Okay, so now we know about Vince Welnick
Damn. Saddest story I’ve heard in a long time. The suicide method used by keyboardist Vince Welnick has been revealed this morning in the San Francisco Chronicle. Famed Bay Area music critic Joel Selvin writes: “…the 55-year-old musician stood on a hillside behind his Forestville home and drew a knife across his throat in front of his wife.” This tells us why the method of suicide was kept under wraps for a while.
The ramifications run deep:
Lori Welnick declined to make a statement about her husband’s death, although she did say one thing for the record. “You say one foul thing about me,” she said, “and you’ll regret it the rest of your life. I have been nothing but good to the only man I ever loved. And you can put that in the newspaper.”
This passage from Selvin’s article is also worth noting:
“After an earlier suicide attempt about 10 years ago, Welnick started taking antidepressants, but lately, he had been telling friends the pills didn’t seem to be working anymore. When he died, according to friends, he was trying to wean himself from the old medication and begin a new drug regimen.
“Nobody knows whether there was a direct link between his suicide and the change in his medication, but two years ago the Food and Drug Administration asked antidepressant manufacturers to add a warning on pill bottles about potential suicide risk during changes in dosage.”
Be sure to read the full article here. My previous postings here and here.
(above photo of Sad Song Creek via highlandssanctuary.org)
August 6, 2007 at 6:58 am
This is interesting to note. Lori Welnick (and perhaps Vince to some extent) was a “Borderline Personality” (BPD – Borderline Personality Disorder). Vince was in love with her. She was extremely beautiful but a very, very contentious person. She was constantly harrassing him which would send spiral him downward into his depression. She is as much to blame, or more so in my opinion, as any GD member who iced Vince after he lost it on the Rat Dog tour. When a person hooks up with a BPD it can be tragic, for all involved.
October 5, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Thanks for the read, Oldman. As for the wife being “more to blame” than the husband for his suicide, I take your point about the harassment at a bad time. In general, I can’t agree that a spouse or any other family member is “to blame” for a person’s suicide. On the other hand, I admit there is a possibility that the wife goaded the husband into using the knife on himself, but only because that possibility exists in any suicide where there is more than one person present and neither is in their right mind.
I have posted many ruminations here on the topic of mental disorders, no disagreement with you that anti-depressants are serious business. As in, life-and-death serious. But an untreated mental illness is dangerous too.
Tragic, indeed.