GRACIE GOLD

Michael Phelps, DeMar DeRozan, Kevin Love, Lindsey Vonn, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Terry Bradshaw, Jerry West, Joey Votto, Ian Thorpe, Ricky Hatton, John Kirwan, Clarke Carlisle, Dan Carcillo, Rob Krar, Zack Greinke, Picabo Street, John Daly, Scott Schoeneweis, Stephane Richer, Greg Stiemsma, Oscar de la Hoya, Andrew Jensen, David Freese, Larry Sanders, Brandon Marshall, Frank Bruno, Michael Yardy, Greg Louganis, Serena Williams, Theo Fleury, Delonte West, Ronda Rousey…

Luminaries in their worlds. High-profile, elite athletes. But human. Human beings. People. All saddled with varying forms and degrees of depression and anxiety. A snapshot of a much larger picture. According to the World Health Organization, 300 million people spanning the globe suffer from depression. Sixteen million-plus adults in the United States — roughly 6.7% of all adults in the country — have experienced a major depressive episode in the last year. More than ten million U.S. adults experienced an episode which resulted in severe impairment in that time frame. Nearly 50 percent of those diagnosed with depression are also diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. And it is estimated that 15% of the adult populace will experience depression at some point in their lives.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) defines a major depressive episode “as at least two weeks of a depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure in almost all activities, as well as at least a half-dozen other symptoms, such as:

— Sleep issues on an almost daily basis (either difficulty sleeping or sleeping too much);

— Changes in appetite and weight (change of more than 5 percent body weight in a month)

or a decrease or increase in appetite nearly every day;

— Decreased energy or fatigue almost every day;

— Difficulty concentrating, making decisions, and thinking clearly;

— Psychomotor agitation or retardation that is observable by others (slow physical

movements or unintentional or purposeless movements);

— Recurrent thoughts of death or suicide, a suicide attempt, or a specific plan for suicide.”

These symptoms must cause significant distress or impair one’s functioning, be it social, occupational or educational.

Research suggests that there is no singular cause of depression. Factors in play include brain chemistry, hormones, genetics, life experiences and physical health and well-being.

DNA doesn’t care who you think you are because it is in large measure whom you are. DNA defines a person in an unimaginably complex myriad of ways, all impactful. Deoxyribonucleic acid is “a self-replicating material which is present in nearly all living organisms as the main constituent of chromosomes. An acid in the chromosomes in the center of the cells of living things, it is the carrier of genetic information. [It represents] the fundamental and distinctive characteristics of someone or something, especially when regarded as unchangeable. DNA determines the particular structure and functions of every cell and is responsible for characteristics being passed on from parents to their children.”

There is no escaping the strands of one’s DNA. It can be a glorious component or it can be the essence of horror. The DNA package is full. Loaded. An intricate labyrinth of convolution and entanglement. The permutations boggle the mind. But as powerful as one’s DNA may be, it remains a defining part of the person, part the operative word.

Gracie Gold, 23 was by all accounts a teenage prodigy in the global figure skating niche, on the cusp of Olympic stardom. In 2014, likened to an athletic Grace Kelly “because of her tight blond [sic] bun, bright red lipstick and regal bearing, her personality [was] so sparkling it sometimes blinded people to the fact that she had not won an individual Olympic medal…” Conventional wisdom however, dictated that it would be only a matter of time. And a very short time at that.

Then life happened.

The day she covered every mirror in her new suburban Detroit apartment because she found the sight of herself abhorrent offered fair warning of the trouble lying in wait. She kept the lights off. She sometimes slept for 24 hours at a time and then would stay awake for three days straight. She gorged on ‘forbidden foods.’ Brushing her teeth and her hair was a chore as was undertaking the fifteen minute drive to the practice rink. Sometimes she couldn’t do any of it.

She was hiding from her family, friends, coaches, skating — from everyone and everything because her world was closing in on her. She was compromised, diminished, depleted, helpless… and suicidal. “You want people to see your pain so they see you need help. But you don’t want to ask for help. So you live in this terrible kind of limbo,” she recalled, the angst etched in her face. Gold’s refusal to ‘ask for help’ was borne of her elite athlete tough-it-out mentality, shreds of which remained, along with her pride. She was embarrassed and she was afraid.

Most importantly though was that as her life was unraveling she was thankfully beginning to comprehend mental illness.

This suck-it-up mindset is typical of strong-willed people and unsurprisingly it is a staple if not an all-embracing characteristic of athletes. Striving for world-class greatness on a daily basis is not for sissies or those with thin skin. As Caroline Silby, a sports psychologist who was a national-caliber skater explains, “Some of it is predestined. The DNA is such that these individuals would be faced with these issues regardless of their Olympic prowess. Some of it is developed through habits and practices that feed the athletic quest for excellence but drive these individuals further away from being healthy, productive nonathletes.” Following the lead of high-profile athletes like Phelps, DeRozan and Vonn among many others, Gold decided to go public with her ordeal last fall.

The seeds were sown at birth…or before.

Gracie and her twin Carly arrived 40 minutes apart on August 17, 1995 and by her family’s admission it was only natural that Gracie led the way out of the womb with her sister following. Throughout their childhood she was consumed by being first and near-perfect. Case in point? By second grade she would feverishly and tearfully erase an entire sentence and start over if she misspelled a single word. Her compulsiveness was evident even then. Formal skating lessons for the twins provided an outlet but for Gracie it served to feed the beast within. Carly did well but never rivaled her sister. She was fine with that, her wiring geared more to having fun than achieving perfection. Noted Gracie somewhat wistfully of her twin, “She didn’t cross those lines that needed to be crossed to be an elite athlete. She didn’t push past the border of being normal and into the realm of insanity.”

Gold’s skating ambitions took her around the country over a decade and through her teens she was accompanied everywhere by her sister and their mother, a retired emergency room nurse. Her career was on the uptick fueled by her expectations and the expectations of others. The upward trajectory was dramatic and by the time her star was rising and acclaim was coming her way it appeared fortuitous that U.S. Figure Skating — which had produced a string of Olympic medalists in the women’s competition from 1968 to 2006 — was to be charitable, stuck in neutral. The sport’s popularity in the states was on the decline and Gold was seen as a savior. She learned to welcome the responsibility and dealt with the added pressure(s) of this burden in her own way. “I almost created this other person,” she reflected conceding that, “I wanted to be the most flawless, angelic, plastic, Barbie-doll-face human who just says all the right things and does all the right things and is sterling. And people just don’t like her because she’s so perfect.” Clearly this was a bubble dying to burst. And it took but a single ill-timed and thoughtless remark to set those wheels in motion.

Weighing herself one day in front of a coach — standard procedure — the scale read 124 pounds on Gold’s 5-foot-5 frame. “That’s a big number,” she recalled the coach saying.

Wrong thing to say. And to the wrong person. Her ultra-competitive spirit married to a burgeoning unhealthy relationship with food would conspire to ultimately derail her career. Major on-ice successes — her first national title; helping the U.S. win a bronze medal in the team event in Sochi; a fourth-place finish in the women’s singles competition; a second national title — followed by a disappointing fourth-place finish at the 2016 World Figure Skating Championships in Boston (an event in which she was slated to become the first American woman in a decade to win a singles medal) devastated her. Her body and psyche were broken, damaged nearly beyond repair.

In the summer of 2016 when she arrived in Colorado Springs for a scheduled U.S. Figure Skating monitoring session she was carrying 20 extra pounds accompanied by a furrowed brow and embedded scowl. She was depressed and was now binging and purging. She was sick, something that was abundantly clear to her rival Ashley Wagner who painfully recalled, “There was just no one home, and that was a scary thing to see.” Wagner alerted the association’s hierarchy and swift action was taken to connect Gold with its licensed psychologists and various other specialists available to athletes dealing with mental health problems. She was in such denial that efforts to right the ship failed. Rock bottom had not yet been reached but it was lurking menacingly around the bend.

Still targeting the next Olympics Gracie kept skating, a shadow (and a longer one at that) of her former self. At another Colorado Springs session in the summer of ’17, the walls came tumbling down. Out of shape and with the 20 extra pounds having ballooned to 50, she simply couldn’t perform. Her routines bore no resemblance to those of her glittering past. When the judges critiqued her — some tearfully — she construed it as accusatory and snapped. Sobbing, cursing and screaming she remembers braying, “Can’t anybody see the cry for help that is my existence right now?” She was persuaded to put her career on hold and receive treatment. Within a month she had entered an in-patient program for eating disorders, the cost covered by U.S. Figure Skating. Says Gold, “I just dropped off the face of the earth for 45 days. It was liberating.”

Gracie Gold has slowly made her way back to figure skating with a new coach and in new surroundings, Philadelphia. Her fresh start involves a positive outlook and different tack. Starving herself back into shape is not an option; gradual reversal of weight gain is the rule of the day. Eating healthy and smartly has translated into a 30-pound weight loss since June. She gives skating lessons to young children and adults and trains side-by-side with teenagers. Her sense of humor and a sharpened perspective have returned. “When I was their [the teens’] age,” she wryly remarked, “I never had a semi-retired mentally ill Olympian come to my rink.”

Mental illnesses, not unlike many physical disorders come with a social stigma. Over time the chokehold of derogation has loosened allowing those troubled to feel more comfortable opening up, helping themselves and countless others. Judgment takes a back seat to treatment — as it should be — and people get better.

To count out Gracie Gold would be a fool’s errand.