Reed Robertson is part of a duck call empire and a reality TV hit, but the 18-year-old "Duck Dynasty" star now admits that fame and his family's success were almost too much for him to bear.
"I guess I got really caught up in thinking that I was better than everyone else because of who my family was," Robertson confessed in a short film produced by the Christian group IAmSecond. "I mean, really, 12 million people watch us every year — every week actually. I guess that's part of the pressure that's on me."
Robertson believes that pressure pushed him toward increasingly cynical thoughts and, eventually, isolated him from his former friends.
"I told my youth minister ... I pretty much told him that I wanted to kill myself," he said. "I had finally hit rock bottom. I wrote a letter, and I was going to do it. I really was."
But then his parents, Jase and Missy, found out about his plans.
“My mom was devastated," Robertson recalled. "Of course, she’s crying and all this kind of stuff. She’s thinking where she went wrong — and it wasn’t her at all."
His father had a far different reaction.
"(Dad) said, ‘That is the most selfish thing that you can do ... leave this world because you can’t take it,'" Robertson cried. "And I really believe that that’s true."
It's that statement he credits with turning his life around and leading him "back on track with Jesus."
See Robertson and the rest of his family on the "Duck Dynasty Christmas Special," which airs Dec.11 at 10 p.m. on A&E.