“Because there are a lot of people I can help through my story to save lives.”
Most people would have thought Daniel Conn had everything to live for. He was successful and attractive – a National Rugby League star and a male model. He also gained fame after having romances with Hollywood and reality TV stars, including Vicky Pattison of “Geordie Shore,” according to ntnews.com in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.
Then a neck injury caused Conn to “prematurely retire at the age of 25 in 2011 following seven seasons with the Bulldogs, Titans and Roosters after leaving his hometown of Dubbo,” a city in the Orana Region of New South Wales, Australia, as a teenager, according to ntnews.com.
That’s when the dark times began, causing him to contemplate ending his life, “not once, but three times,” he told ntnews.com.
After leaving his team, Conn “lost his sense of purpose” and “fell into a lonely pit of self-doubt,” the story said.
He can help people through his story to save lives.
Today, however, Conn, 31, is “happy, healthy and using the fitness industry” to share his story and save lives, according to ntnews.com.
Conn told ntnews.com that he was “lucky” because he “talked himself out of it” (depression). ” It got to the point, where as much as you want to disappear, you’ve got to think about the people around you that would have helped if you said something,” he said.
Learning that about “eight people every day commit suicide in Australia and 3000 a year,” Conn became determined to “erase the stigma surrounding depression,” the website said.
According to the website, Conn “reached breaking point four years after retiring. He found himself so lost, he would drive around in his car for hours without any purpose.” He said on many days he would drive until he ran out of petrol.
The former rugby player realized he needed help and checked himself into a rehabilitation center on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, the story said. “I owed it to myself and my family to go,” he said.
One boy Conn met at the rehabilitation center inspired him to overcome his struggles. He became close with a young homeless boy who was a recovering heroin addict, according to ntnews.com. The boy had lived on the streets since he was 12.
Conn told the website that the boy “was teaching me things. I was asking him questions, like, how did you live on the streets, what did you do? He told me how he got by and I was just baffled.”
The boy committed suicide, Conn said in the story, “just because there was no one there for him to help him out.”
He compared himself with the boy, telling ntnews.com that he had taken painkillers to “push through injuries during his care.” The boy, he said, was “taking heroin to avoid a life on the streets, but in the NRL you are trying to escape injury and criticism so you can perform on the field. That helped me put things into perspective.”
Now he spends “countless hours travelling across the country conducting training sessions to pass on his inspirational story,” so that he can support others who suffer in silence, ntnews.com said.
Read more of his inspirational story here. In addition to helping others who suffer from depression, Conn is also the face and ambassador for F45 Training, the fastest growing concept in the health and fitness industry.
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