YORKTON - When you are a sports fan, and a journalist doing a regular column you tend to read a lot of books on sport.
And, when I first cracked the cover of The Save of My Life: My Journey Out of the Dark Kindle Edition from Collins Publisher by Corey Hirsch and Sean Patrick Conboy, I was expecting a look inside Hirsch’s career in hockey.
Well there is a glimpse of that career, but this is not really about the game. It is about a much bigger and far more important topic – mental health.
Yes, Hirsch had a pretty solid NHL career, but it might have been a truly outstanding one if he has not fought mental health issues his entire time playing for teams such as the New York Rangers and Vancouver Canucks, but that’s enough about hockey, this is more important.
“I am about to drive my car off this cliff,” is the first line of the book.
“I am going to end my life.
“I am past the point of thinking about it. It’s done. I don’t even have the energy to ask why anymore. There is only how. How can I make this pain go away? How can I escape from the prison of my own mind? How can I stop these ceaseless thoughts? This bottomless, bottomless, bottomless darkness. This infinite loop, loop, loop, loop, loop, loop, loop, loop, loop, loop, loop, loop, loop that is my broken brain.
“I don’t want to actually die—not really. Not rationally. Not if I had a choice to live a normal life. But at this point, I can’t stop the thoughts. They won’t negotiate with me. They don’t respond to my tears or my begging. They don’t listen to me. They just scream at me. They will not, will not, will not, will not, will not willnotwillnotwillnotwillnot stop.
“They tell me. You are a monster. You are worthless. You are broken. You are sick. Sicksicksicksicksicksicksick.”
By this point I was cringing. I was unsettled. I honestly wasn’t sure how to react.
This book is a very frank, raw, smash you in the face telling of a story by a man who came with a few dozen feet of going over that cliff, and it’s not a pleasant trip.
Hirsch said he is keenly aware the story is edgy.
“It’s intense. I know that,” he said in a recent interview, adding he also knew “. . . it was going to be powerful.”
Hirsch has OCD (Obsessive-compulsive disorder) which many think of as having a compulsion to wash their hands, or repeatedly turn a light switch on and off, or have their desk just a certain way. But, OCD has other forms, and for Hirsch it is thoughts of things always about to go very wrong.
It is a condition that threatens lives if not treated.
“Most of my friends with OCD have made at least one attempt on their life,” said Hirsch.
Now through treatment Hirsch is on a more even keel, the broken mind not ever fully healed, but he has found a regime that allows him to function.
While Hirsch finally opened up and found hope, he said many still do not.
“Mental health issues can be deadly . . . We need to educate people,” he said.
That is why Hirsch decided to tell his story.
“I believe through hockey I have a platform,” he said, adding he realized years ago it was time someone wrote about the condition, to show help does exist.
Hirsch said he keenly recalls when he was “feeling lost” and went looking for help going to the library hoping there was a book that would point him to the help he needed. There wasn’t, and he promised himself then if he survived he would write one.
“I said I would make sure something was out there that people can latch onto . . . For me it’s important to get the message out there,” he said, reiterating the existing system isn’t educating people enough about how to deal with mental health issues.
The book, and his podcast ‘Blindsided’ are part of his promise to himself.
The book is just hitting shelves, but Hirsch knows he’ll be getting feedback that often relates the hardships others have faced before getting help, knowing in too many cases the stories may end with a loved one having taken their own life.
“It is hard to hear other people’s stories. My heart goes out to them,” he said, adding the positive though is the book may encourage others to get the help they need.
But, in the book Hirsch cautions there is no easy fix for many mental health issues.
“In getting diagnosed, there was no magic fix. I had a long way to go to recover. Someone once told me that mental health is a marathon, not a sprint, and they were so right. I needed to unravel the giant ball of yarn that was woven inside my brain from not getting an early diagnosis. When a person is diagnosed with cancer, the best chance of recovery is from early diagnosis. Mental health is no different. It’s so much easier to treat in the early stages. Cancer at Stage 4 is not good. Early diagnosis at Stage 1 is the easiest to treat. Same as if the thought of suicide and suicidal ideation is in Stage 4,” he wrote.
And the first step is to ask for help because you cannot face it alone, but to ask for help you need to take life and recovery one day at a time.
“If a person is ever finding it hard to go on, I want them to think only about making it through “one more day.” Not tomorrow, not next week, or next month, but today,” notes the book. “The best a person can do on any given day might be getting out of bed, and if that’s all they can do then so be it, they should applaud themselves for it. Society pounds into us that having a high-powered career, making lots of money and having the perfect family defines success. Bullshit! Success is the best you can do at any given moment, and that may be as much as getting up, getting out of bed and getting dressed. There are days for me that getting up and having a shower is as great a victory as any win I ever had in the NHL.”
If the book helps someone start the path to recovery, Hirsch said he is not looking for credit.
“Don’t thank me. Pay it forward. Go help someone else,” he said.
In the end Hirsch just wants the book to help.
“I wanted to make an impact,” he said, adding he hopes people see there can be a better end, that there is hope.
And again from the book, Hirsch has one final hope for his readers.
“And if you are that person thinking those thoughts, and you’re afraid to say something, all I can do, for the last time, is beg you to tell someone, anyone, these three words: I need help. There are 60,000 words in his book. If you hold on to just three words from this book, please make it those three.”
