3 Miracles That Saved My Life | Kevin Hines DSH #1060

I shattered three vertebrae immediately upon impact.

They splintered inside me.

I missed severing my spinal cord by two millimeters.

And then at one point, I could not make my way back to the surface.

I was drowning.

And I simply prayed, God, please save me.

I don't want to die.

I made a mistake on repeat.

All right, guys, Digital Social Hour here with Kevin Hines.

We've been trying to set this this up for a while.

Thanks for finally coming on, man.

I'm so glad to be here, Sean.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, I think we're going to impact a lot of people this episode.

That's the hope, the wish, and the prayer.

Absolutely.

A lot of people are probably familiar with your story, but for those who aren't, could you briefly explain what happened?

Absolutely.

Born in abject poverty, raised in a cracked motel.

Parents died of drugs and alcohol.

Got adopted by a beautiful family.

Lived a great childhood and a beautiful adolescence.

However, at 17 and a half, I was diagnosed with bipolar depression, type 1 with psychotic features, meaning I saw and heard things that no one else could see or hear.

I had panic attacks, heart palpitations, and manias and depressions.

And

due to all of that and

a lack of proper treatment, rather a lack of following a treatment plan, at 19, I ended up making my way to the Golden Gate Bridge to attempt to take my life, a method of suicide that is 99.9% fatal.

99.9% of the people that have leapt off that bridge in the last 90 years of it being open are gone.

And I did the unthinkable.

I leapt off.

On the way down,

in that four-second fall, these were the words that rang true in my mind.

What have I just done?

I don't want to die.

God, please save me.

I hit the water at 15,000 pounds of pressure.

If you don't know, that's like a giant African elephant standing on your chest.

I shattered three vertebrae immediately upon impact.

They splintered inside me.

I missed severing my spinal cord by two millimeters.

And then at one point, I could not make my way back to the surface.

I was drowning.

And I simply prayed, God, please save me.

I don't want to die.

I made a mistake on repeat.

And that's when something began circling beneath me.

I thought it was a shark.

I was terrified.

And I really started punching it because I really thought this thing's going to bite bite me.

And I didn't jump off the Colon Gate Bridge.

A shark is going to eat me perfect.

But it wouldn't go away.

It just kept circling beneath my shoulders, my elbows and my knees bumping me up.

And now no longer am I waiting or treading in the water.

I'm lying atop it on my back being kept afloat by this creature, thinking this is what a hell of a nice shark.

I would later learn it was, in fact, a sea lion.

And the people above looking down believed it to be keeping my body afloat into the Coast Guard Boat arrived behind me.

Wow.

And three separate people would report that to the Coast Guard office.

And one man named Morgan, who I won't say his last name, wrote to me through ABC News when I was on there telling this story and said, Kevin, I'm so very glad you're alive.

I was standing less than two feet away from you when you jumped.

Until this day watching this show, no one would tell me whether you lived or died.

It's haunted me until right now.

By the way, Kevin, There was no shark, like you mentioned, you thought there was on the show, but there absolutely was a sea lion.

And the people above looking down believed it to be keeping our body afloat until the Coast Guard boat arrived behind you.

But Sean, the only reason the Coast Guard boat got to my position in the water before I would drown, regardless of the sea lion, was because a woman driving by in a red car at the moment of my attempt saw me go over the rail, called her co-worker in the United States Coast Guard.

She worked there.

and told, who happened to be manning the waters of the bridge at that moment.

Those are the two reasons I survived.

Next to the third final miracle, which was at the hospital,

they took me to Marin Medical Health Center, formerly Marin General Hospital.

And

they had options of which hospital to go, and they were originally going to go somewhere else, but the ambulance decided to go faster to Marin Medical Health Center.

One of the foremost back surgeons in the world

happened to be visiting for the day.

Shout out to Dr.

Jonathan Levin.

Thank you, God, for him.

I had a reunion with him after 22 years last year, which was incredible.

He came in, decided to clock in and do my surgery, replacing my shattered vertebrae with titanium.

Wow.

And he saved me the ability to stand, walk, and I can kind of run.

That's crazy.

So three miracles in one

experience.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And did you realize that at the time, or did you take some time to reflect back on that?

It took some time.

My father,

I'm Kevin Hines.

My dad is Patrick Kevin Hines.

Both named after his uncle, my great uncle, Kevin Joseph Ryan.

May you rest in peace.

And my father, Patrick, adopted me and made me his son.

And

he got the call on the day of.

This is a man who in my life had never cried in 19 years.

Tough sunset Irishman, right?

Played hockey as the goalie with no mask, you know?

Wow.

Yeah, he was a beast.

And

he

gets this call downtown and the person on the other end of the phone goes, Mr.

Hines, and he's standing at the time.

He goes, yes, your son has just jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.

No icebreaker.

And he goes, what?

Is he alive?

Thinking.

as a fourth generation San Franciscan that he's never heard of anyone who survived that fall.

He's thinking I'm dead.

And the woman said yes.

And he truly believed in his heart that she was just saying that to get him to ID the body at the morgue safely.

So he goes out to his secretary.

Rachel, he says, Rachel, I need you to drive me to the hospital.

I won't be able to see straight.

I'll drive off a cliff.

He didn't mean suicide.

He meant he couldn't drive.

So she drives me to the hospital.

And I hear my father's footfall coming down the hallway.

I know who exactly who it is.

I'm in a bracing structure, you know, and he comes in, and this man who'd never cried in 19 years starts bawling like a baby.

And

his first words were, Kevin, I'm sorry, guilt.

And I said, no, dad, I'm sorry.

I was awake.

And he came over to my left side and he kissed me on the forehead and he said, Kevin, you're going to be okay.

I promise.

Outside of the hospital room, they had just given him a 50-50 chance I'd live through the night.

Wow.

Kevin, you're going to be okay.

I promise.

I held on to that.

I needed that.

And I fought.

I really fought.

And

the surgery I had took a massive toll on my body.

And I would go from a wheelchair to a walker and a back brace to a back brace and a cane in a matter of four and a half weeks, which is incredible.

And,

you know,

I think about that moment with my dad and seeing his true emotion that I'd never seen before.

My dad asked me,

I asked my dad in the filming of our movie Suicide the Ripple Effect.

We made a documentary about this story.

I asked my dad in the film as we were shooting if he ever still feared my death by suicide.

And he said, Kevin, turn off the camera.

So we did.

And he goes,

every time the phone rings,

He didn't say when I call him.

So when the phone goes off in his pocket each and every time, even now.

Wow.

His first and every thought is Kevin alive.

I did that.

My actions did that.

He has severe trauma from what I did.

So do the rest of my family.

And

I have to, I feel like I have to take responsibility for that.

I have to, you know, when he calls me, and he invariably does, and he goes, Kevin, are you thinking of killing yourself?

I tell him the truth.

I live and have lived for 24 years with chronic or semi-regular thoughts of suicide.

But I will and have never attempted since the year 2000 off the Golden Gate Bridge.

And people say, well, how do you do that when you constantly think about it?

I say, it's very easy.

I have a two-pronged technique to never dying by suicide.

And I share this with people all around the world.

I teach it to them.

Number one,

I say to find a mirror, any mirror, anywhere.

I say my thoughts don't have to become my actions.

They can simply be my thoughts if they're dangerous to myself or others.

My thoughts don't have to own, rule, or define whatever I do next.

Thus, I never have to attempt or die in the first place.

The second and most important thing I do is I turn to anyone willing to listen.

And Sean, I mean this.

If I was suicidal today, which I'm not, and we were here and here we are together, I would literally say to you, four simple but very effective words, I need

help

now.

The difference between me and people around the world who attempt and die by suicide is that I don't stop saying I need help now until someone's willing to answer the call.

And frankly, mostly it's my wife, Margaret, my lovely wife Margaret, who keeps me on the straight and narrow and keeps me safe in those times of pain.

But I have been at the Atlanta airport where I live and stopped a TSA agent and said, I need help now.

And dude was like, what do you mean, buddy?

I was like, I'm drastically suicidal.

I need your help.

And my phone had died.

I didn't have my charger.

And he goes, come with me.

And he puts me in a locked room.

Three police officers come in, two more security guards.

And I'm like, I'm like, not a threat to the airport or you.

I'm suicidal personally.

I have bipolar depression.

I need you to help me get a hold of my wife and figure this out.

So they did.

And that was my ninth, that was my 10th psych ward stay in 2019.

Whoa.

And so the first three psych ward stays I was in were involuntary.

I was forced in against my will after the Golden Gate Bridge.

The last seven psych wards I've been in, and I haven't been in one since 2019, pre-pandemic.

The last seven psych wards I've been in, I have walked into those units and said, I need to be here or I won't be here.

I effectively saved my own life.

And that's what I teach people around the world is to have agency inside their mental health, to have agency in the idea that you have a choice here.

It is not inevitable that you have to take your life.

It's not the only option.

Just because you happen to be in a world of immense lethal emotional pain today doesn't mean you don't get to have that beautiful tomorrow, but you have to be here to get there in the first place.

Yeah.

And so those are the messages I share with people everywhere I go.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the psych ward because I actually have a distasteful

kind of reaction to it.

So I'd love to hear your perspective on it.

Right before my father's suicide attempt, he was in, or suicide, he was in a psych ward.

So I kind of have a bitter taste from them, but you're sounding like it worked for you.

So I'd love to hear your perspective.

Well, there's a, you know, there's the

work for me is probably not the right term.

Psych wards, as we have them in this country, not all of them, there have been many

new psych wards

that are much more beneficial to people.

You know, mood lighting, cooking classes, beautiful murals on the wall when you come in the ambulance.

peer protectors that sit with your family and give them the rundown of how to take care of you,

seclusion rooms that don't lock you

on a cold metal

box shackled to it.

No more straitjackets.

I've gone through all of that shit in psych wards.

Psych wards that I've been in have been both horrible and wonderful.

The reason they've been horrible is generally because of some of the staff.

You see, there's two factions of staff in a psych ward, most psych wards.

The ones that are just going through the motion, 100% hate their job, job, and are just earning a paycheck, as in any job.

And the ones that love what they do are impassioned and emboldened to help people in pain genuinely care about them and want to see them heal.

You can choose in a psych ward to

worry more about the ones that don't care about you, that are struggling themselves.

with burnout or you can choose to appreciate the ones who've got your back.

And for me, it took me a while, but in my third of 10 psych ward stays, I had this kind of epiphany.

My Uncle George comes in and he came in against visiting hours.

He had a special admin to come in and he drove like six hours from Arnold, California to see me.

And he would always do that.

He would always come to my psych ward stays.

I listened to Uncle George, you know, on my mom's side.

Favorite uncle on my mom's side.

And Uncle George comes in and he has a rolled up magazine in his left hand.

And he goes, Kevin,

your family and friends can help you until we are blue in the face.

But until and when you take 100% responsibility, young man, for the fact that you have this disease and you fight it tooth and nail, kid, ain't nothing going to change.

You'll be in and out of these places for the rest of your life.

Is that what you want?

I said, no, Uncle George.

And he yelled, well, get it together, kid.

We're counting on you.

And he slammed the magazine on the table of the cafe

it was empty besides me and him and he goes read it and he left

and i was like you're not my favorite uncle anymore but he was already gone and i picked up the magazine and i believe it was a 2002 or 2006

oh no it was 2004 when i entered so 2002 it was a 2002 time magazine article the front read How to fight bipolar depression, mental illness with routine and regimen and win.

And I was like, why didn't my three first psychiatrists ever tell me routine and regimen could help balance brain health?

And I go into my room and I'm really pissed off at Uncle George and I don't want to read this stupid magazine, but I go, okay,

what could it hurt?

Right?

So after two hours of staring at the magazine, I read it, the article, twice.

And I'm like, shit, I can do those things.

I could build this routine.

So in that very hospital, I go to my nurse, my case manager, Jana from Brooklyn, tough lady.

I go, Jana,

because I was reading all in the magazine, there were lots of steps.

And I was like, Jana, do you have a nutritionist in the hospital?

She says, yes.

I said, I'd like to see her

because I'm eating profoundly unwell.

I'm well overweight.

I was like, I ballooned up to nearly 300 pounds.

I was well overweight.

I was like,

I need to get back on track here.

And I was a WCIO wrestling champion.

I was an athlete my whole life in high school and played football and all that.

And

I end up

getting this nutritionist to come see me.

And she looks at me and she goes, well, you know, Kevin, you should probably stop ordering four unhealthy meals per one meal a day.

I was like, well, you're giving them to me.

She's like, we don't want to do that anymore.

Let's switch that up, eat more anti-inflammatory foods.

Okay, great.

So I was introduced to that.

And food as medicine is key to brain health.

And so I started eating healthier.

I started cutting weight.

And I realized I was a WCAL wrestling champion.

I need to get my body to the ground of my room and I need to get to work.

So I was like, do you guys have a gym?

They're like, son, this is a psych ward.

I was like, okay.

So I was like, every psychor should have a gym.

It's in the magazine.

So I go and I start training in my room.

Every moment I'm not in therapy, which is a lot of time.

Every moment I'm not in therapy, I was working out.

So I'm cutting the weight.

I'm getting in shape.

I had a two-month stay on that psychor and I used it to my best advantage.

And then finally, I started being honest in therapy.

Who knew that was a good idea?

And I'm telling the truth in therapy and my mom's coming in for therapy with me.

My dad's coming in for therapy with me.

I'm learning more about them and what they're going through, what they went through with what I did.

And it's a healing process.

And I do all of these things to better balance my brain health.

And I basically end up building a 10-step regimen to safety, to mental wellness.

I call it the Art of Wellness 2.0.

I made a video about it.

Thousands of people follow it around the world from as far as Peru, Africa, China, Japan, Canada, the UK, Ireland, and beyond.

They say that in six to nine months, they see a dramatic improvement in their mental health.

These are not novel ideas.

I didn't invent them.

They're both common sense tools and science-backed, evidence-informed techniques to better brain health.

And I share them with the world.

And

so although I would be in seven more psych wards days, I would walk in myself and say, I got to do this for me.

Right.

The mindset was different than being dragging there forcefully, right?

I took took responsibility for my brain disease.

Yeah.

That's what happened with my father.

He was forcefully put in, you know, and I think it's a different mindset rather than just walking in there voluntarily.

Yeah, it's rough.

Yeah.

When you are fighting at every turn to not go in.

Right.

And then you are forced in.

And those stressful aspects of a psych ward.

And when your father, I mean, your father was from a different time.

So it was even worse when he was in those psych wards.

There was things that maybe happened in his time that were considered like torture.

Probably, yeah.

It was bad.

You know, the 1940 psych wards, 1950 psych wars, 1960s.

I mean, you ever seen One Flew of the Cuckoo's Nest?

Like with Jack Nicholson?

It's a terrible scene, the things they did in those psych wards.

I mean, back in the day, it was just natural.

If you had an ailing brain health problem and you were quote-unquote untreatable or aberrantly violent, they just lobotomized you.

Damn.

They took this metal piece, they took out a chunk of your brain, and then this is how you were for the rest of your life.

Holy crap.

Just drooling for the rest of your life.

That's terrible.

That was in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, and it was barbaric.

You know, there are places in other countries today.

I'm not going to name the countries because I don't want people to think badly about them, but there are places in other countries, frankly, a lot in Asia, that there are...

townships and places in those countries that put people who are mentally ill in cages for the rest of their lives.

Whoa.

In cages, sometimes high up in trees.

And you see these people and they look like monkeys.

Their arms are longer.

They're shackled to the cage from their arms, their legs, their necks.

Their hair is long.

They have beards.

They've never been shaved.

They've never been cleaned.

They're dirty.

And they're just dying in those cages.

Terrible.

Like, how do we allow this to happen?

There are places around the world,

including Middle Eastern countries,

that still believe suicide is a crime.

And if you survive your attempt, you go straight to prison.

What?

Yes.

Like, you know,

they let you heal up and then they put you in jail.

Like, you know, how is this?

How is this okay?

You know, we need to be compassionate, loving, empathetic, and caring and lacking in judgment to people who go through this.

I have to ask you, like, if you don't mind, what did you go through when you lost your dad and your grandfather?

Definitely, I wasn't as close with my grandfather.

So that one, just upset.

But with my father, we were pretty close.

So guilt, honestly, because I felt like I could have been there for him more.

I feel like I could have called him, checked in on him more.

He was pretty lonely, pretty isolated.

And I feel like I could have visited more and been there more for him.

Yeah.

You know, do you still feel that guilt today?

I've done some healing now.

So I would say maybe a little bit, but it's not as strong as it used to be.

I always say to my audiences, you know, I speak 250, 300 times a year.

I always speak to my audiences and I say, how many people in this audience are here in part because you've lost someone you know, love, or care about to suicide?

And invariably, you see 80, 90, sometimes 100% raise their hands.

And it's gone up since I started.

I didn't know it was up.

Yeah, you see the majority of the people in the audience.

It doesn't matter if it's an audience of 30 or an audience of 20,000, 50,000.

They raise their hands.

Damn.

Yeah.

And I say, okay, how many of you still feel mildly, moderately, or immensely guilty for the loss?

And you see still a vast majority of people with their hands up who are being honest.

I say, okay, let's stop for a moment.

They didn't die because of you.

They died because of a lethal emotional pain that had nothing to do with you.

That's too much weight for any human being to carry on their shoulders.

Brush it off.

And practice every day looking in the mirror and saying, it was not.

my fault.

What we recite, what we repeat about ourselves or our lives is what we believe.

Think of every major faith in the world.

Recite a prayer, repeat a prayer, believe said prayer.

It's scientific in the brain.

If you recite and repeat self-loathing material, self-hating material,

conversations in your head about how you're useless, worthless, or less than, that's what you believe.

For sure.

If you recite and repeat, I am wonderful, I am beautiful, I am strong, I am the best, I am the greatest, I'm a phenom,

that's what you'll eventually believe.

And I learned this myself in part by reading a friend's book, Dr.

Lisa Firestone and Dr.

Robert Firestone, a father and daughter psychologist team.

I read the book, Conquering Your Inner Critical Voice.

It's a bit of an academic read, but I'm okay with that.

And it was very helpful in me retraining my brain.

So when I would...

And I still go through it sometimes, but when I would self-loathe, and back in the day, I self-loathe a lot, and a lot of that had to do with my grade school experience in grade school at St.

Cecilia's Catholic school funnily enough and I'm a Catholic today I firmly believe in God I have a strong faith

but I was in Catholic school as a kid and I was the only mixed race kid in the school I was part black and part many other things but very mixed but but

they tormented me wow The eighth grade kids, basically every Friday like clockwork, would take me when I was in fourth fourth grade.

I was a child.

And they would pick me up, turn me upside down, and place me in a garbage can face first and tell me that's what I was because I was part black.

Dang.

It was brutal.

A kid named Mike would get behind me, bend down.

A kid named Tony in front of me would push me over Mike.

I'd crack my head on the concrete and bleed because I didn't look like them.

And

for me,

I don't need any pity for that, but I developed a very, very strong self-loathing voice in my head.

In fourth grade, I heard voices, but I didn't tell anybody because I thought, I don't know what this is.

I'm a kid.

What the hell is going on?

This thing doesn't sound like my voice.

Sounds like someone's talking to me in my head and they hate me.

And so I said nothing to anybody, but I just, my behavior was off.

I was too energized or too overwhelmed or too sensitive or whatever the situation was.

And those those students that took part in those actions played a pivotal role in me leaping off the Golden Gate Bridge at 19.

Wow.

Because they built that self-loathing and they destroyed my self-esteem.

And so

while I go to high schools all around the world,

I'm well aware.

that there is a vast amount of bullying, hazing, teasing, and harassment going on in those, in those classes and at home when they go on social media.

Oh, yeah.

And

the crisis text lines AI algorithm, which

predated this AI craze that you know well aware about, but the crisis text lines AI algorithm, which is hyperintelligent, determine

that cyberbullying is 60% more lethal than physical bullying.

Dang.

Because

kids get to believing that that's the rest of their lives and that what's being said on there and reposted and re whatever, reshared,

is permanent, and that they are worthless because of it.

And they're taking their lives left and right.

So, I will say, in an audience of high school students, and you'll see the kids that are laughing because they're the bullies.

Yeah.

And they're laughing like this guy, you know, is he telling me I can't bully people.

And I go, hold on.

Those people, those kids, the students, your peers who you say these things about, they have moms and dads who love them.

family and friends who need them,

people who care about them.

Is it okay to tell a student in your very school to just go kill themselves?

And everybody goes, yells, no.

It's very interactive, the presentation is like, no, you know,

then why is any level of harassment, teasing, hazing, or bullying allowed in any high school in this country?

There should be a zero tolerance policy.

Because your minds are still shaping at that age.

They don't fully grow until 26, 20 years of age, not fully formed.

And you're easily influenced.

And

we need to break free from that cycle if we're going to build resilience in teenagers' lives so that we don't have a society that has a second leading cause of death is suicide

for 13 to 24 year olds,

24 to 35 year olds, and the third leading cause of death from ages above that.

And a massive leading cause of death for the elderly.

Wow.

Which nobody talks about.

Nobody talks about the elderly suicides.

And you go, they still have value.

They're still worthwhile.

Those are our grandmas and grandpas.

They're important.

They have history.

And they're being ignored.

And it boggles the mind.

A friend of mine,

a psychologist,

Dr.

Bart Bart Andrews, is in my film, Suicide the Ripple Effect.

And he says in the film,

something to the effect of the fact that this many people are dying by suicide is a reflection of society, not the person.

We live in a society that demonizes brain pain, that says, snap out of it.

Get over it.

Move on.

Pull yourself up by your bootstrap.

It's all in your head.

You're damn right.

It's in my head.

That's where my brain is.

Single most powerful organ in my body next to my skin and my heart.

if my brain is malfunctioning i'm done

so if we can get to a place where sane and well people can take on the responsibility for suicide prevention and just be more empathetic be lacking in judgment to people in brain pain we could save a lot more lives absolutely yeah we got a mental health epidemic right now right you're looking at these schools you're probably seeing it firsthand firsthand

one of the

by the way one of the things i love about you is that you

you could teach a masterclass in listening.

You're incredible at it.

Thank you.

And that's really important.

I just, I had to say that.

It comes with the reps.

It comes with the reps.

I was not the best at first, my first few episodes, but you got to, it's an important skill to host.

I'm learning too on my podcast.

Because it's easy to want to talk.

Yeah, Chris, you want to, you know, I talk too much, you can tell.

But, um,

but yeah, you know,

to your point,

it is a mental health epidemic.

I call it brain health, brain pain.

You know, your brain is an organ just like every other organ in the body, and it too can become diseased.

But when someone first develops brain pain in America, around the world, what do people around them do?

They tell them to get over it.

They tell them it's all in your head.

And you're like, wait a minute, like

your brain is a massive wondry of chemicals and neural pathways.

And if you get stuck in this recidivistic language of suicide, it's very difficult to break free from.

So you have to implement strategies and tips and tricks like I did with those two-prong techniques I shared earlier to stay away from that.

But one of the other things you have to do is every time you have a suicidal inclination, every time you say to yourself, I want or I should or I have to go kill myself,

reverse it.

I love life.

I'm going to stay alive.

I'm going to live.

Life is the option.

Commit to life.

Whatever your language is that says you need to take your life, reverse it to the opposite and do it every time because you have to retrain the brain's

neural pathways.

You have to retrain the brain's recidivism.

You have to change the language and change the narrative or else you'll be stuck in that forever.

I have a friend who comes to all my speeches and travels from far away to get there.

And she is just so struggling with suicidal ideation.

And she struggles with it daily, all day long.

And I pray, I hope, and wish, and I pray she's someday able to

really utilize all the techniques I've helped her find

to reverse that inner critical voice.

But in order to do that, you have to educate yourself.

You have to read the books.

You have to understand the psychology of it.

You have to know the brain.

Yeah.

And you have to retrain your heart to say,

I get to be here.

And this is not happening to me.

It's happening for me.

What a gift.

I hold gratitude inside my pain.

Sean, I'm in excruciating physical pain sitting here.

You don't see it on my face.

I'm used to it.

I have a metal plate and cage in my back that causes me immense physical pain.

I don't take pain meds.

I once in a blue moon take Advil when it's really bad.

But most of the time, I just white knuckle it.

And I do that because when I came out of the hospital, I was on OxyContin.

And they gave it to me like it was candy.

And I believe I was abusing it.

I didn't think that back in the day.

I was like, oh, you know,

it was whatever.

I would take it to numb the pain, and then the pain would go away, and I'd take it again.

And

I recognized it, and I was like, holy shit, my birth parents died of drugs.

I can't do this.

So, while it wasn't overwhelming, it was just a part of my life.

So, I said to my doctors,

I said, Doc, what do I do to wean this off of my system, to get this out of my system?

He said, wean down to aspirin, then wean down to Advil, then wean down to Tylenol, then get completely off pain beds.

And that's what I did all by myself.

I just did it.

And I did that because I didn't want to end up, like my birth parents, it was like the best

masterclass for me in that scenario, learning what happened to them and learning how they left this world and that drugs played such a huge part in that.

I promise I don't have COVID, but ever since COVID, I got it two or three times.

I have this tickle in my throat that just never goes away.

When you're speaking this many times as I do, it's so annoying.

That sucks.

Because

I've got to plan when I'm going to drink my water.

Like at this line, I'm going to, there'll be a round of applause and I'll drink the water.

Smart.

My secret.

Yeah, I lost my taste for a bit during COVID.

Did you?

Oh, brutal.

Yeah.

That sucks.

Got it back.

You got it back?

Yeah.

So many people didn't.

Food is important for me, man.

If I couldn't get my taste,

I'd be so upset.

I'm so angry.

A lot of meaning to my life in food because I love to travel the world and experience cultures.

So food is a big part of my life.

You do.

You travel the world.

You go all over.

You

enjoy different cultures.

You learn about those cultures.

You bring them back.

Yep.

It's cool.

Perspective is important to me because I grew up kind of sheltered.

I didn't leave much.

So I thought that was the whole world.

But I've learned a lot about life from traveling.

I think everyone should go to

what are called third world countries to see what it's like to live in that scenario, to embed themselves in those situations

and be grateful for what we have here in America.

I agree.

You know, I think that people take that, take this country and take our freedoms for granted.

Yeah, it definitely humbles yourselves.

It humbles you all.

Yeah, it does.

It does.

Yeah, Margaret, my wife and I travel all over and we've seen, we've seen the

devastating struggles of

people

all around the world.

But we've also seen their resilience, which is incredible.

You know, there's cultures around the world that don't have a term for mental health.

Wow.

They don't.

What do they call it?

It's not that they're denying that it exists.

It's that they are

free from its woes because they're so connected to family and to culture and to background and to history.

Think of the Aboriginals in Australia.

the First Peoples, right?

They are connected to Mother Earth.

They're grounded to the Earth.

Spending time with your feet on planet Earth, like you, what I do every morning, I wake up, I meditate for 20 minutes, I do my Hallowed App prayers

on the Catholic app.

I go, I exercise, I have my morning oatmeal, whatever it is, and then I go and I take off my shoes.

I take off my, I'm not wearing socks, not wearing shoes.

I go outside to my grass and I stand there for 19 to 12, 20 minutes.

Love it

because

that

actually grounds you to Mother Earth and it changes

the,

of course I'm blanking on this now.

It changes your entire body's chemistry.

Wow.

It actually

benefits your brain health.

It makes you less depressed if you're in depression.

You're getting the light from the sunlight, which is crucial to get as well.

So you're simultaneously grounding and getting the light that you need for your vitamin D and you are benefiting your brain health every time.

I do it every day.

It's incredible.

I love that.

Yeah, I'm big on grounding.

Let me ask you this, because the Amish people fascinate me.

And one of the things that fascinates me about their community is they don't seem to have mental health issues.

Why do you think that is?

You know, I think it's very, it's very, I actually think it's very common,

it's very much in line with the Aboriginals.

They have a sense of community

that is unrivaled.

You know, think about when

in some Amish communities there have been mass killings and someone who didn't like their religion came in and shot them all up.

What did they do immediately after?

They came out publicly and said, we forgive him

for killing all of our children.

We forgive him.

Done.

They are at peace with themselves.

They know their worth.

They love God.

They love each other.

And they protect that love.

And they protect their hearts.

That's not to say none of them struggle mentally.

It's that they perceive it differently.

Interesting.

And that's okay.

We have to be culturally competent in these things.

We have to look at it differently from different people.

Think about like this, that I'm part black.

I told you that.

My

raging sadness right now is that more seven to 10 year old black children are dying by suicide than ever before in the history of the world.

How does a seven-year-old know to take their life?

That's so young.

That's disturbing.

How does a seven-year-old know what to do to take their life?

It's not acceptable.

And in traveling around to not just high schools and colleges, middle schools, military bases, one of the common thing, most common things I see besides the whole bullying thing is that kids will come up to me and they'll go afterwards, you know, in droves, they'll come up and say thank you and things and tell me their stories for the first time that they've told anyone their stories.

And they'll say,

Kevin, I really love your message today, it was really helpful.

But

when I go home, I'm being abused and neglected every day,

or one or the other, or both

in one way, shape, form, or another.

I don't have a soul for that.

I can't go home with them.

I can't stop their abuser.

So I remind them

what I told you earlier.

Today is not tomorrow.

You're going to grow up.

You're going to break free from that household.

You're going to maybe one day have your own family.

Do things differently.

Change the cycle of violence or abuse, however it comes,

whatever kind it is.

And know.

that you are stronger than you think and you're resilient as hell because you're here right now telling a complete stranger that you met today your truth.

Don't just tell me, let's walk you to the counselor's office right now.

And we do, we walk them to the counselor's office.

Oftentimes, in high schools, I'm invited in to the counseling office with the student that's in question that they had no idea before was struggling,

they had no indication.

Now

we have caused and met the need in one day.

And we get them to open up about their severe pain and what they're dealing with.

And I often follow up with teachers and staff and say, hey, what happened with that?

And they're like, well, we actually had to get CPS involved, child protective services involved, and they're in a better place.

Wow.

I love that.

Yeah.

I can relate to that because I think there's a lot of shame and guilt of going to a counselor and admitting there's issues.

So I never went when I was in school.

And I'm sure thousands of kids are doing that too.

You know what?

I have to tell you, I'm really proud of my wife right now.

My wife,

Margaret,

who I do work with all around the world,

we travel everywhere together.

We do everything together.

We're like inseparable.

We're best friends.

I met her in my third psych word stay.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I was a patient.

She was visiting her cousin who was there for illicit drug use.

Oh, wow.

And he was a catatonic.

He couldn't speak and he couldn't move.

He couldn't talk and he couldn't move.

And I broke him out as his catatonia.

I would tell him stories every day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

And he wouldn't move, wouldn't talk, just drooling.

And one day he goes, Jesus, man, you talk too much.

I know your whole life story.

Like, cut a guy a break.

But in the hospital, she went to visit him.

And I had made my way into like volunteering for the hospital I was staying in,

which is illegal.

But I had finagled my way into doing this.

Everyone else is wearing hospital gowns, hospital pants, hospital slippers.

I'm wearing a pink polo shirt, khaki cargo shorts, and sandals from the giveaway clothes closet, like I worked there with a clipboard, a notebook, and a pen.

I'm official.

And it's just, it's Leonardo the Ninja Turtle.

I still have the drawing.

I did a really good job.

And it's all I'm drawing on there.

But she comes in, so I put the clipboard to my chest so she doesn't see that I'm not official.

And I'm making the visiting hour announcements on the PA system.

And she taps me on the left shoulder.

I turn around and I was done.

I was like, she'll be the rest of my life.

I knew it in that moment.

I just didn't know how.

Love at first sight.

Love at first sight for me, not for her.

But

for me, there was that moment.

I just knew it.

I just didn't know how.

And I was like, don't tell her that.

That'd be awkward.

So she goes, excuse me.

Do you work here?

And all the staff was there.

And they didn't say anything.

And I was like, yes.

It's like a matter of fact, miss.

I'm a volunteer.

And they didn't stop me.

They let me go with it.

And she was like, I'm looking for my cousin Eduardo.

Do you know what room he's in?

I said, madam, right this way.

And I walked her there and I get her to the room.

Now the kid hates me.

I talk too much.

So I duck out into the hallway and I hear her say, your nursing staff is so nice.

And he goes, that guy?

That guy's a fucking nutball.

That guy jumps off bridges.

Don't talk to that guy.

And I ran into his room.

I said, excuse me, one, one bridge, plural.

That's ridiculous.

And she goes, why'd you lie to me?

I said, Margaret, I didn't lie to you.

I'm a volunteer at this very hospital.

I just happen to also live here.

Anyway, long story short, he gets out of the hospital, goes to his halfway home for the mentally ill.

I get out of my hospital.

I go to that same hospital, go halfway home for the mentally ill.

None of my family or friends would house me.

It was three strikes and I was out.

And it was either go to the halfway home or be homeless.

And I wasn't even sure I'd get in or get qualified to get in.

So I get into the halfway home and I do my 30 days probationary period.

You follow the rules to a tier, you're out of there.

30 days probationary period.

After the 30 days, you get your first weekend off.

So you can go out after that.

So I call Margaret and I go, Margaret, I'd like to take you to dinner.

It's Friday.

And she's like,

she was just so thrilled she couldn't find the words.

I was like, Margaret, it's one date.

If it goes south, you never ever have to see me again.

And she goes, okay.

So I showed up at her apartment and I'm wearing my only good white shirt.

I bought it all and maybe on the clearance rack for $5.

That's a two-day shirt because I'm living off of $3 a day because the halfway home takes the rest of your money money from Social Security income.

And I have a giant ski duffel bag of lots of my things.

And she goes, what is that?

I said, Margaret, it's a funny story.

When you leave the halfway home on Friday, it's Friday.

And you go out past 9 p.m., you made reservations at 9.

You kind of can't go back to the halfway home until Monday.

And she was like, oh, hell no.

I was like, Margaret, I planned for this.

I'm going to lay on those Lombardi stairs next to your apartment with the bag as my pillow and my jacket as a blanket and sleep over there tonight but we have to go on this date I came all this way and she was like oh god fine so we show up at cafe sport in San Francisco where you don't order they order for you they judge you and they order for you they ordered Margaret the tables are this big you're elbow to elbow with everybody next to you you can hear everybody's conversation verbatim

so

they get an eggplant parmesan dish for Margaret which fits on the table But this guy didn't like me at all.

He puts a giant bed of spaghetti, a mountain of red sauce, an uncracked lobster, a vote of in a can on a plate with boiling butter on top and the fire on the bottom, and a very large, oddly cut lemon wedge.

Wow.

On purpose.

I'm freaking out.

I'm wearing my only good white shirt.

This is going to be a mess.

So I say, Kevin, you can do this.

I believe in you.

Kevin, go.

So I did the cracker.

I put it on the tail.

Crack marinara sauce all over my only good white shirt.

It was like Captain America's shield on his shirt.

It was terrible.

And then,

and then

I go, Kevin, do something classy right now.

So I pick up the lemon wedge and I'm staring at Margaret's eyes, her almond brown, sexy, cool eyes, looking at the lemon wedge, looking at the plate, and I literally go like this.

And I miss my plate by a mile.

And I squoze the lemon harder than the lemon has ever been squosed.

And lemon juice went directly into her left eye.

And it kept going like a fire hose.

And mascara is running down her face.

And she looks like the band kissed the film The Crow.

And I'm freaking out.

And this lady next to us goes, mister, you okay?

And I was like, lady, it's a date.

It's going south.

You're not helping.

And then I go, Margaret, I'm so, so sorry.

And I was like, Kevin, do something better right now, classier right now.

What is it?

I don't know.

And I go for the plate of boiling butter.

I tip the plate.

Four giant droplets of boiling butter fly across the tiny table.

onto her chest through her blouse and they burn her.

They scold her.

She screams bloody murder.

The restaurant stops cold.

People literally dropped their forks and knives.

Not kidding.

And I go, Margaret, I'm so, so sorry.

Oh my God, I'm so sorry.

And this lady goes, Miss, you need me to call someone, lady.

And I grab my napkin and I reach over and I'm now doing this on a first date right here.

And she's like, what are you doing?

And I was like, I don't know what I'm doing.

I'm so sorry.

And she says, the only two words on a first date you never want to hear in the first 10 minutes of sitting down when you haven't eaten your food.

Check, please.

So we go back to her apartment.

She sees the bag.

She goes, we're going to the roof.

I said, Margaret, are you going to throw me off?

She goes, no.

We go to the roof.

Two purple yoga mats, a box garden, the Bay Bridge, full moon, Golden Gate Bridge tower behind us.

It was epic.

Wow.

And we laid down and I was freaking out.

I was like, Margaret, what are we doing here?

And she goes, Kevin, if all we do right now is stare at that full moon, ain't nothing else can go wrong.

And she gave me a second date.

And we're 20 years dating, 17 years married.

And she's the love of my life, my very best friend.

And the reason I'm proud of her to bring this full circle is because she has gotten together with a great friend of ours named Julia Belt

who created Broglie Box after she lost her brother to suicide.

Brogly Box is a wellness care package for people who live with mental health crisis and struggles and illness and challenges.

And you can gift them to people all over the world.

You can give them to corporates.

And these boxes are curated specifically for the right person.

And you can pick what you want in the box.

It's really nice.

But my wife and Julia founded this company Mindly

to solve the youth mental health crisis by way of using this thing called single session intervention, which allows, which is a, it's a platform they've built.

It's a, it's a, basically a SaaS company platform they've built to

to

you you pick the crisis challenge or issue you have.

You enter it into the platform.

It goes through a branching system.

It makes you a three-step regimented actionable solution to that problem in less than 10 to 15 minutes.

Wow.

You get to the solve, you engage in the solve, you've co-created the solve, you act on the solve, you heal.

It's fucking incredible.

Beautiful.

It's incredible.

And so they're building that right now, and they're putting that in schools all over the world.

They just signed a deal with the territory of Guam.

Nice.

Guam has 157,000 people, right?

This is going to be for everybody.

It's going to be incredible.

That's epic.

I love your approach because it sounds like you're pretty holistic, man.

Yeah, no, I am.

I believe in.

Educating myself as to my diagnosis.

So I get a Google alert on bipolar depression, suicide prevention, mental health, brain health.

Every Friday, I go through all the data and I learn what new things I can do to balance my brain health.

I drink chemical tea every day, once in the morning, once at night.

I used music therapy, art therapy, breathwork therapy, resonance breathing.

I do everything I can.

I meditate.

I am not the kind of person today to sit back and watch my life be destroyed before me because of my brain.

I was that guy for way too long.

I pitied myself.

I self-loathed.

I felt sorry for myself.

And now I am full force learning everything I can because you have to be a constant learner.

You know this,

to change my brain, to change my life every day.

You know, and

I think that if more people took that kind of agency with their health,

we're in Vegas.

I'm in that hotel.

I'm not going to say the hotel name.

I'm in that hotel, and it makes me so sad to see all the people gambling their life savings away, drinking to oblivion, drugging to oblivion,

prostituting to oblivion.

It makes me very sad.

All of those addictions destroy your brain, your gut, your mental wealth.

They destroy it.

What if those people spent all that money on their health?

What if we did that?

What if we encouraged people?

What if Vegas was a place you went to to spend money on biohacking and your health?

That'd be cool.

Wouldn't that be fucking incredible?

Obviously, there's a contingent of that here.

I'm not saying there's not.

I'm saying like, what if as a society, we shifted cities to be more

open-minded

to biohacking your physical and mental well-being or just hacking your mental well-being?

On my YouTube channel,

there's a playlist called Mental Health Hacks, 45 videos you can go through very quickly and learn steps right now that are science-backed, evidence-informed, proven to change your brain and change your life.

Wow.

Everybody needs that.

I love that.

Do that.

Take it.

They're yours.

They're free.

Go.

Yeah.

You know, people are looking for a quick fix, a pill.

No,

there's no quick fix.

You have to do the work.

Right.

And it's continuous.

Yeah, it is continuous.

Everyone wants the uberfication of life right now.

They want their food right now.

They want their pills right now.

They want their drugs right now.

They want their fitness right now.

Do the work.

Hard work because nothing good ever came without it.

That's what my dad, Pat Hines, taught me.

Absolutely.

You know?

Yeah.

I'm still working on my mental health daily.

Yeah.

And, you know,

I had, I, I've lost, so we share something in common.

And I, I, I,

I didn't realize you had lost your dad to suicide before this podcast.

I'm sorry I didn't know that, but, but,

and, and I genuinely am sorry for your loss of your dad, your grandfather.

That's a, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a devastating forever life situation that you have to deal with.

Um,

when I went searching for my birth mom,

a beautiful woman, her name is Marcia.

Her picture is is in my wallet.

When I went searching for my birth mom, it's one of the only pictures I have of her actually.

I have two pictures of her and that's it.

I was two years too late.

All my life, Sean,

I wanted to tell my mom specifically that I love her.

That was a life goal.

I'm going to someday, I'll travel the world if I have to.

I'm going to find my mom.

I'm just going to tell her I love her.

And if she doesn't accept me, I'm going to be okay with it because I got to say it.

I found all the paperwork

that was from the adoption and

I found a, I went to my

person I know in the mental health board, Helenia Brooke.

I was on that board for three years.

I went to her and I said, do you know the the foster care system?

She said, Yes.

I said, Can you search for this name?

I had an alias of my mom's name.

I didn't even know a real name.

I gave the alias and

she did some tracking down.

Four weeks later, calls me,

Kevin, I've got some good news, I got some bad news.

Which do you want to hear first?

So I want to hear the bad news first.

We'll end on the good news.

And she goes, I'm a pretty optimistic guy.

So she goes,

Your mother passed away.

The good news is,

you have a sister we never knew you had.

My mom had a family before mine.

Wow.

She was married to an Indian man, and she had

two children, Chica and Sumesh.

Sumesh is my older brother.

We share the same birthday, August 30th.

Wow.

Ten years apart.

She walked out on them and never came back

after a mental breakdown.

Made her way to San Francisco, met my father, had me and my brother

in a crack motel.

Wow.

Born in abject poverty, lived in the worst neighbor in San Francisco, then the worst neighbor there today.

Kind of places you paid for by the hour, and if you didn't, you were out.

And they did whatever the hell they had to do to pay on that hour by that hour selling drugs doing drugs scoring drugs

i go searching for my mom i find this out and i find out that my sister had moved to san francisco to be with her

got her seven years sober

and something like one day she went back on drugs and

walked in front of a tow truck damn i don't know that it was a suicide attempt i don't know that she didn't die that day she died a year later due to complications to the amputation to the date of the amputation of her right leg.

There is something to be said about blood relatives

and about the innate

unmeasurable connection you have to them

based on chemistry.

Right.

And

while most of my adoptive family doesn't quite understand why this is important to me,

meeting a great

deal of my birth family on my mom's side has been incredible.

They're beautiful people, beautiful, God-fearing people.

We're from Jamaica.

And

when I moved to Atlanta, I got a Facebook message from my mom's cousin

who said, we all live in Georgia.

Wow.

So I see them all all the time.

Beautiful.

There's a contingent of everybody, of family in Jamaica.

I haven't met them yet.

I can't wait to go.

It's going to be incredible.

I met the matriarch of the family before she passed on Zoom.

Nice.

She's from Jamaica, thick Jamaican accent, looks exactly like me.

I love it.

Just freckles everywhere.

She was bald.

It was beautiful.

I was like, oh my God, this is crazy.

You know?

And

it's been a gift to get to know them.

They're beautiful people.

And today, my brother and my sister and my family are thick as thieves.

Beautiful, man.

Pretty cool.

No, there is that bond.

When you come out of her,

that's right.

Can't replace that.

No, you can't.

Yeah.

When they take monkeys away from their birth mom, they can die.

Really?

Yeah.

Wow.

Versus the ones that stay and are nurtured.

It's like a spiritual connection, right?

It's a scientific and spiritual connection.

It's everything involved.

Yeah.

It's physiological.

Damn.

Yeah.

Thanks for sharing that, man.

I know that was really vulnerable of you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I think a lot of people watching this can definitely empathize with that.

I know a lot of adopted people that

they wait too long, similar to you, right?

And then they're dead or they moved on, have new families.

It's kind of awkward.

Yeah.

So thanks for sharing that.

Of course, you bet.

Kevin, it's been an incredible episode.

I could talk to you for hours, for real.

What are you working on next?

Where can people find you?

Right now, I am the most excited

about our

future documentary film, The Net.

We are raising a fund for it right now, and it is the story of the harrowing 90-year journey to end death at the Golden Gate Bridge, the seven fights since 1939 that failed, the current effort that succeeded, and the fact that the physical deterrent net is, the Suicide Prevention Net is now across 360,000 square feet of the Golden Gate Bridge, that suicides have dropped,

suicide attempts have dropped 83% since its inception, as of January 1.

And since the beginning of the year, there was, in fact, a three-month period for the first time in nearly a century, where there were zero suicides at the Golden Gate Bridge.

Wow.

And my father was the founding board member of the Bridge Rail Foundation to fight for this cause, alongside

Dave Hull and Paul Mueller.

Dave Hull lost his 13-year-old daughter, Kathy to the bridge.

Dana Whitmer and Mark Whitmer lost their son Matthew.

Kimberly Renee Gamboa and Miguel Gamboa lost, Manuel Gamboa lost their son Kyle.

We all got together with a lot more people and we fought for the better part of 20 years to raise that net.

It's saving lives.

It's proving unequivocally that reduction of access to lethal means is one of the only empirically proven ways to reduce suicides.

We thought we were going to stop at the Golden Gate Bridge, but I've consulted with bridges, tall buildings, and structures around the world to work on raising nets and suicide deterrence at those locations of icons for suicide.

We've written the book on how to reduce suicides by

reduction of access to lethal means.

And

it's incredibly powerful powerful to be a part of a global movement

that

actually shows people that if you give someone time

plus hard work and treatment for things to change, they can find other options besides suicide to commit to life.

So we're making this film the net.

You can help us make this film at thenetmovie.com.

We're going to share this with the world.

It's going to save lives.

It's going to spark and be the catalyst for the reduction of access to lethal means all over the world.

Love it.

We'll link below.

I can't wait to watch it, man.

Thank you, brother.

Thanks so much for coming on.

Thank you so much.

Absolutely.

Having me.

Thanks for watching, guys.

Check out the link below if you want to support.

I'll see you guys next time.

Friends of the Digital Social Hour podcast and friends of Sean Mike Kelly,

hear me when I say this.

If you are considering suicide today or any day,

stop.

Take a breath.

In, for through the nose.

Hold for four.

Release six to eight seconds, purse lips like a whistle, but no sound.

Just breathe.

Do that forty more times.

Lower a panic, adrenaline

rush.

Quell anxiety anxiety attack.

Lower your heart rate.

breathe.

Suicide is never the solution to your problem.

It is the problem.

Suicidal ideations are the greatest liars we know.

You don't have to listen to them.

Suicide does not, cannot, and will not ever take the pain away.

It just transfers it on to everyone left behind that loves and cares for you, and they do.

And it makes it wholly impossible for things to ever get better but as I said earlier with time energy effort and hard work because nothing good ever came without it I promise you things

can

will and do get better keep

going

you are loved you are valued you are worthy and you matter And you definitely matter to me and Sean.

Take care, be well,

fight for your wellness, and be here tomorrow and every damn day after that.

If nobody else says today, I love you and I want you to stay.