Robert Gallery on CTE, Depression, and the Psychedelic Therapy That Saved His Life

By Wayne Drehs

Robert Gallery could have said nothing. The larger-than-life Iowa football legend, whose name and No. 78 are permanently affixed to the Kinnick Stadium press box, could have shoved aside the darkest details of his post-career mental health struggles. This was a small theater full of 100 strangers, after all—faculty and residents from the University of Iowa Department of Psychiatry, scribbling notes and listening intently while nibbling on deli sandwiches from a boxed lunch.

But on this late-fall afternoon, at the hospital across the street from where the 6-foot-7 inch, 325-pound lineman known as “The Mountain” built his football mythology, Gallery bared all. He spoke of his sweat-filled nightmares where he imagined putting a gun in his mouth, then woke up with a metallic taste on his tongue. He talked about morning jogs in his Northern California neighborhood when he thought about throwing himself in front of a semi. Or the high-speed, teetering out-of-control motorcycle rides where he pondered veering into oncoming traffic.

“To make it look like an accident,” said Gallery. “So nobody could say I quit.”

A lifetime of banging skulls with other 300-pound men had led to multiple concussions and troubling brain fog. Internally Gallery fought the war between the way the outside world perceived him—menacing, violent, relentless—and the way he often felt inside: inferior, inadequate, and insecure. The 2004 No. 2 overall pick in the NFL Draft struggled to equate the promise and potential of his franchise-altering selection with an eight-year NFL career that culminated without a Pro Bowl or playoff appearance.

Retirement made things even worse, with violent outbursts and erratic behavior creating an anxiety-fueled, walking-on-thin-ice atmosphere for Gallery’s wife and their three children. Spill the milk; make noise; look, say, or do the wrong thing; and Gallery would snap like a wire stretched too far.

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