“All of that came to sort of an end, and it was time to either do it or not do it. I think I hung out for a little bit. I think I may have gone to eat some dinner somewhere and then came back and, I don’t know what time, but sort of took the gun, crawled into bed and pulled the trigger.”
Those are the words of former Detroit Lions quarterback Erik Kramer, describing his suicide attempt last year to the Detroit Free Press, and that he’s around to deliver them shows this is a different kind of harrowing NFL tale — it still has time for a happy ending.
The bullet, from a SIG Sauer 9mm purchased weeks prior at a local gun shop, traveled through his chin, tongue, sinus cavities and exited through the top of his head. Kramer, 51, has spent the past nine months in recovery: a cranioplasty to repair a chunk of his skull, oral surgery for tongue and teeth damage, and brain rehab at two clinics after leaving the hospital.
The suicide letters he wrote to his most loved ones — including his teenage son and ex-wife — remain unseen, in the possession of the LA County Sheriff’s Department, which responded to distress calls at the motel where Kramer attempted to take his life.
Maybe it’s denial, but Kramer doesn’t attribute his depression to his football career. A growing roster of former NFL players — many dead by their own hands — have been diagnosed posthumously with CTE, which is associated with an array of symptoms of psychological unmooring. Kramer says he was not diagnosed with concussions during his playing days. Instead, he believes his is a clinical depression that presented early in his career, which he had been treating with anti-depressant medication off and on since his retirement.
“I’ve thought about that often, but nothing really stands out as connecting football to the sort of feeling I’ve had with depression,” Kramer told the newspaper. “It very well may be linked. It doesn’t feel like it to me.
“I think it was the fall from grace [that first brought on the depression],” added Kramer, who flopped as a free agent with the Chicago Bears after leading the Lions to the NFC Championship game following the 1991 season. “Coming in as the starter and the free agent and then getting hurt, feeling better after a few weeks, like I could play, but then not getting an opportunity to. And I think that all played a part in it.”
Now, facing a middle age he meticulously planned not to have, Kramer said his suicidal thoughts have subsided.
“For me, that was the biggest positive thing of somebody coming to the realization that life is worth living and that maybe make steps and recover rather than seeing it as a botched suicide attempt,” said ex-Lions quarterback Eric Hipple, a close friend of Kramer’s. “More looking at it like, ‘I was very lucky,’ and almost a miracle the way he made it through all this.”
Kramer said: “I don’t want to tempt fate but, at this point, I feel very good. And so my hope is to just keep living life and keep contributing and keep all that going.”