Jenna Watson/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Indianapolis Colts tackle Braden Smith has revealed that he thought about committing suicide last season because of something called “religious scrupulosity OCD.” The rare mental health issue also caused him to miss playing in the final five games of the 2024 NFL season and almost led to his retirement from the sport.
Smith and his wife Courtney discussed how bad things got, and how they dealt with it, in a set of videos and interviews this week with IndyStar.com.
According to nOCD, “Religious (scrupulosity) OCD is a subtype of OCD that involves religious or moral obsessions and compulsions. People with scrupulosity OCD often experience intense anxiety or guilt about their perceived moral or religious thoughts, which leads them to perform compulsions to ‘correct’ or alleviate that anxiety.”
Things got so bad with Braden Smith that one day his wife told him she was changing the combination to the safe where the family keeps their guns and there were times where she couldn’t leave him at home alone with their 10-month-old son.
“I was physically present, but I was nowhere to be found,” Smith told IndyStar.com. “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.”
“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.’”
Road trips were difficult. Film study presented the same problems. By the end of the season, Smith wasn’t even able to sit through meetings because in a dark room without a chance to talk, his mind started wandering to even darker places. After the Colts beat the Bears in September to get their first win of the season, Smith said something that set off warning bells.
“He told me he was going to retire,” Courtney said. “We sat on the couch, we were across from each other, and he looked at me and he said, ‘If this doesn’t get better, I’m retiring after this year.’ And I was like, ‘This is not good,’ because I know that he loves to play football. … It was kind of that night that I started to freak out.”
Braden Smith ended up staying at an intensive mental health facility for 48 days, but even that didn’t fix things. It wasn’t until he went to Mexico and began treatment involving a psychoactive alkaloid compound called Ibogaine and a synthetic version of 5-MeO-DMT, another naturally occurring psychedelic that is produced in plants and the venom of certain toads, that he began to feel some relief.
When he returned to the United States, Smith began intensive, OCD-specific therapy to maintain his newfound mental health. “I still have OCD, but it doesn’t have a hold over me,” Smith said. “It doesn’t dictate my life.”
Smith is the second professional athlete to recently reveal his struggles with mental health and suicidal ideation. Boston Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran spoke about his battles in the upcoming Netflix series The Clubhouse: A Year With the Red Sox.
In the series, Duran admitted that things got so bad for him that he tried to kill himself in 2022, but for some reason his rifle didn’t fire when he pulled the trigger. “I took it as a sign of, ‘I might have to be here for a reason,'” he said.
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, remember that help is available. You can connect with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org.