
Michael Phelps Says He Contemplated Suicide After 2012 Olympics - danso
https://www.si.com/olympics/2018/01/19/michael-phelps-anxiety-depression-suicide
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devit
I think it might be due to the fact that after you accomplish something that
you really wanted for quite a while and/or that you prepared a lot for, you
can end up realizing that while it was a great achievement, you are still the
same person with the same habits and issues, and that the achievement doesn't
really change anything outside that part of your life, and sometimes there is
also no reason to think you can replicate the achievement itself. And then you
realize that you are objectively really lucky and can't even properly
appreciate and enjoy it, and that brings you down even more.

Even people who never had any great achievements can experience it with sex:
sometimes you are alone for a while, and think how amazing it would be to have
sex with someone, thinking about all sorts of happy feelings you'd have and
how you would be happier overall and so on. Then you have a one night stand,
and it's good, but you realize it hasn't really changed anything, that a
relationship might not necessarily work out, that you are not necessarily
going to be able to repeat it, then think about how you got exactly what
wanted and that many other people would have really wanted to have your
experience, and yet you can't appreciate it like you think you should.

I think the solution is partly to accept it, and just let your expectations
about the happiness related to those achievements go down, and also trying to
focus on achievements that have lasting effects, mainly those that involve
getting wealthier or healthier, and finally trying to have a more balanced
life, relying less on high-impact random once-in-a-while experiences and more
on habitual routine experiences, although it can be hard to find the
motivation for that for some people.

~~~
rurban
This theory is quite off, as most extremely successful sports heros lead a
happy (and mostly drunk) afterlife as celebrity.

You either having problems with the celeb status, or more likely the constant
cheating (doping) is hitting at your morale. They can always find you years
after. Esp after upper management shakeups. As we saw with many confirmed
dopers. I would certainly look more into that angle.

~~~
brokenmachine
You could be right, but I can see how something that you have dedicated your
entire life to, with much fanfare, riches and congratulation, coming to an end
could make you feel directionless and depressed.

------
Rainymood
What a beautiful and moving story, in my honest opinion. I think this will
mean a lot of people that are struggling with these feelings and look up to
Michael Phelps. I think this is awesome just like when Tim Cook "officially"
came out as gay. For most people it doesn't mean anything, but for those
internally struggling with this myriad of conflicting feelings it might be the
difference between life and death.

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hkmurakami
Phelps had been outspoken about his bouts with depression for several years
now. (It's too late in the night for me to look for links, but I've personally
read 4 or 5 articles regarding this subject)

I find hope in a "heroic" public persona bringing the condition the awareness
and communal acknowledgement and support it desperately needs.

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shoover
_" Really, after every Olympics I think I fell into a major state of
depression," Phelps said._

Bruce Springsteen talks a lot about his depression in his memoir and it sounds
like this, dropping off a cliff when returning home after tours. It is super
helpful that celebrities speak out so people can relate, but I think
performers whose lives are so intensively oriented to performances and then
abruptly return to home life rhythms have special needs when it comes to
mental health and making sense of their lives. Most of us don’t have such
extreme highs.

~~~
satiespickles
One of the best set of podcast episodes I ever heard (there are many great
podcasts out there, but this is one of them) was on Heavyweight.

It's about one of Jonathan Goldstein's friends (Gregor) who is trying to
retrieve a CD set of Alan Lomax recordings from ... Moby, of all people.

This podcast is brilliant to me because, while it somehow manages to be
comically absurd, it also raises all sorts of issues about success and credit
and how it is achieved, and what worth that actually has. The Lomax
recordings, for example, were arguably central to Play as an album, and it was
Gregor that introduced Moby to them. So although Gregor just wants his CDs
back, by the end of it, a lot of issues are raised about how much credit
Gregor really deserves for Play, and Moby's resulting success from that album.
Gregor himself isn't looking for financial compensation or anything, but you
kind of start to wonder if Moby should have done more for him interpersonally
or something, or in terms of acknowledgements and introductions and something,
if nothing else as a friend.

But then you meet Moby, and you find out he was severely depressed after the
album came and went, because he's realized he's been one fad in a stream of
fads, and that a lot of the issues he had in his life weren't going to be
addressed by the fame. But then again, he's sitting in this really nice house,
and doing pretty well for himself, and he still doesn't give the CDs back to
Gregor, and dodges the issue almost entirely, other than to say they're locked
in an archive somewhere that Gregor can't get to.

I'm approaching a point in my career and age where I'm looking back and myself
and looking at others, and starting to feel like a lot of success is just
luck, or chance, or coincidence, or something like that. Not all of it, but
more than we give it credit. I also feel like it operates in these subtle,
cumulative sorts of ways. I'm also frustrated because it seems like people go
through these contortions of hindsight bias and selection bias and all sorts
of other things to justify these things post hoc, or that discussions become
distorted.

For example, Phelps is a great swimmer and I don't mean to suggest he doesn't
deserve his medals. I also don't want to suggest that Moby lacks talent or
something. But what if Gregor hadn't shared those Lomax recordings with him?
Would Gregor's career been different if Moby had actually shown thanks to
Gregor, by forging connections for him, etc.?

I have a mentor and friend who is wildly successful in their career, at the
top of what's achievable in that field, and well within the top 1% income-
wise. At one point, for various reasons, especially because of their spouse,
they moved to a position with a different organization. To me it seemed like a
great fit. This friend had entertained other moves, that never seemed right to
me, but this one seemed right. In the end, though, it killed his productivity,
and he stopped being able to do much of anything, just because differences in
culture and fit at the two institutions. He got out of it and returned to
where he started his career, and things became ok again, but I've often
wondered what would have happened if he had started at the second place he
worked at. I have a strong suspicion people would have attributed whatever
happened to him to him, rather than his circumstances or fit, and I'm not sure
he would have had a point of comparison to know enough that he would do better
someplace else (after all, everyone thought the move was a kind of win-win-win
for everyone involved, when it turned out to be the opposite).

~~~
turndown
Would you happen to have a link to the podcast episode?

EDIT:

A good article on the podcast can be found here[1]. The podcast itself can be
found here[2]. Because I just listened to this song for the first time in a
while, here is my favorite song by Moby[3].

1\. [http://www.vinylmeplease.com/magazine/moby-best-podcast-
ever...](http://www.vinylmeplease.com/magazine/moby-best-podcast-ever/)

2\.
[https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/heavyweight?selected=GLT174...](https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/heavyweight?selected=GLT1741636493)

3\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d9SgRtEkBo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d9SgRtEkBo)

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jotm
What's interesting is that apparently no one is safe from depression. Here is
Phelps, an accomplished man by any means, saying he was thinking of suicide.

I always think "if I do this, if I do that, it will all get better". It does,
for a while. I've changed my surroundings and life several times, used all the
drugs, but depression always comes back. You have to just learn to live with
it. Weird stuff.

~~~
jbrooksuk
Look at Robin Williams.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Just to clarify, whilst Robin Williams was known for suffering with
depression, it was supposedly an unrelated illness that drove him to suicide.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/lewy-body-
dem...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/lewy-body-dementia-the-
disease-that-killed-robin-williams/)

~~~
brokenmachine
I heard an interview with Bobcat Goldthwait who is a good friend of Robin, and
he said that Robin was losing touch with reality at times, probably due to the
Lewy Body Dementia.

------
dbg31415
It would be so nice to live in a world where we could actually talk openly
about mental health, without fear of repercussions.

~~~
acjohnson55
I think we're slowly making progress. I'm even hearing more about mental
health in the hip hop world, which has long been a scene where vulnerability
is risky.

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goldenkey
I'd say the huge difference for Michael Phelps is that he has no obstacles in
his way in seeing a psychiatrist. The rest of us have to worry about our
health insurance, drug insurance, transportation, time off, etc.. I am not
demeaning Mr. Phelps - I just want to make the point-- that seeing a
psychiatrist regularly can make all the difference in mental health and state
of being.

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Dowwie
Stay hyper focused on the present and achieve a flow state with your work. Do
this for a prolonged period of time and you can accomplish great things. But,
eventually you'll return to reality and find that your main skill to cope with
anxiety is impractical in that it requires complete, devoted focus on a task
at hand -- essentially putting issues on the back burner but never really
taking them off.

It seems like Phelps had his moment of reckoning with his back burner issues
in 2012 but he seems to have developed more emotional skills to deal with
them. Good for him!

~~~
zxcmx
Yep, and for the millions of people who can't statistically be outliers we
have to figure out how to live with being normal.

That means living with not being rich or famous or actually being particularly
good at anything on a global scale.

Phelps was supported by a society that brought him burritos and clean towels
and factory workers who made swimming caps and if he has stuff to teach all of
us regular people about depression I think that's good to hear.

