Before I Leave You: A Memoir on Suicide, Addiction and Healing

by Robert Imbeault

Overview

When Robert Imbeault began writing this book, he did so with the intention of ending his life once the book was finished. Robert was in the midst of a five-year suicidal drug and alcohol binge that began after the sudden resurfacing of a buried memory from when he was eight years old. Robert turned to writing, determined to chronicle his life before and after the violent encounter that shattered his reality.

As his life inched back toward normalcy, Robert found new reasons to keep writing. After a series of small steps forward, and a few steps back, Robert found his way to sobriety. He regained his health and began to treat himself and everyone around him with love and kindness.

Today, Robert enjoys a life filled with gratitude and joy he thought he'd never live to see. In Before I Leave You, he shares his real and raw account of how he clawed his way back from the brink, forgave himself, and wrote a new ending to his story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781544506586
Publisher:	Houndstooth Press
Publication date:	03/31/2020
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.73(d)

Editorial Reviews

"Before I Leave You is Rob Imbeault's haunting true tale of how a childhood trauma can stay hidden from you for decades, always following like a ghost that you can never quite glimpse, and definitely never outrun--no matter how many drugs, drinks, and distractions you throw in its path--until you have no choice but to face it."

--Laurie Gough, author of Kite Strings of the Southern Cross, Kiss the Sunset Pig, and Stolen Child

"A savagely brilliant account of a man who chooses to make every wrong decision he can...and then turns it around. A searingly honest, compelling read for anyone who has ever struggled with mental health...or life."

--Declan Hill, PhD, international bestselling author of The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime and The Insider's Guide to Match-Fixing in Football

From the Publisher

2020-06-01
Imbeault’s candid memoir traces a turbulent life of childhood abuse, drug addiction, and suicidal ideation to explore what makes life worth living.

The author’s story begins with one of his suicide attempts in adulthood, and over the course of the book, he tells of his recurrent struggles with depression and drug addiction. He writes that he helped to run software company10Count, which he started, and that he married a woman named Perrine within a year of meeting her on an online dating site. Later, however, painful memories of a childhood rape and the experience of going through a divorce sent the author into a dangerous downward spiral, which often involved abusing the drug MDMA, sexual experimentation, and trips to the party scene in Las Vegas. He finally found his way toward redemption when he fell in love with a woman named Mira and became a father. Imbeault’s narrative is often repetitive in its details, but the repetition effectively mirrors the cycle of drug addiction and efforts to get sober. Although the story can, at times, seem cyclical, unexpected turns of phrase will help to reengage the reader, as when the author writes, “Countless hours sailed by while television shows and movies I wasn’t paying attention to bullied the silence out of the room.” Furthermore, the book bounces back and forth between moments in the author’s childhood and his adulthood, which effectively breaks up the narrative. The quieter moments will allow the reader to see “the depths of self-hatred” that consumed Imbeault. He also notes that his childhood rape “lived in my periphery like trees we pass on a train and I dared not look at it directly,” and he tells of how he managed to forgive the man who abused him.

An unflinching examination of addiction and an engaging account of healing.

Kirkus Reviews