Right thank you Braden Smith is coming back with Indianapolis Colts this season, which seemed far from being possible just five months ago.
Smith missed the last five matches in the regular season with what the Colts considered personal reasons. Smith revealed to the Indianapolis star on Tuesday that he handled a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) called religious review.
“There are the actual, real, true, living God. And then there is my OCD god, and the OCD god is this condemnation (deity),” Smith explained to the star. “It’s like every wrong movement you make, it’s like beating the ruler against his hand.” Another bad move like that and you are from here. “
“There was only one person who was ever perfect, and it was Jesus. When you try to live up to that standard, actually live it, it will push you nuts.”
Smith said he was close to considering suicide – “I was a month away from putting a bullet in my brain” – before his wife, Courtney, insisted that he got help when Smith returned home quickly one day after leaving to practice.
“He’s not there,” recalled Courtney Smith. “No one came back.”
Braden Smith participated in a mental health facility in Colorado, which diagnosed his condition but did a bit in the way to cure him.
Smith then went to Mexico for treatment with the psychedelic drug Ibogaine, which is illegal in the United States. From there it was at home and OCD therapy. What Smith called a “last-dike effort” pulled him out of the crack.
“I don’t make compulsive prayers at all anymore,” he said. “I don’t do to replace the good with the bad. If I have a bad thought it’s just like” Ok, it’s one of many thoughts. “I just move on with my day and don’t let it affect me.
“I still have OCD, but it has no grip on me. It doesn’t dictate my life.”
Instead, his life has turned back to football.
Smith, a third choice of Colts 2018, which has played in 94 matches (92 starts), signed a new deal for 2025 which lowers both his basic salary and cap.
But money is the least of his worries. Being back in the field 2025 was important after all he had gone through.
“I wasn’t here last year,” Smith said. “I was physically here, but I wasn’t. I want to be again here, and I want the people around me to experience it, because I feel I have something to offer the people around me.”
-Field level media
