Michael Phelps said he asked for help after a period when he was prescribed Ambien while battling thoughts about not wanting to be alive anymore, recounting in a new NBC Nightly News series that he was glad he had only 30 milligrams left. The interview aired Friday, April 17, as part of Great Americans, a segment that profiles people using their platforms to strengthen their communities.
Phelps, the most decorated Olympian in history with 23 gold medals, told Tom Llamas that if he had 100 milligrams, he probably would have taken it all. “And who knows if I’m sitting here today?” he said. “Something’s gotta change.”
The former swimmer said the moment pushed him to seek help for the first time. He said it was “the first time I ever saw myself and saw the reflection in the mirror of me,” describing a life spent looking in the glass and seeing only “somebody with a pair of goggles and a swimming cap, not somebody with feelings and emotions.”
Phelps said, “I never saw myself as a human being,” adding that his current appearance — “a gray beard and a man bun” — reflects a life in which he can talk about his feelings and emotions. The interview fits a broader effort in recent years in which he has been publicly advocating for mental health, using the same visibility that made him a 28-time Olympic medalist to talk about what came after the pool.
What makes the segment matter now is the force of the account itself. Phelps did not frame the story as a triumph; he described a specific point when the risk felt immediate and the decision to ask for help changed everything. That is the message the series leaves with viewers on Friday evening: for one of the most recognizable athletes in the world, survival started with saying out loud that something had to change.