Gordon in Georgia

GG: If you honestly disclose what it is you're going through to somebody you know gives a damn, that is going to prove huge dividends for your recovery and getting out of this spot. People do care.

SW: Hey there, my name is Sean and this is Suicide Noted. On this podcast, I talk with suicide attempt survivors so that we can hear their stories. Every year around the world, millions of people try to take their own lives and we almost never talk about it. And when we do talk about it, most of us, including me, we're not very good at it. One of my goals with this podcast is to have more conversations and hopefully better conversations with attempt survivors. As we head into October, we are now on our 22nd episode and we have been heard in 58 countries. So special thanks to everybody who has been involved. All of the Attempt Survivors who have been bold enough and brave enough to come on the show and speak so openly and candidly. And to all our listeners, please keep supporting us. Listen, tell folks about it, rate it, review it. All of these things really do help. And if you're a suicide attempt survivor and you'd like to share your story with us, I'd love to talk. You can reach out at hello@suicidenoted.com One final word before you listen. We are talking about suicide, so this may not be a good fit for everyone. So please take that into account before you listen. I do hope you listen because there is so much to learn. Today I am talking with Gordon. Gordon lives in Georgia and he is a suicide attempt survivor.  Hey Gordon, how you doing?

GG: Sean, doing well. How about yourself? 

SW: I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. Thanks again for doing this, man. I really appreciate it. Here's a question for you. You had reached out to me, right? And I am wondering what was it about, whether it was me or the podcast or this opportunity to sort of share your stuff around this, what was something, why? A lot of people wouldn't talk about this stuff, but you are okay with it. Why?

GG: On my side of things, I disclosed publicly my history of suicide attempts and suicidal thinking about two years ago in a national lacrosse magazine. And that put me kind on this path of writing about and speaking about my experiences with mental illness, with suicide specifically, and really attempting more so with student athletes and younger individuals, but trying to get them to be a sense that you don't have to get to a crisis point to find help or find ways to make whatever it is you're going through a little bit more manageable. So my hope on this is that, I can, you know, by sharing my story, I can spare, you know, a young man, a young woman or anybody who hears the pain of getting to that serious point where you could go either direction.

SW: I genuinely commend you for taking this difficult stuff and then trying to help others, because not everybody does that. I know for me, it's actually a sort of therapy for me to do it. It helps me. Selfish, in a way.

GG: And in that way, yeah, it's very much, and I'm very much up in front of that when I'm speaking to, say, small groups. I'm like, look, folks, I mean, I'm doing this for you or for anybody who wants to hear this, but this is my way to process what it is I've gone through. And in some respects, I'm still going through and will always go through.

SW: For sure. So can you share with me however you want to frame it? The stuff you dealt with, some of which led to attempts, right?

GG: I’m 32 now. I started experiencing depressed thoughts when I was about 15 or 16. And by the time that continued to grow, I didn't quite know what was going on. I just, you wake up and you're like, why am I even here? Nobody cares. I don't care. This is all a burden. And that slowly grew over time. And I didn't know that I even had a problem to begin with. But when I reached 18, my senior year high school, I planned that summer, the summer for my senior year to end my life by suicide by driving my car off of effectively a hundred foot cliff. There was a very, there was a sharp embankment on my way to school that had a short guard rail and a very far drop. So my plan at the time, I was like, I didn't want my family to deal with the burden of me living, number one, but also me having died by suicide. So I wanted to make it look like an accident. And I figured, you know, an 18 year old kid driving around, taking a turn too fast, that would kind of check all the boxes and it wouldn't quite look like what it really was. That was my, in the, in the, the, the part of my head that was that distorted, that sounded like a good idea. But I had planned that out the summer before my senior year. And really my thought was I was just going to wait for a moment that would tell me that all of my thoughts I've been experiencing were accurate and to give me kind of the push to attempt this. So I was an athlete, played lacrosse maybe March or April of, this would be 2006. I got beat in practice by a man named Ben now who is one of my best friends. He beat me on a dodge that just totally broke my ankles, absurd and I was furious with myself, right? Because I didn't, I don't tend to get beat that badly. But in that moment, I was just like, if I can't even just, you know, if I'm getting beat this badly on the lacrosse field where I'm reasonably good. That was the moment for me, I'm like, all right, I'm to do this. And so finished up practice, walked down to the parking lot, and I just sat on my back bumper for like an hour, just kind of just 1000 yards stare, let the parking lot clear out.

And if it weren't for, you know, funnily enough, Ben noticed me in the parking lot, this, you know, one of the few cars still there, he came over to me and he was like, Hey, what's going on? And I didn't say a word. I was just, was so in my head of just like, you know, I've got this 10 minute drive to where I'm going to do this thing. And I'm just kind of allowing that process to happen. And he kind of realized something was up and he asked me, you know, how, how could I help?

And I told him what it was I was thinking. And he got me through the next couple of hours, distracted me. We helped a friend move and convinced me that he was like, know, hey, call me when you get home. I did and he was just like, let's go to the therapist office tomorrow at the school. And he got me through my first acute suicidal experience at 18 years old when I didn't quite know what the hell was going on. So that was number one.

SW: So Ben, just to clarify, Ben, good athlete, 17, 18 years old, helped you not die.

GG: Yeah, yeah.

SW: Good for him and you. Yeah. No, seriously, because I wouldn't in a weird way, I would not think that he would be like the ideal person to talk you through it. But that just goes to show you don't know.

GG: Well, that's, I didn't know for a long time and for a while when I explained the story, mainly to my therapist before I went public with this was he was just kind of in tune with like, something's not quite right here. And it was just being a good friend, a good human being, right? And I can appreciate that. I learned years after the fact, this was two years ago, I'm speaking to my old high school Pace Academy down in Buckhead, Georgia. And we had spoken. I spoke to the the upper school, gave them some tips for dealing with stress and negative thinking. But then we had a luncheon with some of the teachers and Ben was there and they got to ask me some more specific questions, things that they could recognize, you know, how, you know, some from students behavior, if they were concerned what they could do. And Ben disclosed something I never, never knew is that he was part of the peer leadership group PACE when we were seniors. And like two weeks before our conversation in that parking lot. They had had a suicide prevention discussion. They brought somebody in and so I thought for years that he was just, he actually was following best practices for how to get somebody out of a crisis. So, you know, looking back on that, I'm just like, that shows the effectiveness of the recommendations that the experts have put through. yeah, so I'm very much indebted to Ben for getting me through that. But also for the stainless person who ever did the suicide prevention for that group of pay seniors back in 2006.

SW: Yeah, yeah. You're 18 years old. Ben helps you out. You get through it, but I'm going to imagine and if I ever am off here, you'll let me know. don't want to ever put words in your mouth, you're not like in the clear and everything doesn't sound like it was just rosie and golden moving forward.

GG: No, it wasn't. It was kind of a temporary stability. That got me through the end of that year and then I'm going into college. I was recruited to play D3 ball at a small school called Presbyterian College in South Carolina. And I was excited for going to that and a couple of my friends were also going there. And so the stuff in my head kind of took a bit of a backseat to like, life is opening up here. I get to be on my own and do that kind of stuff. My research after the fact was, you know, there are so many reported cases of depression and anxiety and also suicide attempts for the very first semester of incoming freshmen across the country because of how stressful that is. Good stress, bad stress, whatever. It's dealing with the fact that you're on your own and freedom to make some decisions, good, bad, or whatever. That's a lot to process. But I was dealing with an undiagnosed mental illness, a severe one at that. At some point maybe that fall semester of my freshman year, still 2006, I had some kind of breakdown. I called my mom at some point that week and she must have heard something in my voice that was off. So she drove up that night and just took me to the local emergency room. And I met with the ER, the attending doctor there and he was just like, you've got depression, here's some Paxil. And he gave me my very first antidepressant. And he was like, it’ll be a couple of weeks, you know, probably, before you feel anything, but we'll give it a go. I was like, all right, I'll try this. you know, what else do I really have to lose at that point? And so was on maybe like 10 milligrams or five milligrams of Paxil, whatever the starting dose is of that. And I distinctly remember after about two or three weeks, I'm walking across the quad to one of my classes or back from one of them. and I've, I've frozen my tracks because I recognize that I wasn't thinking about it. Which was such a weird experience for me because for five years almost at that point, I had exclusively had these negative thoughts and these suicidal thoughts and these thoughts of worthlessness and anxiety and fear that were interspersed throughout all my regular thoughts. So it's like I never had a moment of peace inside my own head since I was 15. And I had this weird moment like, whoa, this is nice. Like I didn't really understand how to do it. I was just like, this is really, I like this is a good, this is a nice moment. 

SW: A little bit of relief, right?

GG: This is, this is really good. And I'm like, it would have been nice to, kind of continue on that path. But that wasn't the choice I made. I did what a lot of, not even so much young kids, but anybody coming onto any type of antidepressant or even antibiotics. I stopped taking it after a while. Because I felt good. 

SW: Yeah, it's so tricky man, yeah.

GG: And, and that, led me onto several years through my mid twenties, which involves suicide attempts and hospitalizations, and going on and off different medications and cocktails of medications, predominantly because either I was upset with side effects or I was upset by the fact that I was on them, right? But I couldn't feel good on my own. and so I'd be on, you know,

antidepressants for maybe a year, maybe two years, maybe six months. And then I would just go cold turkey and not tell anybody I was doing it. And I'd be good for a little while until all the chemicals got out of my system. And then I would just take a huge turn down. And so it was like my depression on top of what is effectively withdrawal from these medications. And then the shame of, oh I had had this problem solved and now this is my fault once again, you know, trying to live that down led me into multiple suicide attempts in my mid-20s.

SW: Yeah, I was going to ask. when you were a kid after lacrosse practice, you didn't try. But you ended up trying a few times in your 20s, you're saying.

GG: I did, yes. 

SW: Was there something different about those times versus when you were when you were 17 or 18, something different about them?

GG: I think a kind of weariness might be the best way to come onto that bit. At 18, for some part of me, was just like, got my whole kind of life in front of me. And I also had so many things that were not unfinished, but totally unstarted. Like, okay, I can do college or I can, who knows what kind of job I could get or what I could study or people I can meet or whatnot. When I started getting into my early 20s and I dropped out of two different colleges. I had been in and out of my parents' place. I couldn't quite find anything that I I enjoyed studying and I was doing odd jobs of refereeing and coaching. I was just starting to feel that still it's an issue for me even to this day. I think a lot of people deal with it. Of just like still seeing where I'm at in life. Compared to where others are in life or where I feel I should be in life and realizing once again that I'm not where I feel I should be because of the decisions that I've made, that started weighing on me heavily. And then I started feeling much more of a burden to my family and my friends. If there was a distinct difference between when I was younger to in my 20s, that would be it. And there's a doctor of psychology named Thomas Joyner. wrote a book called, Why People Die by Suicide. part of his theory is that feelings of burden or being a burden to others is a strong predictor of people who want to attempt or do make an attempt or ultimately successful at ending their life by suicide, whatever that means. And that I could attest to when I was reading that. And that was the biggest thing. I'm sitting here, I'm just like, either I'm back in my parents' basement or I'm not finishing up school or I can't do a job, I'm not a productive member of society and my family can't possibly be proud of me. And all of it became, eventually waking up going with like, my continued existence is causing the people I care about pain. So the only way to end that is to remove myself from existence, right?

SW: Right. And all of that sort of with what you're calling or others have called a mental illness. It's also tied in. What was the actual diagnosis or the diagnosis that felt most accurate for you?

GG: So it's still major depression. I refer to myself as a depressive. I kind of like that term. I've got a, you know, I can also say generalized anxiety disorder. I'd say over the years I've learned to manage my anxiety far better than even my depression. I think there's, you know, whether that be breath work or meditation or some other ways of approaching anxious thoughts, I found that easier for me to redirect as opposed to just my depression up until about last year where I found some new techniques for that. But yeah, depression is still the primary one and that's a familial thing. Along the maternal line of my family, I've got the genetic, I just pulled those cards out of the genetic lottery and that's what I got and what I have to deal with.

SW: Yeah. Yeah. It's a bitch. I don't know, I don’t want to like minimize it at all. It's true. And you got what you got. And we're like just trying to figure it out and get through the day and feel OK. And then I'll concern myself about being a productive member of society. But before then, I've got like. Get through the damn day.

GG: Yeah, I mean there were weeks where I spent all day in bed and either I was fearful to get out of bed or didn't have the energy to do it. And it's a weird feeling feeling either a thousand pounds or feeling paralyzed. Whichever way my brain was going that morning when I was in the depths of all the different things I was thinking of. That's actually where, you know, and sometimes I still go there, like I still have bad days, it's fine. That's the way it goes. My rebound time from those have increased over time and over learning new ways to deal with things. It's more of learning how to come to terms with when these things happen. It's not a comment from the universe on my value as a human being. It's just this is what my brain decided to do that day and I got a roll with it.

SW: I appreciate the way you shared what it's like. It's really hard to describe what it's like to feel that way, that down. And that's that's challenging because and I ask people to try because I do think when people hear it in a weird way, they're like, oh, OK, I'm not alone in feeling this way. You know, your stuff is unique to you. But there might be some commonality. So when you said , for example, not being able to get out of bed. Feeling, what was the word you said? Feeling like a thousand pounds was that what you said? Yeah, like stuff like that. It's like, I'm wondering there. There's probably people out there who feel that way. I don't want to sort of dwell on all that stuff, but I do think that it matters. I think people hear it and maybe they're like, okay, I'm not alone, you know? 

GG: Definitely.

SW: You're 32. You're obviously alive.Do you still ideate?

GG: Yes, considerably less now than I did even, really even nine, 10 months ago. I said this and I've, you know one of my, cause I've gotten very good at therapy and discussions with therapists and psychiatrists. So they're like, me your history and I can roll it out. But one of the things I always, I always disclose to them cause they're like, you know, from a safety standpoint, like, I've tried to hang myself, overdose, suicide by handgun. So I've tried these different methods of increasing levels of lethality. And so my treatment team, whoever that may be, always has to take those things seriously. And they're like, so do you still have suicidal thoughts? And my go-to answer, the true answer was always, I have a suicidal thought every day. And as far as I can tell, I've had that since I was 18. So from 18 to 32, that's been the case. It might be something very specific. It might be something very general. It might be just a wish not to live anymore. But that was, that was always something that was in my brain that I never felt I had much control of and that I had to deal with. And then I had a breakdown this past October after moving back home from Baltimore. And I went to Emory. Their psychiatric facility there is Emory Wesley Woods and the treatment team there having seen my history of, of the different medications that have worked, hadn't worked. Like we'd really recommend, electroconvulsive therapy. And it was interesting number one being I’m in my sixth hospitalization at that point over the years and I’m going I know my own brain better than a room full of doctors and nurses. When they were like we recommend ECT I told them all to f off. 

SW: Yeah 

GG: In the room. I'm just like,no screw you guys.

SW: Yeah.

GG: And they're like we think this is actually gonna be very valuable to you.

SW: And I'm like, no, it's like, know this, I know the ins and outs of this treatment. I know my own brain, nothing really has really worked for me. So screw you guys. And then two days later I was like, well, they're going to put me to sleep and I can't sleep right now. So I might as well give it a go. At the very least they're going to give me some good drugs and I can enjoy that moment. So that was my, that was my rationale. It'll pass the time. But it actually wound up being tremendously effective and…

SW: So ECT helped you.

GG: Massively so. And so I'm very much a convert to that procedure and the way in which it was done at Emory after about 10 or 11 sessions, I could, if suicidal thoughts for the majority of my life had been kind of right in front of my face and I had to actively work to move them away, the ECT, I could see it treatment after treatment, giving distance, pushing those thoughts more to the periphery of my mind. So now I wouldn't say it's like even the frequency of them has diminished since I got that treatment last November and December. They're further away, they're less intense, and they are much easier for me to dismiss when they do show up. I'm very much, it's got an 80 % success rate, that treatment with people. And I was fortunate to be in that group of folks where it's pretty damn effective. It's one of those where folks ask me about that. just like for me personally, what I'm dealing with, I'm like, it was like that first moment I had when I first got on antidepressants, where it just like, it got all this stuff out specific to my suicidal tendencies. And it's made, it's made that into something where I don't have to expend so much energy to deal with that on a day to day basis.

SW: Right. And that was how long ago? 

GG: That was just past November and December.

SW: And does ECT tend to be something that will be forever?

GG: It depends on the individual. The doctor that I was working with, said in particular that I had very robust seizures while I was under, which was a good sign that this was going to last for a while. He said in the event that you, it was like if you and my psychiatrist advocated for this as well, he's like, if you get yourself into a seriously deep depression in the future, and I've got Emory's information saved on my phone. They're like, give them a call and we'll basically juice you up again, right? And typically like one or two, maybe three sessions after that, having had 12 or so of them before, it gets you back to your baseline much more rapidly than the initial set of treatments. So it's like, if I need that in the future, it's available to me as what I like to call it, the, you know, bringing out the big guns, so to speak.

SW: I mean, hey, if you need the big guns, you get the big guns, right?

GG: Exactly. So knowing I have that in my backyard pretty much is helpful to me. But yeah, it's from going from like, you know, hey, I don't think this is ever going to work to being like this. This has been tremendously effective for me. I advocate for that if folks are not feeling great about their current treatment plans or whatnot on medication or whatever else they may be trying.

SW: Right, like you said, you're a convert. For understandable reasons, right? I mean, you feel better. Really, rather simple, isn't it? You feel better, and that seems to be the reason why.

GG: Yeah, I mean, I can trace it back to that. That gave me the space to finish a 90-day treatment protocol at a place called Skyland Trail in Georgia, which allowed me to rebuild and reinforce the skills I'd picked up over the last 10 or so years and develop some new skills, which I'm continuing to use to this day.

SW: Awesome. I have a really hard question. Maybe even unfair. Here's the question: if I were to ask you, I'm going to ask you, I’m trying to frame it right. Like I don't want to simplify it, but can you answer the question? Why did you try several times to end your life? The why question, which some people don't like being asked. So I get that. Is it something you can boil down to, for example, depression? Or is it a larger, longer answer?

GG: No, it's, it's, I get the thrust of where you're going with that. And it's, two, it's twofold looking at my history. Number one, I have major depression and that meant that manifested with some pretty severe suicidal thinking. So that's the bedrock foundation there. Number two, looking at my, my attempt history, where I actually got to the point where I'm standing on the stool with the belt around my neck, right? Like with, you know, gun in mouth, having taken Medication, whatever, right? Not ‘I'm thinking about it and somebody has time to come and intervene.’ That was due to cold turkeying my medication. Combining the two of those things, there was a direct result of having done that. It was two or three months later that I was in a hole mentally. And the shame of being in there again for my own decisions, that, added on to the depressed feelings on that, withdrawal feelings there, and then the shame added onto it where I'm just like, I can't go, I can't tell my parents again that I'm feeling this way. I can't tell my therapist again that I'm feeling this way. So let us find a way out that is under my control here. That led me to those three severe points in my life. I think it was probably, I'd be about 22 and probably 24, 25 with the other attempt.

SW: The fucking shame.

GG: It's not talked about! 

SW: It is here. It is here!

GG:  Yeah, it is here. I mean. I don't know if you're familiar with Brene Brown.

SW: Oh, yeah. 

GG: Yeah. She's one of my favorite speakers and is an advocate for talking about shame. There's a distinct corrosive effect with shame and the perception of it, especially when it's coupled with people that you care about and you're the cause of that or you feel that it adds a whole nother level. At least for me, of weight to what I'm already carrying. And then on top of that, the psychological side of that is that this needs to be hidden away from other people.  So it's not even so much the social stigma of mental illness and depression. It's the, in my mind, the logical effect of experiencing shame is you want to hide that shit. To come out of that on your own is tremendously difficult. My problem is that with all modesty, I'm a smart guy. So, you know, I researched suicide. I looked for the more effective means of doing this, but then I also read about people who said ‘Oh, I was caught in the act.’ I wasn't going to have that happen to me. So I had a degree of lethality that was added onto this where I specifically planned out ways in which I was going to be alone. 

SW: Yeah.

GG: And that's an even worse place to be in when there's no chance of rescue outside of yourself. It's rough.

SW: Yeah, one of the things that popped into my head when you were saying what you said earlier and just now was like you weren't impulsive.

GG: No, no, I plan everything out in my life, but especially this. I remember my thought process on that, because I can always kind of step back out of my mind and try to, even though it's illogical trying to end my life, I could see all the steps going back to that. And I was like, if I'm going to do this, if this is going to be my last action on this earth, I'm going to do it as right as I possibly could. Like that was my mentality. And that led me into some pretty dangerous situations.

SW: So I know that your last stay at the hospital, you got the ECT and it's been somewhat helpful or more than. I'm always curious about people's care, right? Whether it's in a hospital, different types of facility outside of the ECT, which is obviously a huge part of all this. Was that helpful? The stays in the hospital, was it a place not to die? Was it helpful? What was that like for you?

GG: I think it's important. I've spoken with lot of parents of young individuals who are concerned and they've been like, hey, what's the hospital like? Should we get our son or daughter there? I even wrote a whole series on my blog about my different stays in the hospital, my first stay in the hospital, all the weird fears and trying to understand what it's like. After six times, I kind of knew the feeling of it.

SW: You are now an expert, right? Whether you want to be or not.

GG: I've been six times in three different facilities in two different states. So I've got a good feeling for what is in my mind for effective treatment versus not. And I've had, I'd say a fair experience of the spectrum of what it can be. Emory was certainly the best facility that I had been in. I think the, you can definitely tell the nurses and the doctors and even the janitors who will work there, the folks who care about people in a mental health crisis or an addiction recovery crisis, psychosis, whatever, who do care about you as an individual person versus just a person with problems. And they got to deal with whatever it is you're dealing with.

SW: You can absolutely tell, 100%.

GG: Yeah, even when you're in the midst of that, you can tell the people who give a damn. That was certainly my experience at Emory, which I was fortunate about. I actually talked about that. You get to know some of the people on the ward. Because the only thing to talk about is our experiences in the system. And we're actually kind of like, know, the food's actually not bad and the people are actually pretty nice. I just wish I could leave, as opposed to...You know, some of the other spots I've been in or individuals I've met, that's, that's the, I think the important thing and I tell it to parents as well, is, the hospital is not a place where you're going to get healed. You're going to get stable. That's the point of the psychiatric ward there is, is I, you know, my shortest day was three days. My longest stay was two weeks. You are there to, whether you're detoxing, whether you're getting settled from psychosis, whether you're coming down from mania, whether like me, you're coming off of a suicide attempt, you are there to get stable. That is the purpose of the hospital. The treatments after that are widely varied, again, depending on where you are and what you have access to. Those are your partial hospitalizations, those are your intensive outpatient. Those are your, you know, living in a group home, going to group therapy, which I've done as well. There's a whole range of things there, but my key thing when I talk to folks about hospitalizations is just like, they're there to keep you alive. That's it, right? And to give you enough runway mentally to get additional treatment. So I try to explain to folks who are just like, you're not coming out of the hospital feeling on top of the world. I can't imagine anybody ever has.

SW: Right. Yeah, no, that makes total sense. I've had two week long hospital stays. Absolutely my experience. Not very pleasant experiences. Would change a lot if I could. And I was at good facilities and I had my faculties, I wasn't in some space where I didn't know what was going on and I kept thinking, this is not really helping me. But you're right. And it's worth noting. It was a place to get a little more stable and figure some stuff out and just chill. And so for that purpose, it worked.  It did help.

GG: Yeah, and framing it in that perspective and the things I've tried to explain to folks is just like, you know, just because you've gone to the hospital doesn't mean your life is over. It's just very odd that perception for a mental health diagnosis or treatment versus, you know, you're going in because you've got acute appendicitis, right? Those two things are, you're going to the hospital for a medical emergency when you get down to it, but one has a distinctly unpleasant social connotation versus the other. That's a tough barrier to get across to people. And I'm just like, no, they're equivalent. The only difference is that, yeah, when you get sewn up for getting your appendix removed, you can walk out after a couple of days and resume your normal life. When you do that for a mental health concern, you've got some additional work that needs to be done to get you wherever it is you may want to be going.

SW: Stigma and shame. Stigma and shame. How did people in your life, particularly after the attempts, how did they respond? Family, friends, whomever, in ways that were both helpful and not helpful.

GG: The only folks that knew about my attempts at all were my girlfriend at the time, probably her parents, although I didn't know for sure. And then my mother, father, and my younger sister. Those were the only folks until I went public with my story. Those are the only folks that knew. Then when I went public with my story, I had a whole bunch of old college buddies and teammates being like, that makes a lot of sense. Because you just dropped off the earth for a couple of days. They were like, okay, that adds up, you know, we were missing some numbers in those equations that that filled in with, it was really, it was just my family. And I'll give them credit. In the beginning, we were collectively stumbled, you know, we're a close knit group. You know, we ran a family business for years as a youth lacrosse league. And we know each other very well, the same idiosyncrasies that any other family will have. And the challenges there, but it could have gone two different ways. This could have fractured the family or it could have brought us closer together. And fortunately, it's the latter. Not to say that was an easy process. I mean, my mother and my sister as well deal with- my sister more anxiety, my mother more depression. So we could talk on that front. You know, my father does not, he's admitted to me, like, I've never had a depressed thought in my life. And that doesn't even compute in my head. So, and I, right. And so I think for my whole family collectively, but my father especially was more of a learning curve of what's going on inside Gordon's head and the shame piece of it, but also like, I didn't have the verbiage that I do today to be able to articulate what it is that I was feeling and experiencing and thinking. Right. So we were all stumbling through the dark in the early part and you know, that first hospitalization that I had after my hanging attempt was certainly stressful for everybody because we didn't know if there was a right way to approach Gordon going, is it okay to leave him in bed for a whole day because he says he can't get out of bed or should we try to get him outside or he's not eating, what do we do? He's not talking to us or suddenly he has a good day and then we feel it's all, he's going up and then immediately he has another downturn. It was such a rocky experience. And then having a couple of years of stability and then again running into it. We got better as it went along and we became more educated as well about me personally, but also mental illness in general and really checking in on one another. Certainly since the stories come out and I've done my work with mental agility and my public speaking work, I've increased my social support network to include more close friends. So that in and of itself, the selfish side of that is me continuing to do my writing, my book speaking on that. I do have folks checking in on me pretty regularly, which allows me to also kind of step back and be like, ‘hey, you haven't written in a little while, is everything okay?’ And I can be like, ‘yeah, I'm just, I got a writer's block or whatever.’ But it's nice to have those check-ins from my friends as well.

SW: For sure. So why did you go public?

GG: When I was at Kennesaw State, there was a gentleman, a photographer I got involved with who had this project called Step Inside My Head. It was for, I don't think it was for NAMI, it was Active Minds. That was the college group.

SW: Yeah, I know of them, Active Minds.

GG: They advocate for mental wellness in collegiate populations, especially. He was doing a specific thing. He got a grant from, I think it was Ronald Reagan's wife has a mental health advocacy foundation. And so he got a grant to do stories on college kids who have experienced mental health challenges. So he interviewed me, but it was a total anonymous thing. But that was my first experience telling my story to a stranger and in a safe way because you know anonymous and I'm still sitting over here going just like you know am I ever going to get a job if this thing goes public? So that went out and I didn't hear anything really more on that end other than like the foundation used it for some of their promotional tiers or whatnot. But that was my first experience with that and then I moved up to Baltimore when I was 26 for work working at US lacrosse and I worked and established myself there as, you know, a good employee. I was involved in adult education, making learning modules and resources for referees in the men's game so they could get better. Every now and again, I'd write an article for the website or for the magazine on rules or officiating in general or how to coach more effectively because I enjoyed writing. Gabriella, one of my coworkers who works on the magazine, the layout of everything, had asked me to put together a top 10 rule myths. Which as a referee, I'm like, awesome, cool. I can talk about all the stuff that people get wrong. So I wrote that up and then I had just a thought of an idea of like, I'm gonna write 900 words on the myth of suicide. And I wrote up a draft on that. It was the basics of my story. And I went to Gabrielle and we sat down in an office and I was like, look, I don't know if this is something you guys would want to publish, but here you go. And she reads this and her jaw drops and she brings our editor in, Matt. And he reads this and he's like, holy shit. Couple days and he was just like, I didn't think this was going to be good for this particular edition of the magazine. He didn't feel it fit the, he was just like, I think this needs to go deeper than just what you've written. I'm like, okay. So a year goes by. All right. That was like September of 2017. So a year goes by and every like month or so I'm seeing Matt and I'm like, what do you think about, you know, doing that piece that we talked about? And he was just like, I'm still thinking about it. And then I got into his head again over the summer and we did a long interview, about three hours. We did a full photo shoot and video thing going into that. I gave him the stuff that I had written that had been private at the time, going through memoirs and whatnot. So I'm still working on a book. And what I learned after the fact, after the article went out, is that he wrote a postscript from the letter from the editor. It was like, Gordon came to me with this a year ago. And I wanted to give him a year to reconsider putting this out there, because it was such an intense thing. It was such a raw, raw thing to put out and want to make sure he was okay with that. Because there was a time in my life I was just like, if my assigner knows that I've got a history of suicide, is he ever going to put me on a competitive lacrosse game again? If I make a mistake, am I just going to go off the rails? So, but really part of it was just like, felt safe at US lacrosse. I knew lacrosse magazine would take care of my story in a responsible way. And Matt gave me the opportunity to also write in it. So it was, was a mix of, of, of what I had written his, his take from the interview that we did. So it was a good mix of what I wanted to be able to put out there. Particularly, if it was going out to the lacrosse community, which was my community. It was where I felt the safest. And when that went out in September 2018, that generated just a boatload of press, number one, a lot of thankful emails, number two, and then a boatload of people started reaching out to me. And I was just like, this could be something where I can continue the fight, so to speak. And I can continue doing what I'm doing. Long term, I hope to make suicide prevention, advocacy and mental wellness overall, my mental agility, my full-time job, if I can turn it into that. But for right now, it's a way for me to express that just because you've attempted suicide or you have these thoughts or whatever your mental health diagnosis or not diagnosis, whatever it is, doesn't have to be the, just because you've done this thing, that doesn't mean you have an end point in your life. There's more to come if you want to go down that route.

SW: Hell yeah, you can make it your job. I've dabbled with that. It's not necessarily a smooth, easy path for most people. I know that. But man, it's a hell of a goal. I'm gonna ask you about the speaking in a second. I'm really curious to know about what that looks like and how people respond when you're speaking to them. But you did bring up something that was on my short list here, myths. So can you remember, you don't necessarily have to remember that article, but yeah, what are some myths that you're like, nope. You're wrong, not true, bullshit.

GG: It's a mix of things I've experienced personally and then my ongoing research. So my stick when I'm speaking to athletes is I don't care if you have a mental illness or not. We all have thoughts we don't particularly like, right? That's just kind of where the brain goes. We tend toward negativity as a species that's kept us alive from an evolutionary perspective. So we have to deal with that, right? So, you know, I approach my mental illness, my depression, in the same way that I used to approach an opponent, right? Whether that's, you know, when I was playing lacrosse or whether I was doing jiu-jitsu, I'm going to find the different ways in which this illness has weaknesses and exploit them as best I can, right? That's my idea with mental agility. But the myths on that side of things is, the biggest one that I wrote about, is that people don't care, right? That by disclosing, I am having thoughts that frighten me. I have thoughts of not wanting to be here. I have an active plan that people will be like, oh, that's not a problem that they're just gonna, know, oh, just be happy, right? Kind of thing. Like they're gonna brush it off. I'm like, no, if you honestly disclose what it is you're going through to somebody you know gives a damn, that is going to prove huge dividends for your recovery and getting out of this spot, number one. So number one, people do care, right? Regardless of what your brain is telling you or your shame is telling you, that's number one. The second thing, and this comes from my work in suicide prevention with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention being one of their field advocates and the research I've done, is that asking explicit questions about suicide will lead somebody to, it will give them the idea to commit suicide, right? I still hate using that phrase, but that's the thought process for the majority of people. So the idea of like, ‘hey, are you having thoughts of harming yourself or ending your life?’ That's gonna give somebody the idea to go jump off a bridge or hang themselves or whatever. Not the case. I draw a straight line between that perspective and the idea that teaching teenagers about safe sex is going to lead them to have more sex. No.

SW: You're not introducing anything that they don't already know about. We live in the age of information so while I don't spend a lot of time with people on the sort of method though, I have sometimes, people know that stuff. Yeah, so I appreciate you pointing that out. You are not going to give somebody an idea if you ask them if they're considering it, period.

GG: Exactly. No, and that's where from my experience, I know I'm a good BSer, right? When I need to be, especially when I'm in that space, I don't necessarily want to lie, but I also don't want to tell the entire truth, right? That's part of the illness, part of the dealing with the shame there. So if somebody asked me, it's just like, so hey, are you feeling down? I’d be like, no, I feel all right. And it's just like, are you thinking about, hurting yourself? I can be like, no, not really. I'm just having a down day. But when you specifically asked me, are you thinking about killing yourself? That leaves me no room to evade that question. There is a yes or a no there and a non-answer is an answer as well. So that, that's something where, or I tell folks I'm just like, if you were that concerned about somebody, you need to be explicit with that. And that's what, you know, NAMI, AFSP, all these organizations that are there for suicide prevention that is what they recommend for crisis intervention when you get to that point if you're that concerned is ask explicit questions and don't get judgmental. All right, that's it. Ask explicit questions. Don't get judgmental. Allow the person to speak, allow them to say whatever it is they need to say and then like my friend Ben did you know years and years ago, Advocate for getting them help like hey, I can I drive you to your therapist? Go to the hospital, can I stay with you? Right? That's the biggest thing in suicide prevention that I've found is in that crisis moment, if you can provide space, time, you can tend to get that person distracted enough that their logical faculties can kick in. Their fight or flight when they're in that moment is pretty high. So if you can give them space, you give them time to, to lessen that initial stress or that moment of stress. It allows them to say, ‘Okay I'm still having these thoughts, but I might not do it right now or at this moment.’ You give them time to start processing what it is they're actually thinking, and that increases the likelihood that you can get that individual treatment.

SW: Yeah, for sure. By the way, your response when you said sometimes you're a smart guy, but you BS a little bit about if someone says, how are doing? And you can kind of have wiggle room there. When you said that, though, you said it's due to the illness. But I don't really want to push back. But I think it also has to do with a logical response to people stigmatizing and shaming.

GG: It's one of those, whether this is an urban myth or something that I just picked up over the years, is the most common lie across the board when people are asked how you are doing ‘is I'm fine’, right? It's an easy go around. That's the, hey, how you doing at the office kind of thing. I've learned, again, this is me kind of observing myself is when I'm in a depressed episode, when somebody asks me, I've told my friends this, I've told my family this, if they ask me how I'm doing and I reply I'm all right, that is my code, that is my response for saying I'm not really doing all right but I can't actively say that. So just keep on asking that question. I've learned for whatever reason that that's my go-to when I'm depressed, that that's my way of asking for help without explicitly asking for it. It's my tell, so to speak, on that end. I do think you're right on that.

The shame behind that, again, it's cultural and again, it's personal, we don't want to give people bad news. And we generally want to present the best of ourselves and even when we're not feeling the best of ourselves. That is a challenge to cross and one of the reasons why I continue to share my story. But it's also why for me personally, I've had to build a fail-safe in my day-to-day. Where if I give an evasive answer to somebody of, you doing okay, that they have permission to continue to ask me that question.

SW: So clearly, all this stuff you've gone through, the ugly stuff, the not so ugly stuff, you have a very heightened sense of awareness now. It seems like you really get you pretty well. Does that make sense?

GG: I think it's, my conversation with other depressives is, I think anybody really with any kind of mental illness tends to be maybe a bit more introspective than the average individual. I've learned over time to, you know, I can't go so far as to say my depression has become my friend, but I have, we're more cordial with each other now in my head. And that it's a less adversarial relationship that I've learned to manage much more effectively as opposed to just a drawn out, you know, knuckle bloody fight. But I've had to, this is a life or death thing for me based on my history. I needed to understand where my brain was going when I'm healthy and when I'm not so healthy. And if I hadn't done that, I doubt we would be having this conversation.

SW: We probably would not, you're right, there's probably a whole lot of people out there who, for whatever reason, they're not here. Well, it’s not probably, we know I mean the numbers are high. When you're speaking about these experiences and the mental agility, what are the most common questions people ask, whether you're on stage or afterwards? What are some of the comments or questions you get from people?

GG: One of the more common ones is, ‘hey, are you still depressed?’ Are you still dealing with these things? And yes. For me, it's not a question of if I'll have another depressive episode. It's more of a question of when. Again, I've had to build in certain fail safes into my life with the people that I care about and that care about me to be able to mitigate that when I'm in a space where I'm not able to manage that myself, right? So I've had to offload some of my treatment. So one of those things is I will forever, as far as I can tell, deal with mental illness, my particular brand of it. That's a big one there. And then I have some other folks as to, one of the other questions there is why couldn't you step off the stool? Why couldn't you pull the trigger? What was the thing that was stopping you? And I still don't have a clear answer on that one. The closest I've been able to come to is that my bent toward perfectionism in my day-to-day life, which is another cause of a great deal of anxiety, and I've had to work on that especially, whether that be work or personal life or the hobbies I take, I've softened on my perfectionism a bit, but that's still kind of where my mind likes to default to, is I couldn't guarantee that my action and my life, however I chose to do it, was going to be successful. So I knew logically I didn't have a hundred percent stake on that. So the closest I can come to an explanation of that question is that my perfectionism, while leading me in certain ways to attempt suicide, was the last barrier to keep me from doing it because I couldn't be certain that I wasn't going to just radically hurt myself and then my life would be considerably worse going forward, right? I couldn't have that. I had done too much research to see folks who had do it. And I still hate that bit of failed to attempt suicide. I've written about that. I hate that bit of just like by failing, you continue to stay alive. That, I don't like. I say ‘I succeed by living. I don't suck at suicide.’

SW: But language matters. The language matters. Also telling of what we think about things. So how we use ‘commit’ and ‘succeed’ and ‘fail’ matters. Do you think that you will try again?

GG: I'd like to say no, my history doesn't permit me to answer in that fashion. So I, you know, it's one of those things of ‘my mind can very much be my own worst enemy. And the only thing that I can do on that is to provide as much of a safety net around myself as I can.’ If I get to that point in the future. I do expect to have future depressive episodes. I certainly hope that I don't get to such a point where I'm thinking of ending my life again and we'll take steps to make that happen. I think I've built up enough safety measures and enough breakers that will show other people, okay, Gordon is not doing well. We need to get him to a different degree or a different level of therapy or treatment. That was always going to be my future battle. So I've had to build in those safeguards for that eventuality. And if it turns out that I get to 85, 90 years old, I don't, great, cool. But those safety systems are always in place. And that's what I still try to speak about to folks. There's levels of things you can do individually, and then there's more stuff collectively that can help you through whatever it is you may be going through. And if nothing else, those things tend to strengthen the relationships that you care about as well.

SW: So I have one more thought and then I'll sort of leave it open because I never assume I ask. Well, I know for sure I don't ask all the things I want to ask because I could talk about this stuff for a long time. But with the understanding that there's probably people who hear this podcast who are suffering badly, contemplating, ideating, whatever it may look like. And there's probably some other people who are in a position to help, family, friends, or others. Sort of open-ended of what else would you like to say to them, whoever's listening about this stuff, your experiences, suicide, recovery?

GG: Sure. Well, I was asked when I applied to be a field advocate for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, they do a call screen thing and the young woman on the other line had asked me kind of something similar. What do you think you've learned through all of this that you would like to be able to inform people about? And I took it a little, I prepared her, I'll prepare you on this one. This isn't necessarily a nice bit of feedback for this entire situation, right? I can't tell people honestly that everything's going to be okay. I really can't. I would love to be able to. Knowing my experiences, my history, and having heard from dozens if not hundreds of other people, I can't honestly say that. So I won't say it's gonna be okay. What I will say is that this doesn't necessarily get better for the individual, for the people that care about that person. It doesn't necessarily get better, however, you can get smarter about this. You can learn more about this. You can, there are strategies, there are techniques, there are different tips, there are different therapies. There's so much available that wasn't even known even 50 years ago, certainly not a hundred years ago, that can ease the pain, that can ease the frustration through treatment, that again, you don't necessarily get better in my mind, you just get smarter.

That's where I wanted to put it. And for me, that puts a greater deal of getting away from wishing this would all go away to finding strategies and being active about getting the treatment that you may need or that, you for somebody that you may care about. That's, that's kind of my goal is giving people agency over this.  That's been my experience and that's what I continue to try to advocate.

SW: Yeah, man. Outside of lacrosse, what brings you joy? Not a suicide question. Just what would you like to do?

GG: You know what, my sister thinks I'm weird on this one, but I really love to go out to eat alone with a book. One of my all-time favorite things to do. I don't mind that at all. I'll sit at the bar or I'll get a corner table and just like, will enjoy my book. I will enjoy a nice meal. That's one of my favorite ways of decompressing. Cooking especially, that's another one of my go-tos. But again, my other big thing is just writing. That's probably the thing that gives me the biggest joy whether that's writing about mental health in general, or just kind of my overall experiences of what's going on in a day. Those are the things that give me a good bit of satisfaction through my days and through my weeks.

SW: Cool. Are you reading a book right now?

GG: A couple I just finished in praise of slowness, which is a, has been a good read of, of again, just kind of taking more time in your day to day and how different countries and communities are, are, are moving to living a little bit slower. That's one of them. The other one I got here is the irreducible mind. That one is heavy on the research side of psychiatry and some, curious things on kind of where consciousness comes from, like trying to figure out where exactly are my thoughts coming from. So digging into that, that's a bit of a heavy read. So I can only do that a little bit at a time there. And then I tend to read nonfiction in the morning and fiction in the evening. With Dune coming out in a couple of months, the remake of that, Dune is my favorite book series of all time. So I've been digging back into Frank Herbert. So that's been my evening way to wind down.

SW: Nice. Good man. I really appreciate you not only coming on, but you are an honest guy. Cause you know when someone's not being honest. Well, I mean, maybe I don't, maybe I'm foolish. And I've been blessed for not only being people coming on here, but it just, everyone is, they're just honest and they're keeping it real. And I just, I really think the people hear this. Maybe I'm, maybe I'm wrong here, but I do think that this helps man.

GG: I believe so. I mean there have been enough myths, there's been enough disinformation, there's been enough outright fears about mental illness and general suicide, especially that the it's nice to be living in a time where the truth of our stories is rising to the top of that. And I'm excited to see where that can go for people and for us as a people for that matter.

SW: And I think that what you shared about your life and your experiences is super valuable, but I think the fact that you shared it is just as valuable. Like you're showing people you can do this, you can talk about it, you know? And man, so thank you for doing that and continuing to fight the fight. I always say, people I've met in my life who fight the hardest are not usually the people who train for the marathons, though they work hard. They're the people who get up every day when it's really fucking hard. Excuse my French, but I speak French. That to me is astounding. Yeah, there's that. There's that. I appreciate it again, man. I really do. And I hope that you're, when are you taking off to the school?

GG: Just under two weeks.

SW: How long is that program?

GG: uh 11 weeks so about that mid-december i'll be be graduating from that

SW: They don't screw around, you get trained fast.

GG: You get trained fast and then hopefully I'll get an apprenticeship with a local municipality for the new year and hopefully we'll have a COVID vaccine and shit can go back to normal.

SW: Hey man, we can hope. You know what? I didn't even ask you about that, but it's OK.  I mean, the whole covid thing is just a whole nother conversation I could have for hours about mental health and Covid I was just talking to my therapist today. I had an appointment with him earlier and he was like, there's just numbers that they're just starting to get in about people who are dealing with addiction and mental health issues. And it's not surprising that it is up mostly.

So let us get back to our days. Thanks again. I will follow up with you very, soon.

GG: Sounds great, Sean. Enjoy chatting with you. See ya.

SW: Thanks, man. Take care. Bye.

As always, thanks so much for listening and special thanks to Gordon over in Georgia. If you are a suicide attempt survivor and you'd like to share your story, I'd love to talk. Please email us at hello@suicidenoted.com  You can follow us on Facebook and Twitter at Suicide Noted. We also have a YouTube channel. If you like video, please check that out and feel free to leave a comment, ask a question. I'd love to engage our listeners more in this podcast.

Until we connect again, stay strong, do the very best you can. I'll talk to you soon.