Suicide is a serious issue, no matter who it happens to. It’s such a terrible decision, made under stress and unclear mind, that has taken the lives of people that have otherwise been innocent of any actual crimes.

It’s an ultimate way out for those who can’t find peace in their surroundings who lack reliable trust in others.

No suicide is genuinely random or unmotivated. They all have a root cause, and sometimes that cause lies in the actions – or words. 

And suicide can happen to anyone. It’s not an endemic among the poor or the rich. Successful people in various industries have committed suicide, and not all of them were escaping criminal charges.

Some were just assaulted on all sides by unwholesome lies and allegations which they couldn’t handle and couldn’t fight back against.

Drugs and other mental instability make suicide more common in some fields than others.

When people think of porn, they don’t consider all the mental issues and drug abuse behind the scenes. They don’t want to see behind the make-up because it’s a harsh world, and the truth isn’t sexy.

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10 /10 August Ames

August Ames was a pornographic actress who committed suicide in late 2017 at the age of 23.

Despite only being in the field for four years, she performed in nearly 290 individual films and videos.

She worked with many top porn brands and titles and was nominated three times by the AVN Awards as Female Performer of the Year.

9 /10 Not Born For This

Her birth name was Mercedes Grabowski. She was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, in 1994. Both of her parents were in the army, which led her to live on and off Canadian army bases for part of her life.

Her mother had bipolar disorder, which might have influenced her daughter as well.

Ames alleged that her grandfather sexually molested her when she was very young, but her father didn’t believe her and sent her to live in a group home for therapy.



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8 /10 Getting In The Business

After her rough childhood, she was eager to escape her family and take on a new life entirely.

She willingly entered the adult entertainment industry, took on her stage name of August Ames, and signed up to be a model.

After that, she was flown out to California to start working. Within her short career, she would accumulate over 460 million views for official videos on popular streaming site Pornhub and far more aggregated across various other websites.

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7 /10 Controversy

Ames was scheduled to perform a scene for a video with a male co-star who she learned had acted in gay pornography.

She made a dismissive tweet and requested to reschedule herself and not do the scene out of concern over potential STIs.

Her tweet garnered an immediate and toxic backlash from people from all over the internet. She had over 600,000 followers on Twitter at the time, which only made the presence of the tweet generate more outrage.

Despite the outrage, she defended her decision to exercise her sexual autonomy in who she did or did not have sex with on camera.

YouTube

6 /10 Sudden Turn

One of the more infamous replies to her tweet came from pansexual performer Jaxton Wheeler, who demanded that she either apologize or take a cyanide pill, taunting her into suicide, which many other users joined in.

Ames tweeted one last “fuck y’all” and then went silent. Two days after her initial post, she was found dead in her California home by hanging.

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5 /10 Family Impact

Ames’ birth family may not have had the most positive impact on her growing up. Her mother’s bipolar depression may have been hereditary, which could have been passed on to her.

She once confided in her husband, Kevin Moore. He was a producer for one of the labels she worked for.

She had bipolar depressive disorder and dissociative identity disorder, which caused prolonged episodes of depression, leading to canceled work as she was forced to relive traumatic memories.

4 /10 High Life

Her death was by hanging, but an autopsy revealed that she did not immediately dedicate her evening at home to the deed.

She had a mix of hard and soft drugs in her system, some of which were prescription, that may have accelerated her choice.

The autopsy revealed cocaine, marijuana, Zoloft, and Xanax – the latter of which were prescription drugs meant to help deal with her mental state.

The onset of online harassment worsened her mental state that her tweet sparked, which drove her into a corner.

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3 /10 Cyberbullying

It wasn’t just one or two derisive tweets that led her into her depressive, deadly episode. She got thousands of tweets, none of which were wholesome, and none of which offered suitable, reasonable disagreement.

They were all very hateful, very toxic, and many people wished her dead. She was also unshielded at the time.

She had no one to help her turn away and stop reading them, and the thoughts stayed in her head long after she stopped looking at the screen.

The harassment got to her first, and to medicate or avoid the mental strain, it caused her to move for suicide irrationally.

Twitter

2 /10 The Last Days Of August

The incident attracted Jon Ronson, a journalist, and author, to explore the situation and report on it through an Audible series titled The Last Days of August.

He highlighted the impact of cyberbullying and online harassment, which worsened her already fragile condition.

He drew more parallels to the people closest to her, even her husband, who first pushed for a more investigative piece.

1 /10 A Hard Job

The pornographic industry was forced to take a step back following Ames’ suicide and set up initiatives to help performers that were struggling like she did to avoid the same fate.

British performer Leya Tanit launched a non-profit mental health care support network for people in the adult film industry.

Ames’ husband Moore also launched The August Project, a hotline specifically for adult film actors who needed some outlet of emergency support.

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