Main content

Suicide – Been there, died twice

Warning: This article contains descriptions of suicide.

The Â鶹Éç Radio 4 podcast Walking on Jupiter is a powerful and darkly funny true story of surviving suicide, narrated by Stephen Graham. Writing here, the podcast’s creator Thomas Worthington candidly tells part of the death-defying story of his attempted suicide, his recovery and how hope wins.

In my final suicide attempt, I didn’t just die. I died twice.

I wanted to die where I was born. So, I got the train from London to Liverpool. It was not a spur of the moment idea. I was a patient ghost, travelling through the country on an unreliable and excessively expensive one-way train. A dead man in the quiet coach.

Listen to Walking on Jupiter on Â鶹Éç Sounds

Coma dreams are really not as fun as I thought they would be

I was brought back to life by the paramedics but I stopped breathing and was declared dead again in the ambulance.

After an overdose, evidently strong enough to kill a large man twice over, I lay in bed with a picture of my Nanna Worthy and closed my eyes, for good. My mum found me dead in the morning. Contorted in the corner of the room, sick in my mouth (sorry Margy). I was brought back to life by the paramedics but I stopped breathing and was declared dead again in the ambulance not long after.

I was in a coma for seven days after that. The scariest thing about coma dreams is that they are not dreams, but in fact, nightmares based on reality. I really was ripping the wires out of my skin and shouting “leave me to die.” I really was very aware that I was dead, floating between this world and the next, condemned to the black, a void of nothingness, talking to myself in the abyss, forever. And I really was flashing my bum, in my hospital gown, to all those doctors and nurses.

Jesus saves but hope scores on the rebound

Walking on Jupiter isn’t a sad story, I like to think it’s a story about hope. Hope wins. I’m still here. But there was a time in my life that I really did not want to be here. Having woken up from the coma with the taste of the pills still stuck to the back of my bottom teeth, I’m not only lucky to still be here, but happy too.

I’m not only lucky to still be here, but happy too.

Not everyone is as lucky as me, though. Not everyone gets a second or third chance. I was the only person to leave that hospital critical care ward in the 12 days I spent there. I was the only one who walked out, still flashing my bum.

These days more people die of suicide every year than of murder and war. One person every 40 seconds takes their own life. A lot of people are lost, fighting and losing a civil war within themselves. In school they tell you that your foot bone is connected to your leg bone and that’s connected to your hip bone, but what they don’t tell you is that your brain is connected to your heart. And they are always fighting and wrestling with one another, locked in this war for the rest of your life. One of them often gets hurt, and for some people that is a trigger to abandon hope. On my darkest days I really was totally hopeless, I used to look at old couples and be baffled that they were still alive. The way I looked at the world, the glass wasn’t just half empty, it had been put through a woodchipper.

An epiphany in custard

Walking on Jupiter originally started as some scribbles that I wrote while resident in a mental health ward named Jupiter. I didn’t write it believing it would lead to this, nor did I do it for some cathartic experience. I started writing it because I thought the whole thing was a bit mad. I had tried to kill myself twice before I ended up as a lodger here, and as I ate my jam sponge pudding with custard in the dinner room I noticed Jupiter was home to some of the most amazing people on Earth. People who saw the world differently, like me, but who seemed happy. I still think about Backwards Jeans Guy. Having the big pockets in the front just makes more sense, doesn’t it?

I thought I should probably write some of this down, maybe my little sad tale of a life could help someone else. It could be good as a bit of paraphernalia, something you might get if you woke up in a hospital or get given at a doctor’s office. Because I promise you, the last thing you want to do when you wake up from a seven-day coma is read an exceptionally boring leaflet on suicide prevention.

But I think a podcast works so much better. It all happens inbetween your ears, and that’s where most of the story takes place. So, it’s like you’re in my head – in your head. And if, in your head, you are having similar thoughts, my hope is, it gives you hope.

Thomas pictured during his seven day coma.
The first picture of Thomas after waking from his coma, with his nephew Alfie.

Spoiler: There will not be a second series

I am a very private person, I am the dark-corner-of-the-pub type. I don’t do social media anymore, I just want to be left alone to walk my dog. So – and I still really can’t believe Walking on Jupiter is actually out – for me to share my totally honest, innermost thoughts, things that I am really not proud of, and to listen to Stephen Graham saying them back to me, was very, very hard and very, very bonkers.

But I am so proud of the podcast and proud of everyone who has helped me along the way. I owe being here to the people around me, people worth living for. If I hadn’t woken up from that coma I would not have met my brilliant wife, I would not have seen my best friends get married, I wouldn’t have seen my niece and nephews grow up. I wouldn’t have even got to thirty. I’m also bald as a coot and Everton still haven’t won a trophy since I was five but you can’t have everything, can you?

It may be a cliché, but it’s true, if one person hits ‘play’ while they are in a dark place and Walking on Jupiter somehow drags them out of there and helps them, or their family, it will have all been worth it and I will be made up with that.

All nine episodes of the podcast Walking on Jupiter are available on Â鶹Éç Sounds.

If you are suffering distress or despair, help and support is available here.

A recent picture of Thomas.

More from Radio 4