Adam Peaty has never been one to shy away from expressing his feelings outwardly.
The three-time Olympic champion has long been viewed as a brash, confident athlete who isn’t afraid to let everyone know how good he is—a distinction he’s certainly earned as one of the most dominant figures in swimming over the last eight years.
However, since reaching the pinnacle of the sport, Peaty has spoken openly in a different tone, shedding light on the mental battles he’s gone through both on his path to the top and even more so now that he’s achieved everything he set out to do.
In May 2020, Peaty spoke about the “post-Olympic blues” he had felt after Rio 2016, including “drinking and partying too much,” and some of that has followed him in recent years.
The 28-year-old recently gave an inclusive interview to The Times from Spain, where he’s situated for a training camp under coach Ben Titley to hit the reset button both physically and mentally.
“It’s been an incredibly lonely journey,” Peaty told The Times.
“The devil on my shoulder (says), ‘You’re missing out on life, you’re not good enough, you need a drink, you can’t have what you want, you can’t be happy.’ ”
Last month, Peaty withdrew from the recently-concluded British Swimming Championships, Great Britain’s selection meet for the 2023 World Championships, citing mental health reasons.
The drinking issues that he touched on a few years ago have become more prevalent in his life.
The Times says Peaty mentioned that drinking is “his weakness” and that the demons he deals with sometimes point him in the direction of alcohol.
“Honestly, I’ve been on a self-destructive spiral, which I don’t mind saying because I’m human,” Peaty said, according to The Times. “By saying it, I can start to find the answers.”
The mental challenges Peaty struggles with stem from where he finds himself in the sport—the drive to succeed was diminishing after he already reached the top.
“‘Mental health’ has become a very loose term,” he said. “I meant that I got to a point in my career where I didn’t feel like myself, I didn’t feel happy swimming, I didn’t feel happy racing, my biggest love in the sport.
“I’ve had my hand hovering over a self-destruct button because if I don’t get the result that I want, I self-destruct.
“Sometimes that can be good because I use that as a long-term motivation. It’s why the rise (to being world #1) was so quick at first . . . frankly, it pisses me off to lose.”
Peaty’s internal struggles have only been compounded by external things, such as the lackluster 2022 he had in the pool and his split with Eiri Munro, the mother of his two-year-old son, George.
“It’s not like a team sport where I can rely on the rest to carry me through or another person to get the goals,” said Peaty, who added that he and Eiri remain friends.
“I have to do all this on my own, really, and it’s an incredibly, incredibly lonely journey. No one will ever understand how lonely it is to be at the top of the sport and continually be there because you’ve got to say no to so many things, including many things that make you happy.
“That even means my son sometimes because he doesn’t live with me now and I haven’t got the energy to spend the time driving down . . . to see him, then spending the weekend between there and getting back for racing and training. I’ve got to make this decision, but I feel bad about it.
“Spending time with people is a distraction, because it takes away from what you’re trying to do, takes away from your energy that you’re trying to have for the next session. It is an incredibly difficult and lonely place and not many people understand that. My family still don’t understand that. They don’t have to do what I have to do. I tell them, ‘It’s OK, you don’t understand.’ People get offended by that but I don’t understand their jobs either, so I don’t get into it.
“Unless you’ve been in my shoes, you don’t know what it takes. And I guess that’s the hardest thing, especially when you’re alone all the time. And yes, it does make it harder in relationships.
Peaty went on to speak about the massive amount of time he invests in the sport, trying to get better by a couple of one-hundredths of a second.
“Any sane person knows that 18 years doing the same thing is pretty much crazy,” said Peaty, who began full-time training at the age of 10.
“Trying to find tiny margins year after year, trying to find 0.1 percent. The dedication and sacrifice — weekends and all your time are spent chasing that goal for this one opportunity of Olympic glory. Once made sense, twice was a big ask, and was bigger last time round because that extra Covid year was really hard on all of us.
“A third one? It’s very bizarre that we do it, but I’m still here. The only reason that I took a step away from it for now, competitively, is because I don’t know why I’m still doing it, to be honest. I don’t know why I’m still fighting.
“The positive thing is that I noticed a ‘why’ there. I’m looking for the answer.”
On days when he’s not feeling good, Peaty has had difficulty battling through given that he’s already achieved so much success in the pool.
“As soon as you wake up, the only thing that matters is how you’re going to get the best out of yourself,” he said.
“I’m up around 6-6:30; you start to roll it up mentally in the car on the way to training. And that’s when the voices start, like a devil on my shoulder. Some days you feel good and you don’t have to talk back; some days you feel horrendous, so you have to talk back and get through it.
“The difference between now and 2015 is that you had a lot more energy and you had a lot more to prove. The difficult thing now is that when I talk back to the voice that says, ‘You’re not feeling good today,’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I don’t feel good today and I’ve done everything in this sport I’ve ever wanted to do, so why am I still fighting?’ That’s the reason I took the break.”
When posed with the idea of walking away from the sport, given these thoughts, Peaty said: “I kind of persuaded myself out of thinking like that. I don’t want to end on these terms.”
He also linked the voice in his head to his drinking.
“I’m trying to quieten that voice, which is alcohol,” he said. “I like a glass of wine or a beer but when I haven’t got a stimulus, nothing to focus on, I really struggle with the noise.”
Despite all of the challenges he’s dealing with, Peaty’s eyes remain on the ultimate goal of winning a third straight Olympic gold medal in the men’s 100 breaststroke next summer in Paris.
If he were to do so, he would join Michael Phelps, an athlete who had similar experiences dealing with mental health amidst his time at the top of the sport, as only the second male swimmer to win the same event at three straight Olympics.
“I think I can do that, otherwise I wouldn’t be here, but it’s going to take a very different journey to get down to that,” he said.
Peaty said he never felt quite right when he returned from a foot injury (that forced him out of the 2022 World Championships) to compete at the Commonwealth Games, shockingly missing the podium in the 100 breast.
“You work for months and months on getting the feel and flow of breaststroke right,” he says. “It’s a fine line and the foot just didn’t feel right. It was too soon.”
Peaty says he’s frequently felt as though all of his past success will disappear should he falter in his next performance, something he’s finally able to reframe in his mind.
“That’s something I’ve come to terms with only recently,” he said. “I was like, ‘Hold on a minute, I’ve achieved all this,’ but I’m always thinking I’m going to lose it if I don’t win my next one.
“It’s like you’re playing all in on red. I’ve realized that no one can take any of it away from me. And yes, I may have immortality,” he said referencing his world record of 56.88 in the men’s 100 breast, a goal he dubbed “Project Immortal” when first setting out to break 57 seconds.
“No one knows how fast ‘special’ is going to get but my time is going to be up there for a long time to come.”
Peaty has taken to writing journal entries and taking 15-minute “time to think” walks during his training stint in Spain, helping him reset mentally.
“I’ll write down pros and cons of a situation if I need to or even just write for writing’s sake,” Peaty says. “That’s really helped with sorting out things — I’m letting my soul breathe and truly relax.
“It’s only when you give your mind and body that kind of break that you can work out where your head is and look back and truly appreciate what you’ve achieved.
“For the first time in my career I’ve been able to see that I’ve gone the whole way and I couldn’t have given more. Now it’s about how we continue the journey without having that self-destructive mindset.
“I do love swimming, I do love racing, I do love it all and it’s somewhere in there, but sometimes you lose sight of it because you get so caught up in absolutely everything — distractions, stuff that’s not even important, your own ego.
“Just to realize what I’ve achieved and appreciate it put a smile on my face for the first time in a very long time. So it’s looking good.”
Peaty has also been able to use his platform to help promote the next generation of swimmers in Great Britain, as he’ll host the inaugural AP Race London International meet next month.
In the lead-up to Paris, the main thing for Peaty is to enjoy himself, “because I don’t want to get to a place where I regret or hate where I’m at — or even worse.”
“The physical preparation goes on so my body will be ready to fight again when my heart and mind have caught up,” he said. “I’ll be ready when I need to be ready.
“What the future looks like, I don’t know, but I have a smile on my face at last. I’m courageous and resilient and will face the challenge that I need to face.”
