Even the most decorated Olympian in all history is hardly immune to hitting the inevitable lows of life. Yes, we’re discussing Michael Phelps here— the man who’s not just mastered swimming in the pool but also through life’s turbulent waters. No wonder when he was placed in the middle of an uncertain phase nearly two decades back, he swam his way out of it.

After an unsuccessful first Olympics run in Sydney, Phelps swore to turn around the Athens script. And oh boy, did he do it! With 8 Olympic medals, 6 of which were gold, the American exited Greece as a force to be reckoned with. But that ecstasy and those camera flashes lasted only for so long. As the lights slowly started to dim, Michael Phelps found himself being pushed deeper and deeper into the darkness.

A YouTube video aired by NBC News on December 31, 2024, shows Michael Phelps speaking to Kristen Welker a month before the Paris Olympics. That’s when he opened up about battling depression for the first time. And when was that? “I would say probably 2004. 2004 was my first taste of post-Olympic depression,” he said. Right after the Olympics ended, Phelps started feeling a certain sense of unease. He described it as, “You know coming off such a high and it’s basically you get to like the edge of the cliff and you’re like cool now what? I guess I got to wait four more years to have the chance to do it again, right?”

Ideally, one would have brushed it off as a little anxiety. Well, Phelps made that mistake too. But he had to bear the brunt of it when his mental health worsened to the point of contemplating suicide. Nothing seemed to help — not m**ijuana, nothing. That’s when ‘America’s icon’, this perfect poster boy of ‘everything’ — decided to acknowledge his problem.

Post the 2004 Games, he took a short break. But he jumped back into the thick of things soon. Michale Phelps agrees that he had been compartmentalizing those feelings and, over time, they decided to reappear whenever they wanted. And yes, depression did come crawling back into his life. This time again, it was like a similar pattern repeating, which made things clearer to the swimmer.

Michael Phelps heard the voices in his head for the 2nd time

If you think Athens was exceptional, what happened in Beijing was purely unbelievable. This time, Michael Phelps upgraded his swimming medals to an all-gold range, racking up 8 golds from the Chinese capital. Just imagine the grandeur and the fame that must have followed after. Naturally, the American was put on a high pedestal, but it didn’t take long for him to fall off of it.

In the same interview with NBC News, Michael Phelps confessed, “So for me, 2004 was my first, 2008 was my second taste of post-Olympic depression. Because coming off that high after doing something you set out like you set out to do your whole entire life, like my goal was to do something no one else had ever done before.”

Well, Phelps did tick off that goal. He did what no one ever had. But that came at the cost of another post-Olympic gloom. Although, the fact that he did turned to professional help in the later years helped him substantially. Today, he’s not just more self-aware but a strong advocate of therapy for mental health challenges. He even pushed himself to share his experience in the hope of helping others, too. What do you think of this transition he experienced in his life? Let us know below!