Former NBA star Ben Gordon wrote an incredible piece for The Players’ Tribune about being suicidal.
Gordon was a star in the NBA for a long time with the Pistons and Bulls, and had an incredibly successful career. Despite that, he struggled mightily when his career came to an end. In the piece published Thursday, which I encourage you all to read every word of, Gordon opens up about how dark his thoughts became. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football)
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Gordon wrote the following in part about wanting to kill himself and trying to hang himself:
I was obsessed with killing myself. It’s all I researched, all I thought about. One night my panic attacks got so bad that all I could think about was escape. Man, I’m telling you….. you become like an animal. It’s instinctive…I could actually feel the blood vessels in my head about to burst, and that’s when this thought hit me, out of the blue. I had never thought of it before. Yo, BG.… You’re really about to die. You don’t want to die. You don’t really want to kill yourself. You just want to kill this anxiety.
This piece from Gordon is going to do more good for society than people probably realize. I think it’s very easy to forget athletes are people too.
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They’re not just people. They’re people who have to live their lives in the public eye. Their successes and failures are put on display in front of millions of people.
They’re not robots. They’re real people, and they struggle with the same stuff everyone else does, and it can be even worse given the attention.
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Gordon should be given huge props for being willing to publicly speak about his dark depression and suicidal thoughts.
If one person struggling with depression reads his piece, and decides to go get help, then it was worth it. It was 100% worth it.
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Props to Gordon for being so blunt about his struggles outside of basketball. His piece is going to help people, and he should be applauded for that.