Nathaniel Wood has been open about how his mental health struggles have impacted his career.
Now he’s just as open about how anti-anxiety medication has helped him keep from going to what he called a “dark place,” and he hopes that message might help other people, too.
“I have suffered with OCD and anxiety for as long as I can remember,” Wood told MMA Junkie Radio. “I know I had it when I was a child, but I didn’t know it at the time. I’ve been on my medication now for, on and off, probably nine years. There was one time where I would be on and off, and your dark cloud days come.
“There was one time where I was really, really, really bad for a solid month. When I went back on (Sertraline), I just said to myself I’m not coming off them – not for a long time. … I’m still on it now. I’m still happy to take it. I’m still proud to say I’m taking it because if potentially coming off it will put me in a dark place again, then I’d rather just stay on it.”
Wood (20-6 MMA, 7-3 UFC) on Saturday takes on Daniel Pineda (28-15 MMA, 5-6 UFC) in a featherweight bout to close out the prelims at UFC 304 (pay-per-view, ESPN2, ESPN+) at Co-op Live in Manchester, England.
He’ll be trying to break back into the win column after an October 2023 decision loss in Abu Dhabi to Muhammad Naimov. That snapped a three-fight winning streak of decisions since he moved up to featherweight from bantamweight.
Absent the meds, things might be different for someone who suffers with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
“I have intrusive thoughts. I have a headache. Instantly, I might think, ‘Could it be brain cancer?’ So instead of just going, ‘I’m gonna move on, I will obsess over that – all day, potentially all night, without realizing until I put myself in a really anxious state.
“… It’s a very unexplained illness. A lot of people just think (OCD) is about being tidy or it’s about washing your hands. But there’s so much more to it that people don’t understand. Even I didn’t understand it until I eventually went and got medical help and realized that it’s a lot more complex than people think.”
Check out the full interview with Wood in the video above.
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 304.
