The Solution to Suicide

I TRIED TO KILL MYSELF IN 1989. Things were tough, I was deeply in debt, drug addicted and thinking things were never going to change. I tried to take the selfish way out because I had no hope.

My Uncle Brent shot himself through the heart with a deer rifle when I was a little kid because he had no hope.

Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain took their lives despite the fact that they were rich and famous because they had no hope.

According to the Centers for Disease Control suicide rates have gone up 30% since 1999 “among both sexes, all racial/ethnic groups, and all urbanization levels.” More than half of these individuals had no mental health issues.

The World Health Organization reports that nearly 800,000 people take their own lives each year—one person every 40 seconds—and for every successful attempt, twenty more try. 45,000 people died in America by their own hands in 2016.

Some people believe in the false notion that once this life ends all their problems will be over because there is nothing after death, we just get buried in the ground. That is suicide’s appeal. That everything will be better.

When I tried to take my life nearly thirty years ago I didn’t think of the afterlife nor the people I would leave behind; I just wanted out. Life was overwhelming. I thought there was nothing to live for anymore.