
The Last Days of BMX Superstar Dave Mirra - wallflower
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/bmx-dave-mirra-last-days.html
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louprado
Sorry to use this tragedy for an opportunistic but related comment.

If you have had past struggles with suicidal thoughts, or depression combined
with addiction, then you should not own a gun. You might feel fine today, but
relapses happen.

Other ways to attempt suicide are less fatal and more complex, giving you more
chances to back out.

Harvard on the, powerful link between gun ownership and suicide:
[http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-
suicide/](http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-suicide/)

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cubano
I'm not sure if my thoughts on this subject can ever be articulated correctly,
but I'm going to try anyway at the risk of being misunderstood.

Due to my lifelong struggles with addiction, I have often contemplated
suicide. Actually, one of my closest ex-girlfriends off-handily remarked 20
years ago that she thought suicide might be the only answer for me, after
doing everything in her power to help me over a 3 year period.

You see, she intimately saw the pain that my self-inflicted junkie lifestyle
dispensed to others and, on a much deeper level, myself.

Today, I continue to live in the wreckage that I so carelessly created, with a
brother whom will not talk to me no matter what I do and old friends whom
don't return calls, and I'll be honest...life is pretty bleak when family and
friends no longer exist.

Why is it that some, often ancient, cultures not-only-tolerate but almost-
glorify suicide _when an individual has lost their self respect or has been
publicly shamed_?

Maybe suicide isn't the worst possible option there is.

~~~
the-dude
Hi Cubano,

I remember earlier very open minded posts from you. Thank you.

I can relate a bit about the loss of family and friends and feeling desolated.
While it is true you might not be able to replace your family, it is possible
to make new friends.

It worked for me and I have never been happier, even without the family.

I will put my email in my profile. Keep going.

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gerbilly
>On the brink of a trick, McCoy explains, “there’s a sense of calm and shit
sort of quiets down and it’s time to focus.”

I used to do bike trails[1] and also rode every stunt on every double black
trail on the North Shore in Vancouver. [2]

I know the feeling being described here, and I'd venture it is the _real_
reason people engage in these sports.

There is a calm when pulling off a really risky stunt, like gapping handrails
or riding along a skinny elevated log, and it can be addictive.

>“I’m more comfortable on my bike, jumping, than I am walking down the
street,” says Ryan Nyquist, 37, who still competes.

After doing trials for years, I would often say to people that I'd feel more
comfortable riding my bike off a big dropoff rather than jumping down to land
on my feet.

I can personally attest, that that feeling is hard to give up. I had to stop
riding trials at around 37 because of damage to my spine, which thankfully
remained limited.

Many of my cycling friends report missing it as well.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkfYm-
rnfFI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkfYm-rnfFI) [2]
[http://www.pinkbike.com/video/222711/](http://www.pinkbike.com/video/222711/)

(I am not either of the riders depicted the linked videos, just included them
for context. Also I never came close to riding at Ryan Leech's level, who is
also a very nice guy.)

~~~
dluan
I used to skate a lot when I was younger too. That feeling never really goes
away once it's been trained and recognized. It just kind of fixates on another
thing.

Not being able to get into that flow is a dangerous thing because you'll
always be searching.

~~~
gerbilly
> That feeling never really goes away once it's been trained and recognized.

I found it again in surfing. And luckily, the wipeouts are not so hard on the
body in surfing, well most of the time. :-)

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two2two
As an avid BMX rider during the mid 90's to early 2000's, Mirra was one of
only a few greats, along with Lavin and Nyquist, I looked up to. This saddens
me greatly, but also helps me understand a lot of my own inner turmoil growing
out of my own x-games centric life. From aggressive inline skating everyday in
Texas, hitting jumps in the woods of Nor-Cal on my BMX, to bombing the streets
of San Francisco on a skateboard, I now better understand the feeling of
thrill separation as an older, risk-averse, adult; thanks to some of the
insights in this article.

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e40
_Mirra had recently been feeling lonely and lost, his friends tell me, but it
never occurred to them, or most of them, to worry for his life._

Someone very close to me committed suicide and this is exactly how I felt. I
resolved to never look past this symptom again and try and be more active in
how I respond in the future, if I ever see it again.

At the time, I remember feeling helpless and unsure how to help. If I could do
it over again, I'd just be there and offer to listen more than I did. I'm not
saying this would have made the difference, but it's what I would do in the
future.

~~~
DanBC
> I'd just be there and offer to listen more than I did.

Sorry to hear abut your experience - that's rough.

Just listening is important.

> At the time, I remember feeling helpless and unsure how to help. If I could
> do it over again,

People might be interested in ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills
Training) courses.

You don't have to be someone working with people with mental illness or people
who have declared suicidal intent.

[https://www.livingworks.net/programs/asist/](https://www.livingworks.net/programs/asist/)

[https://www.mind.org.uk/media/112813/Applied-Suicide-
Interve...](https://www.mind.org.uk/media/112813/Applied-Suicide-Intervention-
Skills-Training-_ASIST_-Steve-Jones.pdf)

~~~
e40
Those are interesting resources, thanks. Not in the US, as far as I can tell.
If anyone knows of something similar in the Bay Area, I'd consider it.

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ZanyProgrammer
With these kinds of sports, I have to wonder how much cumulative brain damage
(CTE) contributed to his death.

~~~
bcook
"These kinds of sports"?

What physically competitive sport has no threat of falling and hitting your
head?

How much "brain damage" is caused by the psychological and physiological
effects of a sedentary life-style?

~~~
myg204
Swimming.

~~~
pimlottc
You've never hit your head on the end of the lane while doing laps? Especially
backstroke...

~~~
kasey_junk
I gave myself a nasty concussion during a mistimed flip turn when my goggles
had filled with water.

I suspect I'm in the extreme minority though.

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burger_moon
That was a really great read into some of Dave's life at the end. Growing up
and riding, him and the other vert guys were always the nice guys and role
model types of bmx. They were in stark contrast to what we all watched and did
riding street. Dave introduced a lot of people into this sport and advanced it
in many ways beyond new tricks.

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macscam
i wonder if the alcohol played an issue in his decision to kill himself. I
know that people with some mental instability can be rapidly triggered by its
effects. I've seen it and felt it.

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DanBC
One american dies every 12 minutes to suicide. Suicide rates have increased
over the past ten years.

Stigma kills.

Some projects are aimed at tackling suicide in men. The UK has CALM Zone (The
Campaign Against Living Miserably) and Australia has Soften the Fuck Up.

[https://thecalmzone.net/](https://thecalmzone.net/)

[http://softenthefckup.spurprojects.org/](http://softenthefckup.spurprojects.org/)

Perhaps people in the US know of good quality initiatives? (Certainly the
"Zero suicide" stuff from Detroit has been useful for me when I'm trying to
change people's attitudes that death by suicide is somehow inevitable for some
populations.)

> Another says it didn’t happen exactly that way. But whatever went down, by
> the time the friend arrived at the truck, parked just outside, Mirra was
> already dead, a suicide, the police established, with no room to hope it was
> a mistake. When Mayor Thomas arrived at the scene, the front door of the
> truck was open and family members were beginning to arrive. Mirra’s friends
> and the cops all stood around, “staring at the rain, like, What in the world
> has happened?”

> In the tiny, tight-knit clan of 40-something BMXers, many could not believe
> that Mirra intended to commit suicide.

Some people wonder why the US's suicide rate is lower than the UK. This
paragraph snippet hints at some of the difficulties in counting deaths by
suicide.

If I shoot my self is that a death by suicide? Or an accidental death? If I
overdose on opiate pain meds was that a deliberate choice, or an accident
caused by confusion?

You can't leave it to coroners - there's too much variability (some didn't
want to rule a death as suicide because they thought the family would find
that too distressing) and because death by suicide has to be proved beyond all
reasonable doubt while most other deaths can use the balance of probability.

The UK uses this definition:

[https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/405411/Statistical_update_on_suicide_acc.pdf)

> Statistics on causes of death produced by the Office for National Statistics
> (ONS) are based on the information provided at death registration. These
> statistics are provided to the Department of Health on an annual basis. Open
> verdicts are generally coded by the ONS as deaths from injury or poisoning
> of undetermined intent. When national statistics are presented, suicides and
> deaths of undetermined intent are combined. This reflects research studies
> which show that the majority of open verdicts are most likely suicides,
> although they do not meet the high legal standard of evidence required for a
> coroner to record a suicide verdict. Therefore official suicide rates are
> measured by a definition that is broader than the definition of suicide used
> by coroners.

> In the remainder of this update we use the term suicide to refer to deaths
> from both intentional self-harm and injury or poisoning of undetermined
> intent.

The US uses a different definition:

[http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/definitions.ht...](http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/definitions.html)

> Suicide

>Death caused by self-directed injurious behavior with an intent to die as a
result of the behavior.

If the US used the UK definition suicide would be the leading cause of death
for men aged between about 11 to about 49. Suicide is still common in people
over 50, but other causes of death (heart disease, cancer) start taking over.

Even with their tighter definition suicide is a leading cause of death in the
US - ranked second for ages 10 to 34. (But see all that unintentional injury
ahead of it) [http://www.cdc.gov/injury/images/lc-
charts/leading_causes_of...](http://www.cdc.gov/injury/images/lc-
charts/leading_causes_of_death_age_group_2014_1050w760h.gif)

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ablation
How incredibly sad.

