I wanted to be Anthony Bourdain—until I met him.
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I wanted to be Anthony Bourdain—until I met him.<br>CW: suicide, suicidal ideation, addiction
Cailey Rizzo<br>Jun 25, 2026
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Today is my birthday. It is also Anthony Bourdain’s birthday. The man was one of my heroes and in honor of our shared DOB (and ahead of the new A24 biopic), I am re-releasing an old post about when we met. Thanks for reading!
I sat in front of a blank Word Doc on the patio of my corner coffee shop, sweating and chain-smoking Marlboro Reds. Anthony Bourdain had been found dead that morning and I was supposed to have something to say about it. I knew I did, but as acidic smoke plumed blue in my face, my fingers faltered over my keyboard.
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What did I have to say about the man? I had only talked to him twice. I felt inadequate as I pieced together a eulogy about what he had meant to me and millions of others. As I typed, I kept the cigarette lit between my lips so if anyone saw me, I could say that I wasn’t crying, my eyes were just filling with smoke.<br>Finally, I sent the article to my editor and exhaled, hoping my words conveyed something (anything) about my relationship to Bourdain. But after I returned to my apartment, I could no longer pretend to hold myself together. I collapsed in tears and my roommate burst out of her room, asking, “What’s wrong?”<br>“Bourdain,” I sputtered, well aware I shouldn’t be sobbing over a man I had only spoken to twice.<br>She put her arm around me, puzzled. Throughout our friendship, I’d had the reputation of being the stoic one. “It’s always so confusing when people do something like that,” she said, trying to console me.<br>“I’m not crying because I’m confused,” I wiped away tears with the heels of my hands. “I’m crying because I understand. I understand it completely. And I’m scared.”
Whenever people asked how I became a travel writer, I’d smile and shrug with something like, “Oh, I just kinda fell into it.” But the real answer was: I wanted to be Anthony Bourdain.<br>As a teenager, I was enamored. He was cool. And smart. And funny. He knew about books. And movies. And music. He was a rock star in a foreign correspondent’s body—or was it a foreign correspondent in a rock star’s body? After watching “No Reservations,” I knew exactly the type of adult I wanted to be: one who, like Anthony Bourdain, wasn’t like other adults. I wanted to swear like Bourdain. I wanted to live like him. And fucking Christ, did I.
When Bourdain died, I was a 24-year-old travel writer who had traveled to Paris, Puerto Rico, and Montreal all within a month. And I’d been suicidal—on and off—for years. The sort of suicidal that masked as a hard-partying lifestyle. People who only saw me at night would call me things like “free-spirited.” But it’s easy to be free-spirited when you don’t care if you live or if you die.<br>On the road, this manifested as “Bourdain style” travel. That meant, namely, binge-drinking on press trips but also getting on the backs of strangers’ motorcycles in foreign countries and walking deep into medinas alone, hoping I’d find some Burroughs shit. (All I got was lost.) I went to clubs on a mission to erase my mind. I would go anywhere with anyone because I didn’t care if I made it back home. (Somehow, luckily, I always did.)
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Lots of people loved Bourdain, but I think his most ardent fans were fellow addicts. He wrote openly about his heroin use and early debauchery. He often said he was stunned that he was still alive.<br>In my early 20s, I never thought much about this part of his life, other than to acknowledge that it made for great lore. I couldn’t yet make eye contact with my own patterns of addiction. All I knew was that Bourdain burned bright, which encouraged me to burn brighter. What I didn’t recognize was that a burning person must always be burning something. Every fire needs some fuel.
A year before Bourdain’s death, I was shaking at my kitchen table as I dialed the number his publicist had given me. When the hotel’s front desk picked up, I collected myself and repeated the room number I’d been told.<br>They patched me through and a deep voice answered, “Hello?”<br>“Is this Anthony Bourdain!?” I practically shouted.<br>“Yes..?” he answered tentatively. I melted in my chair, glad he couldn’t see my nerves.
Bourdain at Cayman Cookout | by Trey Ratcliffe<br>I went down a list of questions my editor had given me—packing tips, his favorite foods, favorite vacations. Things that made for strong headlines. Bourdain answered politely but half-heartedly, like a musician playing the Greatest Hits he’d long since stopped caring about.<br>Finally, I asked him about West Virginia, where he was filming at the time. What was it like there? His voice changed, becoming both more thoughtful and more animated. He told me that he’d sat down with war criminals around the world and shared meals with people he vehemently disagreed with. Why couldn’t he do the same in his own country?...