The harsh side of a perma-happy city

The mother-of-three had been detained after becoming hysterical when she missed her flight to Tucson, Arizona, where she was going for rehab, having spiralled into alcoholism.

Her husband, Noah, called the airport police from New York, telling them to treat her carefully. His calls were futile. Police cuffed and shackled her and put her in a cell. Eight minutes later, they found her dead, a shackle pressed on her throat.

Like many, I was horrified and saddened. But days later I felt a great anger directed not at the airport police but at this city that as much creates as despises vulnerability.

Gotbaum was apparently vivacious and happy until moving here from London in 2002, when she found herself struggling to run a house and family. The word "struggle" doesn't go down well in the New York lexicon. No matter the reality, a New Yorker has to appear "up", glossy and in control. "If asked 'How are you?'" I was once advised, "the only reply is 'Terrific.'"

In order to perform the perma-happy role, many of my friends here take pills: copious varieties to stay awake or go to sleep, to have sex or cope with depression. The only reason that most women are not alcoholics is that alcohol is fattening - and obvious. The point of all the doping is to hide one's problems, not reveal them.

If I sound hyperbolic, let me share with you a story that recently made the email rounds in every Wall Street institution. A 25-year-old woman advertised herself on the website Craigslist as seeking a partner who made a minimum of $500,000 annually since "$250,000 won't get me to Central Park West".

A male investment banker replied that her proposition was a bad deal. "In economic terms, you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset," he wrote. "You're 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next five years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest."

Thankfully, not everyone here thinks like that, but a frightening number do. So, the question haunting me is this: is Carol Gotbaum's fate as much to do with suffocation caused by a one-track venal society as that of an iron shackle?