leap of faith

Olympic diver Matthew Mitcham opens up about his battle with addiction and chemsex

By · 8 comments · Updated on January 26, 2024
Olympic diver Matthew Mitcham standing against an off-white tile wall shirtless with his arms folded.
Photo via Getty Images

Olympic diver Matthew Mitcham has been open about his struggles getting to the Olympic Games in the past: his coming out journey, his battle with drugs and alcohol, and mental health struggles that all tried to stand between him and his dream.

In a candid new interview with PinkNews, the athlete dives deep to discuss his fight with addiction and the road forward from it.

Mitcham explains that, throughout his diving career, he’d have to enter a detoxing phase as soon as a competition was on the horizon.

“That process was just horrible,” he says. 

“Every single time, because it was so awful, I would just promise myself with every single cell in my body that I would not use drugs again after that competition. And every single time I just couldn’t keep that promise to myself, because being inside my own head was so unbearable.

“There’s something quite soul destroying about making a promise to yourself with absolute conviction and not being able to keep it,” he explains. “There’s something quite soul destroying about making a promise to yourself with absolute conviction and not being able to keep it.”

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Mitcham’s struggle with drugs and alcohol had developed in his teen years after his depression had started to emerge.

“I could see that my drug use already was a bit problematic at that stage,” he says. “I felt like it was my ticket to being special – like it was my only option.”

Even winning gold at the Olympics in 2008 couldn’t break the cycle, as that unimaginable high dove back down once he returned to normal life.

“All that stuff came back with vengeance after Beijing,” he recalls. “I shamed myself a lot for having depression and for feeling the way I felt because I felt like it was unjustified.”

The diver was able to pull out of the drop once he reached what he calls a point of “absolute desperation”

“I literally could not do it by myself. It was a last resort, really, to go to rehab,” he says.

“There was a lot of fear for me – being in the public eye, being recognizable, being in sport – there’s a huge taboo with drugs and sport,” he explains. “There was a lot of fear that prevented me from doing it but ultimately it was the best decision I ever made.” 

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His bravery to ask for help, even while in the public eye, paid itself back tenfold. As he can contend today, his going to rehab finally helped him break the cycle.

“Using drink and drugs is a really powerful way to change the way you feel,” he explains. “Going to rehab, I learned lots of other tools to change the way I feel – much more effective ways to change the way I feel – that don’t have these added consequences.”

Mitcham, seven years sober, now works to help others kick their addiction to the curb the same way his rehabilitation helped him.

The Olympian volunteers with the organization Controlling Chemsex, which works to combat the reliance on drugs in sexual encounters in the LGBTQ+ community, especially for gay men.

“I’m very passionate about helping people who do have these issues because it is insidious,” he says.

“People should be able to have sex without the shackles of having to be high.”

It doesn’t take the bravery of jumping off a 10-meter-tall diving board to kick addiction; it just takes the courage to ask for help.

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