Athletes and Identity Loss: How Olympians Cope With Life After Injury

Beth Rush

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Olympians are the best athletes in the world. They devote every minute of every day to their chosen sport, sacrificing much of their personal lives in the pursuit of success. But they face constant pressure from fans, peers and media, which takes a toll on their mental well-being.

So what happens when an injury puts them out of competition? How do Olympic athletes cope with injury when it unravels years of hard work and dedication?

Sports as an Identity

In order to appreciate the mental toll an injury can take on a high-level athlete, it’s essential to understand what their sport truly means to them. For most people, sports are hobbies that keep them in decent shape. For Olympic athletes, their sport is their entire life — they don’t have time to pursue other interests.

Becoming a professional athlete didn’t always take this kind of commitment. Just a few decades ago, they could take entire months off and still compete at a high level. Today, there is no offseason. They have to train year-round to remain at the top of their profession, which ironically increases the risk of injury because their bodies can’t sustain the volume and intensity.

While it’s much better for an athlete’s overall health to play multiple sports and get adequate rest time, Olympians can’t afford to do these things. They have to tolerate the physical and mental “burnout” from doing the same thing over and over again. Even if they don’t always enjoy it, they must follow their training regimen.

You have to be an addict in every sense of the word to reach the Olympic level. When elite athletes suffer significant injuries, they often show many of the same withdrawal symptoms as recovering drug or alcohol addicts:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Irritability
• Insomnia
• Mood swings
• Loss of appetite
• Suicidal thoughts

Injuries are also so mentally traumatic for elite athletes because it makes them feel guilty for letting their loved ones down. Former NFL player George Koonce poetically described his experience with a career-ending injury — “Your family buys into it, your friends buy into it, the alums from your college buy into it. And then it is gone. You are gone.”

Identity Loss By the Numbers

Athletes have different anecdotal experiences when recovering from injuries. Some of them bounce back despite the physical and psychological anguish, but the odds aren’t in their favour. Even at the high school and college levels, athletes are more prone to many issues than the average person:

• 7.3% of student-athlete deaths are by suicide.
• 45% of male team sport athletes reported having anxiety and depression.
• 60% of female athletes reported body shaming pressure from coaches.
• 79% of collegiate athletes sleep less than 8 hours per night.
• 11% of high school athletes use narcotic painkillers by the time they reach their senior year.
• 6.3% of collegiate student athletes meet the criteria of clinically significant depression.
• 21% of student athletes who experienced depression also abused alcohol while in school.
• 30% of undergraduate student athletes reported feeling so depressed that they could barely function.

As you can see, many athletes resort to desperate measures to cope with their stress. They don’t even have to suffer an injury to attempt suicide or start abusing harmful substances — high-functioning depression is rampant. These are the unfortunate results of young people being overwhelmed by the demands of their sports.

Filling the Void

Despite an Olympic athlete’s hectic schedule, they still love the sports they play. They derive a satisfying sense of purpose and feel a spike in their neurological systems that is impossible to replicate outside elite competition. When an injury takes this indescribable rush away, they need something to fill the void.

Here are some common substances athletes start using to cope with injuries:

• Alcohol: Alcohol is the most readily available substance, affecting millions of athletes. Some have even reported drinking alcohol before and after games to deal with physical and mental pain.

• Adderall: Adderall is a prescription drug meant to treat ADHD, but many athletes abuse it to control their fatigue and avoid putting on weight.

• Cocaine: Athletes often use cocaine during rehabilitation to improve their focus and shed excess poundage. Since the “high” doesn’t last very long, it’s easy to binge the drug and become addicted.

• Opioids: Almost 20% of people have used illicit drugs at least one time in their lives. Specifically, prescription opioids like Vicodin, OxyContin and morphine are highly addictive. Many athletes who start using these drugs during recovery never stop taking them.
• Anabolic Steroids: Even when they’re sidelined due to injury, athletes still take anabolic steroids in the hopes of accelerating their recovery and getting back to 100%.

In the most extreme cases, athletes lose their battles with physical and mental trauma and resort to suicide. There have been a total of 184 confirmed Olympian suicides since 1900. The sports they played varied from boxing to bobsledding, which shows the mental health trend isn’t exclusive to a handful of sports.

A Shining Example: Former Olympian Picabo Street

Former gold medalist American skier Picabo Street’s story shows how Olympic athletes cope with injury. She suffered brutal injuries to both legs at the 1998 Winter Olympics, putting her out of competition for 20 months. During her recovery period, she experienced severe depression and thought about committing suicide often.

”I think it was a combination of the atrophying of my legs, the new scars, and feeling like a caged animal,” Street said. ”I went from being a very physical person, a very powerful athlete, to barely having any strength to get from my room to the kitchen. You’re stuck and you can’t do what you normally do and it makes you crazy.”

Street’s family members said she locked herself in her room for weeks, not socializing with anyone or even turning the lights on. This coping mechanism is better than taking drugs or alcohol, but it still shows how much anguish Olympians go through when an injury derails their careers.

Street eventually returned to professional skiing but never reached the medal podium again. She retired at age 30 after finishing 16th overall in downhill skiing at the 2002 Winter Olympics. Street’s recovery story is one of the milder endings. Many of her Olympian counterparts weren’t so lucky.

Olympic Athletes Are Humans, Too

Olympic athletes sacrifice their physical, mental, and social well-being to reach the top of their respective sports. When their only sense of purpose gets taken away, there is the risk that they will fill the void with drugs, alcohol, and sometimes suicide. They might have superior athletic abilities, but at the end of the day, they’re human, just like anyone else.

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Featured image courtesy of Jonathan Chng on Unsplash. Image license can be found here. No changes were made to this image.