- Programming Note: Catch an excerpt of Gary Plummer’s interview Sunday at 4 p.m. PT during “49ers Pregame Live” on NBC Sports Bay Area. The full interview can be found on YouTube.
Across his 12-season NFL career, former 49ers linebacker and Super Bowl XXIX champion Gary Plummer estimates he suffered thousands of concussions.
The debilitating pain that came as a side effect to those injuries slowly sucked the joy from Plummer’s life upon his retirement in 1998, and it wasn’t until he lost a friend from suicide over a decade later that the former football star decided to take charge of his life -- and his depression.
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“For me, when I noticed that, hey, there’s something wrong, is [the pain] wasn’t going away,” Plummer told NBC Sports for the “Headstrong: Mental Health and Sports” series. “So things that had started with a little tap became more of a punch in the back of the head. And those periods in between having that got shorter and shorter and shorter until, essentially, it was 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“As time went on, I felt like sometimes I just didn’t want to get out of bed and I didn’t know why nothing was bringing joy. Feeling like, ‘You know what? Nobody would care if I wasn’t around anymore.’ ”
Plummer kept his emotions to himself for the most part, but his wife, Corey, noticed daily tasks were becoming more difficult for her husband as he dealt with the pain.
“I would just remind myself, I’ve had more joy than 100 people have the right to have,” Plummer said. “So if there’s this headache, it’s just the price that you have to pay … You just choke it down, and you just don’t want to complain.”
San Francisco 49ers
But Plummer was forced to address his mental health struggles head on when his friend and former San Diego Chargers teammate, Junior Seau, took his own life. It eventually was found that Seau suffered from the neurodegenerative disease referred to as CTE, which can be caused by repetitive hits to the head.
“That’s probably the first time I started contemplating in my mind, ‘Well, do I have a problem?' ” Plummer reflected.
Plummer and Corey immediately took action, contacting a counselor and visiting a neurologist to undergo testing. Plummer was told he had traumatic brain injuries to the point where it could be classified as the early stages of dementia.
The diagnosis gave Plummer a starting point, and he began making little changes to improve his quality of life. Yoga helped ease his head pain, and that led him to meditation. He then discovered music therapy and also began utilizing his outdoor garden as a way to quiet his brain.
“Each one of those things has just made me this much better, and the longer I did it, it made me this much better,” Plummer said. “Well, this much better and this much better and this much better, it all started to add up.”
Just six months after his diagnosis, Plummer underwent testing with the NFL. The doctors were astounded at his progress and thrilled to see him doing so well.
“To go from contemplating taking your own life to, six months later, feeling like, ‘I can’t believe I ever had that thought,' was pretty dramatic,” Plummer said. “It’s just being given a second chance at life, and not even just a second chance, a chance at having the most joy I’ve ever experienced.”
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Plummer continues to thrive after having gone through so much pain, and he hopes he can inspire others to seek help for their mental health issues when they need it.
“If we can save one person’s life by watching this and understanding that it’s not too late … You might be in the depths of depression, been there, done that,” Plummer said. “There is a way out. I think that there was an embarrassment about this, and now there’s understanding and that’s what we need.
“Knowledge is key to all of us living our best life.”
If you or anyone you know is in emotional distress or suicidal crisis, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline can be reached at any time by calling or texting 9-8-8.