Singer Jimmie Allen has opened up about a dark time in his life.
It was in the wake of a May 2023 lawsuit that accused him of sexual assault, where the singer and songwriter found himself loading bullets into his gun while in a hotel room.
If it wasn’t for an incoming text message from a friend, the “Down Home” singer would have committed suicide.
“I don’t feel that way now, but in that moment, when you feel like you have nothing In the midst of a society where it’s no longer innocent until proven guilty She said this so it must be true,” the 38-year-old told Kathie Lee Gifford in an interview.
Allen’s former manager ended up dropping her suit against him last month, but the singer told Gifford that the turmoil that came from the initial filing — which accused him of rape — made him consider suicide.
It came at a time when the country singer felt like his “whole world had just collapsed” due to some business deals that were pulled as a result of the lawsuit. Affecting the financial support of his family, he contemplated suicide as a means to support them.
“The first thing my brain goes to is not the career,” he told Kathie Lee Gifford in an April 24 YouTube video. “It’s how am I going to provide for my kids? I had three then. I’m thinking to myself, how am I going to provide for my family? And then it hit me. My life insurance covered suicide.”
Allen denied allegations of wrongdoing with the unnamed woman but admitted to having a sexual relationship. He was then dropped by his label BBR Music Group, as well as by his booking agency, management and PR firm, and removed from a 2023 CMA Fest performance slot and a commencement keynote speaking engagement at Delaware State University.
Even though he no longer feels that way, the singer — who is a father to 9-year-old Aadyn from a previous relationship, daughters 4-year-old Naomi and 2-year-old Zara, and 6-month-old Cohen with estranged wife Alexis Gale, and twins Amari and Aria, whom he welcomed last summer with a friend named Danielle, the “Best Shot” singer did get into how close he came to making that undoable decision.
The “This Is Us” singer felt “pissed off, confused and heartbroken” after the initial filing from the woman he considered a friend following a year-long affair that unfolded as he was preparing to get married, where he ended up loading a gun in the hotel room on May 11. A text from a friend came in at just the right time.
“He said, ‘Ending it isn’t the answer.’ And when I read those words that he texted me, I read them again. I just stopped,” the 38-year-old explained. “I remember I called one of my buddies who lived in lower Delaware. He came up. I gave him my gun. I said, ‘Take it. I don’t need it.’”
After, there was a brief stint where Allen turned to drugs as a coping mechanism, but it was going to a retreat and seeing a therapist that helped him turn things around completely.
“Every single day I remember battling: Do I want to live? Do I not want to live?” he recalled. “I’m like, man, my family would have X amount of dollars if I would’ve [taken] care of something. But I realized that’s not the way to do it.”
He added, “I am healing and growing for me and my children.”