Sometimes, the thrill of alcohol and drugs can bring a person to their lowest point, leaving them questioning their purpose in life.
Take it from Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps, whose struggles with alcohol and drug use almost derailed his life. Recently, Phelps spoke at the Kennedy Forum—a leading mental health and behavioral health organization—highlighting that those who suffer from depression, like him, often grapple with suicidal thoughts.
Thankfully, the 28-time Olympic champion found his way back, but it wasn’t easy. Let’s revisit Michael Phelps’ turbulent journey with drugs, alcohol, and mental health.
Phelps describes his journey to becoming a champion as one filled with relentless hard work, grit, and resilience. As he rose through the ranks, he was initially overjoyed by his Olympic potential. But his confidence took a significant hit after narrowly missing a medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics by half a second. He recalls that the intense pressure to succeed and to bring home gold weighed heavily on him.
In 2004, Michael Phelps entered a period of severe depression and turned to self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. That same year, he was arrested for a DUI—a low point that he now recognizes as part of his struggle with mental health. Phelps openly discusses how substances served as a temporary mask, allowing him to bury his sadness and disappointment.
In his interview, Phelps shared that his first treatment experience was intimidating. He was uncertain about what recovery would entail and admits that facing his reality was scarier than the numbing effects of alcohol and drugs. During his early treatment sessions, he was encouraged to talk openly about his feelings—a process he describes as grounding and eye-opening.
Since that time, Phelps has become an advocate for mental health awareness, emphasizing the importance of speaking openly about mental health struggles, no matter how big or small. According to the CDC, depression affects over 8.4% of adults in the United States annually, underscoring the significance of seeking help and support.
Many well-known individuals, like Phelps, have faced severe struggles with addiction and mental health, often leading to publicized, life-threatening moments. Substance use can affect anyone at any time, and what starts as a coping mechanism can quickly spiral out of control.
However, recovery is possible with the right blend of determination, support, and professional help. Through effective treatment, individuals can regain control over their lives and prioritize their mental and physical well-being.
If you, a friend, or a loved one is dealing with addiction or mental health issues, Asana Recovery is here to help. Our team of compassionate therapists and medical professionals is dedicated to guiding you through every step of withdrawal, detox, and recovery. We believe that with the proper support, recovery is within reach.
At Asana Recovery, we offer a range of treatment options designed to support you on your journey to recovery. Our residential treatment programs and supervised detox options provide a safe and structured environment for healing.
For those interested in exploring these programs, contact us at (949)-763-3440 to discuss how we can support your path to mental wellness and substance-free living.
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To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
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Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
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We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to