Luke Combs opens up about ‘wicked’ and ‘obscure’ health struggle in new interview

Luke Combs is opening up about his health, particularly a challenging diagnosis.

The “Forever After All” singer has given insight into his battle with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), which he describes as “particularly wicked.”

Though OCD is typically associated with compulsive ticks or habits, for the country star, it’s not always outwardly obvious symptoms, and it tends to manifest itself through “intrusively violent” thoughts.

Speaking with 60 Minutes Australia about living with both OCD and anxiety, Luke said: “I do really well with it for the most part,” however noted: “It’s something I think about in some part every day.”

He added that he suffers from an “obscure” form of OCD. Per the Mayo Clinic, “these obsessions lead you to do repetitive behaviors, also called compulsions. These obsessions and compulsions get in the way of daily activities and cause a lot of distress,” and that ultimately, those with OCD “feel driven to do compulsive acts to ease your stress.”

“It’s thoughts, essentially, that you don’t want to have,” Luke further shared, adding: “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 then 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.”

© Getty Images

Luke added that he had one of if not his worst flare ups in the lead up to arriving in Australia, where he recently performed a slate of shows, and that his thought patterns are “really complex” and “really detailed,” but he has become “an expert” in managing his flare ups.

Further reflecting on his own experience, he shared: “I think the craziness of the particular disorder that I have is… the way to get out of it, it doesn’t matter what the thoughts even are.”

© Tibrina Hobson

He continued: “You giving any credence to what the thoughts are is like irrelevant, and only fuels you having them. It’s learning to go ‘It doesn’t even matter what the thoughts are.'”

© Instagram

“The less that you worry about having the thoughts, eventually they go away,” he added.

© Getty Images

Luke also shared that his OCD started around when he was 12 or 13 years old, and going forward, he would love to be a source of support for kids going through the same thing.

“I definitely want to spend some time at some point in my life doing some outreach that kids who deal with this,” he stated. “It held me back so many times in my life where you’re trying to accomplish something, you’re doing really great and then you have a flare up and it ruins your life for six months.”