I always feel a more intense sense of loss when a fellow alcoholic or addict commits suicide. Possibly because I have thought about it obsessively for years, and slit my wrists on multiple occasions until being forced into rehab and getting sober a year later at the age of 18.

No one will ever know exactly what Robin Williams was thinking and feeling when he made the decision to end his pain the way he did. But I do know he wasn’t seeing himself the way the rest of us saw him.

I first met Robin in 1998 when he came to the Comedy Cellar in New York City to do a guest spot. Comedians tend to be impossible to impress and love to stress how they’re impossible to impress when bigger, far more famous comedians perform sets.

But on this particular night, I noticed that none of the regular…