College is stressful

Amid all the news this week about VT, I heard that one in 10 college students think of suicide and one in 100 actually attempt it. Do you find those statistics alarming? Personally, I'm surprised they aren't higher.

I graduated from college over a decade ago. I've had reason recently to go back to my journals and read entries from that time. They are highly personal and offline, and there is something very tactile about actually having a book and seeing my own handwriting and what color ink I used and how I arranged things on the page itself which I don't get from all my online blogging...

I didn't realize it at the time, but in college, I was extremely depressed. Then again, maybe I did, as nearly every entry includes the phrase "I am depressed."

I didn't do anything about it in terms of seeking help until years later. I didn't have it as bad as some as I was smart and I had a partial scholarship, but I still felt a great deal of pressure and unhappiness. I was under a lot of stress to succeed academically and financially and from some candid conversations with friends my age, I know now I was not alone. Back then, though, it certainally felt like it. My basic hope was that the experience was a necessary means to an end; that after graduation I would no longer have the academic stress and the financial burdens wouldn't be so great once I started a job where I was compensated well. That didn't really work out the way I had planned, which is one of the reasons I fell back on acting. At least my story is happy presently as a result.

However, when I read my own writings from when I was an undergrad, I can see it would not have taken much for me to snap. I doubt I would have gone down in a dramatic blaze of glory harming others physically. But I did contemplate ending it all several times in those years and it would have hurt a lot of people emotionally if I had made an attempt and/or succeeded.

Too much of a good thing

I heard a news story that a woman died from drinking too much water. To me, this was scary because I drink A LOT of water - somewhere between a gallon and a gallon and a half a day. I've been doing it every day for over two decades. How much did this woman drink?!

According to reports, Jennifer Strange of Rancho Cordova, CA died after competing in a radio contest requiring contestants to drink copious amounts of water without relieving themselves. The competition was designed as a winner-take-all elimination style battle of the bladder. The contest was sponsored by KDND 107.9 The End based in Sacramento called "Hold your wee for a Wii." The prize: none other than the coveted Nintendo Wii game station console.

Perhaps this is the saddest part. Ms. Strange was the mother of three. One of the other contestants who participated in the contest with her, James Ybarra of Woodland was quoted as saying she "was doing it for her kids." Mothers are extraordinary people and there's not much they won't do for their children, but is a video game worth dying for? Then again, who would have thought that drinking lots of water would be so hazardous to one's health?

It stands to reason that an excess of anything could be dangerous, but water?! Turns out there is such a thing as water intoxication. From a biological standpoint, it all makes sense. If you pump enough water into your body, you effectively dilute your body's fluids so much that your systems can no longer support your own life functions. The AP news story says "It was not immediately known how much water Strange consumed." All that is known, I suppose, is that it was enough to kill her. It had to be a quite a large amount indeed.

The more disturbing conclusion about this story is that people will die to get a video game. We all thought it was funny on South Park this season when Cartman froze himself so he didn't have to wait to obtain the same coveted Nintendo Wii system Ms. Strange was competing for. But Ms. Strange isn't going to wake up 500 years in the future. She's gone, her children are left motherless and all for the want of a video game.

What kind of a world do we live in where the demand for the latest and greatest new technical wonder-boxes is so high and frenzied that people are willing to do themselves bodily harm at the chance to get them? Perhaps Ms. Strange, the contestants and the radio station didn't realize how dangerous the contest would be, but the contestants weren't forced to drink. Some blame should fall on the video game manufacturers who artificially increase demand by limiting supply. If the Nitendo Wii's were easier to get, it stands to reason that people wouldn't be dying to get them.