Source: Kevin Hines’ Instagram
Kevin Hines is a renowned author, a motivational speaker, a husband, an inspiration, and apart of one of the most astonishing statistics – he is one of only thirty-six (less than 1%) to survive the fall off of the Golden Gate Bridge.
On Monday night, Hines spoke his story of survival to a packed audience in Decker Social Space. The speech was a journey of emotions, students were seen crying, hugging, and laughing unconditionally throughout the two hours Hines took the stage. Hines brought the crowd along with him on his journey to attempting to commit suicide, and the aftermath.
Hines explained that the early, developmental stages of his life were terror. The first 3-9 months of an infant’s life are crucial to the future of the child’s brain, and for Hines, his first few months were spent on the floor of motel rooms alone with his brother, as his parents were out elsewhere partaking in drug-related activities. Hines and his brother were malnourished, “we ate only what our parents could steal,” he said. His parents were drug addicts, but they also had a disease called manic depression. His parents couldn’t continue living the life they were with children on their hands, so Hines and his brother were soon picked up by Child Protective Services. Hines and his brother went from home to home, and at one of their temporary homes the boys got really sick – a bad case of bronchitis. From the illness, Hines’ brother passed away.
Eventually, Hines was given a forever home with a nice couple from San Francisco – Debbie Hines and Patrick Hines. On March 17, 1986 Kevin Hines was formally adopted into the new home and seemed to have a new, positive life ahead of him. There, he had a new brother and sister – two children the Hines parents also adopted. The family was multi-cultural and extremely accepting.
However, around the age of 17, Kevin Hines began to experience major difficulties. Around this time, his adopted parents were in the middle of a divorce. Hines said that at this point “I started to loose my mind, as they say.” The major turning point for Hines occurred while he was on stage, in high school, acting out a play. Suddenly, he was hit with extreme paranoia and thought that every single person in the 1,200-seat audience was at the play to kill him. He ran off the stage, in the middle of his performance, and soon there after was brought to his first psychiatrist. There, he was diagnosed with major depression, but in reality, he is bipolar, so at this age he wasn’t being treated correctly. Hines’ bipolar disorder led him to have “euphoric natural highs, like ones you would get from drugs, and dark, horrible lows,” as he explained it. However, to make it worse, the treatment of major depression that his psychiatrist falsely diagnosed him with gave him mania, paranoia, hallucinations, and panic attacks.
From that diagnosis at 17 to the day Kevin Hines looked down at the water beneath the Golden Gate Bridge – knowing he was going to jump – at age 19, Hines was tormented by voices inside of his head, conspiracy theories that certain people were out to kill him, and hallucinations of a double of him whose messages were dark and morbid.
On September 25, 2000 at 6:00am, Kevin Hines wrote a suicide note and placed it in a backpack. He had been up all night, contemplating the act, and made a pact with himself that he would kill himself that day – unless someone asked him ‘are you okay?,’ ‘is something wrong?,’ or ‘is there something I can do to help you?’ That day, Kevin’s father drove him to school because he had an inkling something was off with his son’s behavior. As he dropped Kevin off, he said, “Kevin, I love ya, be careful.” As Hines recalls in his speech, “I told him I loved him too, and for what I knew, that was the very last time I would.” Hines went to a school counselor that day, dropped all his classes but one, went to the one remaining class – English, “because the teacher was gorgeous” – signed the suicide note, and took a bus to the Golden Gate Bridge. On his way to the bridge, and while he contemplated the act on the bridge for over 45 minutes, not one passer-byer stopped to ask if he was okay. So, he jumped.
The details of Hines’ survival can be found here. I have chosen, instead of rephrasing Hines’ survival, to highlight some of the most important messages Kevin Hines spread to the audience last night. These are lessons that Hines has learned first-hand, and lessons that he wishes the many who didn’t survive the 25-story drop could have heard before they jumped.
Every single person has a story, and every single person could learn valuable lessons from listening and absorbing one another’s stories.
The brain is the second largest organ in your body (besides the skin). So why do we think it is okay to neglect our brain health? It is not.
Never silence your pain. When someone who loves you asks you what is wrong, do not let your mind think it is okay to respond with “nothing.” Tell them.
If you, or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, please call 1-800-273-8255.