Phelps talks about depression
Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian in history, is using his lofty perch and personal experience to call on the U.S. Olympic Committee to help athletes who are struggling with depression.
Phelps is speaking out at a time when a host of current and former athletes are bringing mental health issues to national attention, attempting to remove the stigma from depression and suicidal impulses. NBA stars Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan recently opened up about their mental health struggles, as have Olympic swimmers Missy Franklin and Allison Schmitt. Phelps echoed them and said he “straight wanted to die” at one point in his career.
“I’m somebody who’s gone through at least three or four major depression spells after [Olympic] Games that, you know, I’ve put my life in danger,” Phelps said on David Axelrod’s “The Axe Files” podcast. “... The USOC, in my opinion, hasn’t done anything to help us transition after an Olympics. I think it’s sad. I think it’s unfortunate. It’s something that we’re working towards now.”
After the 2012 Olympics, Phelps said, he became suicidal after “doing the bare minimum” to compete and wanting to get away from the sport. By 2014, when he got his second DUI, he admitted he was “running from something,” adding, “I wanted to die. I straight wanted to die.”
“We were prescribed Ambien because we were travelling the world and I actually looked back and I had one Ambien left,” he said. “And I’m actually happy I only had one . ... That scares the living hell out of me.”
At that point, Phelps said, he asked for help and went through rehab in Arizona. He said he hopes the USOC will help future athletes before they reach that point. By his estimate, as many as 90 per cent of athletes go through a post-Games depression.
“We’re competing to represent our country, we’re competing to do everything we can to try to win a medal or to try to do our country proud by wearing the stars and stripes on international ground,” Phelps told Axelrod, describing himself as “the boy in the bubble” because of his athletic focus. “When we come home from it, you know, they’re like kind of, ‘OK, check. Who’s the next kid coming in? Where’s the next person?’ And I think it’s sad.”
Phelps described the postOlympic void, saying, “you take a step and just fall right down.” For him, that first stumble was a DUI in 2004, when he “didn’t know what was causing me to put myself in bad situations” because of alcohol and drug use.
Phelps, now 32 and the married father of two sons, described on the podcast having ADHD and being placed on Ritalin as a child, admitting that he didn’t like “going to the nurse” every day at school to get his pill and arguing to stop taking it. And as an adult, he said, there was a struggle to turn off the “competitive switch.”
For Phelps, like many young athletes, sports helped him escape from an unpleasant family situation. His parents are divorced, and he wasn’t close to his father. “There were moments growing up when I was training where I swam with aggression. I swam with a lot of anger, and, yeah, part of it was probably coming from home and coming from what I was going through when we were in our home life . ... I let out a lot of profanity underwater. There were times when I was pushing off the wall, whether in pain or pissed off, and I am saying expletives out the wazoo.”
The Michael Phelps Foundation hopes to promote swimming, as well as raising awareness about physical and mental health.