Johnny Manziel, the former Texas A&M and Cleveland Browns quarterback who briefly captivated football audiences, told GMA today that he has been suffering from bipolar disorder.
Manziel explained how he turned to alcohol to deal with mental issues and facing his own failure:
“I was self-medicating with alcohol. That’s what I thought was making me happy and helping me get out of that depression to a point of where I felt like I had some sense of happiness. But at the end of the day, when you wake up the next day after a night like that or after going on a trip like that, and you wake up the next day and that’s all gone and that liquid courage or that liquid like sense of euphoria that’s over you is all gone, and you’re left staring at the ceiling by yourself, and you’re back in that depression and back in that hole, that dark hole of sitting in a room by yourself being super-depressed, thinking about all the mistakes you’ve made in your life, what did that get me? Where did that get me except out of the NFL? Where did that get me? Disgraced?”
Manziel, who became the first ever freshman to win the Heisman Trophy in 2012, explained how that early success got to his head:
“I had a sense of entitlement about what I had accomplished at the age. For a while, I got so ingrained, caring only about what Johnny wanted, only caring what mattered to me, what made me happy. When I look back at it now, even when I thought I was doing what I wanted, I was miserable.”
But now Johnny Manziel is on the way back. After dropping his new clothing label Comeback SZN, and with reported interest from the CFL, Manziel is trying to get back to work. He spoke to GMA about his comeback.
“I am coming back from a huge downfall. I don’t know what kind of comeback it will be, but I know I want to get back on a football field, to what brought me so much joy in my life.”
It’s been a long and arduous road for Johnny Manziel, who had a precipitous and public fall from grace. We hope he gets the help he needs and gets back on the football field in some capacity soon.