This is probably the hardest chapter I have written. There are parts of my life I can look back on now and talk about reasonably openly. @dd!ct!on, homelessness, losing almost everything, sleeping in drains, abandoned houses and my car are all things I am not proud of, but I can accept that they happened. This is different. Even writing these words makes me uncomfortable, because there is embarrassment attached to this part of my story that I still struggle with. For a long time, I did not want to think about it, let alone tell other people about it. But if I am going to tell my story, I cannot clean up the parts that are hardest to admit.

By this point, I had reached my lowest point. The black dog had arrived. I had lost almost everything that had once given my life structure. My relationship with Jenny was in pieces, my son was no longer in my care, my work and sense of purpose were gone, @dd!ct!on had taken over, paranoia had distorted my thinking, and homelessness had stripped away whatever stability I had left.

Physically, I was deteriorating as well. I had lost a lot of weight and was down to around 62 kilograms. My body was showing the effects of the way I had been living. I was exhausted, underweight and running myself into the ground, but by then I barely cared what was happening to me.

I had also tried asking for help. I had made the phone calls and contacted crisis services and emergency accommodation services, only to be passed from one organisation to another until eventually I ended up back where I started. I had called a mental health crisis line and listened to the phone ring until an answering machine told me nobody was available. Eventually, I stopped believing anybody was coming to help.

Something changed inside me. I was no longer thinking about how I could fix my life. I was thinking about how I could end it.

One day, I drove out towards one of the dams. Before I went, I told an acquaintance where I was heading. We both knew the area, but I did not tell her what I intended to do. Looking back, I think some tiny part of me still wanted someone to know where I was. I did not necessarily expect to be stopped, but I wanted somebody to know where my car would be and where to look for me.

I waited for a while, but as time passed and nobody came, I remember thinking that was okay. I had already made up my mind. I walked away from the car and into the bush with a plan to end my

l!fe. There was no dramatic moment or sudden revelation where everything became clear and I realised how much I wanted to live. I was exhausted, and my thinking had narrowed down to one terrible conclusion. In my mind, I had become the problem, and removing myself seemed like the only thing left that I could control.

I found a tree and attempted to take my own l!fe. I will not go into every detail of what I did, because the mechanics of it are not what matters. What matters is that I genuinely believed I was going to d!# there, alone in the bush, and at that moment I had accepted that.

What I did not expect was for the person I had spoken to earlier to actually turn up. She went looking for me and found me partway through my attempt. She intervened before it was too late.

She was furious with me, but beneath the anger was fear and genuine concern. She had just found someone she knew trying to d!#, and suddenly she was dealing with something neither of us had been prepared for. She got me into the car and decided she was taking me back to Jenny.

On the way there, something happened to me that I had never experienced before. I could not breathe properly, my chest tightened, my heart was racing and everything around me suddenly seemed wrong. I felt trapped inside my own body and completely unable to control what was happening. I was having my first panic attack.

An ambulance was called, but I refused to go with them. Eventually, Jenny agreed to come with me to the hospital. We sat there for several hours, and although I cannot remember every detail of that night, I remember the waiting, being agitated and eventually having a disagreement with Jenny. In the state I was in, I became angry and stormed out of the hospital.

I had just survived an attempt to take my own l!f#, been taken to hospital and given an opportunity to receive help, yet I walked straight back out the door because the thought had not gone away.

That is one of the things I find hardest to explain about that period. Surviving did not suddenly make me grateful to be alive. Being found did not magically repair my thinking. The problems I believed I was escaping were still waiting for me, and my mind was still telling me that there was only one way out.

A couple of days later on the 1/10/23, I decided to try again. This time, I came up with a different plan that involved my vehicle, and I convinced myself that it would work. I drove to a quiet country road, away from other people, and put that plan into action.

I remember sitting alone in the cabin as the air became dangerous. I had a glass p!p# in my hand, and even there, at what I believed would be the end my l!f#, @dd!ct!on was still beside me. Tears were running down my face as I sat there completely convinced that everyone would be better off if I disappeared. I believed Jenny would be better off, my children would be better off and my family would be better off. In my mind, I had caused enough problems, hurt enough people and become a burden to everyone around me.

None of those thoughts were rational, but they felt completely rational to me at the time. That is probably the most frightening part when I look back now. I was not sitting there thinking that my mind was unwell or that @dd!ct!on, exhaustion and despair were distorting reality. I believed every thought going through my head.

Even while trying to end my l!f#, I was still trying to numb the pain. Eventually, I became physically sick, my head began pounding and I became incredibly tired. At some point, I lost consciousness.

Everything after that comes back in broken pieces. I vaguely remember movement and voices, and I have a brief memory of a police officer or paramedic pulling me from the vehicle. After that, there is nothing until my next clear memory, when I found myself back in hospital.

I had survived again.

You might imagine that waking up after something like that would bring an overwhelming sense of relief, but it did not. I remember lying there feeling humiliated, embarrassed and defeated. I had reached a point where even surviving felt like another failure. I remember thinking to myself, with absolute disgust, "What a loser. I couldn't even do that."

That thought probably explains better than anything else just how unwell I had become. I could not see what the people around me could see. I could not see a father, a son, a brother, a partner or a human being whose l!fe still had value. I could not imagine that my circumstances could change because I had completely lost the ability to imagine a future. All I could see was the wreckage behind me.

Today, I know that the belief that everyone would be better off without me was not some great truth I had discovered. It was the thinking of a man buried under @dd!ct!on, homelessness, shame, exhaustion and despair. At the time, however, it felt undeniable.

I had spent years trying to numb pain instead of dealing with it. Whenever reality became unbearable, I escaped into dr%g$. When that stopped being enough, I ran harder. Eventually, when there was nowhere left to run, I turned against myself.

There is nothing heroic about what happened on those two occasions, and there is nothing romantic about reaching rock bottom. It was frightening, lonely and ugly. I am still embarrassed writing about it, and part of me would rather leave these pages out altogether. But doing that would mean telling only the parts of my story that are comfortable enough to admit.

The truth is that I had reached a place where I no longer wanted tomorrow to arrive. Twice, within the space of only a few days, I tried to make sure it did not.

Somehow, tomorrow came anyway.