Wet Exit

THE BIGGER THE RIVER, THE BIGGER THE DROUGHT For author and adventurer Rod Wellington, 2015 was the year everything changed. It was the year when his passion for life diminished, when the burdens of unrelenting suicidal thoughts and debilitating depression finally pushed him past the tipping point. At age 49, he was living a life of quiet desperation, alienated and isolated from the world around him. Middle age was anesthetizing him like a chloroform-soaked cloth. Weight gain, hair loss, loneliness, and gnawing regret only added to the misery. Life, he decided, would end on his own terms, in a manner uniquely his. Crafting an elaborate suicide plan, and cleverly disguising it as a groundbreaking, 3000-mile, self-propelled expedition, Rod set off for Australia to climb its highest mountain and kayak its longest river system from source to sea. His goal was to retire a champion, to drink the champagne of success a final time before departing. His woeful mind, however, had other plans. Laced with hard-hitting honesty and spirited adventure, Wet Exit plunges readers deep into a heart-wrenching mental m lange of festering fears, smoldering secrets, and raging resentments as it navigates through a choppy sea of confidence-shattering fallibility, rough-edged redemption, breakups, breakdowns, and bittersweet breakthroughs. The social stigma surrounding suicide and mental illness is bravely contested, setting the stage for a search for a second chance.