Tommaso Ciampa Tells All About Suicide Attempt

Tommaso Ciampa is a role model for the NXT locker room as a leader with or without Goldy around his shoulder. It wasn’t all good times for Ciampa as he dealt with some pretty dark times in his life.

While speaking to Chasing Glory, Ciampa revealed that it got very bad for him. He actually tried to commit suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning via a car’s exhaust. This did not work and he was thankfully able to come through the experience.

“I lost a lot of myself. I’m just in a bad place, and I remember hitting this, I have bad thoughts but I wouldn’t act on them or anything. I do remember a time where, my attempted suicide was reversing the exhaust in the car, and the worst part to this day to me about it is, so my sister had an ex-boyfriend who years after they broke up, committed suicide, and that is how he did it. I knew it was possible from that. To this day, it eats at me in a different way. It doesn’t eat at me in a way like, I’m really good at the past is the past, I live in the moment. It’s just one of those things like, goddamn, I can’t fathom my sister then hearing, I can’t even fathom what went through her mind. But that’s how I attempted it.”

Thankfully, this plan did not work out as Tommaso Ciampa had planned. A mall security guard saw him and saved his life.

“The attempted thing, it was one of those, even after it happened, for awhile, I reasoned with myself, ‘Oh, it was a cry for help.’ But realistically, I was sitting in the car, doing the reverse exhaust thing. The reason it didn’t work is because I was in this weird, back parking lot area of this mall, and it was like 2-3AM, and somebody who was off shift, who was done, the mall security, for God knows what reason, decided to do one more circle lap and saw this car, and called the cops. And when the cops show up, I’m like virtually passed out, because I remember I was doing some of the cry for help texts with my brother and an ex-girlfriend, and then those stopped because I was, I do remember, I don’t know if some of this is I remember or just being told by the cops after, but when they came my phone was shut off and I was not in it and they knocked on the window and got the door open and once the oxygen started to circulate again, obviously I started to come to, and ended up going to get help.”

“If you ask me about that one year stretch of my life, I have the faintest memories of it. It’s one of those things where, but it’s bizarre how elapsed that time is. It was as if I wasn’t even on Earth for it. I just have no, not even just that year, but that year trickling extra time, I have no recollection. And I still think to this day, it has effected my memory.”

Recovering from that dark place in his life took some time. Ciampa is now able to discuss it openly as he hopes to inspire others to not take things as far as he did. The former NXT Champion went on to explain how he was able to move forward after such a traumatic experience.

“I just remember hitting this point where I finally had some time at home where I was clean, I was off everything, and I just had this, ‘Well, what do I want to do with my life, do I want to wrestle, do I not want to wrestle,’ and my big decision, and God bless my parents for saying OK, but my big decision before I got signed to Kentucky, I was about to move to Missouri to train at Harley’s.”

“Just for six months, just wanted something new, and I wanted to get that life experience ironically that I didn’t have. And I just remember hitting a point where I was like, well that’s what you were going to do, at 20 years old, you were going to go to Missouri and you were going to try to learn how to wrestle and get better and maybe go to Japan and do this stuff, so do it, do it for six months, and if you love it, great, and if you hate it, at least you know, at least you did it.”

This really puts things into perspective. Everyone has bad times no matter who they are. Successful people generally had to endure a lot of struggle to get to where they are and Tommaso Ciampa is no exception.

If you or someone you know if talking about suicide or self harm, please seek help and call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at: 1-800-273-8255.

Thanks to 411 Mania for the quote