Wilson opens up about his OCD

Former Avalanche forward Colin Wilson, an NHL free agent who played only nine games last season, wrote an autobiographical account in The Players’ Tribune of his personal struggles with obsessive- compulsive disorder and drug and alcohol abuse that may have ended his career at age 31.

“There is simply no way to overstate the impact it’s had on my career, and on my life,” Wilson wrote of OCD. “It controlled me, it almost broke me for good. And there were times when I thought I might never be able to tell a story like this. But I’m here, and I am.”

Wilson, selected by Nashville with the seventh pick of the 2008 draft, played the last three seasons for the Avalanche, which acquired him via trade in the summer of 2017. Colorado resigned him as an unrestricted free agent July 1, 2019, to a one- year contract worth $ 2.6 million.

A healthy scratch in the 2019- 20 season opener after coming off offseason shoulder surgery, Wilson left practice early last fall and never played again. The Greenwich, Conn., native, who played two years at Boston University, said he is back living in New England.

“I’ve done a lot to prepare for my next step in life. I’m completely sober,” Wilson wrote. “I’m back at school in Boston working on a psychology major. The last few years I’ve been working with a new, more traditional talk therapist who has been one of the pillars that I lean on as I transition toward life after hockey. They’ve helped me think through everything and see the next chapter of my life in a positive light.”