Herschel Walker is mainly known for being a Heisman-winning football star and Olympian, but he also is one of the few celebrities to be formerly diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. DID is a less common disorder that involves patients taking on multiple personalities, and is not as commonly talked about due to its rarity.

The first thing Walker did was debunk the typical thoughts about DID that people get from movies. Often times people with DID are portrayed as thinking that they are multiple different people with multiple personalities. In reality, DID is when aspects of a personality don't work together to form one personality, and one personality trait ends up overriding the rest. Walker says he had almost a dozen different alters (when his personality changed) and many of them he didn’t even remember. The most devastating part of the illness was some of his extreme and violent behavior, which as a result collapsed his marriage. Walker wanted to share his story to inspire others with DID to seek professional help.

Photo credit: Herschel Walker visit with USAFA Class of 2016 Basic Cadet Training [Image 4 of 17] by DVIDSHUB