Cocaine, sleeping pills and darkness. The flip side of the NHL, from the confession of a former player freezes – ŠPORT.sk

Last year he published for the portal The Players Tribune an article in which he confided why he had ended his career. From a young age, he struggled with OCD, an obsessive-compulsive disorder. “It has affected my whole life, my career and everything in between. I had bad thoughts that pushed me to the dark corners of my mind, where I no longer knew who I was or what I wanted to be. And that led to what came next, “ Wilson explained his health problems at the beginning.

However, when he told the story last year, he was not completely open, he was hiding something. “I thought it wouldn’t make sense it wasn’t necessary, but I lied. The truth is… I was ashamed. The truth is, I was addicted. “ the 32-year-old American admitted.

The death of hockey player Jimmy Hayes, who died after a drug overdose this summer, led him to tell his story of addiction.

Wilson played eleven seasons in the NHL, the first eight in Nashville, then in Colorado, where he moved before the 2017/18 season. At that time, his problems began to worsen the most. “OCD has completely taken over my life. It made a deep hole in me, empty. I haven’t felt normally for a long time, “ describes his problems.

He couldn’t even talk to his friends normally at the time, he was terrified by the look in their eyes. He didn’t want to see their normalcy and therefore what he couldn’t be – a normal person. “I appreciated and was happy for the life of an NHL player, I really was. But it isolated me even more. ”

So he was looking for something to help him feel better. “When I was 20, I started taking sleeping pills, I couldn’t sleep without them. My career, mine all depended on sleeping pills. If I didn’t sleep, I wouldn’t even be able to play. But I wouldn’t call it addiction. ” The pills helped him function in a normal life, but he felt that it was not right.

He reached for another alternative when he was 22 years old trying marijuana. “I found something I had never felt before: normalcy. I remember how I wondered if everyone else felt that way. My OCD was in the background at those moments. I called marijuana my best friend. I really felt like when I was smoking, I was with a best friend I didn’t know I had. “

However, the marijuana could not save him from what was happening in his head. OCD increased, increased. The older he got, the worse it got.

COCAINE WAS EVERYWHERE

“See if I have to go. I have to be honest at this point. I feel like people don’t want to talk about it. But for me? Let’s talk about this. “ said Colin Wilson and then eloquently stated. “When I went out, I felt that cocaine was everywhere. It looked like someone always had cocaine when I went out in New York, Los Angeles or Vegas. ”

He tried it for the first time when he was 22 years old. Why did he go for it? “Like many others, I was a lost child who wanted to feel something. I wanted to feel what I needed to feel. It was there, right in front of me, it offered me control over my mind, my feelings, and only for that one night. “ In the beginning, he did not have cocaine often. Once a maximum of twice a year. But when he was 28, he took it every few weeks. “I was ruined that night. Because only during them I was able to feel something. “

“Cocaine or similar drugs won’t tell you that they will destroy years of connections in your brain in a matter of seconds. Chemical reactions that occur when we succeed, fall in love, or experience a great moment, cocaine triggers these reactions immediately.

He knocks on the button of good feeling and presses it a thousand times a minute. This button should be pressed a few times a week or a month. It will take our nature. “

In his case with OCD, he did not experience the mentioned feelings almost at all. “Cocaine made me feel like I was finally coming home. I finally felt what everyone else was feeling. Love. Life. The room. “

As is the rule in such cases, this also had a bad ending. For Wilson, it went too far. “I was so afraid that I would collapse because I took sleeping pills or Xanax to the club. I put them on before I went home so I could sleep. It was a terrible cocktail of drugs and alcohol, and I wondered if I would wake up in the morning. ”

One night it went so far that he wrote a message in case he didn’t wake up. “But I don’t remember doing it.”

“I was addicted. I was in the NHL, I scored goals, I played the Stanley Cup final, I lived my dream, but I was addicted and I didn’t even know I had a problem. “ He only went to the party once every few weeks, trying to tell himself that it wasn’t so bad. He knew not to take drugs for weeks.

“But I was afraid until I became, when it got dark, when my mind needed peace. It was a slow process, it was insidious. ” At some point he crossed the invisible line. “I could no longer find the light switch. I couldn’t suppress the feeling that I wanted to have something, that I wanted to be influenced. “

IT COULD BE THE LAST IN LIFE

In October 2018, another of the similar nights came, but it was exceptional in something, it was the last. He trained in the morning, but still couldn’t control himself. “I had everything. Alcohol, cocaine, sleeping pills, even more than before. I couldn’t control myself. My life, my mind, everything. I knew that light would come, darkness would pass, and hell would come in the morning. Hell.”

He could only describe that word the next morning. He had nothing for eight hours, but he still couldn’t see normally. In such a state, he went to the stadium. “I thought I would drop out. I decided that was enough. There was no alternative. I went to tell the coach everything, I went for help. ” But he didn’t make it. A few minutes before the start of the training, they announced that he would be voluntary. “I turned around and went straight home to bed.” He did not seek help that season and continued to fight with himself.

“Fortunately, I haven’t had a night like this anymore. And it was luck. Because I didn’t have control over myself that year, I haven’t had it in a long time. If another such night came. I don’t know, I really don’t know. I’m lucky I’m still here today. I know it. There are many people who have had such nights and are not here today. Addiction is a beast, a monster. “

Addiction is currently a major problem in the United States. “It’s a complicated problem, but we have to say that we have a crisis here. By the end of December, there will be more than 100,000 overdose deaths in the United States. Which is also the most common cause of death for people under 50 in the country. It doesn’t have to be that way. “

He calls for more to be said about this issue, so that it is not a social public secret. “Cocaine is one of the words that is not pronounced. They don’t talk in the office or in the cabin. ” There are many athletes who are going through similar problems and have nowhere to seek help.

Wilson was assisted by the NHL and the NHLPA. “They helped me a lot. They did a huge amount of work. I am very grateful to them, they have done a lot for many boys. But I think all leagues can do even more. “

He himself does not want his actions to be left to words. He therefore studies psychology and wants to help people with similar problems. “I hope you know this was not a bad man’s story. This was the story of someone who should know more about this issue. Someone who couldn’t find peace, ” he concluded, admitting that he himself was still in the process of learning, still working in his room.

Colin Wilson ended his NHL career in the 2019/20 season. He played 667 matches in the league with a balance of 130 goals and 189 assists, a total of 319 points.