In early August 2018, I tried to commit suicide. I was in our summer house on Martha’s Vineyard with my wife and two young children. For the previous five weeks I’d been stockpiling sleeping pills and pain- killers, which I planned to take when my family went to Boston. The day before they were set to leave, the fifty-three pills went missing. After a frantic search, I found them tucked behind some books on my desk. Fearing that someone knew about my plan, I decided to take the pills that night, with my family still in the house.
For the past year my wife, Alina, and I had been sleeping in separate rooms. I went to bed early, locked the door and transferred the thirty-eight Ambien and fifteen Percocet from plastic vials into a wooden bowl. In handfuls I scooped all fifty-three pills into my mouth and washed them down with water, swallowing the lot in under two minutes.
Having always considered myself a coward, I was shocked at how little I hesitated before taking such a lethal dose. As I drifted into oblivion, I remember thinking that it had been so easy. My suicide attempt had worked.
Only it hadn’t.
There was a time when everything worked. Twenty months earlier I’d been happily married and the owner of eight successful Manhattan restaurants, including Balthazar in SoHo. In 2004, the New York Times had called me “The Restaurateur Who Invented Downtown.” I had everything going for me. And then on November 26, 2016, the clock stopped.
I was living in London. One Saturday morning I coaxed my youngest children, George and Alice, into seeing a Caravaggio exhibition with me at the National Gallery. George was thirteen, Alice eleven. While looking at a painting of Jesus being betrayed by Judas, The Taking of Christ, I sensed my body beginning to show signs of betraying me: a strange metallic tingling started to pinch my fingertips. It was an odd feeling, but as it stopped after five or six seconds, I didn’t give it another thought. Soon afterward, to the relief of my children, we left the museum.
Two hours later, when I was back home by myself, the metallic feeling returned. Only this time it was in earnest. Within seconds the horrific tingling shot up my left arm and, like some malignant jellyfish, clasped itself onto my face. Terrified, I phoned Alina, who rushed back with the kids and instantly called an ambulance. George, fists clenched, was panic-stricken as medics examined my convulsing body. Within minutes I was being hoisted into the waiting ambulance. Alina, George and Alice looked on.
