Change Your Brain Every Day - I Jumped Off The Golden Gate Bridge & Lived with Kevin Hines

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

Trigger warning: Mention of Suicide, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide Attempt On September 25, 2000, 19-year-old ‪@KevinHines‬ approached the Golden Gate Bridge and was determined to end his own life. According to CNN, San Francisco's iconic bridge is the number one suicide spot in the United States and the second most used spot in the world. The bridge has a 98% fatality rate, but Hines survived. Kevin sits down with Dr. Daniel Amen to discuss his journey through his suicide attempt and prior Bipolar Disorder diagnosis - and receives his brain scan results and recommended treatment. Want to schedule a visit? Our highly trained specialists can guide you through the process so you and your loved ones can get the help you deserve. https://www.amenclinics.com/schedule-...

Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. To start, give me like five minutes of summary. Okay. Of your journey. Sure. Born in abject poverty to birth parents who after they had me on drugs and alcohol, they were on drugs and alcohol,

taken away from our birth parents. by fostered by the foster care system, placed in his separate homes. My birth brother and I were initially together, he died right near me. How old were you when you were taken? He was 10 months older than me, so I was anywhere between, I was just a few months old. I was taken in by the Heinz family at nine months of age after my brother died. And things seem to be going well.

I started to acclimate to the Heinz home. Initially, I was a very sick child because of abandonment issues and a detachment disorder from reality that it occurred after my brother died and after being taken away from our birth parents. Grew up in a very stable home, loving family, a beautiful life. At 17, it all came crashing down, and I always say my brain broke. I had a complete mental breakdown on stage in front of 1,200 people. I was a theater kid playing one of the leads in the show on opening night. I believe that 1,200 people were going to simultaneously rise, rest the stage, and end my life. So I ran offstage in the middle of the play.

The theater director had to resume my position to finish the show. I was very soon thereafter diagnosed with bipolar type 1 with psychotic features, which I haphazardly battled believing I didn't want to have that diagnosis. I didn't like it. I didn't want to be labeled mentally ill. I just wanted to be the kid that was the WCL football champion, the wrestling champion, the football team, went to state, all this stuff. So I wanted it to go away.

And so I was in denial. And at 19, in the middle of that denial, I became so good at silencing my pain, having hallucinations auditory and visual, paranoid delusions, bleeding the people were out to get me, trying to hurt me, trying to kill me. constant manic episodes followed by depressive episodes because once you go up you must come down and panic attacks and the like and I kept it all to myself. I convinced my father on September 25th of the year 2000 that I was going to be okay going to City College to have the day. On that day, I attempted to take my life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge,

a method of suicide, which is 99.99% fatal. Fell 240 feet, 25 stories, closing in on 80 miles per hour, nearing the speed of terminal velocity, and I prayed that I would live. Instantaneous regret from the millisecond, my hands left the rail, which is actually very common with suicidal actions. And in the water, I was drowning, and a sea line bumped me to the surface and kept me afloat into the Coast Guard borderized. behind me. These wonderful coast guard officers saved my life secondarily. And then this back

surgeon, one of the foremost back surgeons on the West Coast came in. He was apparently not supposed to be there that day. Did a surgery on me at the time that was the first and only of the particular kind he invented it for me to reshape my back with titanium to save me the ability to stand walk and run. Of the 39 Golden Gate Bridge Jump Survivors, only five of us can stand walk and run. It was a rough road after that. 10 psych ward stays in the next, well, from 2000 to 2019. But after the third involuntary psychboard stay, I kind of got hip and got wise to it.

And I became self-aware. When did you start hallucinating? I started hallucinating at 70. The same time I had the paranoid delusions. Does it come in cycles? As, you know, when I think of bipolar, or I think of people that have long periods of normal, periods of deep depression, and then periods of mania.

But they last, like weeks or months at a time, you're in one state, then the other state. So I would rapid cycle. You're a rapid cycle. So I would skyrocket into mania, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and I'd crash into depression, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and I'd stay in that depression for some time. And then I'd come back up.

How was school? Tell me about school. What level? I was in grade school. It was awful. I was in an all-white school. I was the only part black kid in the school, and it was brutal. They treated me like I was, they told me I was garbage. The eighth graders picked me up and put me in garbage cans and said that's what I want. This is what city? San Francisco. And other kids would hold me down and say swing the Lennward swing to try to get away.

And they were older than me. I was in fourth grade when they were in eighth grade doing that. The kids in my own class would do things like get behind me, kneeled down, and then someone from the front would push me until I cracked my head of the concrete. It was all. And how was school itself? Kindergarten through eighth grade, the issue was the biggest thing was distraction. I was very easily distracted.

Things took my attention that weren't scholastic. And did your parents ever get you? SAS doesn't sound. Not that I can recall for that. I know in college I was by the disability program, I was diagnosed with ADD. That was only a one-time diagnosis. I don't know how to.

And did they ever give you medicine for them? No, no. Just the medicine for the butthole. Yeah, no, sometimes stimulants can unbalance someone with bipolar, but just because you have bipolar disorder doesn't mean you can't also have ADD. Fair enough. When I looked at how you filled out the questionnaires, depression, panic, anxiety, bulimia, tell me about that. Yeah. In high school wrestling, it's part of the culture.

Yeah, it's very much part of the culture. and the coaches are unaware. I didn't know what it was when it was happening. I just knew that I had to make weight. And you'd get to a certain weight and they'd go, we need you to go to this weight. And so you're going to cut that weight in six days before meat. And then you cut that weight before,

six days before meat in 90 degree heat in the mat room. Or you're out with the plastic jackets running in circles and running up the hills. and sweating profusely without adequate water, without, you know, it was a mess. And by the time I get to the meat, I'm exhausted. I've made weight, so then I go eat tons of, you eat a big meal, and then right after the match,

I purge. And I just, I said to myself, oh, I'm just, you know, I just keep getting the flu. Just keep getting the flu. And it was my mom as a nurse who was like, Kevin, this is a problem, you haven't, eating disorder. And I was in denial then and that and I, I, uh, that that lasted for some time. How old when this is gone on? Let's see, 16, 17, 18. Okay. Yeah. And then I, you know,

and then out of high school and out of wrestling, I got that under control and that wasn't happening anymore. I still hadn't labeled it yet or felt I needed to. But then at 18, um, 2018, developed secondary burns across my entire body because of a reaction to a new medication. And I felt like knives and needles are coming from my bones through my skin everywhere for 38 weeks, 24 hours a day. I had bloody blisters from head to toe. What medicine was? They believed it was perfenicine that was perfenazine that was causing this. They took me off. All psych meds, all. asthma meds, all allergy meds simultaneously within 24 hours.

I had a complete 48 hour withdrawal-based psychosis. It was really bad. But at that time, for the 38-week period of being in that pain and living with those burns, I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. I was diagnosed with five simultaneous sleep disorders. Has anybody ever looked at your brain? No.

No, because Speck looks at blood flow and activity. It looks at how your brain works. And it basically shows us three things. good activity, too little or too much. And then our is to balance it. Behind me, this is what a healthy scan looks like. So here's your scan. Okay.

And you have a lot of really good brain activity. So let us be grateful and hopeful. But you can see the trauma. Can you see this area right there? Of course. It's not supposed to have a dent right there. It's trauma. And maybe that's drama from hitting the water.

Okay. Or from wrestling or from some of the other things you did. That's a dent in my brain? It's decreased blood flow. And you see this hole right here? Yeah. That's your left temporal load. And that's often an area when it's heard.

I often say people have dark, evil, awful thought. So one of my hero stories is my nephew who attacked a little girl in a baseball field for no reason out of the blue He was drawing pictures of himself shooting other children hanging from a tree He's really off he's nine years old He had a cyst the size of a golf ball occupying this space So yeah you can see it right here and that can come from trauma. So if you do what I ask you to do and it works like we hope, this is how much better it can be. A lot of fun of it. Okay. Wow.

Every day you want to love your brain. So the big thing I add to the sort of mental health discussion, it's not mental health. It's brain health. Right now. The brain can continue to just get better and better if you do the right things. Now let's look at the inside is pretty impressive. You have a very busy brain. Your cerebellum, so this is that quality control part we talked about, is great. Okay.

It's beautiful. Good. It's the cerebellum of an athlete. Oh, nice. But your anxiety centers are really busy, and your mood centers are busy. I'm gonna put you on a really good multiple vitamin that's brain directed it's loaded with bees that'll

stabilize your mood um um omega 3 fatty acids vitamin D like I think so important and then I want you keep me posted on how you do I promise I will