How long would you guess that you've suffered from Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID? I'm going to say DID from now on. Yes, that's short. You know, I think I suffered with it for a long time. You know, I think it goes back maybe when childhood, I think, because of my weight problem and being bullied, being picked on.
It's hard to believe that somebody who is, you know, so big would have been picked on. When you were a kid, you were just a fat kid? I was small.
I was a fat kid, a little bit overweight. You'd have a stuttering problem. And I didn't love myself.
I didn't love who I was. I didn't love what I did. And every kid wanted to be better. When was it diagnosed?
It was diagnosed in 2001. So recently. Yes, recently. I really didn't know what was going on.
And to be honest with you, probably my life had stayed in football and stayed as busy as I was doing and had it. that I res-res-res-doing the things that I was doing, I probably would have never noticed it. I think getting out of football and then having to change my-alter my life, alter my life so I'm going to a whole nother field, I think that's when I started to know that things were different, that things just seemed-seemed a little bit different. Well, they-since the book came out, the press has talked to some of your former teammates. They said they didn't suspect it, but your ex-wife, your college sweetheart-Yes.
She says now, thinking about it, she probably probably should have suspected something like this because she was so close to you she would have seen things others might know that's exactly right and and you know and I still praise her today for helping me because you even though we're not married now and that I think they did may have has a lot to do with the divorce I think at the same time she stayed with me she fought with me and she went through it with me which really saved my life and really helped me out a lot Is DID the same illness that was once known as multiple personality disorder, the sort of thing that we saw in Sybil and Three Faces of Eve? That's exactly right, and that's one reason I wrote the book, is to try to get rid of that stereotype. I think people have stereotyped it so much that they've really demonized DID. And what I'm trying to say is, guys, I think a lot of people have DID.
But those people didn't know they were the other person. Right. When you seem to have always been Herschel, you just had different... Versions of yourself. That's exactly right.
Different fragment, as you may say, of myself. Alters, you call them. I call them alters. And I think there's a lot of people who have it.
And like I say, I think they hide. And they hide because a lot of people think it's something strange. Where I say it's not strange.
I think a lot of people just, they're coping with it a little bit better. Well, the diagnosis of DID is still controversial. Yes, yes.
Were your parents and siblings aware of what was happening to you when you were going through that when you were a kid? Not at all. You know, I left home when I was about 16 to head off to college.
So, you know, my mother would always say I was always a quiet sort of shy guy. And that's the way I was. And to be honest with you, I was really afraid of crowds. I hated crowds.
I never really liked to be around a lot of people. Maybe that's why you were a successful running back. Well, that's it.
Stay away from everybody. And I think that was one of the biggest keys, just to feel loneliness. And that's why that I wrote the book, just try to touch someone else. Well, you started having memory lapses. When did they start?
Well, you know, I've always had memory lapses, but I really didn't understand because, you know, my ex-wife said that. She said that those things that I did. And I used to say, you know, I never did that.
And she said, no, you did this here. And when she started telling me that. In the opening scene of the book, I talk about something. At that time, being fortunate to have two mother and father that put a good foundation down for me, I knew I had a problem. I knew there was something going wrong.
I didn't know the reason why and what to do, but I knew there was something that I needed to get help.