Former Canucks goalie recalls battle against OCD
Former Canucks goaltender opens up about how dark condition twice drove him to the brink of suicide
“I lay in my bed, suffering. I could barely get dressed to get to the rink ...” Corey Hirsch, former Canucks goalie
The question seems simple enough: Why?
Why now? Why would you go back to that time and dark place? Why after all these years, when there are so many great and beautiful things in your life?
Like so many aspects of this story, there aren’t any easy answers to those questions.
Corey Hirsch met another player who suffered the way he suffered. He wanted to help him and he wanted to help others. He was also strong enough to tell his story and he felt it was time. That much he knew.
What he didn’t know, what he couldn’t know, is that since he came forward, his entire dark, heartbreaking and ultimately triumphant journey found a purpose and meaning. It’s touched people. It’s touched people who suffer the same way he once suffered, when he was trapped and there seemed to be only one way out.
“I thought it would get some reaction but you’re always worried it will get out there and then people will forget,” Hirsch said Saturday while the Vancouver Canucks, his former team, prepared for their meeting with the Calgary Flames.
“What I’m realizing is, it’s a lot bigger problem than I thought it was, and getting the message out there has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. We’re getting there. We just need to keep talking about it.
“My goal is one day it will be like going to the doctor for any other condition.”
Hirsch calls this his mission. And in this mission, he’s learned he’s not alone.
This week in The Players Tribune, the former National Hockey League goalie opened up about his battle with an obsessive-compulsive disorder that drove him to the brink of suicide.
It’s a difficult story to read. It’s even more difficult to comprehend.
At 22, Hirsch was the New York Rangers’ third-string goalie during their 1994 Stanley Cup run. During a tour of the Empire State Building that spring, he turned to his mother and said: “I wish I could just jump off this building right now.”
About the same time he tried to break his own hand so the Rangers would send him home. That summer, he tried to drive his sports car off a cliff near Kamloops.
Two years later, in his second season with the Canucks, his weight dropped to 140 pounds and Hirsch, who was again consumed by thoughts of suicide, reached out to Canucks’ trainer Mike Burnstein.
He was put in contact with a psychologist who diagnosed the OCD and Hirsch started treatment that year. It would take another five years before he had the condition under control.
“I lay in my bed, suffering,” he said. “I could barely get dressed to get to the rink and I dreamed this day would come. I remember those days. Now it seems like it’s so far away and I’m here and I can talk about it.”
This day he’s here talking as part of the Canucks’ Hockey Talks initiative to raise awareness about mental health and, as much as Hirsch’s battle is against a very specific condition, it’s also about the battles we all face.
He talked about the shame. He talked about the fear. That was hard. Asking for help was even harder, but when he was finally diagnosed correctly — Hirsch has the Pure O (pure OCD) form of the condition — he had his life in control in a matter of months.
It sounds so simple. Hirsch knows it’s anything but.
“It’s not voices in your head,” Hirsch said. “It’s more like your brain is lying to you. It’s like when you have depression and your brain tells you, you’re a terrible person. It’s not true, but it takes over and it’s screaming at you. You think: Why would my own brain lie to me? But it does.”
Except it doesn’t anymore. Hirsch now lives in the Phoenix area and is the father to three kids. In the Players Tribune article he writes about the moments they’ve shared, moments the illness almost took away.
“I would have missed lacing my son’s skates for the first time,” he writes. “I would have missed listening to my older daughter’s beautiful voice when she plays the guitar. I would have missed seeing my youngest daughter prance onstage in The Nutcracker.”
Saturday also marked the day the Canucks unveiled the statue of Pat Quinn in front of Rogers Arena. Twenty years ago, Quinn traded for Hirsch. On that Canucks’ team was Trevor Linden, who took in the ceremony as the Canucks’ president.
“I wish I could go back in time, knowing what I know now,” Linden said. “As much as he’s your teammate, you don’t know what’s going on behind the curtain. You think about 20 years ago and where we were with mental health. It’s like another planet now.” At least you hope that’s the case. In 2008, Hirsch worked with Quinn as the goalie coach on Team Canada at the world under-18s in Russia. After Canada’s gold medal victory, the two men talked in the locker-room.
“This stuff didn’t come up but I said I wish I was a better player for him,” Hirsch said. “(Quinn) said, ‘I always knew you were trying your best.’
“It was like a moment of closure for me. I always wanted to talk to him. I felt I owed him. He was an amazing man.”
Hirsch is asked about the impact his condition had on his playing career.
“I always wonder,” he said. “I don’t know. It’s my fault because I didn’t get the help. But I didn’t know either. Could I have been a better player? I think so. There was just no one out there.”
But they’re out there now and Hirsch wants everyone to know this. He is, after all, a man on a mission.