#revolver

“Kids are crazy these days”, we’ve all heard it before. I’d even put money on the fact that some of you catch yourselves saying it from time to time (those of you that are parents anyway). I tend to shy away from saying things like that because, to be very honest, I did some pretty stupid stuff myself when I was young. Like, ridiculously stupid. But, for the most part, people considered me a “good kid”. I listened to my mom (while she was watching), I got descent grades, I respected my elders, all the basic stuff. But at the same time, even today, if my poor mother knew some of the crap I was pulling when I was a kid… lord. Lets just say she’d probably be very disappointed in me. Hell, when I look back on those days I’m often disappointed in myself!

Which brings me to the point of this week’s article. Imagine this scenario (which may, or may not have actually happened…): A colleague of yours confides in you that she recently visited her son who was alway at college. She had braced herself for the worst, a filthy bedroom, moldy shower corners, spoons stuck to plates jammed underneath the couch. You know, gross guy stuff. Instead while helping clean up her son’s apartment, what catchers her attention is a toy gun. It didn’t have a barrel, but it had a handle and a trigger, but this toy-gun was just so odd looking, so she had to ask him what it was. “It’s a party roulette gun, mom. It’s a pretty sweet game!” her son answers. What happens next is an explanation of the game: Party Roulette.

The “rules” of the game are simple:

1. Pass the Party Roulette Revolver (with a balloon in place) to a friend.

2. Your friend cocks the hammer & then pulls the trigger (hoping they can take their shot without popping the balloon).

3. If the balloon doesn’t pop, the Party Roulette Revolver gets passed to the next person.

Onewebsite goes on to suggest:

“It’s just like Russian Roulette, except that the unlucky person will only have a water balloon explode on his face. Or you could fill up the balloons with pig’s blood; that way someone – i.e. you – will still end up looking dead.”

Your first reaction to this “game” is likely something along the lines of “Eww. That’s not good”, which is exactly what I said to myself when I learned about it. But, taking a step back I asked myself, “is this game just in poor taste or is there something more than that to the story?” I mean think about it, sure suicide is obviously no laughing matter, but it isn’t like this is a “gateway game”, right? Surely nobody is going to play this game and have it be the reason they actuallywent out and played Russian Roulette (RR) with an actualloaded gun, right?

Then the nerd in me kicked in, and a few minutes later a quick search through the medical literature turned up a very interesting paper titled Race, Urban Context, and Russian Roulette: Findings from the National Violent Death Reporting System, published in the The American Association of Suicidology. The paper looked at 71 RR cases and compared that to a group of 284 (the “control group”) males who committed suicide by a gunshot wound to the head. And, when compared to the “control group” what they found was that RR suicides were:

• More apt to be African American or Hispanic.
• More apt to be younger.
• More apt to be single/divorced.
• 49.3% of the RR suicides tested positive for alcohol compared to only 22.9% of the control group.
• Only 2.8% of the RR individuals experienced current treatment for psychiatric conditions (e.g. depression) versus 18.0% of those in the control group.

Now, my goal isn’t to have parents freaking out, and rushing in to their kid’s bedrooms looking for toy guns. And, it’s only fair to point out that RR is actually an extremely rare behavior. There were 71 RR cases (of 30,593 reported suicides, from 17 states over 4 years), that’s just 0.23% (less than 1%) of all suicides. Point is, RR is not the new that thing all the cool kids are doing.

However, and maybe it’s the “kids are crazy these days” side of my brain that is making me think this, but kids/young adults drinking alcohol at a party with a bunch of other kids just seems like the perfect storm for some drunk dummy to whip out some real steel and say “Oh yeah, think you’re tough?! Lets go, for real!” (or something made for a TV drama that sounds way more “tough” than that, but you get my point). Without knowing anybody that has actually played this game, I can only assume those who do play are a “few fries short of a Happy-Meal” to begin with anyway. Why would I say that you ask? Just check out the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” section on Amazon.com when you pull up Party Roulette. That’s right, items included:

1. Offensive Business Cards
2. “Thug Life” Temporary Tatoos
3. Party Pooper Fake Human Poop
4. Barbuzzo Spin-the-shot

See what I’m saying?

I’ll leave you with this, maybe Party Russian Roulette is just a harmless, albeit tactless, game. Maybe. But, life is about percentages and odds. Odds that you’d like to stack in your favor whenever possible. For that reason alone, perhaps it may be worthwhile to have a talk with the loved ones/ young ones in your life about this game (and any game like it) that may attract a certain kind of crowd, a crowd that it may make sense to stay away from. Also, remind them that those who reach out for help in “bad times” are a lot less likely to attempt and/or commit suicide.

The authors of the study also speculated that RR may actually be serving as a more “culturally legitimate” way to commit suicide among members of a cultural group that take a strong stance against suicide (Black and Hispanic men are about half as likely to commit suicide when compared to Whites, while Asians and Native Americans have the highest suicide rates). They suggest that while suicide can be culturally defined as unacceptable, RR might be viewed as more of a “gamble”, and in some strange way a gamble with death may be viewed in a subculture as heroic.

At the end of the day, the facts are 1) Party Roulette is game gaining popularity amongst young adults and 2) of those who unfortunately do commit suicide via RR, a disproportionate amount of them are Black and Brown young men. Now, what you decide to do with that information, well, that’s up to you.

-InjuryDuty Health

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