INDIANAPOLIS – The “personal issues’’ that kept Bradon Smith away from the Indianapolis Colts last season flowed deep and took him to a foreboding place.
The veteran right tackle and devoted husband and father was dealing with religious scrupulosity, a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Smith and his wife Courtney opened up to Indy Star’s Joel A. Erickson about an internal battle Smith was close to losing, and how he found his way out of the darkness.
Smith’s internal battle
“I was physically present, but I was nowhere to be found,’’ Braden told Erickson in an exclusive interview. “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.’’
Courtney knew something was wrong with her husband, and that was driven home the day before last Thanksgiving.
Smith’s day had started routinely with breakfast at the Indiana Farm Bureau Football Center. But he suddenly returned home to take a nap. After talking with Michael Perrett, Smith’s agent, Courtney checked in on her husband.
She knew at a glance he needed immediate help.
Her thoughts: “He’s not there,’’ Courtney told IndyStar regarding Braden’s condition. “There was no coming back.’’
Smith had started the first 12 games of the season, including the Nov. 17 road trip against the New York Jets.
That was the end of Smith’s 2024 football season, but the beginning of a long road back on a personal and family level. The journey went from Colorado to Mexico and involved a pair of psychedelic drugs that “reset’’ his brain.
The Colts had helped at working Smith’s therapy sessions around his football schedule during the ’24 season and getting him the necessary medication. They even altered his film study since he had difficulty sitting for an extended period in a room.
But there was a limit to the team’s impact, even considering its sensitivity to mental health through the Irsay family’s Kicking the Stigma initiative.
Everything was “very temporary,’’ Braden said. “It’s like I’m getting hit with a sledgehammer, essentially, with all these different things going on.’’
After Braden considered his options, which included medication, daily therapy sessions and checking into a mental health facility, Courtney weighed in.
“I’m looking at you,’’ she told him. “I think you need to go to a facility.’’
Courtney had shown Braden the level of her concern by changing the combination to the safe where the family kept their firearms. She already was reluctant to leave her husband at home alone with 10-month-old son Wyatt.
In early December, Braden checked into an intensive mental health facility in Colorado and spent 48 days dealing with his OCD. At some point, he was diagnosed with religious scrupulosity.
According to the International OCD Foundation, scrupulosity involves religious or moral obsessions. Individuals are overly concerned that a thought or deed might be a sin or other violation of religious or moral doctrine. They might worry about what their thoughts or behavior mean about who they are as a person.
Smith, a devout individual, conceded his internal battle was intensifying.
“There’s the actual, real, true, living God,’’ he said. “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.’
“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.’’
Despite what was truly bothering him, Braden had made only minimal progress after his 48-day day at the Colorado facility. According to IndyStar, he still scored a 28 out of 40 on the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale. That’s in the “severe’’ range.
The next step might have been the most significant.
Courtney learned of ibogaine treatment from her father, who had heard about it from an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” while Braden had had firsthand information from another patient at the Colorado facility.
“It’s a very hopeless feeling,’’ Braden said of his condition. “And that’s kind of where the ibogaine comes in. This was like the last-ditch effort for me.’’
Ibogaine is a plant-derived psychedelic alkaloid that’s a Schedule I drug and illegal in the United States.
IndyStar noted a Stanford University study published in Nature Medicine last year showed ibogaine reduces PTSD, anxiety and depression. It also improves function in veterans with traumatic brain injury (TBI). The Stanford study mentioned veterans have been crossing the border into Mexico for ibogaine treatment.
Braden followed suit. He flew to San Diego on Jan. 28 and was driven to Tijuana the next day for a five-day stay. The treatment included one day of ibogaine and a second day with another psychedelic, 5-MeO-DMT.
“Ibogaine legitimately resets your brain,’’ Braden said. “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.
“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.’’
At the end of the treatment, Braden was in a much better place.
After returning to the United States, he began intense OCD therapy three hours a day for two weeks. That’s been tapered down to once a week.
“I don’t do compulsive prayers at all anymore,’’ Braden 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.’’
Upon conclusion of his intensive OCD therapy, Braden tested 12 out of 40 on the Yale-Brown scale. That’s considered “mild.’’
“I still have OCD,’’ he said, “but it doesn’t have a hold on me. It doesn’t dictate my life.’’
Back to football
Braden’s long journey has him back where he belongs from a career standpoint. He’s the projected starting right tackle for the team that selected him in the second round of the 2018 draft.
During the NFL Scouting Combine, general manager Chris Ballard revealed, “He’s in a great spot.’’
Braden agreed.
“I wasn’t here last year,’’ he 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.’’
Smith agreed to revise his 2025 base salary, lowering it from $16.75 million to $8 million with the opportunity to earn an additional $11 million through incentives.
Courtney and Braden will do whatever possible to assist others with mental health issues.
“People ask me, ‘Is he better than when he left, is he the same, is this back to normal?’’’ Courtney said. “And I’m like, ‘This isn’t normal, this isn’t back to normal.’
“This is a very intentional version of Braden that he’s never really been before. I think this is exactly who he’s meant to be, who he’s always wanted to be.’’
You can follow Mike Chappell on Twitter at @mchappell51.