Leah Messer has revealed that her upcoming memoir, Hope, Grace & Faith, will detail a time in which she contemplated suicide while driving her car — a scary incident that was caught on-camera by the Teen Mom 2 film crew.
In an excerpt of her memoir obtained by The Sun, Leah explained that at the time, she was feeling “suffocated” with issues including the guilt of her daughter Ali’s Muscular Dystrophy diagnosis and her second marriage falling apart.
The book goes on to say that Leah’s father, Gary Lee Miller (who has a history with drug addiction), was living with her at the time and he gave her a painkiller to “just take the edge off.” The next thing Leah remembered was driving down Mink Shoals Hill in West Virginia with her foot “pressed down on the gas.”
Leah claims she could “barely see the road through the tears,” though she did check behind her to make sure her daughters’ car seats were empty. From there, she wrote that she watched her speedometer climb from “80… to 90… to 110 mph.”
“There’s a steep cliff off the side of the road just up ahead,” she writes. “It would be so easy to drive my car over the edge. Then it would all be over. No more worries. No more failure. No more pain.”
Despite her belief at the time that “everyone would be better off” if she followed through with her plan to drive off the cliff, instead, Leah slowed down and pulled onto the side of the road where she became emotional thinking about her daughters and how “selfish” it would be of her to abandon them.
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“A lifetime of tears comes pouring out of the deepest part of my soul,” she wrote. “I cry so hard I wonder if I’ll ever be able to stop. Then a thought cuts through the deafening static in my brain: My daughters need me.”
After Leah returned to her house, she received a message from Teen Mom Executive Producer Larry Musnik who was “concerned” about some footage they had of her driving her car. At the time, Leah said Larry had been trying to convince her to go to a treatment facility in Arizona, but she was initially apprehensive.
As longtime Roundup readers will remember, The Ashley broke the news back in May 2015 that MTV basically forced Leah to go to the Arizona treatment center, even though Leah didn’t want to go at the time. (She even left the center after less than a day, only to return soon after.)
“The show’s producers had to essentially force Leah to go,” The Ashley reported in 2015. “They used something in her contract terms to force her to go to rehab, and from what the source told The Ashley, producers basically refused to continue their contract with her until she went.”
However, Leah describes it a bit different in her book.
“I kept saying no because I thought I could handle things on my own, but now I wasn’t so sure,” she wrote. “I had to do something because I had gone from anxious and depressed to suicidal.”
Ultimately, Leah did seek treatment for her issues.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B7RoxsMF0Y5/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Leah’s suicide attempt is one of the many personal struggles she has discussed leading up to the release of her book. Just last month, she revealed during an Instagram Live Q&A that she had been sexually and physically abused as a child. She also opened up about her relationship with her father and his issues with substance abuse.
Leah’s book, Hope, Grace & Faith, is set to be released May 5. Click here for more details.
(Photos: MTV; Instagram; Post Hill Press)
16 Responses
She shed that West Virginian accent like a snake skin! She sounds nothing like angy of my friends or family born and raised there. They’ve mostly all moved here to Tennessee but their accent is still all West Virginia all the way
I may change my name to “The deafening static in Leah’s brain.”
Anything in her book about moving her boyfriend of 2 minutes into her house? Or why she let her girlseses sharpie their pet cat blue? Or wtf is remotely attractive about Robbie? I need to know
Terrible ghostwriter.
Worse than Jeneller’s?
I’ve always liked Leah. She is far from perfect but I feel like she has always tried hard to be a good mom. And coping with a child who has MD would be overwhelming for any parent let alone a teen mother who comes from a dysfunctional mess and who can’t maintain a healthy relationship with either of the husbands she has had. I think it is really nice to see her growth and how she is now starting to acknowledge some things she wouldn’t/couldn’t in the past.
She should have named the book “Let me rewrite history, play the victim and hopefully make money for my girlses”.
I would never use my hard earned money on any book by any of these people but the excerpts turn my stomach. I call bullshit!
1) We are supposed to believe that due to a botched epidural she got addicted to OxyContin, morphine and other opioids. Yet, ONE hydrocodone made her suicidal? She had a fleeting thought, stop being dramatic!
2) The fact that she had an abortion and her mom knew and they had a whole scene where she cried and talked about how devastated she was about having a miscarriage makes me want to punch her in the face. That is such a slap in the face to those of us who actually had a miscarriage and didn’t pretend for shits and giggles.
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That’s so hostile and mean. Consider why you feel the need to go in a forum and bully people from a reality tv show.
I’m entitled to my opinion as you are yours. 🙂
Okur Cind…I mean Leah. That’s why we’re here so shut up lady.
I would not describe that as an suicide attempt, she had suicidal thoughts. Suicide attempts & suicidal thoughts are 2 very different things.
Or rather, a fleeting suicidal contemplation. She wasn’t going to do anything. She is too worried about what that headline would do to her image and hopefully, her girls. My husband passed Suddenly after Emergency surgery due to high blood pressure that went horribly wrong and we lost hi’x. I have a boy and a girl 10 and 12. Plenary of times I wished I could just be rolled into the grave right next time him but as far as contemplating driving off a cliff, OD, shooting, whatever you have it-never did I actually mull over actually doing it. I always says my kids saved/save me. I’m not a single parent I’m an only parent. So what she is saying is not suicidal contemplation just young girl hysterics and freaking out. If she was gonna commit suicide she would have done it already. She’s strong, she has come along way, I just hope she. I rinsed therapy for coping skills, if nothing else, raising her children. At least he’d daughters have izbcolves paternal sides. My kids don’t. It’s all me, I’m the only parent-my parents are my coparents. I appreciate her hustle and ambition but no more books please Leah
Sorry my typing skills ain’t so great at midnight-30. Should’ve proofread
I just want to see the chapter, “Robbie, how I craved that D, a love story”
stay lit
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Now there’s a steamy romance novel I could tuck into.
Leah also admitted the “miscarriage” she had with Jeremy was an abortion, and she didn’t tell him until years later.
This book is going to be a shitshow and I’ll love every minute of it. But Jesus God, Leah, your girlses will read this one day.
I don’t think that’s a bad thing. At least then they would have a better understanding of their mother and why certain things happened in their childhood. I’m not saying for them to read it NOW, but when they’re older.