"I need you to come over right now," Slater told best pal Benji Weatherley.
It is a remarkable thing that even after forty years in the spotlight, Kelly Slater still has the ability to surprise with revelations about a life lived almost entirely in the public square
And in a new interview Slater has pulled back the velvet curtain on a dark chapter when he, very briefly it must be noted, considered suicide.
The year is 1993. Slater is the hottest thing in the sport, the reigning world champ, the youngest ever, a surfer of zeitgeist shifting talent whom the previous generation, Gary Elkerton, Martin Potter and co, can’t get near.
It drives Pottz and Kong nuts, in particular, alpha bears flexing and grunting but failing, spectacularly, to rattle the wildly talented twink.
But then the ol wheels start to spin off their hubs and, to the surprise of everyone, Slater finishes the year sixth behind Derek Ho, Damien Hardman, Gary Elkerton, Pottz and Tom Curren, surfers, with the exception of Tom Curren, he’d usually beat in his sleep.
In an interview with the comic and RVCA sales rep Jay Larson and the noted Filipino surfer-skater Lyndon “Choccy” Cabello, Kelly Slater says it was the embarrassment of his results that had him sitting in his hotel room contemplating ways to kill himself.
Kelly Slater, whose vulnerability is evident in his ongoing online debates with surf fans, tells his hosts he doesn’t want to get into it too deeply, but “I was suicidal…I was so depressed and I had a moment where I was, like, ok, I’m considering this.”
The host asks Slater if his sponsors offered help and he tells ‘em, well yeah, if they knew. But, he says, he was in his hotel room in Kirra on the Gold Coast and called up old friend Benji Weatherley, staying nearby, and asked for his help.
“I need you to come over right now,” he told Benji.
This little fork in the road, says Slater, convinced him the pain of losing was far greater than the joys of cruising the tour with pals.
“I remember thinking, I have to put everything I have into (pro surfing) and see how far I can go with this competitive thing, all my focus, everything I do in the day effects how I’ll go. That was a real learning lesson, to get me focussed and on target.”
Slater is asked if any books got his head right and he says, yeah, he was reading the Tao of Health, Sex and Longevity, Modern Practical Guide to the Ancient Way is a book by Daniel Reid. The book was first published in 1989 and explores Taoist principles for diet, exercise, breathing, meditation, sexual practices, and more, emphasizing balance and harmony with nature’s rhythms.
Reid famously encouraged sexual yoga where men are encouraged to conserve energy by limiting ejaculation, redirecting it to enhance vitality, a practice long enjoyed by your old pal DR.
The book was so fundamental to Kelly Slater’s life he named his kid after it, explaining to the host that white people pronounce it Tao, like with a T, and the BIPOC among us, use a D, like, Dao.
Suicide talk swings in at eighty-eight minutes.
Also, who else into sexual yoga? I believe it should be taught in schools etc.
