The sudden death of Adam Goldstein, aka DJ AM, on August 28th at age 36 has been haunting me. Though Goldstein had a serious drug problem, thought to be the cause of his untimely death, when I heard he had died I wasn't surprised, but not for the reasons one might think.
Adam Goldstein was one of two survivors of a plane crash on September 19th, 2008. Four others perished, and he experienced multiple injuries.
The similarities between Goldstein's life and the psychology of aging may not seem readily apparent, but two aspects about this tragedy strike a chord involving the elderly and patients with illness I see in my clinical practice: survivor guilt and the traumatic effects of beating the odds.
Surviving a traumatic experience such as a near-fatal accident or critical illness can be met with intense feelings of confusion. People often ask, "Why did I survive?" And "How did I survive?" The resulting confusion can lead to a sense of hopelessness and helplessness, especially since such questions really have no definitive answers.
Even more difficult is the question, "How can something so senseless and random happen to me?" Survivors sometimes wonder, "Was I supposed to die? Am I now living on ‘borrowed' time?" Many people are tortured by these questions. This is even true among the elderly, who often wonder why they are still alive when so many of their friends and family are no longer living.
Such individuals often feel alone in their suffering. An onlooker might say, "Wow, you escaped death, don't you feel lucky?!" Though some survivors may feel "lucky," they also have to come to terms with the fact that luck means being at the whim of factors they can't control. Those of us on the outside don't know what to do when random events occur. I'm reminded of a comment an insightful young woman made to me after the Indonesian tsunami in 2004, which took hundreds of thousands of lives. She said, "This disaster is so overwhelming, that no one can even talk about it." This is often the case with smaller scale tragedies as well.
So, while we could stand back and speculate that since Adam Goldstein had a second lease on life, and failed to acknowledge the dangers of his drug abuse, most of us don't really know what it's like to survive such a terrifying event. Talking about tragedy is hard, but perhaps when we can find a way to share our thoughts and feelings about it, victims of senseless events don't have to survive alone.
