Gone to Suicide: A Mom’s Truth on Heartbreak, Transformation, and Prevention

By Ann Clark

Suicide is soul-crushing for the survivors left behind. This book gives an inside look at the heartbreak and devastation that a Colorado mother experienced after her seventeen-year old son took his own life. By being transparent about her son Brant’s tragic death, author Ann Clark hopes to help reduce the silence, shame, and secrecy that surround suicide.
Included in this book are examples of Clark’s efforts to warn others about the role that marijuana played in her son’s death. Brant had a psychotic break immediately after heavy use of THC-marijuana, and this led to his suicide. All the most important, yet widely under-reported scientific research about marijuana is documented in this book.
There is a national crisis when it comes to mental health care, and the suicide rate in the US continues to increase at an alarming rate. Gone to Suicide offers many insights for both suicide prevention and for survivor recovery. Through the author’s relentless pursuit to understand her son’s death, this book explores the transformative power in extreme loss, and reveals how pain and sorrow can actually lead us to our purpose for being alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532086465

Ann Clark

Ann Clark grew up in Wisconsin and graduated from Miami University of Ohio with a degree in comparative world religions. She has lived in Boulder, Colorado, for the past forty-six years. Since her seventeen-year-old son’s suicide twelve years ago, she has worked to end the secrecy and stigma surrounding suicide, and she has been active in many projects to increase awareness about the harmful effects of THC-marijuana to youth. Her work has appeared in newspapers, on TV, in a documentary, on YouTube, at conferences, and now in this book. She can be reached at [e-mail].

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Copyright © 2020 Ann Clark.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-8647-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-8646-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019919541

iUniverse rev. date: 01/30/2020

For

Brant

Remington Clark

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Part 1 The Lifelong Process of Recovery and Healing

Chapter 1 In the Beginning

Chapter 2 SOS: Storm of Sorrow

Chapter 3 Suddenly Stigmatized

Chapter 4 Releasing the Pressure of Raw Emotion

Chapter 5 Support Groups and Overcoming Isolation

Chapter 6 Are You Over It Now?

Chapter 7 Endless Nightmares

Chapter 8 Communication Does Not End with Death

Chapter 9 Let There Be Light!

Chapter 10 The Never-Ending Reminders of Loss

Chapter 11 True Unconditional Love

Chapter 12 Common Misguided Attempts to Help You

Chapter 13 Reconditioning Your Subconscious Mind

Part 2 Finding the Transformative Power

and Purpose in Extreme Loss

Chapter 14 Suicide and the Soul

Chapter 15 The Law of Attraction

Chapter 16 Suffering Happens

Chapter 17 The Lesson of Impermanence

Chapter 18 Finding Unconditional Happiness

Chapter 19 Finding Unconditional Trust

Chapter 20 A Turning Point in Our Perspective

Chapter 21 Remembering Who We Are and Why We Are Here

Part 3 My Assignment—Increase Awareness

of Marijuana-Induced Psychosis

Chapter 22 A Sudden, Major Change in Brant’s Mental State Led to Suicide

Chapter 23 Marijuana Not Harmless for Everyone

Chapter 24 Brant’s Experience

Chapter 25 Other Projects to Increase Awareness

Chapter 26 Confusion and Controversy over THC and CBD in the Marijuana of Today

Chapter 27 How Did This Harmless Drug Cause So Much Damage to My Son?

Chapter 28 The Plan for My Life

Chapter 29 Suicide Prevention

Closing Truths: The Universe Has A Plan For Us All

Statistics On Suicide

Resources

About The Author

INTRODUCTION

Suicide forever changes the lives of those left behind. This is my story after my seventeen-year old son took his own life. When Brant died, my connection to life died. The overwhelming heartbreak of losing him, the disillusionment from this loss, and his absence from every day of my life created a major shake-up of my entire worldview.

After Brant’s suicide, I spent countless hours trying to understand the why of his death, I worried about how suicide affects the soul, and I questioned endlessly how fate and destiny worked in his life and mine. I struggled to stay positive and constructive in my outlook but nevertheless experienced many negative outcomes. The combination of post-traumatic stress disorder associated with trauma and the extra burden of stigma and stereotype associated with suicide have made recovery difficult and slow.

Very often our society judges, blames, finds fault, and makes assumptions about a suicide death. People who die by suicide and their families are often subjected to shame, yet it is estimated by many mental health organizations that more than 90 percent of people who die by suicide had an underlying mental illness.¹ So isn’t this shame misplaced? Shouldn’t the real shame be attributed to our culture, which is not only so fearful of suicide that the average person’s reaction is to recoil, retreat, and run from it, but also so resistant to understanding some of the factors that could predict and protect against mental illness and therefore suicide? I believe that the real failure is this ignorance, judgmental silence, and inaction within our society. Suicide will happen again and again until we learn and grow from it as a community.

By sharing the extreme crises that I have experienced in healing from this unbearable death, I hope to demonstrate to readers the depth of this loss and how challenging recovery is for survivors. By promoting dialogue and transparency on this highly uncomfortable subject, I hope to increase awareness that silence, secrecy, stigma, guilt, and shame are inappropriate and detrimental reactions for both survivors of suicide and those who are suicidal. And by sharing my son’s story of how he developed a sudden mental illness, which resulted in psychosis and suicide, I hope to shine a light on how substance abuse of what many consider a benign drug—marijuana—can unpredictably and abruptly trigger extreme mental health disorders in some individuals like my teenage son.

For purposes of organization, I have grouped my experience of the aftermath of Brant’s suicide into three major sections. These sections summarize the main phases of my journey since his death and include

1.) The Lifelong Process of Recovery and Healing

Includes practical suggestions for coping with the heartbreak of suicide loss.

2.) Finding the Transformative Power and Purpose in Extreme Loss

Includes perspectives for viewing suicide loss from a spiritual or soul consciousness and encourages survivor transparency and action over secrecy and silence.

3.) My Assignment: Increase Awareness of Marijuana-Induced Psychosis

Includes examples of my efforts to make public causes of my son’s death and how it could have been prevented with better information about the harmful effects of marijuana.

This book is not meant to give professional advice or therapy about what does or doesn’t work for others; it is merely a collection of ideas from a survivor who has been there. My intent is to give some insight into common difficulties for those who have been deeply affected by a suicide—those individuals whom I refer to as suicide survivors throughout this book. I know that healing is different for everyone and we all process our pain differently, but I feel that we survivors share many common issues. While each of our roads is completely individual, I am guessing that much of the road to recovery may overlap and be typical.

I am not a writer and it is a major struggle for me to pretend to be one, but somehow Brant’s death has given me the courage to at least try to communicate how his loss has affected me so profoundly. I do not in any way present myself as a model griever, as I have certainly not been one who went to work immediately to help others. But it has been surprising to me that my son’s death has drawn me back into the world of involvement and has motivated me, rather than prevented me from doing certain things that otherwise never would have occurred to me.

By participating in more than one hundred grief support groups, spending many hours in trauma and talk therapy and countless hours meditating and praying, I believe I have been fortunate to receive valuable perspective along the way. My hope is that other suicide survivors might feel less alone by reading about how difficult the healing process has been for another. I also hope that my writing will be educational for the general public, which I find is mostly ignorant about this difficult subject. If any of the thoughts or practices for healing that are briefly mentioned are of further interest to readers, I trust they will make a more thorough and complete search for more detailed information than what I can provide here.

Please feel free to make substitutions for any of the terms that I use to discuss a higher power. I often refer to God and the Universe interchangeably, thus the word Universe is often capitalized in this book. My purpose for doing this is to emphasize that God is a spiritual force at work in our vast and complex world—a power that encompasses the totality of all of space, time, life-force energy, light, and all the laws of nature that govern us. Any concept of a human-like image sitting up in a heaven simply does not facilitate a vision of God for me. If this is offensive to anyone, I hope that they will use whatever word works for them. If you do not believe in God, you could even substitute abstract words like universal love, universal mind, light, hope, or whatever words work for you.

I have drawn from ideas in Christianity, Buddhism, Spiritualism, New Age thought, and Universal Laws in order to make sense of this extreme loss in my life. My writing will probably have the most meaning for people who believe in an afterlife and who believe that some higher power exists and is in control of their lives. However, these beliefs are not necessary to appreciate this work. I hope that others—whether they are atheists, agnostics, existentialists, or whatever—will also read this book.

Some readers, especially those who have not experienced such a tragic event, may feel that part of my writing does not always deal with loss in a healthy way. I have included all aspects of my journey, both what might be considered positive and negative, because I feel that these thoughts were all necessary phases of healing for me to experience in order to move on with growth in a positive direction.

The ideas in this book are from the perspective of a mom who lost her only child to suicide. My task has been to heal without the benefit of having other children to focus my recovery on. I do not wish to offend or make comparisons with any readers who still have surviving children and feel that their loss of one of their children is felt just as deeply by them as my loss of my only child. I understand that it is the same pain that is felt from any such loss, and the only difference between us is in terms of built-in support afterward and how truly alone we are left after such a death. This principle would also apply to anyone dealing with any loss of any loved one.

Part 3 of this book is about marijuana and the role that it played in my son’s suicide. This section recounts how a marijuana-induced psychosis influenced my son to take his own life and how I have worked to increase awareness about this risk. I hope that this information will not deter any readers but instead will inspire them to uncover facts that are generally not well known. I also hope that this section will influence survivors to question and consider whether marijuana might have played any role in their own loved one’s suicide—a circumstance often overlooked due to a preponderance of inaccurate and misleading reporting. People have a right to believe what they want to believe, but shouldn’t their beliefs be based on facts? Some of the most important, yet quietly underreported, scientific research can be found in Part 3.

Whether you do or don’t accept this marijuana risk factor, all survivors are encouraged throughout this book to consider whatever message their own loved one’s suicide might inspire them to bring to better this world. If your child died by suicide after being bullied, of course, your message would be about overcoming the disastrous consequences of bullying. We all have contributions to make regarding preventing future suicides. Chapters 22 to 25 include many examples of my personal efforts to help prevent deaths similar to my son’s. These examples are given not only to educate but also with the hope that many other survivors will work to make public the cause of their own loved one’s suicide.

A recurring theme of this book is that transparency about suicide deaths is a necessary key not only for survivor recovery but also for suicide prevention. When we survivors make our stories public, we are collectively helping to erase the stigma of suicide. This makes it easier for those in despair to ask for help. Another important theme throughout this book is that the experience of extreme loss has the potential to transform like no other circumstance can. It can deepen our understanding of who we are and what we are here to do. Timeless, fixed Laws of the Universe, often missed in the busyness of life, become apparent as truth to those