Brant Remington Clark (1989 – 2007)

My son, Brant, was a healthy, happy, bright, and normal teenager.  He was a senior in high school, had excellent grades, and planned to attend college in the fall.  He never had any discipline problems either at school or with the law.  Brant had a gentle, quiet, and reflective side to his personality as well as a fantastic sense of humor.  He was good at making and keeping friends.  There was no doubt his future looked bright, until things went terribly wrong.

When he was 17 years old, he had an experience with marijuana that triggered a sudden, major change in his mental state—a psychotic break.  Overnight, he felt permanently damaged and even ruined.  In December of 2006, he went to a party at a friend’s house and smoked a lot of marijuana.  That night, his outlook on marijuana changed drastically.  When he arrived home the next morning, I knew something was very wrong.  He repeated the same ideas over and over in a flat, blunt, unemotional tone—that he had made a big mistake smoking so much pot and he would pay for it, that God was angry at him for this and would never forgive him.  The pupils of his eyes were dilated two-three times their regular size, and he complained of tunnel vision.

Brant became increasingly delusional, paranoid, and hopeless.  He started cutting himself and swallowed a lot of ibuprofen in an attempt to kill himself.  When I took him to the hospital, the psychiatrist said that Brant was “playing games” with him.  When I asked why, he replied because Brant said it was the marijuana that caused this reaction.

Two weeks after Brant returned home from the hospital, he took his own life.  He had stopped marijuana, but the damage was done.  He left two notes.  To me he wrote: “Mom, I am sorry for doing this.  I just feel so lost and hopeless.  I only hope you can move on and be OK.  I love you always.  Love, Brant.”  To God he wrote: “For my Father who is in heaven, I am sorry for what I have done to myself.  I wasn’t thinking the night I smoked myself out.  I am unable to do any good without you in my heart.  I love you and am sorry I didn’t love myself more.  Eternally yours, Brant.”

 By Ann Clark    Brant’s mother, Ann Clark, wrote the book, Gone to Suicide.

QUOTE: Mom, I am sorry for doing this. I just feel so lost and hopeless. I only hope you can move on and be OK. I love you always. For my Father who is in heaven, I am sorry for what I have done to myself. I wasn’t thinking the night I smoked myself out. I am unable to do any good without you in my heart.”