By Caleb Whisler, Staff Writer
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—Cody Ware comes into 2019 with a renewed confidence, despite struggles with mental health.
About seven years ago, the 23-year-old driver was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. Around the age of 18, Ware began to acknowledge that he had a problem but waited until he was about 21 to circumvent the problem.
“I want to say that I was 17 or 18 when I really acknowledged that I had a problem, but it wasn’t until I was 20 or 21 where I actually started actually trying to fix the problem,” Ware said. “I acknowledge it when I was a young adult, but it still took a couple of years after that for me to really make an effort to change that.
“That has been part of the past few years for me to making the conscious decision to keep fighting that fight. It is not something that I can take medication and be done with it, but it is a battle every morning when I wake up to deal with those problems.”
As he was growing up, Ware suppressed and bottled up his emotions to become scared to talk about not being “normal.”
In 2017 when Ware’s diagnoses were not made public, he said and did things on social media that created tons of backlash for himself personally; however, it was in that moment where he hit rock bottom and began to do something about the problem.
“For me, hitting rock bottom was the best thing that happened to me,” he said. “That really gave me a wake-up call that it was going to get worse and that you are never going to come back from it unless you do something about it right now.
“That really set the stage where I am having to deal with
that now, but I own and accept it. All I can do now is show that I am putting
in the effort to improve myself and talk about my story. Moving forward, I have
to own what I’ve done and all I can do is go forward and not make the same
mistakes twice and try to make a difference.”
In recent months, Ware has become open and honest with his followers on social media about the problems he was facing. That openness, however, took time for Ware.
“The first one or two serious tweets, I took a lot of time to ponder over it to make sure I said the right things and didn’t advocate the wrong message,” Ware said. “After I got over that initial anxiety of the tweeting, things just came naturally.
“I knew what my message was. Over the past few months, it has come to me where I have tweeted what is on my and not overthinking it. I just let it come out knowing my head and heart are in the right place. Going forward, it has been pretty easy.”
When he began the process of admitting his struggles to the public, Ware expected negativity and backlash; however, the messages of support poured in.
“As soon as I made the first decision to open up, I was expecting backlash and negativity, I had a lot of support from people with messages that it was nice to see somebody talking about it,” be said. “It gave me the confidence to move forward with tweets, Facebook posts and things like that. It is going to be a long process to make it really go away, but I think it is going to start now.”
Now, Ware has to find a balance between being open and his professional image, but he knows that the platform he has a full-time driver in the Cup series to address the issue of mental health.
“I feel like I am doing the right thing and making the right call with being open about it,” Ware said. “There is such a stigma around mental health, in general, in this country. You see lot of issues in the news and media that have been happening the last couple of years.
“I feel like it is a topic that needs to be talked about by athletes in general because everybody looks up to guys like us. If we can start that conversation, hopefully, it will start a downward pour where everyone is talking about it and not taboo about talking about it. This isn’t my story, but it is a story that needs to be talked about for everybody.
“This is an issue that is way more prevalent in this country that hasn’t been discussed at all. I think the more people that have and use their voice to talk about mental health and the stigma around it, I think will help more people than I can even imagine. If all I am doing is starting a conversation, then I am accomplishing what I want to do.”
While he will be racing full-time, internally Ware had to make sure that he can mentally and emotionally handle the stress a driver faces. With all the support from friends and family, Ware will sit back and enjoy every moment of the 2019 season.