John Fetterman said he ‘should have quit’ Senate bid in an excerpt from his new book

In an emotional excerpt from his new book, Sen. John Fetterman said he should have dropped out of his 2022 senatorial race while battling severe depression after his stroke.

Fetterman’s book Unfettered comes out Tuesday, and a selection published by the right-of-center website the Free Press on Monday tells the story of how deeply he struggled during his political ascent.

The senator provided a raw narrative of how he would have died if he wasn’t so close to a specialized hospital in Lancaster when he suffered a stroke four days before his dominating Democratic primary win on May 13, 2022. He described his heart stopping for several seconds.

“I had this feeling of leaving; of everything inside me coming through my face, out a window, and into the sky,” he said in the excerpt. Fetterman was in surgery the day of the primary, in which he won every county in the state. He was too weak to take then-President Joe Biden’s congratulatory call, he recalled.

Fetterman couldn’t hear for several weeks after his stroke, communicating only with a whiteboard and markers. Once he could speak, he relied on closed-captioning.

“Is this my life now?” he said he asked himself.

Fetterman revealed that he had a pact with himself in the months leading up to the 2022 general election. If his physical condition didn’t improve by Aug. 15, he would drop out of the Senate race. But he improved, his polling looked good, and he believed he could show voters he was fine as long as he had closed-captioning.

“In hindsight, I should have quit,” he continued in the excerpt, noting the vicious attacks he endured from Republican opponent Mehmet Oz, as well as from Fox News hosts and keyboard warriors. (Oz is now the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.)

As his health condition was mocked, the attacks hit him hard.

“Because of the way the brain works in depression — you are always searching for a way to hate yourself — I began to wonder if some of my opponents’ insults were true.“ he said in the excerpt. He “felt desperate” by the end of September as his lead in the polls shrunk.

As a candidate, Fetterman only felt worse after struggling through his late October debate, which drew more criticism and attacks. Fetterman said that his poor performance wasn’t because of his stroke, but because of his nerves.

“For the entire three-and-a-half-hour ride back from the debate, I read reactions on X, shooting myself up with the shame that is too often the sustenance of the depressive,” he wrote.

As a senator, Fetterman has been outspoken about the negative impacts social media has had on his mental health, sponsoring legislation that would create mental health warnings.

Fetterman said he was suicidal for months, feeling like he let down his family. (He noted that he still contemplates suicide at times but that his love for his family is “the best antidote to depression.”)

His depression continued through his victory in November, largely staying in bed for the next two months.

“Once, as I lay in bed, I asked myself, What would you do if there were a pill on the nightstand you could take and not wake up?," he said. “I would have taken it.”

The senator didn’t feel better once he was sworn into Congress in January. He described laying on a mattress on the floor in his dark basement apartment in Washington with no routine other than going to work.

Come February 2023, and he wasn’t eating. He became disoriented and texted his wife, Gisele, not “making sense.” At the hospital, doctors said he didn’t have signs of another stroke but needed a mental health consultation.

He revealed that he spent time at his parents house before being hospitalized for inpatient treatment.

“I called Gisele, and she told me I could not come home until I was back to being myself: The impact on our kids was just too great,” he said. “So, I moved in with my parents in York, Pennsylvania, once again to the basement where I had slept as a teenager.”

“I had nowhere else to go,” he added.

Fetterman was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Feb. 15 where he was diagnosed with severe depression and stayed for 44 days. He was also suffering physically because he had stopped eating and drinking.

In the excerpt, he tells the story of finally being ready for a visit from Gisele and his three children, who handed him positive messages on colorful sticky notes. He said their lunch at the Walter Reed Wendy’s was “the first positive interaction with my children in months,” in which he didn’t retreat to bed or stare off and they didn’t avoid each other.

Fetterman said that as an elected official who was open about his mental health, he may always be “accused of being unhinged, even for simple everyday actions, particularly if you diverge from the most vocal end of your party.”

He rebuffed accusations that his positions that are out of step with his party, like his hardline support of Israel, have anything to do with his mental health, pointing to his support for the country during his 2022 primary campaign.

Fetterman has also been outspoken against Democrats’ negotiating tactics during the government shutdown. He was among the Democrats who joined every Republican on Sunday night in voting to end debate on a Senate bill that will likely lead to a funding settlement.

“I have never viewed my political party as an iron shackle adhering me to the party line,” he said. “And I don’t take positions for my own self-interest. I take positions based on what I believe is right. I know this has cost me support from a significant part of my base, and I’m well aware that it may cost me my seat. I’m completely at peace with that.”