Mental Health | Corey Hirsch and his victory against himself

The good news is that Corey Hirsch is doing better.

He’s better off, for example, than the time he considered driving his car off the side of a winding road in British Columbia because it was too dark in his head. He’s better than the time he told his mother he wasn’t, because he didn’t want to tell anyone else. He’s better than when he couldn’t see anything during training with the Rangers.

In fact, that’s when he realized he wasn’t okay anymore.

“In New York, I was having anxiety attacks, and I was at my wit’s end,” he says in a video interview. Then there was that moment, when I was in the net, during game day practice. We were supposed to play the Devils that night, and I couldn’t see the pucks anymore. The guys were shooting at me, and I couldn’t see anything. Later, I realized there was a name for it: depersonalization. »

The phenomenon, “a bit like when you have the impression that your brain is frying”, he explains, forced him to go to the club’s management to ask for leave. The most embarrassing moment of his life, by his own admission.

“Later, I ended up asking for help. To save my own life…”

Fortunately, today and at the age of 50, Corey Hirsch seems to be doing better, much better. After leaving a position as a radio analyst at Canucks games, this former goaltender has rebuilt his life, and recently he is a speaker and author. In October he published The Save of My Life: My Journey Out of the Darka book that describes his battle with the demons in his head, and with what has eaten away at him so much: his obsessive compulsive disorder.

Breaking point

The man we see sitting in front of us, in the distance and on the screen, somewhere in British Columbia, does not seem to retain any scars from these fights in front of himself. He affirms that he is better, and that he is proud of himself, proud of the result.

He had been, in 1991, an eighth round choice of Rangers, the 169^e in total. Five years later, he was named NHL All-Rookie Goaltender, two years after a certain Martin Brodeur.

But before, there was this quick move to Rangers, the time of only four games. In the spring of 1994, he was the third goalkeeper for the club, which finally aspired to a first triumph in more than 50 years.

And that’s where he cracks.

He remembers once when he tried to fracture his hand by beating it himself with a hockey stick. Because he wanted Rangers management to send him home.

“Nobody wanted to talk about mental health at the time, let alone in the case of a goalkeeper! Imagine a club that had a goalkeeper with mental health issues in front of the net… You had to be tough to survive in this league. I knew if I said anything, my NHL career would be over. »

He therefore decides not to say anything, except once to his mother, to whom he confides his desire to jump from the top of the Empire State Building.

“There are guys from the Rangers who supported me. Others who treated me like a leper, and others who were just indifferent. But I can’t blame them because I didn’t say anything. So I looked like a bad teammate. »

Skin on bones

It was only a few years later, when he was with the Vancouver Canucks, that Corey Hirsch finally asked for help. It is one of the club’s therapists who forces him to do so. Shortly before, striker Martin Gélinas had jumped when he saw him get out of the shower. “I was just left with skin and bones…”

What’s worse is that on the ice, the goaltender looked in great shape: in his year of nomination to the rookie all-star team, in 1995-1996, he posted an average of 2 .93 and a .903 save percentage in 41 games in a Canucks jersey.

“I had suicidal thoughts, he continues, and what is quite incredible is that I was playing well! Hockey wasn’t the problem. Hockey saved my life, because I learned resilience there, I learned the importance of always taking a step forward. The problem was the people around, some of them anyway. There are also very good people in the world of hockey, but this reputation is tarnished by those who are not good people, who want to take advantage of others…”

Empty her bag

Hirsch, despite everything, continues on his way. After Vancouver, he moved quickly to Washington and Dallas, before returning to the minor ranks, and concluding his journey in Europe, in 2005-2006, with a club in Sweden.

He says it took him 20 years, at least, to be able to tell his story, first in a text that appeared on the Player’s Tribune site in 2017.

“One day, while I was in Arizona, I ran into an NHL player who had just been admitted to a clinic for a mental health problem,” recalls Corey Hirsch. I had never really told anyone about my story, so I went to a cafe with him, and I don’t know why, but I told him everything. At some point, he looked at me and said, “My God, I suffer from the same thing!” Then he told me that his mother had to resuscitate him twice after an overdose of fentanyl. I understood that people suffering from OCD are more numerous than one might think…”

“I knew that Jonathan Drouin asked for help last season, and I’m very proud of him, continues the former hockey player. How many guys per team suffer from mental health issues? Who suffers from OCD like me? »

He swears not to be angry. Neither against an NHL that did nothing for him, nor against his former teammates or coaches. “But I wish I had been made aware of mental health issues at school […] If I had known how to ask for help, I would have done so sooner. Instead, I hid. Most of my friends with OCD have attempted suicide at some point…”

He hopes his story and his book will change things. Regrets ? Very little for him. He laughs heartily when he is reminded that he once found himself on a stamp in Sweden, after allowing the winning goal to Peter Forsberg at the 1994 Games. money, and thanks to Forsberg, I’m part of hockey history! he laughs.

“In the end, I just wrote a book, I was an analyst, a goalie coach in the NHL… Mental health issues don’t have to slow us down, and it’s never going to go away. He’s the man I am. But I think I had a very good life…”