Leisel Jones reveals moment she wanted to ‘end it all’, and words that saved her life

Three simple words brought Leisel Jones back from the brink after the Olympic champion spent hours lost in dark questioning whether she still wanted to be here. This is her true incredible story.

Olympic champion Leisel Jones has opened up about the moment she wanted to “end it all” after spending hours lost in dark thoughts before three simple words brought her back from the brink.

Almost two weeks ago, the 39-year-old sat on the stairs of her Gold Coast home and sobbed for three lonely hours, questioning whether she still wanted to be here.

“I just wanted to die in my sleep, I thought that would be the greatest thing I could ever hope for in that moment,” she said.

“(I thought) I just want to end it all, I really do not want to be here tomorrow, I was like, please do not let me wake up.

“They’re the thoughts that go round and round and around, they don’t stop and it was just like ‘please die, please die, please die’, that’s how serious it is, the thoughts get stuck.

Leisel Jones took to Instagram to document her mental health battles earlier this month.

“You’re like, please just whatever you do, just take me tonight because I don’t want to see tomorrow. Then you wake up and you’re like, shit, my wish didn’t come true.”

But, in that moment, Jones said the phrase “stay until tomorrow” changed everything.

“I had said it before but it was really crucial in that time because I was feeling so low, I was like just stay until tomorrow because you just don’t know what tomorrow looks like,” she said.

“You actually don’t know if you’re going to have the greatest day of your life tomorrow but if you take your life now you will never get it.”

She said going to her job the next morning as a co-host of Triple M Gold Coast’s breakfast radio show gave her a reason and purpose to keep going and after her shift, she went for a beach walk which helped clear the heavy fog clouding her mind.

Jones, who made the Australian swim team at the age of 14, shared the deeply personal ordeal and her battle with ‘high functioning depression’ the next day to her almost 40,000 Instagram followers.

The champion swimmer, who retired in 2012, said she did it with one purpose: for those three words to reach someone else who needed to hear them.

Her post reverberated across the country with an outpouring of concern and support for the beloved sporting legend.

Jones was inundated with messages and phone calls from high profile celebrities and athletes to people she had never met, all offering their love and compassion.

Speaking to The Courier-Mail in what is her first interview since that dark day, she said she is in a far better place.

Leisel Jones with her Triple M Gold Breakfast colleagues. Picture: Supplied

She is happy, calm, well supported by family, friends and professional help and is in a life she genuinely loves.

“I don’t make this my identity … I have these moments but I have so many other elements of my life that are part of me that are so important,” she said.

“I am really passionate about talking about it … With depression, it’s not always sad sacks that mope about, it impacts some of the most high functioning people who get the job done and do it well and show up on time.

“That’s why I said ‘high functioning depression’ because I still turn up to work, I still do all my things, I still do it with a smile on my face and it’s sometimes you just have no clue what someone is going through, they just keep doing it.”

Jones is a woman who has built her life and career rising above adversity and has become a loud and passionate voice in mental health conversations.

She talks candidly with vulnerability and fierce strength to remind others they’re not alone but even Jones was stunned by the power of her post.

“I was like, you know what, I’m going to post this because yesterday was really garbage and I wanted to end all of it but today, I’ve just had the best walk I’ve ever been on. I’m going to post this just to show the difference a day can make … then it blew up,” she said of her Instagram post.

“I was like ‘wow’, this has really resonated with people and it went crazier than I ever expected.”

Jones said she was touched by other people’s stories.

With her former The Rush Hour co-hosts Dobbo and Liam. Picture: Triple M

“Those beautiful messages of people that it’s helped, but there were other people that wished they had that saying before,” she said, as her eyes filled with tears.

“I really had no idea that story was going to impact people and to be so extreme that it might save someone’s life.

“I’m not a spokesman, I don’t want to be any of that, it’s not my whole identity, but if I could save one person’s life with three simple words, that means so much to me.”

While Jones wasn’t expecting such an overwhelming response, she also wasn’t expecting June 30 this year to be anything but an ordinary day.

That morning she went to work as usual, chatting on-air alongside her co-hosts Liam Flanagan and Peter ‘Spida’ Everitt and was her bubbly self.

“I was feeling OK … nothing you would have picked up on, I was smiley and chatty,” Jones said.

But when she got home, she felt a shift.

“It was a compounding of a lot of things,” she said.
“I think there’s a lot of work stress at the moment, I think global issues, all that sort of stuff, nothing in particular.”

Jones has faced quiet challenges in recent years with major life and work upheaval.

She is going through a divorce after announcing her split with her husband of five years, Damon Martin, in November, 2023.

She said it was an amicable end.

“We want the best for each other genuinely … it just wasn’t the right relationship, there’s nothing more to it,” she said.

In November, 2024, the afternoon radio show Jones hosted for three years on Triple M Brisbane, The Rush Hour with Leisel, Liam and Dobbo, was axed but she was quickly picked up by Triple M Gold Coast.

“I was devastated, I loved that show … I was so heartbroken,” she says of Rush Hour,” she said.

“I was very lucky this show came up, I know a lot of people don’t have that opportunity so I am grateful for that.”

It’s brought a lot of change; a new city, new lifestyle and new routine, all while adapting to the brutal breakfast radio hours, with a 3.30am wake-up time.

Jones says she has “high functioning depression” because she is still able to work and “do all my things”.

“I’ve been trying to work on sleep hygiene so going to bed a bit earlier, but I think it’s just caught up to me not sleeping very well,” she said.
She said home wasn’t a source of comfort either, especially since the Mudgeeraba property she bought in April is currently undergoing major renovations.

“I go home and I’ve got one chair that looks at a blank wall, I don’t have a TV, I’ve got to get my floors done so I don’t have furniture …. I just don’t really have that sanctuary away from anything,” she said.

But on this day, everything piled up; the unread emails, empty house, burnout and her frenetic and restless mind went into overdrive.

“It was very quiet, there’s no one in my house, I don’t have a dog, I don’t have anyone there, I don’t have a TV for background, so I think I was getting caught in that … just wanting something else and feeling alone in that moment,” she said.

“I was in the middle of making dinner and I just lost it, I was like, what the hell? It just hit me out of nowhere. I just sat there (on the stairs) and cried and cried and cried for ages.

“You just feel like you’re at the bottom of a well and you can’t see the top, there’s no ladder or anything. That’s what it feels like in the moment, its dark and horrible.”

Depression first appeared in Jones’ life when she was in her early 20s in the peak of her swimming career.

Hers was a fast and intense journey from teenage prodigy to Olympic champion and one of Australia’s most decorated swimmers. She became Australia’s youngest Olympic swimmer and went on to do the extraordinary across her 13 years of competitive swimming including four Olympics (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012), nine Olympic medals, 10 Commonwealth Games gold medals, 14 world records and 23 national titles before her retirement in 2012.

Leisel Jones with her gold medal for the 100m women’s breaststroke at the Beijing Olympics.

Jones is open about the shocking way she was treated as an athlete in the early days of her career, including being denied access to psychologists and dietitians.

It led to ongoing struggles with self-esteem, identity and body image and all of it amplified by the pressure to perform and public scrutiny. It ultimately took a toll on her mental health.

In 2011, Jones came chillingly close to ending her life while in Sierra Nevada, Spain, for a training camp before a knock on the door from her coach, Rohan Taylor, saved her life.

It prompted Jones to seek professional help, medication and psychology and over the 13 years since, has worked hard on strategies to help when her mind becomes fragile.

So on that day almost two weeks ago, she knew what was happening and crucially, how to pull herself out.

“I remember in 2011 my psychologist said to me … just look for little things,” she says.

The following day, when Jones’ went on an hour-long beach walk from Kurrawa Surf Club to Main Beach and back, she found what she was looking for – hope.

Leisel Jones (bottom left) with fellow swimmers in 2007. File picture

“I was looking at the clean waves and the breaks, they were so beautiful. That was all I thought about, no emails, no ambition,” she said.

“It was the little things, looking at people, making eye contact with people, wondering what they were doing and it got me out of that loop.”

Jones said she hopes she can make a difference in the lives of those who might be lost in the dark.

“I don’t need to know you, you don’t need to know me, just promise me you will stay,” she said.

“Just enjoy the simple things because they are the things that can change everything.”

If you or anybody you know need help, please contact Lifeline Australia 13 11 14, lifeline.org.au

Originally published as Leisel Jones reveals moment she wanted to ‘end it all’, and words that saved her life