their lives? Life is no less dear for people with no such professional success. In the end, it’s not about money, and we all know this. It’s not even about the people around you… it’s about how you find your own happiness in relation to them, and to yourself.

I didn’t see a lot of happiness in Ben Shaffer, not the happiness of content. I saw the same angst that was inside of me, the same questioning and doubt, the same eagerness to find a like-minded person coupled with a hesitation to approach. Of course, I didn’t know him, not really. At the time I wished I had allowed him closer, and I still do. There aren’t many people I can say that about.

Note.

Suicide seems to be a problem with doctors, and perhaps even particularly orthopaedic surgeons. Being a doctor is stressful, for doctors and their families, and doctors and their families, together. I’ve frequently encouraged people to become doctors, because if they have that impulse, well, we need doctors. But of course, it’s dangerous to offer advice. (Be an elf).

Of course, depression and suicide are medical issues. Mental disorders can be treated medically, and yes, the right drugs can help ameliorate depression and prevent suicide. Sometimes. But it’s difficult to find the right drugs, and without the behavioral component (therapy is an essential step), they won’t fix things. Most important, we still don’t fully understand how depression works, chemically, in the brain. We don’t fully understand how the brain works, period. (Really good article about depression.)

Family and friends can help, but they cannot fix it. Only the individual can fix it, and not always.