Remington's Story
I was born in a small town in Nebraska. My father was a fairly successful executive with a small company, and my
mother was a housewife. Both of them were older; my father was almost 50 when I was born, and my mother was almost
40. I was her only child. My father had a son, my half-brother, who was 25 when I was born.
On the surface, we seemed like a good family. My father's picture was in the local paper a lot; he was involved in civic
clubs and other activities. He always wore a suit. But he was also an active alcoholic. We had a whole different life at
home. I've seen pictures of myself as a child, being held by different people, and you'd think I was a happy kid because
there were always a lot of toys around. But if you look more closely at those pictures, you'll see that nobody is smiling. I
remember how tense and quiet everything was. We never talked much about anything.
Fundamentally, my father used our home for drinking. There was a lot of tension, especially on weekends; lots of
arguments, then long silences, then more arguments. I was frightened, angry, and very, very quiet.
My mother had no close friends, only acquaintances. Her sister and I were the people she was closest to. I turned into
her surrogate spouse. She talked to me about my father, about her fears and anger. Gradually, the family became just
the two of us, my mother and me, with my father on the outside.
My first exposure to suicide came when I couldn't have been much more than five. One Saturday night, my father was
sitting and drinking, becoming more and more morose, talking about how everything would be better if he was dead. My
mother took me aside and told me what we had to do. We searched the house, and we found my father's pistol. It was
fully loaded. I remember the impact of seeing that revolver, and my mother taking it out of the house. We went to my
aunt's house - we were there often.
About the same age, I remember going out on weekend nights with my mother to try to find my father. He led a double
life: during the week, he was a well-dressed well-spoken successful executive, but on weekends, he would hit the lowest
meanest bars he could find. We'd look for him there, my mother and I. I remember her saying, as we drove through the
night, "Well, we need to find him so we can make sure he hasn't killed himself." That really frightened me. But I had to be
good, I had to be quiet, because I was there to help my mother.
My salvation was my aunt - she was the person who really raised me. At her house, I could be a kid; I could play, and I
had neighborhood friends. Friends could never come to my parents' house, because it had to be quiet so that my father
could do what he did. I didn't want people coming there. I was ashamed of our house. It was full of junk, old ratty
couches covered with sheets. No one ever visited there. Home was where my father lived and drank. I remember the
fear; I remember the gun. We had to keep it hidden where he couldn't find it.
When I was six or seven, my mother developed breast cancer. I became her helper and withdrew from other kids. I
played war games by myself - I had an arsenal of toy guns. That's what I was happiest doing. I was a mamma's boy,
unlike other boys. At first the other kids called me "sissy"; then they used worse words.
I was six when I first thought of suicide. It was after my mother's diagnosis; I was so scared and angry...Not having any
friends and having to put up with other kids' tormenting made me feel deeply ashamed and angry. I didn't have a father;
the only role my father could teach me was how to drink beer and be abusive. I turned inward, in my anger and shame.
I remember talking about suicide for the first time when I was seven. There had been a Cub Scouts meeting at my
home, and the other boys were tormenting me. I ran up to my room and started to cry. They came to my door, yelling
names and making fun of me. There was nothing I could do to stop them. After the meeting, I was in an absolute rage. I
went to my mother in tears, yelling at her "I might as well kill myself!" At that moment, I crossed the line. Those words
gave me a sense of control over what went on around me. I didn't speak those words again for a long time, but I held on
to that knowledge. I never really put it away.
My mother's cancer was treated with surgery and chemotherapy. It was very frightening. I was the little man of the
house, living with other kids' abuse and with the strains of silences of our family. My fear and anger grew all the time. I
had no friends; I couldn't play sports - all I had was my solitude and my toy gun collection.
I decided that the only thing I could do was be smart. I'd been told I was smart; I chose to be smarter. My school
performance was the one thing that pleased even my father. So I threw myself into my schoolwork. I studied constantly.
When I got into high school, I went all the time - I even went to summer school. That gave me a sense of being worth
something.
My mother died when I was 14. It was terrifying, being left with only my father. I could retreat to my aunt's house, but
not all the time. I shut myself up in my room, reading or playing with my toy soldiers. I also found that I could satisfy
myself and find escape from my fears through masturbation - something I found entirely by accident. It relieved my
sense of stress and tension. I masturbated often.
I also learned how not to feel - or at least, how not to show feelings. That's what I did the day my mother died. She'd
been in the hospital for about a week, and it was clear she was dying. The cancer had spread throughout her body. She
died early one Wednesday morning in 1965. My father and my aunt came home from the hospital and told me she was
dead. I cried a little, but then I did what I had to do. I wasn't supposed to miss school. So I went to school the day my
mother died. I finished out the week without letting the kids around me know what was wrong. I knew how to behave: I
was supposed to carry on and do what my mother would have wanted me to do.
But I still had to put up with the taunts, the pushing and shoving, and the snickering ... So I learned how to fight, and
that helped some. But you can't fight everybody. I think of the flip side of my suicidal impulses was the fantasies I had of
killing my tormentors - shooting, stabbing, maiming the kids who made my life miserable. Those fantasies made me feel
better.
I finished high school when I was 16. I don't know if I was really all that smart, but I'd certainly worked hard. My father
decided that he would be proud of me if I went to one of the military academies. That would make a man of me. It would
be a prize for him, to talk about the fine school his son went to, to boast that his son was an outstanding military officer. I
hated the idea. I begged not to go, telling my father I didn't belong there. I wanted to go to medical school. He wouldn't
listen.
In 1969, I was enrolled as a freshman at one of those academies. It was horrible. I was hopeless at sports. I didn't
know how to behave around other young men, and I was shut up with thousands of them. I remember being
nose-to-nose with people who were screaming at me. I was frightened all the time.
During that first summer, a lot of students quit and several killed themselves. We had our own weapons; we
maintained them and marched with them. One young man shot himself in the head with a blank cartridge; at very close
range, the blank did exactly what he wanted it to. For months I obsessed about getting hold of a blank round, keeping it,
and - if things got unbearable - using it on myself. That's how I kept going. I was doing well enough academically that I
wasn't going to flunk out. If I had to, I could always use the blank round... Fortunately, I didn't act on that idea. Instead, I
quit the Academy and went home.
The day I got back was the worst in my life. My father had remarried, and he invited me to a welcome-home dinner at
the country club. Midway though his second Tom Collins, out of the clear blue, he told me that I was a goddamn
worthless coward and he didn't want anything to do with me. I'd learned not to respond, and I took it very quietly and with
some dignity, but I have never been more shamed in my life. I thought I deserved to die. I had let my father down, and I
had taken my one chance to be Somebody and thrown it away. I was suicidal for quite some time after that evening.
I went off to the state college and threw myself into studying. I went to school twelve months a year. At college, I found
something that helped for a while. I'd been active in church as a child, because that's what children were supposed to
do. At college, I joined the church Student Union. I was a damn good churchgoer for a while, and that helped me. I
started to think that just maybe, life was going to be okay.
I got accepted into a medical school when I was 19. I thought that was really cool - to be in med school as a teenager.
That was going to fix me. I became a summer missionary and went to Mexico. I was pretty good with the young people at
camp, and that too made me feel better.
I went back to Nebraska, to med school, and met the girl I later married. In fact, I was already engaged to someone
else, a country girl, but I figured I needed to move up a level. That says something about who I was. I found several new
diversions that year: sex with a partner, alcohol and marijuana.
Medical school wasn't what I thought it would be. For one thing, it was hard work. It was the first time I'd ever had to
push myself academically. Because I wasn't perfect at it, I felt I wasn't any good at all. This was what I'd been aiming for,
all my life, and I wasn't the very best at it. I was in a state medical school, too, so even if I did well, what did it mean?
I got my first gun. The medical school was in a bad neighborhood, so I needed the gun for self-protection. That was
great, having my own gun. I kept it with me. If I went out at night, I took it along in my car. With it, I felt that nothing could
get to me - that I was safe. I kept it close by me when I studied, playing with it - as I did later, when I was drinking.
Later, after I was married, I started to think that it could take care of me in another way. I remember one night I was
sitting in the closet where I studied; my wife was downstairs. I picked up my revolver, turning it over in my hands and
studying it, rubbing it; and I thought This can take care of me. I don't have to feel this shit anymore. I can take care of
things. From that moment on, I was never entirely free of suicidal thoughts. Suicide became both a way for me to pay for
not being good enough and a way to protect myself. If the pain got too bad, I could find a way out.
During medical school, I obsessed about death all the time. I was so frightened. I found out that I had Medical Student
Syndrome: everything I studied, I got. I got worked up for cancer, kidney disease, and other disorders, going through all
sorts of invasive procedures, because I was convinced that I had some disease that was going to kill me. At the same
time, I had this gun that I was going to use to kill myself. I gave up smoking marijuana because I had death fantasies that
terrified me.
In medical school, I started drinking heavily. One of my classmates named me the Happy Drunk, because drinking
made me happy. After tests, before tests, I was steadily using alcohol. My addiction to sex started about the same time. I
had an affair with one of my classmates and broke it off the week before I got married. Later, I had affairs with nurses;
they made me feel a little better.
My father died while I was in medical school. He died on New Year's Eve. I remember taking the call and saying, "Oh,
well, happy New year" as I hung up. That was that.
Medical school didn't fix me, so I went to North Carolina to do my ear-nose-and-throat residency. For a while, that went
well. With more money, I started buying more guns. That was how I was going to kill myself. Guns gave me a sense of
protection from whatever might threaten me.
As for addictions, I limited myself to guns, alcohol, and sex. As a young resident, I found it easy to find young women
who wanted to be with young residents. None of these affairs ever lasted more than a month or so, but they came one
after another. It was always unprotected sex, too - which, again, says something about my outlook on life.
I made it through residency and into practice. I went with a friend of mine to South Carolina. I thought perhaps making
a lot of money would fix me. I didn't realize how frightened I was of going into practice. It was a multi-specialist practice,
and I was the junior guy. I started drinking daily, drinking to go off to work, and having lots of sex. These affairs were
more and more dangerous - sex in the woods, in a moving car. The ultimate was sex in a swimming pool during a
thunderstorm, something I found immensely stimulating and dangerous as hell.
I had all the guns anyone could ever want. That's what I did with my money. I loved guns, lots of guns, and lots of
ammunition. I was never a survivalist or militiaman; guns were my way of protecting myself. The world was over there
and I was over here, and I needed to keep a killing zone between us. I needed to keep that space. Besides, guns were
powerful, and I needed that as well. So I bought guns, I traded guns, I hung around with gun owners, and we shot guns
together.
My wife and I had real problems. She was the adult child of an alcoholic, and her way of dealing with everything was to
use anger and shame. She always tapped all the right buttons. I came home late one night, drunk, and my wife
confronted me. She shamed and scared me, and I was really pissed off. In front of her, I grabbed my .44 hand-cannon
and put it to my head. I felt a sense of power: back off, or I shoot. What was she going to do? Be spattered all over with
pieces of my head? That was power. It was vicious, but a the time it felt good.
Over time, I spent more and more time in my own inside place, because life was starting to fall apart. Medicine was
drudgery for me. People knew I was drinking, but they didn't want to confront me. When they did confront me, I denied
the problem: "No I haven't been drinking." I lost my job at the clinic and opened a solo practice, which my wife ran. It was
pure hell, absolute misery. I couldn't get enough to drink, so I got more involved with the woman I'd been seeing. One
night, I stayed with her and drank until two or three in the morning, then admitted a patient to the hospital. I finally
sobered up, went to the hospital to follow up, and found myself in a whole lot of trouble. Sent to counseling, I covered up
by telling the counselor that it was just stress, a lot of things going on. I thought that the most honorable thing I could do
was to kill myself.
One night, my wife and I had a fight about my drinking, money, and a number of other things. In the middle of the
night, I started to sober up, and it felt awful. I pulled out my trusty .44. This time, I meant it. I waited for my wife to fall
asleep. When I thought she'd nodded off, I cocked my gun and put my finger on the trigger. I rubbed the trigger lightly,
with a sense of tingling anticipation. I can't describe it: it was a sense of I'm going to get the hell out of here, and
wherever I go it's going to be quiet and I will be at peace. I don't know how long I sat there with my finger on the trigger -
minutes or hours. I was trying to experience how it would feel, that last moment before I stepped out of life. I don't think
I've had a feeling quite like that before or since. It was amazing. I knew that when I pulled that trigger. I'd be dead. I just
wanted to savor the feeling before that moment. If that's not mood - and mind - altering, I don't know what is.
After dragging on for another year or so, I went to Colorado. I told myself that I wanted to go to the mountains and ski.
What I really wanted was to go somewhere where I wouldn't be, and of course, when I got there, there I was. I went into
practice with another surgeon. The same things started happening all over again: angry outbursts at patients and
others; people picking up the smell of alcohol on my breath and not being sure what to do, not wanting to raise a stink
about it. I did, however, get into skiing, which I loved.
I lived in the home town of John Browning, the inventor of the .45-caliber automatic pistol. Pure coincidence, I think. I
even met Browning's 91-year-old son. I thought I was doing pretty well, but every time I had to come in from the slopes
or from a ski trip, there I was, still drinking and playing with guns.
One afternoon, while my wife was still at the office, I got my trust .44 out. I kept it loaded with the heaviest rounds I
could fit in it. A .44 magnum loaded with hunting rounds is a formidable weapon. I sat in the bedroom, playing with it,
really getting off on it. I suppose it was a form of masturbation. I was reasonably drunk at the time. I cocked the pistol. I
don't remember the sound, but I do remember seeing an orange ball hanging in mid-air. It seemed to hang there for
about 10 minutes. When it finally disappeared, there was a hole right through the bedroom wall about the size of a
grapefruit, a hole in the far wall of the next room about the same size, and a crater on the other side of that wall. Oh
shit. I'm not going to be able to hide this from my wife...Where'd the bullet go? If that hit anyone, the next round goes
into me. Fortunately, I was on the second floor of the house. I searched and found a chunk of plaster - covered metal.
You'd think I'd have learned something from that incident, especially after my wife got home and found the damage.
How she lived through it, I don't know. We seemed to get past it. But I couldn't let go of the gun or the vodka - I couldn't
put them down. My practice was doing poorly. I made some money, but getting up in the morning to go to work was hell. I
decided I had to do something, so I went to counselors and psychologists. We'd talk about my problems, and they'd
always come to the same question: "Do you have a drinking problem?" I always answered, "No, not really. I drink some
because I'm really depressed." And I always got away with it. Of course, I could never tell them that I knew that as long
as I had my guns, I would be okay.
I managed to quit drinking for a while. I didn't get sober by any means, but I didn't drink for about five years. I was
miserable. I kept holding on to the thought, If it gets bad enough, I can always...<click>
In 1988, one of my colleagues - a general surgeon, who was my hero, who had money, position, respect, cars, and
women - took out his pistol, put the end of the barrel in his mouth, and blew off the back of his head. I grabbed hold of
that suicide and couldn't let go of it. It was like the kid who'd shot himself with the blank in the military academy. I kept
saying"Poor Gene!" but I kept thinking, That's really cool, that's great, that he could just step out of all this shit. I was
obsessing about the suicide to anyone who'd listen to me. I couldn't leave it alone. People started worrying about me
again. I got calls from the hospital chief of staff asking if I was okay, and I told him I was just upset about Gene's death.
But it wasn't grief or sorrow: I was using his death as a mood - altering drug. If he can do it, I can do it. I wonder what it
was like. I wonder how he felt, that last minute.
Soon after that, I started drinking again, and my wife and I separated. We'd both had enough. I was alone. I had a few
friends, but I couldn't keep them. I took another geographical cure, saying to hell with this private practice; I'm going to
join an HMO. But being an HMO doc was even worse. It paid better, and the work was easier, but I was even more
miserable.
I finally managed to put Gene's suicide down, but the drinking was causing problems. I started taking the barbiturate
Fioricet because my headaches were so bad. But that's not because of the alcohol,. Maybe I do have a problem with
alcohol, but Fioricet will make it okay. I was having lots of headaches and taking lots of Fioricet. I didn't kill myself
because I just didn't have the energy - probably because of the barbiturate. I got incredibly depressed. I quit taking
Fioricet not because it made me want to kill myself, but because it made me so damned tired that I couldn't get around
to it.
That brought me back to alcohol, and to angry outbursts at patients, other physicians, and the HMO hierarchy. I lost
my job in January 1993. They paid me off handsomely, so I could sit on the couch putting back the vodka, always with a
gun close at hand. I had nothing else to do, and I had plenty of vodka. I just hung there for a while.
It was then, I think, that God came back into the picture...Something started pulling me back. I decided that I couldn't
just sit there and drink myself to death. So I started looking for a medical job again. I also met my present wife, and that
was good. I couldn't find a job in Colorado - probably something to do with my drinking! But I found work in Kentucky, at
a clinic. My wife and I were married, but she stayed in Colorado for her health. I said to myself, I'm going to work again,
and this time when I get there, I won't be there.
I took off across the western United States, my car loaded with my clothes, a bottle of vodka under the back seat and
my .44 under th front seat. God's grace must have been with me, because I made it all the way through the desert -
through Colorado, across New Mexico, driving through the night drinking vodka. God must have been at work.
I finally got to Kentucky and put the gun away for a little while - but I kept the vodka out. I started work in August 1994.
My bottoming-out was in sight. First I carried the regular-sized bottle of vodka; then I graduated to the big jug. Then I
was keeping two jugs in my car and drinking whenever I could get out of the office. I lost my job. It was real scary now,
because before I'd drunk when I needed to drink, but now there was no not-drinking.
My wife arrived from Colorado, and I don't know how I managed to hide my drinking from her. I kept the booze in my
car and went out ten times a night for a drink. I started getting sick; I was vomiting, bloating, and bruising. I snuck out at
night to throw up blood behind the apartment. One night, in the rain, I was down on my knees in the mud, vomiting. God,
you've got to help me. I can't stand this. I can't take it anymore. I'm going to die, either from the bottle or from the barrel.
But then I got myself a .45 pistol - I've always liked a .45 automatic, Mr. Browning's pistol from the West. I would sit at
night just working the action and ejecting shells. My sex was with my weapon. Whenever my wife was out, I'd sit on the
couch drinking vodka and playing with my gun.
God finally stepped in, through others like myself, who intervened with me. They didn't say "Remington, have you
been drinking?" They said, "Remington, you're drunk. Here's what you've got to do." I remember a sense of relief; but
there's a lot more that I don't remember. It was on a Thursday, I heard them say "Remington, you need to go to
treatment and get some help." I went home instead.
I don't remember that weekend, except for little flashes of pain when I'd run into a wall. I remember sitting on the toilet,
falling off, smashing into the wall, and urinating all over myself. My wife tells me I played a lot with that gun. I don't
remember much of it. I do remember the taste of metal in my mouth.
I woke up Monday morning with a chipped front tooth and the gun beside me, cocked and with the safety off. It was
very gently and gingerly lifted from my hand by a deputy sheriff. They put me on a stretcher and took me to the city ER. I
stayed in-patient for a couple of days, and then I went to a treatment center for drug and alcohol addiction. It seemed
like a lousy idea at the time. I remember saying, "Look, you've got to let me go home. My wife needs me." This, from a
guy who'd been sitting on the couch, less than 72 hours before, with a cocked gun, dead drunk...I promised to go back
as an out-patient - that was just part of the insanity. This time, thank God, they didn't listen to me.
Treatment lasted a long, hard 16 weeks. I played it every way but the right way. There was some real hard times. But I
came through it.
Today, I wouldn't trade what I've learned for anything. I'm learning more about what's wrong with me - about my alcohol
and drug addictions, about my sex addiction. I was in love with suicide, I said that I was afraid of death, but in fact, I was
in love with killing myself.
I am so thankful now to be alive, and to know and (for the first time) to believe that God does listen - that he was
listening when I begged him for help. I still carry a .45 - caliber pistol shell. By itself, it is absolutely harmless. In the
proper vehicle, it could have kept me from having a wonderful life. That's amazing - that such a little chunk of metal
might have kept me from having the life I have today.
© 1stBooks; Bloomington, IN; Seduction of Suicide Understanding and Recovering From Addiction to Suicide;
Kevin Taylor, M.D.