Former NFL Player Colton Underwood Took Meds to Suppress His Gayness

Former NFL player Colton Underwood is talking about his struggles with coming out.

Underwood said he once tried to fight being gay so much that he took medication to suppress it.

He used to abuse Xanax as a coping mechanism.

“I was suppressing my sexuality so hard that I was taking medication daily to deal with depression and anxiety, and that made me a paranoid freak,” he says in a clip from his new Netflix show. “I didn’t trust a whole lot of people, and I was trying to do anything and everything I could to protect a secret.”

He said he tried to kill himself after he broke up with Cassie Randolph.

“I started to spiral,” he said. “I was f*cked up. … I lost my mind, and I did some things, I said some things that I’m not proud of.”

Colton’s dad recently told NY Times that he wished his son had come out another way. His son told him in front of cameras.

“I’m not saying I’m upset about it, but I would have preferred it had been done differently,” Scott Underwood said, adding that his son was an “entertainer.”

Colton Underwood played defensive end at Illinois State and was signed by the San Diego Chargers as an undrafted free agent in 2014, and was on the practice squad of the Oakland Raiders and Philadelphia Eagles. After being released by the Raiders, Underwood became a contestant on the 14th season of The Bachelorette, and was then announced as the lead of the 23rd season of The Bachelor.

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