Ex-UGA star recalls playing with loaded pistol while dealing with disorder
 
Herschel Walker, a Georgia football legend, successful businessman and father of one, said in his book “Breaking Free” and during an interview with ABC’s “Nightline” that he nearly took his own life and the lives of others as he struggled with Dissociative Identity Disorder.
 
In the “Nightline” interview, which is scheduled for Monday night, Walker talks about playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun at his kitchen table shortly after his retirement from football in 1998.
 
“To challenge death like I was doing, you start saying, there’s a problem here,” Walker said in the interview.
 
The interview coincides with today’s release of Walker’s book, which chronicles Walker’s lifelong struggle with DID and his therapy since being diagnosed in 2002. Since that time, Walker has worked with Dr. Jerry Mungadze to understand the disease, in which alternate personalities aid a person who is dealing with traumatic events.
 
In the prologue of Walker’s book, he describes how a business deal over the delivery of a car so enraged him that he checked his glove box for his Beretta while driving to the meeting.
 
“The logical side of me knew that what I was thinking of doing to this man — murdering him for messing up my schedule — wasn’t a viable alternative,” Walker wrote. “But another side of me was so angry that all I could think was how satisfying it would feel to step out of the car, pull out the gun, slip off the safety and squeeze the trigger.