How depression became my curious ally

Attempting to take my own life in many ways saved it. I wish I had talked to my friends about it, though, just to let them know I knew how they felt, says Alex Chapman

Light at the end of the tunnel (Shutterstock/Adam Radosavljevic)

Around midnight on the eve of my dear mum’s birthday 20 years ago, I tucked myself into bed in my one-bedroomed flat, systematically swallowed 40 Asprin, and settled in for the night, hoping never to wake again. The fact that I am writing these words is testament to the fact that it didn’t quite work out that way but that single event set me on my ongoing quest for integrity and has probably saved my life on at least five occasions in the intervening years. Depression is a curious ally! 

I’ve lost two friends to suicide in the past four years, the most recent of whom cut himself off from contact with me and many of our mutual friends to the extent that none of us knew of his death until three months after he left us for good. I have been mourning his loss for about 15 years, which was the last time I heard from him but, now I know that the chance of ever catching up again has been taken from me, that feeling has only intensified. I’ve read my children his very funny picture book. I’ve named my car in his honour. I recently re-discovered the copy of Piper at the Gates of Dawn he once gifted me on vinyl. And I can’t think of scaling Kinderscout in the Peak District, or sitting around The Nine Ladies stone circle at the Summer Solstice or consuming port and stilton without his quirky face popping into my head.

Apparently, he drove into a remote part of Scotland in his Mercedes camper van, parked up, closed all the windows and put the gas on. My other friend, a few years earlier, elicited all manner of verbal abuse from a publican for not turning up to his gig one night; he’d decided, instead, to hurl himself in front of a moving train. The conversations we all could, nay, should have had!