Like most of you, I read the news about these suicides this past week with sadness. I was a fan of both Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. It felt especially scary for those of us that have suffered from depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

In May 1995, I awoke one morning, and my vision was blurry. I thought I was going blind. I called my ophthalmologist and waited for an appointment. I remember sitting in the living room that day clinging to my young 2-year-old son since I could not see him well. After the doctor examined my eyes and could find nothing wrong, he said I probably had diabetes. I was amazed. I was 35, not overweight without a history of the disease in my family. Unfortunately, hospital tests later confirmed his diagnosis.

I sat in the waiting room reading a thick medical textbook about diabetes the doctor had given me. I read all of the complications that would ultimately afflict me: blindness, heart attacks, amputation, and kidney disease. I was scared shitless.  As a waited for my wife, I cried.

Since blood sugar only rises when a person eats something, I reasoned that if I did not eat, my blood sugar would not go up. I measured every spoonful of food. As a result, I also lost 30% of my body weight (52 pounds) in two months. Most of my friends thought I was dying of AIDS. I looked and felt sicker than before I found out I had diabetes.

All of this plunged me into a downward spiral of depression, anorexia and anxiety. If you have never suffered from depression, it’s impossible to know what it’s like. It is not about “cheering up” or “getting happy.” It was like every day living in a dark room with no door. I remember thinking, there seemed to be no escape from depression except suicide.

For me, the lyrics from a musical, “Next To Normal” describe how I felt the best:

Do you wake up in the morning

And need help to lift your head?

Do you read obituaries

And feel jealous of the dead?

It’s like living on a cliffside

Not knowing when you’ll dive…

Do you know

What it’s like to die alive?

When a world that once had color

Fades to white and grey and black…

When tomorrow terrifies you

But you’ll die if you look back.

The sensation that you’re screaming

But you never make a sound,

Or the feeling that you’re falling

But you never hit the ground—

It just keeps on rushing at you

Day by day by day by day…

You don’t know

What it’s like to live that way.

Like a refugee, a fugitive

Forever on the run…

If it gets me, it will kill me—

But I don’t know what I’ve done.

I not sure exactly how I survived those bad years. I know that faces of my children sustained me. I did not want them to grow up without a father. My family and friends supported me. I gave them the book, “The Beast” by journalist Tracy Thompson so they could understand what I was going through. I participated in weekly individual and group therapy sessions. Oh yeah and some great pharmaceutical drugs eased me up out of this tremendous hole. If it were not for all of these things working together, I surely would not have survived, and I could have easily ended up like Kate Spade or Anthony Bourdain.

Depression still shows its ugly head every now and then. I am in a good place now. But when it does, I remember that these bad times won’t last forever. For me, that helps wait “the beast” out until he goes into hibernation again.

I have been there. If you want to confidentially talk about your depression or anxiety, I am here to listen.