Colts OT Braden Smith reveals battle with OCD, which included contemplating suicide
Content warning: This story contains references to suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide and needs support now, call or text 988 or chat with the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988lifeline.org.
In the second half of last season, the Indianapolis Colts placed veteran offensive tackle Braden Smith in the reserve/non-football illness list due to what was described as a personal matter. No other details were provided.
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Months later, Smith and his wife Courtney revealed what he was dealing with.
In an interview with The Indianapolis Star, the couple said Braden was diagnosed with a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) so severe that he contemplated suicide, struggling to function with both football and family:
'I was physically present, but I was nowhere to be found,' Smith said in an exclusive interview with IndyStar, explaining for the first time the nature of the personal reasons that caused him to miss the Colts' final five games. 'I did not care about playing football. I didn't care about hanging out with my family, with my wife, with my newborn son. … I (felt like) was a month away from putting a bullet through my brain.'
Smith reportedly suffers from a form of OCD called religious scrupulosity, which he described as an obsession with his Christian faith so severe that he agonized over every potential sin and felt a sense of impending doom over them.
'There's the actual, real, true, living God,' Smith said. 'And then there's my OCD god, and the OCD god is this condemning (deity). It's like every wrong move you make, it's like smacking the ruler against his hand. 'Another bad move like that and you're out of here.''
The Smiths reportedly got baptized last May, but Braden's case only worsened to the point where he was incapable of focusing in film study and told Courtney he was planning to retire. After speaking with the Colts, he was placed on an antidepressant and a mood booster and given time to go to therapy sessions.
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Braden reportedly worsened to the point that Courtney changed the combination to their gun safe and avoided leaving him alone with their 10-month-old son, Wyatt. The next step was to check him into an intensive mental health facility in Colorado, but he only made minimal progress.
Braden Smith dealt with something far more serious than football last year. (Photo by Bailey Hillesheim/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
The turning point was reportedly when the couple learned about a psychedelic called ibogaine, a substance banned in the United States as a Schedule I drug. The drug was administered as part of a five-day treatment in Tijuana, Mexico and Braden described the experience as intense:
'Ibogaine, it legitimately resets your brain,' Smith said. 'Imagine your brain as a ski slope, and you create all these grooves, from all these trails that you're going on, and they keep getting deeper and deeper and deeper. Those are the habits that we create, and over time, like, it's not going to be possible to create a new trail, because that one is so deep. Ibogaine literally will clear off those, like, the receptors in your brain.'
The treatment reportedly worked as well the Smiths could have hoped. Braden felt like he had a "blank slate" mentally and underwent three hours of OCD-specific treatment per day for two weeks, and is still doing one session per week.
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He said he no longer does compulsive prayers and recently received a mild 12 out of 40 on the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale, after previously scoring a severe 28. He reportedly intends to return to the Colts, who continued to pay him while he was on the reserve list and helped get him support he needed.
Indianapolis reportedly restructured Smith's contract over the offseason from $16.75 million in salary to $8 million with $3 million in incentives. He has been a member of the team since it selected him in the second round of the 2018 NFL Draft.
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