The Colts’ decision to put offensive lineman Braden Smith on the non-football injury list in December didn’t go unnoticed, but the illness was not mentioned.
Now, we know what was afflicting the starting right tackle.
As Joel A. Erickson of the Indianapolis Star writes, Smith suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
“I was physically present, but I was nowhere to be found,” Smith told Erickson. “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 I] was a month away from putting a bullet through my brain.”
Smith described the torment he felt from the disease in dark, Biblical terms.
“There’s the actual, real, true, living God. 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.’”
After a 48-day stay at a facility in Colorado, Smith went to Mexico for further Ibogaine treatment.
“Ibogaine, it legitimately resets your brain,” Smith told the Star. “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.”
Though it cost him the final five games of the season, Smith succeeded in downgrading his OCD from severe to mild and returned to the Colts.
“Getting Braden Smith back, and he’s in a great spot,” Colts G.M. Chris Ballard told Erickson. “I think people forget how good Braden is.”
Smith has spent the entirety of his seven-year career with the Colts after being drafted in the second round of the 2018 NFL Draft.
