#107 – Why Team USA Athletes Keep Losing Their Lives – With Team USA Bobsledder – William Person
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In this episode of the State of Mind Mental Health Podcast, I sit down with William Person — a 9-year member of Team USA’s Olympic bobsled program and the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit fighting to protect athletes from CTE.
William walks me through the cost of nine years and an estimated 22,000 bobsled rides on the human brain — and what happens when an entire roster of teammates starts taking their own lives. He shares the story of the friend who called him speaking gibberish before hanging himself in his family’s factory, the autopsy that revealed Stage 4 CTE, and the decade William spent living on his living room floor, praying for death without ever having the language for what was wrong with him.
He opens up about the New York Times article that finally diagnosed him when his doctors couldn’t, the day Joe Namath’s hyperbaric oxygen video changed his life, and the one hour in a chamber that gave him six straight days of clarity after ten years of cognitive fog.
William is now building the American Post-Concussion Wellness Center — a free, public-facing treatment facility for veterans, athletes, and anyone suffering from undiagnosed brain trauma. If you’ve ever taken a hit to the head and wondered why something feels off, this conversation might change everything for you.
Support William here : https://bit.ly/49u8xES
Chapters
00:00 Cold Open
05:30 The CTE Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight
08:00 What Bobsledding Actually Does to You
11:00 Lost in Dementia for a Decade
18:00 Praying for Death
24:00 The Article That Diagnosed Me
32:00 One Hour, Six Days of Clarity
40:00 Building the Wellness Center
50:00 The Canadian Connection
Free 1-month of the Meditation App – Waking Up https://dynamic.wakingup.com/guestpass/SC58BD912
Questions – hello@startswithme.ca
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