Luke Combs might seem to have it all, including a successful career, a beautiful wife and a healthy new baby, but life isn’t as easy for him as it might seem. The 32-year-old is opening about his own battle with anxiety and OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), and how he has learned to move forward in spite of the challenges it presents.
“Crippling is the word I would use,” Combs reveals on Apple Music Country’s Today’s Country Radio with Kelleigh Bannen, adding that it can be triggered by a lot of things, but never walking on stage.
“[It] could be anything,” Combs concedes. “It’s really stuff that’s out of my control, whether it’s my health. It’s just really insane. Stuff you could never get an answer to. So you have to learn to live with the uncertainty of never knowing becomes the only way to get over it.”
Combs and his wife, Nicole, welcomed their son, Tex Ritter, in June. The addition of his first child has changed a lot for Combs, and how he approaches things, now that he is a father.
“Your whole perspective changes,” Combs admits. “Like, there’s stuff that used to matter as far as the things that you worry about, you just don’t really worry about that stuff anymore, and almost instantly. … You’re just kind of like, ‘Don’t care about that. Don’t care.’ And I was fine before, but I did tend to have pretty tremendous anxiety at times in my life.”
The North Carolina native has learned to cope with his anxiety and OCD, and move forward in a healthy way in spite of the challenges they present.
“I look at things now in ways that I never would’ve been able to before,” Combs says. “And even before the kid. After getting married and then spending a lot of time at home during COVID, just a bunch of stuff happened. It was time to process all of this craziness that’s happened in my career, too. I mean, that’s important.”
While Combs continues to deal with his anxiety and OCD, he is also trying to lose weight and be healthy, a challenge he admits is still a struggle for him.
“Let’s say you’re a cocaine addict, and you quit cocaine,” Combs tells Zane Lowe on Apple Music. “Food is the only drug that you are addicted to that you have to have to live. I don’t need a cigarette to be alive. But I need food to be alive … It’s like, you would literally die without food. And so that’s what makes it such a difficult thing.”
Combs is currently on his The Middle of Somewhere Tour. Find music and tour dates at LukeCombs.com.