Herschel Walker knows there will be jokes made about him when the content of his book, Breaking Free, becomes known with its release today.
Walker, the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner, NFL Pro Bowler and Olympian, tells of having dissociative identity disorder (DID), or what is often referred to as multiple personality disorder.
Walker knows that conjures immediate thoughts of Sybil and Three Faces of Eve.
"I know that's coming. Make the jokes, that's all well and good," Walker says. "I'd just like to get it out there that it (DID) isn't a demon. We're not freaks, we're not aliens -- we're people. We're people who need a life adjustment."
Walker's life adjustment came in 2001, after he was diagnosed with DID. Before getting treatment, he tells in his book, he played Russian roulette with himself.
"The name of the book was going to be, 'Doctor, am I crazy?'" Walker says.
In Breaking Free (Simon & Schuster), Walker chronicles how as a child he developed ulterior personalities, or "alters."
That was his coping mechanism to deal with childhood bullies who picked on him because he was obese and he stuttered.
"I was fat. Couple that with a severe stuttering problem, and you have a recipe for a schoolyard disaster," Walker writes. "I was frequently the subject of beatings throughout my early school days."
In an attempt to get comfortable conversing with other children, Walker says he offered money just to have conversations.
To get in shape, Walker tells about the days he spent running barefoot in a plowed field in rural Georgia, dragging a tire roped around his waist.
To conquer his social confrontations, Walker says he employed alters that he has given names: Warrior, Sentry, General, Daredevil, Different Drummer, Enforcer.
"My alters functioned as a kind of community supporting me," writes Walker, adding there are parts of his childhood he doesn't recall.
Walker lives in Dallas and founded a successful food company, Renaissance Man, that he says sells about 25million pounds of chicken a year. Walker says the profits have enabled him to become involved in starting medical treatment centers in Texas and California.
"No I haven't overcome it," he says of DID. "It's something I'm working on."
He chose the U.S. Football League over the NFL in the 1980s. After the USFL's demise, he is maybe best remembered for the deal in which the Dallas Cowboys traded him for five players and four draft picks.
On the playing field, Walker says he invoked his alters primarily to be aggressive and cope with pain.
Walker, 46, believes DID "can be a powerfully effective tool for some people" and writes, "I don't think of myself as a 'victim' of the disorder, nor do I suffer from it. Quite simply, I have it."
But he says the condition did contribute greatly to his divorce from wife Cindy.
"A lot of things she said I did, I don't even remember doing," Walker says. "That's when I knew I had a serious problem. I never injured her, but I threatened her a couple of times. I've grabbed her before. That's not me."
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