Colts RT Braden Smith 'in a spectacular place' after career-threatening battle with OCD
To this season.
A chance to experience the joy of football again, freed from the stranglehold obsessive-compulsive disorder placed on him last year. A specific type of OCD, religious scrupulosity, overwhelmed Smith last year, forcing him to leave the Colts with five games left in the season in a desperate attempt to find an answer for what was going through his mind.
The search took Smith through therapy, medicine, a Colorado health clinic and finally a controversial treatment with psychedelics in Mexico, but the 29-year-old right tackle emerged on the other side last spring with his OCD under control.
In his own words: Colts RT Braden Smith's desperate, life-threatening fight vs OCD
A half a year later, Smith is back on the practice field at Grand Park, ready to enjoy football again after his battle with OCD caused him to briefly consider retirement last fall.
'I'm in a spectacular place, honestly,' Smith said. 'I've learned a lot about myself. I've learned different tools and strategies, I've had a great support system here and at home.'
When Smith returned from an ibogaine treatment in Mexico that he believes erased the bad habits his mind had created — internal compulsions that caused him to repetitively pray, repent or declare his faith — he began intensive therapy for OCD.
In Smith's own words, he still has OCD.
But it no longer has a hold on him, no longer serves as a crushing weight on him at all times, forcing him to try to justify himself to a perfect God.
'There's not boxes I need to check off, there's not things I need to do,' Smith said. 'It's not perfect, but it's kind of allowed me to give it all to Him and not worry about what else can happen.'
Smith, a Christian who was baptized last May after deciding to devote himself fully to his faith, has found better balance in his belief, a pursuit of God based on love rather than guilt.
'You have to find out what is healthy and what is not healthy. It looks a little bit different for every person,' Smith said. 'My relationship to God doesn't have to be a cookie-cutter type of thing. … Luckily, the whole point is just (having) a relationship.'
Playing football again on the practice fields at Grand Park is a reminder of how far Smith has come since last winter.
One of the statements that set off alarm bells for Courtney was when Smith floated the idea of retirement last September. Her husband has always loved playing football, loved playing the game, and the OCD had stripped football of the joy and fulfillment he felt playing the game.
The Colts tried to help Smith.
Instead of ignoring or downplaying his symptoms, the coaching staff helped Smith find treatment and medicine, allowed the veteran right tackle to avoid going to meetings when OCD began to overtake him and supported his decision to miss the rest of the season.
The day before Thanksgiving, Smith showed up at the practice facility and headed right back home, the final piece of the puzzle that convinced Courtney to tell her husband he needed to leave his team and go to a mental-health facility in Colorado.
Before he left, Smith told the rest of the offensive linemen and the coaches exactly what had been going on throughout the season, and the Colts responded by protecting and supporting the man who has been a pillar of the offensive line since 2018.
Smith started 12 games and played 731 snaps last season.
But he was far from the player he could be.
'Last year, I was just kind of out there,' Smith said. 'I was going through the motions, but I didn't feel that edge that players have. I didn't have that last year. I didn't feel that.'
Smith hasn't been able to be himself in years.
Before the scrupulosity took over Smith's life last year, he played through a painful knee injury in 2023, an injury that cost him seven games and ultimately forced him to undergo surgery on the joint.
Physically, Smith feels better than he has in years.
Mentally, it's possible that Smith feels better than he ever has before. When Smith first started going to therapy last fall, his psychologist told Courtney he could trace her husband's OCD back to at least the third grade, if not before that.
For the first time, Smith believes he understands his OCD and has a handle on his condition.
'Instead of obsessing over other things, I can obsess about my craft,' Smith said. 'Turn a negative into the positive.'
When Smith first talked about his battle with OCD in April, Courtney said she believed her husband could finally be the person he's meant to be.
Half a year later, Smith has no reason to believe anything has changed since then.
'This is probably the best I've felt in a really long time,' Smith said. 'It's kind of nice to see everything come together. Now, I can just go play football.'
For the love of the game alone.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
6 hours ago
- Fox News
Christian bodybuilder reveals how fitness honors God: 'Your body is a temple'
Regular exercise is known to benefit physical and mental health — but there has been some debate about whether pursuing physical improvement could conflict with Christian principles. Some have cautioned that putting too much focus on fitness could veer into "idol worship," which is when another pursuit surpasses devotion to God. In the book "Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power and the Only Hope that Matters," author Tim Keller defines an idol as "anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give." According to some points of view, that could even include exercise. Others — like Hunter Sprague, a Christian bodybuilder and father of three in Texas — take a different perspective. After spending time in Christian ministry, Sprague tapped into his personal passion for exercise and strength-building to launch Monolith Movement, a coaching and mentorship platform that helps men balance faith and fitness. In an on-camera interview with Fox News Digital, Sprague described physical health as a form of spiritual stewardship, which is reflected in 1 Corinthians in the New Testament: "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit ... therefore honor God with your body." (See part of the interview in the video at the top of this article.) Sprague acknowledged that in Gnosticism — a set of ancient religious beliefs that emerged around the 1st and 2nd centuries AD — followers believed that the physical body and the material world "just didn't matter." "If you're going to be saved, be enlightened, you have to kind of ascend the body," he said of the belief. "It's this mindset that it's all about my heart, and my body doesn't matter." Over time, Sprague was able to strike a balance between his commitment to physical fitness and his devotion to his faith. "Our bodies matter, our physical material world matters — it was created," he said, noting that the physical form is a critical part of who we are designed to be. "That is the natural created order — if the Lord didn't desire for you to have a body, you wouldn't have one." "I think the Lord kind of used fitness to illuminate a lot of this to me," Sprague went on. "I can't just live a mental faith — there has to be some experiential power that goes along with it." "If the Lord didn't desire for you to have a body, you wouldn't have one." In his view, exercise and fitness are a form of embracing the control — the "agency" — that the Lord has given us over our bodies. "This is primarily a matter of stewardship," Sprague said. "How are you stewarding the fact that you have a functioning body? How are you stewarding the fact that you've been given all of these tools and resources and abilities?" "What are you doing with it for the benefit of others, for your benefit, as you seek to love the Lord and delight in him, and have that sense of peace and hope and resilience?" In his own personal fitness routine, Sprague said he focuses on a mix of strength training and cardio. "For a lot of people, fitness equates to just weight loss, but if you're losing weight without building muscle, you're shooting yourself in the foot," he told Fox News Digital. Strength training is "absolutely crucial" for Americans right now, the expert said, as many people are "overweight and under-muscled." Sprague spends three to four days a week in the gym lifting weights and using cable machines. "It's the hard part, it's the slow burn. It doesn't happen by accident," he said. "It's just pushing myself week after week, competing against myself." For cardio, Sprague recommends finding opportunities to keep moving and to increase daily steps. "You'll see a massive difference between 2,000 or 4,000 steps and doubling that to 8,000 or 10,000," he said. "And if you can go up from there, the more the merrier." Walking is an "easy barrier to entry," he said, and is very good for brain health and digestion. In addition to alternating between walking and sprinting, Sprague recommends finding other ways to stay active in day-to-day life. "Just more activity that's coupled with something you enjoy is really helpful," he said. In terms of nutrition, Sprague focuses on what he calls "modular eating," including a few lean proteins, fibrous vegetables and a handful of carbs. If he's trying to achieve a particular goal, he carefully tracks his food intake to get "absolute clarity" into how he's doing. When it comes to supplements, Sprague said he keeps it "very, very simple." "I do creatine and monohydrate every day. I'll utilize protein powders to reach my protein target with minimal calories." For anyone looking to honor their body and also honor the Lord, Sprague said it's important to recognize that the physical being matters, but that it will never be the main source of happiness or peace. "It's hard to be satisfied, it's hard to get to a place where you're like, 'I'm done, I made it,'" Sprague said. "There's always going to be this sense of, 'There's more to go, there's more to do.'" "My identity, my worth, my value, isn't wrapped up in what I achieve physically — rather, this process is just a joy in itself." In the pursuit of greater physical fitness, Sprague said it's essential to "notice God's goodness" in all of it. "It's a means of grace that the Lord designed endorphins for you — he designed dopamine for you," he noted. "He designed the feeling of accomplishment you get when you lift something or run a little bit farther or have a really good day with your food — that's not inconsequential." "The more you bring the Lord into this and notice His goodness in it, the better it goes." Setting specific goals and making a plan to achieve them is the most effective path to success, according to the expert. "Just get some momentum and start putting one foot in front of the other," Sprague advised. "It all comes down to time and effort. Put some pressure on yourself, set some deadlines and just go do it — because the thinking, considering and mulling it over will get you absolutely nowhere," he went on. For more Health articles, visit "And the more you bring the Lord into this and notice His goodness in it, the better it goes."
Fox News
6 hours ago
- Fox News
Physical fitness represents ‘spiritual stewardship' of God's creation, says Christian bodybuilder
Hunter Sprague, a Christian bodybuilder and fitness coach in Texas, shares how he balances his dedication to physical improvements and his commitment to his faith.
Hamilton Spectator
2 days ago
- Hamilton Spectator
An Ohio couple welcomes a baby boy from a nearly 31-year-old frozen embryo
A baby boy born last week to an Ohio couple developed from an embryo that had been frozen for more than 30 years in what is believed to be the longest storage time before a birth. In what's known as embryo adoption , Lindsey and Tim Pierce used a handful of donated embryos that have been frozen since 1994 in pursuit of having a child after fighting infertility for years. Their son was born Saturday from an embryo that had been in storage for 11,148 days, which the Pierces' doctor says sets a record. It's a concept that has been around since the 1990s but is gaining traction as some fertility clinics and advocates, often Christian-centered, oppose discarding leftover embryos because of their belief that life begins at or around conception and that all embryos deserve to be treated like children who need a home. 'I felt all along that these three little hopes, these little embryos, deserved to live just like my daughter did,' said Linda Archerd, 62, who donated her embryos to the Pierces. Just about 2% of births in the U.S. are the result of in vitro fertilization , and an even smaller fraction involve donated embryos. However, medical experts estimate about 1.5 million frozen embryos are currently being stored throughout the country, with many of those in limbo as parents wrestle with what to do with their leftover embryos created in IVF labs. Further complicating the topic is a 2024 Alabama Supreme Court decision that said that frozen embryos have the legal status of children. State leaders have since devised a temporary solution shielding clinics from liability stemming from that ruling, though questions linger about remaining embryos. Archerd says she turned to IVF in 1994. Back then, the ability to freeze, thaw and transfer embryos was making key progress and opening the door for hopeful parents to create more embryos and increase their chances of a successful transfer. She wound up with four embryos and initially hoped to use them all. But after the birth of her daughter, Archerd and her husband divorced, disrupting her timeline for having more children. As the years turned into decades, Archerd said she was wracked with guilt about what to do with the embryos as storage fees continued to rise. Eventually, she found Snowflakes, a division of Nightlight Christian Adoptions, which offers open adoptions to donors from people like Archerd. She was also able to set preferences for what families would adopt her embryos. 'I wanted to be a part of this baby's life,' she said. 'And I wanted to know the adopting parents.' The process was tricky, requiring Archerd to contact her initial fertility doctor in Oregon and dig through paper records to get the proper documentation for the donation. The embryos then had to be shipped from Oregon to the Pierces' doctor in Tennessee. The clinic, Rejoice Fertility in Knoxville, refuses to discard frozen embryos and has become known for handling embryos stored in outdated and older containers. Of the three donated embryos the Pierces received from Archerd, one didn't make the thaw. Two were transferred to Lindsey Pierce's womb, but just one successfully implanted. According to Dr. John David Gordon, the transfer of the nearly 31-year-old embryo marks the longest-frozen embryo to result in a live birth. He would know: Gordon says his clinic assisted in the previous record, when Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway were born from embryos frozen for 30 years, or 10,905 days. 'I think that these stories catch the imagination,' Gordon said. 'But I think they also provide a little bit of a cautionary tale to say: Why are these embryos sitting in storage? You know, why do we have this problem?' In a statement, Lindsey and Tim Pierce said the clinic's support was just what they needed. 'We didn't go into this thinking about records — we just wanted to have a baby,' Lindsey Pierce said. For Archerd, the donation process has been an emotional roller coaster. Relief that her embryos finally found a home, sadness it couldn't be with her and a little anxiety about what the future holds next, with possibly meeting the Pierces and the baby in person. 'I'm hoping that they're going to send pictures,' she said, noting that the parents have already sent several after the birth. 'I'd love to meet them some day. That would be a dream come true to meet — meet them and the baby.' ___ This story has corrected the first name of Lindsey Pierce in the second paragraph.
