Nine months ago, former Lions and Bears quarterback Erik Kramer bought a gun, checked into a hotel room and shot himself in the head. The bullet passed through his chin, his tongue, his sinus cavity and the top of his head. Kramer, who had been suffering from depression for years, survived the suicide attempt.
For most of the time since then, Kramer has been in the hospital, getting treatment for his physical wounds and for his mental health. Now Kramer is doing well enough that he is opening up about his experience in an interview with Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press.
“I don’t want to tempt fate but, at this point, I feel very good,” Kramer said. “And so my hope is to just keep living life and keep contributing and keep all that going.”
Despite some speculation that brain injuries in football could have caused his depression, Kramer doesn’t feel that way. He said he doesn’t know of any concussions he ever suffered and doesn’t feel like there’s a connection between his depression and football injuries, although he can’t say for sure what exactly causes his depression. Kramer does know that he felt a sense emptiness from a series of problems in his family, most notably the death of his son from a heroin overdose.
Now Kramer calls himself “extremely lucky” for surviving. His injuries were serious, but to see him now you wouldn’t know a bullet had passed through his head.
“I don’t know how that happened,” Kramer said. “I guess I’m just one of the lucky ones.”
