Keyon Dooling Talks Sexual Abuse, Paranoia, Mental Health in Players' Tribune
Former NBA player Keyon Dooling wrote about being sexually assaulted as a child, checking into a mental institution after suffering from paranoia in 2012 and other mental-health issues in a revealing article for The Players' Tribune.
In the article, Dooling describes being seven years old and playing basketball with a friend when a 14-year-old friend of his brother invited him up to an apartment to escape the rain and hang out. But things took a disturbing turn when the older boy turned on a pornographic video and forced the two boys to perform oral sex on him.
Dooling wrote that the sexual abuse forever changed him: "I told myself, at seven years old: You have to be tough. You have to be so tough that nobody can ever hurt you.
"After that day, I had a huge chip on my shoulder, and huge secret in my heart. My childhood was effectively over."
Dooling said he took his anger and hurt over the incident and putting it into sports. Eventually, he became an NBA player and didn't tell anybody about his childhood trauma, but in September 2012, a drunk man in a steakhouse bathroom came up behind Dooling while he was urinating and grabbed him on the rear-end.
The moment caused the repressed feelings from Dooling's childhood to rise to the surface once again:
"All these images started flooding my mind, and I couldn’t tune them out. I had this horrible, crushing anxiety wash over me.
"I called my mom. I called my wife. We prayed together over the phone. But the feeling wouldn't go away. Even when I got back home to Boston, I was a complete mess. I became paranoid. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. It felt like there was some kind of danger right around the corner, and it was making me sick."
Everything came to a head after the 2011-12 season, when Dooling visited with Boston Celtics general manager Danny Ainge to tell him he planned to retire:
"My two-year-old son K.J. was with me. I took him along, because he loved coming to the gym with me. I remember holding him in my arms and telling Danny that I was done. I was telling Danny a whole lot of other things, too. Really paranoid, off-the-wall things. I was ranting about God and about the darkness all around us. Eventually, Danny made a phone call. A couple minutes later, two of my best friends on the team appeared in the doorway.
"It was Rajon Rondo and Avery Bradley. They were super calm, and they did their best to get to me relax. Rajon took my son from me and told me they were going to show him around the facility. Then Avery walked me out to his car and told me he was going to drive me back home."
A few days later, Dooling checked himself into a mental hospital and later revealed his story to then-Celtics head coach Doc Rivers. Ainge and Rivers then arranged for Dooling to meet with mental-health specialists, and Harvard's Dr. Timothy Benson diagnosed Dooling with post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from the sexual assault in his childhood.
But he wrote that the support from his close friends and family, including his wife, Natosha, Rajon Rondo, Avery Bradley, Ainge and Rivers, saved him.
"I will never forget that feeling of support. It saved my life. They kept saying, 'It's gonna be O.K. Let's just get you some help.'"
Dooling also urged anybody suffering from depression or mental illness to seek help.
"If you are hurting, get some help," he wrote. "You can call out to God. But your second call should be the doctor."
