UFC 304's Nathaniel Wood proud to embrace anti-anxiety help to stay out of dark places

Nathaniel Wood has been open about how his mental health struggles have impacted his career.

Now he’s just as open about how anti-anxiety medication has helped him keep from going to what he called a “dark place,” and he hopes that message might help other people, too.

“I have suffered with OCD and anxiety for as long as I can remember,” Wood told MMA Junkie Radio. “I know I had it when I was a child, but I didn’t know it at the time. I’ve been on my medication now for, on and off, probably nine years. There was one time where I would be on and off, and your dark cloud days come.

“There was one time where I was really, really, really bad for a solid month. When I went back on (Sertraline), I just said to myself I’m not coming off them – not for a long time. … I’m still on it now. I’m still happy to take it. I’m still proud to say I’m taking it because if potentially coming off it will put me in a dark place again, then I’d rather just stay on it.”

Wood (20-6 MMA, 7-3 UFC) on Saturday takes on Daniel Pineda (28-15 MMA, 5-6 UFC) in a featherweight bout to close out the prelims at UFC 304 (pay-per-view, ESPN2, ESPN+) at Co-op Live in Manchester, England.

He’ll be trying to break back into the win column after an October 2023 decision loss in Abu Dhabi to Muhammad Naimov. That snapped a three-fight winning streak of decisions since he moved up to featherweight from bantamweight.

Absent the meds, things might be different for someone who suffers with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

“I have intrusive thoughts. I have a headache. Instantly, I might think, ‘Could it be brain cancer?’ So instead of just going, ‘I’m gonna move on, I will obsess over that – all day, potentially all night, without realizing until I put myself in a really anxious state.

“… It’s a very unexplained illness. A lot of people just think (OCD) is about being tidy or it’s about washing your hands. But there’s so much more to it that people don’t understand. Even I didn’t understand it until I eventually went and got medical help and realized that it’s a lot more complex than people think.”

Check out the full interview with Wood in the video above.

For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 304.