Country star Luke Combs opens up about ‘wicked’ mental health disorder: ‘Hate it’

(NEXSTAR) – Country artist Luke Combs opened up about his specific struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in an interview with “60 Minutes Australia” this week.

Combs, 35, has previously discussed his struggles with a condition he’s described as “purely obsessional” obsessive-compulsive disorder, also sometimes called “Pure O.” This form of OCD generally manifests in mostly mental compulsions, rather than physical compulsions. (For this reason, mental-health authorities — like those with the International OCD Foundation and the Anxiety and Depression Association of America — say the term “purely obsessional obsessive-compulsive disorder” is an inaccurate description of the condition, as it still manifests in compulsions.)

Combs, describing his OCD symptoms as being a “particularly wicked,” said he often battles intrusive thoughts during his “flare-ups,” but revealed he’s gotten better over time.

“It’s thoughts, essentially, that you don’t want to have, that you’re having,” he said during the interview. “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 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,” he said.

The most anxiety-inducing aspect of the disorder is that the thoughts that Combs obsesses over are usually questions that he can’t resolve, he said.

“They can be, you know, intrusively violent thoughts, or thoughts about religion. It focuses on things that don’t have an answer,” Combs said. “It’s really questions about who you are as a person, that you can’t get an answer to.”

In a 2021 interview with Dan Rather, Combs had said he would also often worry about whether he was “going to have a heart attack or a stroke.”

“[They’re] thoughts that I play over and over in my head,” he told Rather.

But while compulsive thoughts associated with so-called “purely obsessional” OCD or “Pure O” are indeed real struggles, mental-health researchers say these terms are not used by professionals.

“We know what it means, but we don’t use it because it’s a misnomer,” Stephanie Woodrow, the owner of the National Anxiety and OCD Treatment Center in Washington D.C., told Nexstar.

“The term originally described this idea of people who just have obsessions, or unwanted distressing thoughts or images,” Woodrow explained. “And because some people didn’t have overt compulsions, they believed that it was just ‘obsessional’ OCD.”

OCD, however, can manifest in “a number of different ways,” Woodrow said, “and most people with OCD have multiple themes that jump around and overlap.” But they always include compulsions, she said.

“Most people today don’t use the term ‘Pure O,’ because it does dismiss the fact that people are engaging in compulsions mentally. They are engaging in compulsions, but other people may not notice them,” Woodrow said.

In any case, Woodrow suggests that OCD sufferers seek treatment from a professional, as symptoms can get significantly worse over time, whatever the terminology.

“We do often use terms to categorize OCD, but the wonderful thing is that evidence-based treatment works on them all,” she said.

In his “60 Minutes” interview, Combs didn’t go into detail about any treatments he’s sought over the years. But he said he’s become an “expert” in dealing with his compulsive thoughts.

“It’s learning to just go, ‘Doesn’t’ even matter what the thoughts are. Like, I just have to accept that they’re happening, and then just go, ‘Whatever, dude. It’s happening, it’s whatever,’” Combs said. “It’s weird, sucks, hate it, drives me crazy, but then you just eventually … the less that you worry about why you’re having the thoughts, eventually, they go away.

“It’s very tedious to pull yourself out of it,” he also said. “You have to know what to do, and I’m lucky to be an expert in how to get out of it.”