No, not me.
But sadly, a bunch of others.
News item from January ‘24 (Daily Mail):
This topic came up when I visited Telluride on a road trip three summers ago before any news reports when, over Telluride Brown ale, I asked the female bartender what I should be thinking about (testing if she was a muse, a twist on requesting a message from the universe).
Misinterpreting, she rambled on about what people in Telluride think, fixating on the apparent high rate of suicide due to widespread depression, which she put down to the long and very cold winter doldrums.
Now it’s an acknowledged thing, put down by mental health experts as the “paradise paradox,” which applies not to vacationers but to locals.
This time round, a male bartender at the New Sheridan shared a different perspective, having lost three friends in this town to suicide: In coastal California you have surfer dudes who smoke too much dope. In the Colorado mountains, he explains, “you have ski bums in their 30s who drink too hard.”
They don’t earn much money and, suddenly, with rents spiking sky high and having no prospects and, feeling disaffected and depressed, find it hard to exist. Rather than change their lifestyle and location, their preference is to cash their chips.
Which may explain this sign at a popular lunchtime hub called The Butcher & The Baker…