Luke Combs opens up about struggle with severe form of OCD

“Fast Car” country superstar Luke Combs has opened up about overcoming a two-decade struggle with a severe form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the 35-year-old revealed in a new interview.

The singer-songwriter recently told 60 Minutes‘ Australian edition that, after first being diagnosed with OCD at around “12 or 13 years old,” he’s been “crippled by it” ever since. “It held me back so many times in my life,” he said in the conversation — during which he also explained that his case isn’t what most people think of when they picture a person living with OCD.

“It’s something in some way I at least think about every day. There’s some tinge of it, to some extent, every day. Probably the worst flare-up I’ve had of it in three or four years, started two days before this trip,” he said of his Australian excursion, which coincided with his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour in support of both albums earlier this year. “The first two weeks for me here, it was a lot of rumination, OCD stuff, it was not ideal.”

Combs called his iteration of the disorder “more of an obscure form of OCD” that involves “thoughts that you don’t want to have that you’re having, and they cause you stress and then the stress causes you to have more of the thoughts,” versus more classic representations like, as the journalist interviewing him suggested, physical feelings compelling one to do things like flip a light switch.

“It’s tedious to pull yourself out of it. You have to know what to do. I’m lucky to be an expert in how to get out of it, now, but I feel for the people that struggle with it. Especially anyone with OCD, really, but the variant that I have is particularly wicked. There’s no outward manifestation of it,” Combs continued. “The flicking of the light switch is all going on in [my mind] for me.”

Combs offered a hopeful outlook on his experience, though, as he said he’s found a way to deal with the intrusive thoughts.

“It doesn’t even matter what the thoughts are, I have to accept that they’re happening and just go, whatever, dude, it’s happening, it’s whatever, it’s weird, it sucks, it’s driving me crazy. The less you worry about why you’re having the thoughts, eventually they go away,” he said, before confirming that the condition “definitely has” impacted him mid-performance in the past.

“When it hits, it can be all-consuming. This is no exaggeration,” he recalled. “But, if you have a flare-up, you can think about it 45 seconds of every minute for weeks. It’s not fun.”

Combs aid he’s “not as afraid of it” when it happens now, and that he wants to be an example to young kids struggling with the disorder as role model who still achieved great things through perseverance.

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“When it happens now, I’m not as afraid of it. I’m not like, ‘What if I’m like this forever?'” he said. “I know I’m not going to be like this forever, now.”

Combs’ rise to music stardom on the country scene began with the 2016 release of his debut single, “Hurricane,” which reached the top 40 in the United States. He’d go on to release a string of successful albums and a pair of No. 2-peaking singles, including 2021’s “Forever After All” and his 2023 cover of Tracy Chapman’s iconic 1988 tune “Fast Car.” To date, Combs has also amassed eight Grammy nominations to his name.

Watch Combs discuss his OCD in the video above.