“Carefree,” says Ryan Caldwell when I ask what the word tattooed across his fingers means. He looks up from his hands on a rainy morning in Belfast. The former Ireland international, who played as an enforcer for Ulster, Bath, and Exeter, then laughs softly, acknowledging how odd that word seems.
We’ve been talking for nearly two hours about a lot of heavy, dark topics – from his struggles with addiction and time in prison, to his injury-plagued rugby career, and the final severe concussion that ended his playing days and sent him spiraling deeper into suicidal depression.
Caldwell has also told me how he slowly healed himself after going into the Amazon jungle and taking the first of several doses of ayahuasca, a plant-based hallucinogen. He now helps others by listening to their problems while teaching breathwork and meditation.
“I know, I know,” Caldwell says wryly when I point out that “carefree” isn’t the most obvious word for someone with his troubling, though ultimately uplifting, story.
Caldwell is 6ft 7in and covered in tattoos, but the big man, who turns 42 on Tuesday, is gentle and often amusing company. The former second-row is also about to publish a book, White Lines: A Rugby Life Broken and Rebuilt, which might just be the sporting autobiography of the year. It’s a gripping read, full of sobering insights into professional rugby and life.
But near the end of our engrossing interview, I want to hear more about the blue ink that covers so much of his face and body. “The first tattoo came when I was 18,” Caldwell remembers. “It was Sanskrit for ‘strength’. My mum cried and I was like: ‘Och, Mummy, it’s only skin deep.'”
View image in fullscreen: Ryan Caldwell says of his tattoos: ‘They’re pretty much the one thing. Most of me is tattooed … they’re just part of me.’ Photograph: Paul Faith/The Guardian
How many tattoos does he have? “They’re pretty much the one thing. A few small gaps here and there, but most of me is tattooed. I don’t want any more now and haven’t had any in a few years. But they’re just part of me.”
The words “no love” are tattooed above one eyebrow, which seems strange because Caldwell’s life has been full of love from his family. “When I got that tattoo, I felt very low and had no love for myself. In that state, it’s hard to see the love other people have for you.”
As a boy, Caldwell fell for rugby union because it “felt wild and alive, and so did I”. He loved the game’s intense physicality and the freedom it gave him to smash into other players.
But during his rise as a schoolboy prodigy, and then while playing professionally for Ulster, rugby made Caldwell believe it was wrong to show any insecurity or vulnerability. He was a hard man who only lost his shyness when getting up to all kinds of drunken and ridiculous antics, where trying to be loud and funny with his teammates mattered more than being authentic and truthful.
Caldwell writes that, “despite the hard-man exterior, I was a sensitive soul. I felt things really deeply. Only looking back do I see that I had no language for feelings.”
He earned just two full international caps – not the many that were predicted when he was a powerful force in junior rugby. Caldwell is perhaps best known for an incident during a training session in the buildup to the 2007 World Cup, when he upset Paul O’Connell and the future Ireland and Lions captain punched him so hard that, as he claims in his book, “I nearly died … I was out cold. The punch had burst my cheek open – one of my back teeth punctured straight through it. I was swallowing blood, gurgling, and then started fitting on the pitch. I stopped breathing. Almost gone. They had to resuscitate me right there on the grass. Gary O’Driscoll, the team doc, sprinted over and cut the jersey open. I remember flashes of his face – panic in his eyes – his hands pressing…”I woke up with someone’s knee on my chest. Someone was shouting for an ambulance. It was complete chaos.
Caldwell doesn’t hold any grudge against O’Connell, who was deeply shaken by what he’d done and later called it the worst moment of his rugby career. But at the time, Caldwell tried to brush it off as if it was nothing.
His book also talks about other painful experiences with the national team. He describes how happy he was when head coach Declan Kidney told him he’d been picked to play New Zealand in November 2008. Caldwell grimaces now as he recalls that, two days later, Kidney called him to say his name had been announced by mistake. He was dropped from the squad.
Caldwell was devastated but says: “I was still inexperienced, so I didn’t question him about it.”
He moved from Ulster to Bath in 2011 and played so well that Kidney called to say he was back in the running. A few days later, according to Caldwell, Kidney phoned again to say he actually couldn’t be selected because he was playing outside Ireland.
Caldwell, feeling “really resentful,” was voted Bath’s forward of the season – but then injury hit. It wasn’t long before, while dealing with the breakdown of his marriage and ongoing injuries, “everything started falling apart in Bath.” Caldwell began using cocaine and soon used it so often that he had his own dealer.
View image in fullscreen
Ryan Caldwell playing for Bath against Worcester in 2012. “I couldn’t even put my socks on in the morning. And I was running around on the Saturday, tackling, hitting rucks,” he says. Photograph: David Rogers/Getty Images
If injury hadn’t stopped him, might he have avoided the darkness that took over? “I don’t know,” he says. “To be honest, I was living on borrowed time. By the time I got to Bath, my hips were in constant pain. In my second season I had surgery and the surgeon said: ‘I don’t know how you’re playing professional sport.’ In the last couple of years, I couldn’t even put my socks on in the morning. And I was still running around on Saturdays, making tackles, hitting rucks.”
At Bath and then Exeter, he pushed through the pain, and injections let him keep playing. “I always wanted to play – and that was the rugby culture. I remember a medic from my early days. I said: ‘Doc, I’m really struggling. My knee’s killing me.’ He said: ‘Here are some harden-up pills.'”
As his injuries got worse, his drug use – cocaine and others – went up too. A embarrassed Caldwell tells me how Rob Baxter, his Exeter coach, might have seen him snorting coke in a toilet stall. “I thought: ‘God, did he notice? He must have.’ I remember flushing the toilet and Rob was standing there. I said: ‘Alright, Rob?’ And he said: ‘Alright?’ I just walked out.”
Skip past newsletter promotion
Free newsletter | Weekly
Sign up to The Breakdown
The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week’s action reviewed
Enter your email Sign up
after newsletter promotion
Baxter was understanding and kind when Caldwell finally retired in 2014, at age 30, after a concussion he couldn’t shake off. Caldwell pauses when I ask how many concussions he had. “It’s hard to say. There were times I was completely knocked out cold, but there were also lots of head knocks. The last concussion, when I retired, was different. A heavy depression set in. I went to a specialist in Belfast, and he ran some tests and told me: ‘You shouldn’t be playing rugby.’ I knew it was over.”
How long did the effects of that concussion last? “I had that foggy feeling for months. Even now, my memory isn’t great.”
Caldwell knows about the legal action many players have taken against rugby authorities, but “I’m focused on the positive things I’m doing now. Chasing compensation takes so much mental energy, and it’s aIt feels a bit out of step with my life now.
Ryan Caldwell during his time at Exeter in 2014. He fears Rob Baxter caught him taking cocaine during his time at the Chiefs. Photograph: David Rogers/Getty Images
He has come a long way from the days when he would tell his long-suffering mum, tears rolling down his face, “I wish I’d never been a rugby player. I should have had an ordinary life.”
Caldwell doesn’t blame rugby for the fact that he ended up with “hips wrecked, brain rattled from too many bangs to the head” and twice being sent to Maghaberry prison near Lisburn for being caught in possession of drugs and causing criminal damage while unfit to drive. He came close to taking his life, for a second time, in his cell and was only saved by a prison warder coming to check on him. If the man had stuck to his usual routine, Caldwell would have been dead by the time he arrived.
Paddy Johns, the former Ireland international whom Caldwell revered as a kid, was the prison dentist who helped him. But it was only when an addict tried to introduce him to heroin that Caldwell decided “enough was enough”. He took the radical step of heading for the Amazon jungle and confronting all he had become through ayahuasca.
It has taken him years, but finally, Caldwell found peace and a new purpose in his work. “Over the last few months, for example, I’ve worked with women going through menopause, people dealing with grief, depression and anxiety. I help people with natural medicine and breathwork, meditation and give them a place where they feel safe enough to talk. But the main core of what I do is running three- and four-day retreats where they disconnect from their daily life, and their phone, and we speak about all the things that we’re talking about here.”
Caldwell has also repaired his relationship with his parents. They recently came over for dinner with him and his partner, Tara, and their two children. He gave each of them a copy of his book and, as Caldwell says now, “When he was leaving my dad said: ‘Love you!’ He would never have said that growing up. He and my mum are so much more relaxed because they worried about me constantly.”
Ryan Caldwell at the Giant’s Ring in Belfast. ‘My relationship with my parents is better than it’s ever been,’ he says. Photograph: Paul Faith/The Guardian
He smiles wryly. “My dad is 73 and my mum’s 70. We were on holiday in Portugal and I had brought some magic mushrooms. I’m very open with them and when my mum said: ‘What would it do to me if I took one?’ I told her: ‘It would slow down your thoughts, allow you to be more relaxed.’ She was like: ‘I might take one. Let’s ask your daddy.’ And she goes: ‘Cyril!’ My dad comes in and she’s like: ‘Will we take one of these?'”
Caldwell rocks in amusement. His parents have always been conservative and hard-working and so he only gave them “a mere microdose. They were just lying there, my dad watching Formula One and my mum gave me two thumbs-up on the bed upstairs. I’d never seen them so chilled out. Our relationship now is better than it’s ever been.”
His relationship with rugby has also begun to heal. Last December he went to watch Ulster play Racing at Ravenhill and discovered that “I’m still part of this. And it’s still part of me. Aye. The love remains.”
Caldwell may once have felt traumatised but he says now, sounding almost carefree: “I have this underlying peace even when there are challenges in life. I don’t have a lot of material things but I’ve never felt as rich as I do now. I can see that the whole experience I went through completely humbled me. It had to happen for me to be able to find the life I have now.”
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988.Call or chat with 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to reach a crisis counselor. In Australia, you can contact Lifeline at 13 11 14. For helplines in other countries, visit befrienders.org.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs based on the article about Ryan Caldwell written in a natural tone with clear simple answers
General Background
1 Who is Ryan Caldwell
Hes a former professional rugby player from Ireland He played for teams like Ulster and Bath and he also represented Ireland internationally
2 What exactly happened to him
After retiring from rugby he hit a really dark patch He struggled with severe depression anxiety and a breakdown It got so bad that he felt he had no love for himself and reached a point where he was considering ending his life
3 What does back from the brink mean in this context
It means he pulled himself back from the edge of suicide He went from a state of total despair and selfhatred to a place where he feels peaceful and has a reason to live
4 Is this story recent
Yes he has been very open about this journey in recent interviews and on social media sharing his story to help others who might be struggling
The Journey Mental Health
5 What caused his mental health issues
It wasnt one single thing It was a combination of things the sudden loss of identity when his rugby career ended the physical pain from years of injuries and the pressure of not knowing what to do with his life next
6 What was the turning point for him
He realized he couldnt keep going the way he was He finally admitted he needed professional help and started opening up to people instead of hiding his pain That was the first step
7 What kind of help did he get
He sought professional help which included therapy and medication He also changed his lifestyle focusing on his physical health his family and finding a new purpose outside of rugby
8 He says he has peace now What does that mean for him
It means hes no longer fighting a constant inner war Hes accepted his past hes comfortable in his own skin and he doesnt have that overwhelming feeling of selfloathing anymore Its a sense of calm
Practical Advice Takeaways
9 What is the main message he wants to share
That its okay to not be okay and that asking for help is a sign of strength not weakness He wants men especially athletes
