Country singer Luke Combs recently discussed a mental health condition he’s had since childhood.
The 35-year-old recording artist did an interview with “60 Minutes Australia” and talked about his experience with purely “obsessional obsessive-compulsive disorder,” which has the nickname “pure O.” Unlike typical OCD, pure O occurs when the compulsions a person experiences are mostly internal, whereas OCD usually involves physical rituals or repetitive behaviors.
“It’s thoughts, essentially, that you don’t want to have,” Combs said during the interview, per NBC News. “And then they cause you stress, and then you’re stressed out, and then the stress causes you to have more of the thoughts, and then you don’t understand why you’re having them, and you’re trying to get rid of them, but trying to get rid of them makes you have more of them.”
The singer said these thoughts are “wicked” as they can sometimes turn violent.
“I just have to accept that they’re happening and then just go, ‘Whatever, dude. It’s happening. It’s whatever,’” he said. “It’s weird, sucks, hate it, drives me crazy, but … the less that you worry about why you’re having the thoughts, eventually they go away.”
Combs says he’s lucky to have figured out a way through these moments while acknowledging how difficult it can be.
“When it hits, man, it can be all-consuming,” the singer said. “If you have a flare-up of it … you could think about it 45 seconds of every minute for weeks.”
The Grammy Award nominee said he’s seeking to spread awareness about the condition and help others.
“I definitely want to spend some time at some point in my life doing some outreach to kids that deal with this,” he told “60 Minutes Australia.”
“Because it held me back so many times in my life, where you’re trying to accomplish something, you’re doing really great and then you have a flare-up and it just ruins your whole life for six months … and then you’re back to where you started.”
“The message is if there’s someone out there that’s struggling with it, it’s possible to continue to live your life, and be really successful, and have a great family, and achieve your dreams, while also dealing with things that you don’t want to be dealing with,” Combs said.
