Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has admitted that she contemplated suicide after she divorced her first husband, Jorge Arantes.

Rowling was in her mid-twenties when her first marriage collapsed. The now 42-year-old said she sought help from a doctor after having “suicidal thoughts” but he only told  her to speak to a nurse if she felt “a bit low.”

The author says that her struggles led her to write the Harry Potter books, which have made her an estimated 500 million pound fortune.

“We’re talking suicidal thoughts here, we’re not talking ‘I’m a little bit miserable.’ Two weeks later I had a phone call from my regular GP who had looked back over the notes…She call me back in and I got counseling through her,” says Rowling. “She absolutely saved me because I don’t think I would have had the guts to go and do it twice.”