Lagos-based humour merchant, Owen Gee, joins other stakeholders to share their depression experiences as a new initiative, Live and Not Die, is unveiled to prevent suicide.
His personal story is instructive enough in this regard. Here is a comedian who contemplated suicide in 2017 when he was pushed to the wall by thorny circumstances.
“I have had suicidal tendencies,” he said. “Last year, I tried several things, but they did not work out. It was not because the ideas were bad, but the people I was working with just didn’t let them work out. Then anxity and depression set in.
“It was then I realised that no drug could calm depression. There was hardly anyone I didn’t take. There was a time I was sleeping on drugs. There was a particular yellow tablet that, if I took it on Tuesday, on Wednesday I would only be prompted to barely wake up, eat and go back to sleep even before I finished eating. I would not wake up until Thursday.”
Owen Gee explained how he eventually came to the reality that he had the responsibility to handle his issues with tact and live to take care of his children. He advised the guests to shun fake life – the type of which, he noted, was prevalent in the showbiz arena in Nigeria.