Veteran NHLer reveals just how close he was to suicide in shocking new interview.

I covered this story at the time that the incident occurred and I must admit that I had no idea just how bad things were behind the scenes.

In a stunning new interview veteran National Hockey League forward Kyle Okposo has opened up about the traumatic experience that landed him in the neurosurgical intensive care unit of Buffalo General hospital. Although we knew at the time that his career was in jeopardy we had no idea just how dark things had gotten for Okposo during that traumatic time in his life. 

It all started when Okposo took what both he and the Sabres thought was a rather innocent and run of the mill hit during a Sabres practice, a hit that left him with a concussion that at the time went undiagnosed. Little did the Sabres or Okposo know that the concussion would go on to unlock a vault, one that contained memories of horrific childhood trauma that he had suffered, that he had buried in the deepest recesses of his mind, a vault that when opened left him in a manic state and unable to function.

Okposo was unable to sleep and stopped eating entirely shrinking back down to a weight he had last been at during his teenage years as his body struggled to cope with the lack of nutrition coming in. Worst of all however was that he began telling his wife that he was willing to hurt himself just so that he could get some peace and rest. This was no idle threat either it seems, Okposo's agent Pat Brisson, speaking with the permission of his client of course, revealed that Okposo was really prepared to take his own life.

“Kyle Okposo could have jumped off a frigging building,” said Brisson as per The Athletic.. “He could have ended it.”

For many of us the thought of an extremely successful professional athlete, a millionaire many times over, taking his life during the prime of his career, with a loving wife at home, with a beautiful 3 year old daughter and beautiful 1 year old boy sounds so foreign as to almost be unbelievable. That is however where Okposo found himself and he says it's an experience that opened both his eyes and his heart to the kind of suffering that so many others among us experience every day.

“My experience,” Kyle said, “made me really take a hard look at why people do things they do, why they fall into depression or isolate themselves or commit suicide or have suicidal thoughts.

It has taken Okposo 18 months to open up about the traumatic experience and frankly it may have been something that he never opened up about at all where it not for his desire to help people who find themselves in a similar situation. As a professional athlete Okposo has a megaphone that many people who have gone through similar experiences do not have, something that he appears to be very cognizant of.

“I want to use my platform to help people who don’t have an outlet or who don’t trust somebody enough to talk,” Kyle said. “I want people to think they can trust me, talk to me about whatever and know that I’ll do what I can to help them.

Okposo is now a spokesperson for an organization that deals with mental health and substance abuse in New York and I sincerely hope that his new found passion for helping others helps him find some peace and come to terms with the horrific experience he suffered just a little over a year ago.