"I was almost willing to give my life up because I was so devoted to what I believed," Archuleta tells PEOPLE of reconciling his sexuality with his Mormon faith
NEED TO KNOW
- David Archuleta’s new memoir Devout is out on Feb. 17
- The American Idol alum writes about his journey to self acceptance after trying to reconcile his sexuality with his Mormon faith before leaving the church
- Archuleta reflects on the moment that saved him from suicidal thoughts in an exclusive excerpt from his book
David Archuleta is opening up about how accepting himself — and embracing his sexuality — saved his life.
In his new memoir Devout: Losing My Faith and Finding Myself (out Feb. 17), the American Idol runner-up details how his harrowing struggle to reconcile his sexuality with his Mormon faith nearly drove him to suicide.
"I was almost willing to give my life up because I was so devoted to what I believed," Archuleta, 35, says in the new issue of PEOPLE.
Eric Michael Roy; Robert Ascroft
Ultimately, the "Crush" singer came out as queer in 2021, before leaving the Chuch of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints the next year. But in Devout, Archuleta writes about how close he came to dying by suicide — and how a conversation with God changed his life.
"I had to learn how to not be ashamed. I always felt like I had to hide before," Archuleta says. "I’m just grateful to be alive and to see what I can do with my life while I’m here. It really feels like starting again.”
Below, an exclusive excerpt (and audio excerpt) from Devout. (The audiobook version of the memoir will also include three new songs by Archuleta.)
I was completely alone 95 percent of the time. I prayed more than I ate or slept. In the past, prayer had always helped me endure. The difference now, though, was that I felt nothing while praying. I was numb to any emotion, any connection. I kept thinking, God’s not there. I thought He abandoned me because He was so disgusted with me. The logic flowed that if God left me with these homosexual feelings, I supposed He didn’t want me to exist. I contemplated whether it would be better to admit to myself that I was gay or end my life. It was a constant internal war.
My mind buzzed with questions. What would be the most efficient way to do it? The safest way? What would cause the least anguish for my family? I started going on short drives, scouting locations, looking for a place I could crash my car at a high speed without hurting anyone else. I found a place in my neighborhood with a long stretch into some trees, a big exposed wall on the I-65 Freeway heading toward downtown Nashville, the Natchez Trace Parkway Bridge about 30 minutes south, which I definitely would not survive driving off because of how high it was. When I found a decent spot, I thought, Should I just do it now? The thing that held me back wasn’t the fear of death, but the fear of not dying. If I survived but broke my back, I might be paralyzed, and then it’d be impossible to try again. I’d have to exist with my thoughts for decades without being able to do anything about them.
Robert Ascroft
No matter what I did in this life, I would never be able to make up for being bisexual, gay, or whatever I was. I’d tried everything to change that, and nothing worked. I went on a mission and was an obedient servant. I’d confessed, felt shame, and repented. I’d been engaged three times. I tried therapy, and that got me nowhere.
[After ending my third engagement], I had a revelation. I was in my living room alone. Suddenly, I felt something while walking across my shaggy Walmart rug, a lightning slash of sensation that cut through the shell of numbness and weeks of not feeling anything. There He is. There’s God, I thought to myself. I said, “God, if you are there, and if you have a plan for me, please just take this away from me. Please help me overcome my sexual feelings for men because I don’t want to be like this. I’m so tired of dealing with this.”
Suddenly, God spoke in my head. “David, you need to stop asking me this.” He said, “You’ve been asking me this for over half of your life, since you were twelve. I’m not going to change anything. I don’t see you how you see you. It’s time for you to understand that.” It wasn’t exactly a burning bush, but there, on hands and knees, the dam of confusion and mixed messages—from the church, from its leaders, from therapists, from my own self—crashed down as the voice of God flooded my head. I had spent a lifetime letting others interpret who God was for me and what He wanted for my life, but there adrift in the silence I had finally heard the message He had for me all along. God was telling me that I was wrong to think that being gay was a mistake. I’d been thinking that it would be better to end my life than to live as a gay man. But now God was giving me permission—encouragement!—to start dating men, something I never thought would be okay.
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Copyright © 2026 by Archie Books, LLC. Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio read by David Archuleta from the forthcoming audiobook Devout by David Archuleta to be published by Simon & Schuster Audio, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Used with permission from Simon & Schuster, LLC.
From DEVOUT: Losing My Faith to Find Myself by David Archuleta. Copyright © 2026 by Archie Books, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Gallery Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC
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