NFL news: Colts’ Braden Smith talks mental health battles during 2024 season

This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Indianapolis Colts right tackle Braden Smith battled against more than just opposing edge-rushers last season. 

Smith, 29, was fighting a war within his head and missed the last five games of the Colts season. He was placed on the reserve/non-football illness list. 

Smith was eventually diagnosed with religious scrupulosity by a psychiatrist. Religious scrupolosity is a form of OCD that is characterized as obsessive thoughts and compulsions focused on religious themes, such as sin, God and the person’s religious practices.

“There’s the actual, real, true, living God,” Smith told the Indy Star. “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.’”

“I was physically present, but I was nowhere to be found, 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.”

When Smith had a bad thought, he would immediately respond with a compulsive prayer or internal statement of devotion. 

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Smith was taking medication and participating in daily therapy sessions, but they only offered temporary relief. 

Right before Thanksgiving, Smith’s wife, Courtney, gave him a choice. 

He could either continue with the medications and daily therapy sessions, or step away from football and check into an intensive mental health facility to tackle the issue. 

Smith knew it was time to step away. 

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Smith then checked into a facility in Colorado, planning to stay for four weeks.

Instead, he was there for 48 days, but not much progress was made. 

“It’s a very hopeless feeling,” Smith said. “And that’s kind of where the Ibogaine comes in. This was like the last-ditch effort for me.”

Ibogaine is a psychoactive indole alkaloid that is known for its psychedelic effects and is illegal in the United States.

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“Ibogaine, it legitimately resets your brain,” Smith told the paper. “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.”

During his trip to Mexico to try Ibogaine, Smith took a different psychedelic that yielded positive results. He took the synthetic version of 5-MeO-DMT, which is a naturally occurring psychedelic produced in plants and seen in some toads’ venom.

After he took 5-MeO-DMT, Smith felt he was back in touch with the real God, and was intimately one with Him. It seemed the demons were being exorcised, and he no longer felt beholden to the OCD god. 

“I still have OCD, but it doesn’t have a hold over me,” Smith said. “It doesn’t dictate my life.”

The Colts look forward to getting Smith back in the fold on the playing field. 

“Getting Braden Smith back, and he’s in a great spot,” Colts general manager Chris Ballard said, via the Indy Star. “I think people forget how good Braden is.”

Smith has spent his entire seven-year career with the Colts after they took him with their second-round pick in the 2018 NFL Draft out of Auburn.

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