Right tackle Braden Smith will be back with the Indianapolis Colts this season, something which seemed far from being possible just five months ago.
Smith missed the final five games of the regular season with what the Colts deemed personal reasons. Smith revealed to the Indianapolis Star on Tuesday he was coping with a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) called religious scrupulosity.
“There’s the actual, real, true, living God. And then there’s my OCD god, and the OCD god is this condemning (deity),” Smith explained to the Star. “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.’
“There was only one person that was ever perfect, and that was Jesus. When you’re trying to live up to that standard, actually live that out, it’ll drive you nuts.”
Smith said he was close to contemplating suicide — “I was a month away from putting a bullet in my brain” — before his wife, Courtney, insisted he get help when Smith returned home quickly one day after leaving for practice.
“He’s not there,” Courtney Smith recalled. “There was no coming back.”
Braden Smith attended a mental health facility in Colorado, which diagnosed his condition but did little in the way of curing him.
Smith then headed to Mexico for treatment with the psychedelic drug ibogaine, which is illegal in the United States. From there, it was back home and OCD therapy. What Smith called a “last-ditch effort” pulled him out of the crevasse.
“I don’t do compulsive prayers at all anymore,” he said. “I don’t do the replacing the good with the bad. If I have a bad thought, it’s just like, ‘OK, that’s one of many thoughts.’ I’ll just move on with my day and don’t let it affect me.
“I still have OCD, but it doesn’t have a hold over me. It doesn’t dictate my life.”
Instead, his life has turned back to football.
Smith, a third-round pick by the Colts in 2018 who has played in 94 games (92 starts), signed a new deal for 2025 which lowers both his base salary and cap hit.
However, money is the least of his concerns. Being back on the field in 2025 was important after all he’d gone through.
“I wasn’t here last year,” Smith said. “I was physically here, but I wasn’t. I want to be me again here, and I want the people around me to experience that, because I do feel like I do have something to offer the people around me.”
