‘I want to die’: My unthinkable thought

Help prevent suicide. Share your struggle.

In September of 2004, I received the call that every person dreads: My father had dropped dead of a heart attack at

61. It came as I was already grappling with other issues, including watching my mother fight breast cancer for the preceding six months, a breakup with a boyfriend and a lack of structure in my life; I was freelancing as a consultant while I tried to determine what I wanted to do next with my career.

I was in an emotional free fall, so I visited a psychiatrist. He said the antidepressant my general practitioner prescribed to help with my life-long struggle with anxiety wasn’t what I needed, so he prescribed a new one. This seemed to make things worse. Within a few days, I found myself thinking the unthinkable: I want to die.

I couldn’t imagine a life without my father and our hours-long conversations about, well, everything. The pain was debilitating, getting out of bed was an Olympian event, and life was utterly devoid of meaning. I stopped eating and shed 15 pounds in a month. I couldn’t see any reason to be alive.

I’ve thought a lot about this period following the suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, who outwardly seemed to be living their best lives. We also learned amid their deaths that suicide rates have risen nearly 30% since

1999, suggesting a national crisis. I decided to share my story after interviewing John Draper, director of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, who happens to be my future brotherin-law. He told me the news media can reduce suicide: “What creates a contagion effect is when the media focus mostly on the suicide and the way the person killed themselves. If people are more open about talking about coping through suicidal experiences, and the media highlight those stories, the evidence is very clear that this has a very positive effect on getting people through a suicidal crisis.”

So it might help a person contemplating suicide to read that I am thankful I didn’t succumb to my suicidal impulses. Or to learn that people like Halle Barry, Elton John and Drew Barrymore attempted and survived suicide. Or that Oprah, Olympian Michael Phelps and singer Demi Lovato considered suicide but didn’t go through with it.

We often assume that people who commit suicide are mentally ill, but this isn’t always the case. There are many factors that can contribute to suicide that have nothing to do with mental illness, including loss of a relationship, loneliness, chronic illness, financial loss, history of trauma or abuse and the stigma associated with asking for help.

Even for those who do ask for help, friends and family can be flummoxed by “successful people” planning their own deaths.

Mine told me that I was “living the dream” and that I was “too strong” to succumb to suicide. Even my psychia- trist didn’t take me seriously, saying a suicidal person was more likely to show up disheveled and unbathed than with a blowout and a fresh manicure.

Never mind that the day before, I had stood pressed against the 20th floor bathroom window of a building where I was consulting for a campaign, sobbing and wishing I could open it and jump to my death. Or that a few days before that, I had turned on the oven and put my head in, pulling it out only when an image of my brothers, also grieving my father’s death, flashed in my mind.

Despite my doctor’s claim that nothing was wrong, I insisted that he change my anti-depressant, and within a few weeks my suicidal thoughts diminished. I’ll never know whether the anti-depressant was the cause of my suicidal thoughts or not. What I do know is that every day I didn’t kill myself felt like a victory.

Though my suicidal thoughts passed, a depression ground me down that year. Life was an agonizing daily struggle. When I hear that Kate Spade was reportedly fighting depression and anxiety for five years, all I can think is that it was nothing short of heroic for her to stay alive as long as she did.

“A person contemplating suicide is in overwhelming emotional pain and they think very differently than people who are rational,” Draper told me. “Your pre-frontal cortex goes off line and you have a flight, fight or freeze impulse. In that case suicide seems like the best way out or the best way to fight for your survival. They think, maybe my afterlife will be better.”

But why are so many more Americans getting to this level of emotional despair than in the past? As journalist Johann Hari wrote in his best-selling book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression — and the Unexpected Solutions, depression and despair in the Western world can be caused by the way we live.

We exist largely disconnected from our extended families, friends and communities — except in the shallow interactions of social media — because we are too busy trying to “make it” without realizing that once we reach that goal, it won’t be enough.

In an interview this year, the comedian and actor Jim Carrey talked about “getting to the place where you have everything everybody has ever desired and realizing you are still unhappy. And that you can still be unhappy is a shock when you have accomplished everything you ever dreamed of and more.”

Yes, there are people who have chemical imbalances who should be supported and treated with medicine. But many Americans are depressed, anxious or suicidal because something is wrong with our culture.

Changing that culture is critical. Being honest with others about our own struggles is the first step. People on the edge need to hear stories that assure them there is a way through the allconsuming pain to a meaningful life.

I’ve told mine, now go tell yours.