Hardships are not foreign to champions like Phil Heath who grew up underprivileged, shifted careers, and almost lost hopes of making it further before nabbing his opportunity. However, he admitted to almost reaching his brink once before he saved himself from the darkest of thoughts. In a recent interview with Jake Humphrey and Prof. Damian Hughes, he came clean on battling depression.
Heath was well on his way to becoming a basketball star despite his 5’9 height which made him question his NBA dreams. However, things came crashing down when basketball didn’t work out for him despite his athletic scholarship at the University of Denver. This sent him down on a spiral of dark thoughts that he remembers to date.
Speaking to the hosts on how he felt dealing with the feeling of reluctantly accepting his fate and looking for other opportunities, he admitted that he even tried distracting himself with various activities. Heath recalled how he would run around on the campus or resort to alcohol to drown the pain.
Probably the worst part of it all was how he didn’t feel comfortable enough to share his pain. Heath admitted that while he didn’t have friends or family to talk about his struggles with, he also didn’t feel comfortable sharing his pain with his coaches. His grief had nowhere to go, and he ultimately gave in to his vices.
“I just ultimately felt like they didn’t give a s**t. So I decided to, you know, think about death and suicide…I was definitely into alcohol, and not drugs or anything, but just more of that and that brought a lot of nasty demons out.”
Heath, however, quickly realized that coping with alcohol wouldn’t go as expected, with many of his family members indulging in the same. But then, he ultimately made a move that almost ended it all for him.
“And when I was, you know, wanting to commit suicide, laying in the street, hoping that someone would run me over… that’s pretty sad.”
But that one moment where he almost lost his life changed his attitude towards it forever. Heath was not just grateful for surviving and pulling through but also found a new window open up in one of his business classes.
Phil Heath once confessed how Ronnie Coleman started it all
Since basketball wasn’t an option anymore, Heath realized that he still had his scholarship to vouch for and access to education. Coming from an underprivileged background, the former bodybuilder confessed that he lucked out in terms of his studies and academic opportunities. But it wasn’t until an odd day in his IT lecture that he saw his bodybuilding dreams manifest.
In a fun workout video with former Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman, he admitted that he wanted to be a bodybuilder because of him. He saw a picture of Coleman on his neighboring computer and was so intrigued about the physique and muscles that he decided his career trajectory right then and there. The rest was history, and Heath went on to win seven consecutive Mr. Olympia titles before hanging up his posing trunks.
