from Colin White Wilson at The Players' Tribune,

I wasn’t fully honest with you.

When I shared my story here last year, I was holding something back.

I opened up about my OCD. My retirement from hockey. My successes and my failures. But I left something out. And I justified it in my head because I didn’t want it to dilute my message — or my goal to help people. I told myself it wouldn’t make sense, that it wasn’t necessary. But I was lying to myself. The truth is … man, the truth is simple: I was ashamed. Deeply ashamed. I held it close, scared of what people might think of me.

The truth is, I was an addict.

And when I saw the story in the The Boston Globe about Jimmy Hayes’ autopsy, everything that I’d suppressed about my own addiction came flooding into my mind. I’m two-and-a-half years sober — and in a way, I guess, I thought I had beat it. But you never beat it. You just live with it. And what happened to Jimmy … it could have happened to any of us. It could have happened to me.

I texted his dad and his wife, Kristen, the morning that article came out, and I let them know how powerful it was — how brave they were to share what they did. I’ve known Jimmy since I was 16, and he was a great, great person. Everyone cared about him so much. I can’t speak highly enough of the Hayes family. They are all great people. And I know they want to help, just like I do. Because we’re in the middle of a massive opioid and mental health crisis. Those two things are inherently connected. And I believe the first step toward change is honesty and vulnerability.

I let myself down the last time I did this. I won’t do it again.

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