Talking straight from my ass, but he's apparently expressed a lot of shame in interviews over returning to drug and alcohol abuse after so long sober and how easy it was to "become an asshole again" (iirc) So maybe it was the shame of that mixed with a lifetime of chronic mania/depression that finally did him in. The same sort of self-loathing that Kurt Cobain talked about where he felt undeserving of all his fame and adoration while shooting up with heroin every day to keep his stomach pain away.
Hell, how many times have you seen a stand-up comedian where you couldn't tell how much of it was an act and how much of it was a therapy session? I have Patton Oswaldt and Louis CK in my dead pool.
Anyway, this has been a really shitty day. I mean, I hated my dad for killing himself and leaving his body and blood and brains for me to find when I was 12 because he left behind two kids who still needed a dad and he had a good job and was crazy smart and so on. I didn't know until years later about his manic depression and the Valium he was knocking himself out with and the anxiety and stress and feeling of inadequacy he was feeling at work and his growing agoraphobia (all of which I now understand all too well, yay genetics) so all of this with Williams really resonates because it seems he had so much to live for. How can someone with all of that fall so far into a pit that they kill themselves? Plus I remember watching specials like Live at the Met or Mork and Mindy with my dad and having a laugh together etc. But what my father left me with was this total fear of having anything worth losing. He offed himself because his wife left him and he was terrified of losing his job. So the solution is to have nothing, right? So instead of maybe becoming miserable, I make it a self-fulfilling certainty. But at least my fear of being suicidal makes me an unlikely candidate, so yay I'll keep on putting one foot in front of the other in misery.
I'm trying to work right now and it isn't happening. Not a good day.