Dawk Talks Depression, Drinking And Concussions

In an interview with ESPN’s Dan Le Batard, Brian Dawkins talked openly about a variety of topics, such as dealing with depression early in his career and cutting out alcohol.

The video is embedded below, but here are a few excerpts.

And thanks to our friend BountyBowl for Tweeting out the link.

Asked for an estimate of how many concussions he sustained during his career: “What are we considering concussions today? Is it loss of memory? Is it nausea? Is it loss of balance? Is it when I hit somebody I see the little spots? Is that a concussion? You just don’t know. You’re saying a full-blown concussion where I lost consciousness?

…If I count the sparkle things, there’s no way I can count those because that happened pretty much every day at practice sometimes.”

On dealing with depression after his rookie season: “Went through a period of depression, taking some medication for that. A lot of things going on at the house. Stopped drinking right along that time. A lot of expectations from my football team of what they were expecting of me. A lot of expectations from my family members – not in my house but back in Florida, what they were expecting from me, and didn’t know how to handle all those things. So I had to call on my faith and dive more into my faith and that allowed me to pull out of that depression, stop taking the medicine that I was taking and be able to grow up a lot. I had to grow up a lot during that time.”

On cutting out alcohol at that time: “One of those things that I decided – this is not for everybody – but I decided that alcohol was something I was going to cut out. Period. I was going to stop drinking and dedicate myself more to my relationship – not a religion – but my relationship with the Father. And when that happened, it quickly took that thirst or that urge to have that beer or that alcohol after whatever it is you do. Sometimes you have it to just relax or whatever, it quickly took that urge away.”