Player's Tribune: Clint Malarchuk- Bleeding Out

[Drake]

Another good one.

I know there might be a bullet in the rifle, but I press it against my chin anyway.

I don’t care.

I’m drunk as hell.

Coors Light. In the cans. Twenty down the hatch, maybe even 25 by this point in the afternoon.

My wife, Joanie, had needed a break from all the chaos that was going on — a quiet evening to gather her own thoughts and get some rest — so she spent the night with friends. But my brain keeps telling me she was with another man. Over and over and over again that thought clangs around in my brain. Each beer is like a pause button for my head. But the pauses don’t last long enough. So I figured I’d try something else. I decided to go out onto our ranch and shoot at some cans — head spinning all the while.

When Joanie gets home I’m just sitting on a bench behind our barn, screaming about who knows what.

I see her, and I look her in the eye, and then I reach for that rifle. With it pushing so hard against my jaw that it tilts my head upward, I yell some more.

“This is what I would love to do! This would solve everything.”

She’s sobbing. I keep going.

“You don’t know what it’s like to live with my brain. Everything would be so much better if I could just turn off my head. It would be so much easier on everyone.”

I’m staring Joanie dead in the eye when I say that, and then I just….

Pull the trigger.

I don’t feel anything after that.

It turns out that there#is#a bullet in the gun. And now it’s headed right for my brain — the brain that, over the course of 47 years, had proven to be among my worst enemies.

That bullet is directly on course to turn off my head.

For good.

https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en...k-bleeding-out

[Flashpoint]

Hard to read, hard to view those pictures. But a lot of lessons here about what kind of challenges people with psychological issues have to deal with.

Thanks for sharing.

Jesus he was lucky he had that trainer on hand who had been in Vietnam.

[stang]

Tough read for sure.

Thanks for sharing that.

[Ruttiger]

He was my instructor one summer at the Okanagan Hockey School in Penticton so though it's not like I actually knew the guy, I've always felt a connection to this story. Might be the most powerful of all the Players Tribune stories I've read to date.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Holy ####.

[Cube Inmate]

Pretty amazing wife he has.

[the2bears]

Originally Posted by Cube Inmate

Pretty amazing wife he has.

This cannot be overstated. I was amazed at how strong she was and still is throughout the whole time.

An amazing story. I remember the game where he was cut, thinking at the time I was watching a guy die.

It's funny the things in a story like this that resonate. I'm quite scarred myself from an accident, and I really get what he says about shaving and nicks. After everything else fades there are these constant reminders.

A tip of the hat, and a nod to Clint. I've got a ton of admiration for him, and his wife for being by his side through this.