October, 13, 2024
BOSTON GLOBE written by Gary Washburn
Despite a solid career that included the NBA Rookie of the Year Award in 2014 and three seasons as a double-digit scorer, Hamilton native Michael Carter-Williams knew that mentally, he was troubled. While Carter-Williams was with the Rockets in 2019, his fiancée left him and took their 7-month-old daughter. He was broken and lost, and had reached a low point.
“I went through my own mental health issues in my own life and it was something that was a struggle for me,” he told the Globe this past week. “I come from a background of my family that has depression and anxiety, and it affected me later on in my career to the point where I needed to reach out for some help.”
Carter-Williams, who turned 33 Thursday, is retired after playing parts of nine seasons in the NBA, including that Rookie of the Year with the 76ers. He has helped develop an app called NDUR for athletes, which offers mental health tips and resources to student-athletes, providing options to deal with issues such as anxiety, depression, and anger.
“I needed to get my mind right and I didn’t know what was going on,” Carter-Williams said about his revelation in 2019. “I didn’t know too much about anxiety. I didn’t know too much about depression. It was something I needed to look outside my normal bubble and get some help. And when I got help, I started to see those stretches of anxiety in other people and some of my teammates, and I would talk to them, ask them if everything is going OK off the court. My teammates would open up to me and we’d have real conversations, something that really lasts.”
Carter-Williams decided a few years ago to go public with his mental health struggles and recovery. “And by the time I retired, I wanted to put my story out there,” he said. “I feel like a lot of times people judge athletes off their performance on the court and that determines whether they are a good person or whether they like them or not. I wanted to share my story that people go through a lot of mental illness and I think people need to know about it. And I felt like if I shared my story other athletes would feel comfortable coming out and either getting help or sharing their story, as well.”
People other than athletes reached out to Carter-Williams and said they related to his story and experienced the same issues. A week after his fiancée left, Carter-Williams was traded to the Bulls and then immediately released. He admits he was using drugs and alcohol to deaden the pain.
“I was really low,” he said. “I didn’t leave my bed for days. Kind of really didn’t know what to do in my life, which direction to go. I was looking for any kind of help I could get. Never been released on a team before and then going through my fiancée and the baby, that was a really, really rough time for me and I knew at that point I am not right mentally. I was using certain things I shouldn’t have been using. I didn’t recognize myself.”
Acknowledging he had a problem was difficult. Carter-Williams beat long odds to reach the NBA. He earned $23 million in his career. He was still a serviceable backup guard. What could be wrong? “It was hard because as an professional athlete, comparatively, life is, I wouldn’t say easier but smoother,” he said. “I was a McDonald’s All-American, I went to a Division 1 college, I spent two years there and I went to the NBA and I’m making all this money, living a dream, and I’m looked at as a person of a certain stature. It was hard to feel those emotions and be like, right now it seems I’m not who I was my whole life.”
Carter-Williams’s first step was hiring a therapist and a psychiatrist, and he began to find answers to his issues, as well was coping mechanisms. “I was having anxiety attacks at the time, so I was in pretty bad shape,” he said. “Feeling when those attacks are coming, what are the techniques that I’m going to use for the rest of my life? Just finding different [ways] in my life to live a healthy lifestyle and make sure my mind was right was the biggest key.”
After Houston, Carter-Williams played parts of four seasons with Orlando. He finished his career on his own terms, mentally healthier, a devoted family man, and at peace with himself.
“The biggest thing for me was to get myself right and find changes in myself,” he said. “I think the people around me could see that and that led me to get a second chance with people in my life. That was the biggest thing for me. I know I could change myself and really get right mentally and show people what my values are and live that life. Ultimately that was the factor for me trying to fix everything. The more you’re right in your mind, the better off you’re going to be.”
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