Luke Combs is getting vulnerable with his fans.
To start 2025, Luke Combs spent a good bit of time touring around New Zealand and Australia, playing in some of the biggest stadiums in each city. The packed venues were a testament to how big of a name he is in country music. The 2022 CMA Entertainer of the Year had a sprint to the top of country music. Some would describe him as maintaining his status as one of the biggest names in country music over the last few years.
But Luke Combs feels like his climb to the top was anything but a sprint. It took meeting many goals, spending a lot of time on the road, and living a lot of life as he’s gotten married and welcomed two kids into the world since he’s become a household name.
While Luke Combs’ life might seem perfect to the everyday Joe, Luke Combs lives a life that faces struggles just like we do. In 2021, Combs opened up about his lifelong battle with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Combs noted in an AXS interview that he remembers first struggling with it in middle school and had difficulty getting a grip on it until college.
“Essentially, my version of fixing the blinds or straightening the carpet are thoughts that I play over and over in my head. For example, it’ll be something about my health. I’ll be worried that I’m gonna have a heart attack or have a stroke and it becomes this very obsessive thing that you literally can never have an answer to… It’s something that you learn about yourself, and arming yourself with the knowledge of exactly what’s going on is the most important thing, I’ve found.”
At the time of this interview, Combs noted that he’d mostly overcome his anxiety and OCD but still faced a flare-up here and there.
Combs revisited this topic four years later when he sat down with 60 Minutes Australia. During this interview, Combs shared that his OCD has become “debilitating” at times, taking over aspects of his life. Combs even admitted that his worst flare-up in over three years happened roughly two days before he embarked on his Australia and New Zealand tour.
“So the first two weeks for me here were like a lot of rumination, a lot of OCD stuff, and it was like not, it was not ideal.”
Combs then said that his OCD is very thought-based, leading him to have intrusive thoughts.
“It’s thoughts, essentially, that you don’t want to have … and then they cause you stress, and then you’re stressed out, and then the stress causes you to have more of the thoughts, and then you don’t understand why you’re having them, and you’re trying to get rid of them, but trying to get rid of them makes you have more of them. It’s really complex and really detailed. It’s very like tedious to pull yourself out of it.”
Given that Luke has dealt with this mental condition for over two decades, he considered himself an expert in Pure O and knows how to get his head out of a bad episode, but even with the tools to de-escalate this thought, they still occur. Combs tells reporter Adam Hegarty that he feels for people who have the same manifestation of OCD as him because it’s a very “wicked” variation of how it presents itself.
Combs elaborates that while most people think of OCD as “flipping a light switch” or something of that nature, given that his thoughts are all internal, no one knows that he’s suffering.
“For someone like myself, you don’t even know it’s going on. It could be going on right now, and you don’t even know.”
Combs said that for him to move on from these episodes, he has to know that he’s having these intrusive thoughts but can’t pay any attention to them, or else they escalate. The more he gives attention to them, the more they grow and keep coming into his mind. Hegarty then asked Combs if he could detail some of the thoughts that led him to have a bad flare-up before leaving for tour.
“I mean they can be, they range, they can be intrusively violent thoughts, or thoughts about religion. It focuses on things that don’t have an answer. For example, no one worries about whether 2+2 is 4; that’s not what we are talking about here.
It’s really questions about who you are as a person that you really can’t, you can’t ever get an answer to. There’s never a yes or no answer, and that’s what really fuels the anxiety. Like, you can’t ever get an answer, but you desperately want an answer for whatever this thing that’s bothering you is. But learning to be like, ‘Doesn’t matter what the answer is,’ is the freedom of like going, ‘Doesn’t have to have an answer to that question.'”
Combs notes that he’s learned to get things under control, but again feels for the kids who experience the same thing he does. Combs notes that he wants to eventually do outreach to kids who suffer because he knows how frustrating it is to feel like your mental health is impacting your life.
“It held me back so many times in my life, where you’re trying to accomplish something, you’re doing really great, and then you have a flare-up, and it like ruins your whole life for like six months. And then you’re back to where you started.”
Combs hopes to inspire anyone else with OCD that they can have a successful career and a happy life. You must learn what tools will help you pull yourself out of these episodes. Combs sharing his story about his flare-up right before tour is why he is so transparent about his OCD; he wants people to see that if he can do it, they can, too.
Luke Combs is an inspiration for many reasons, and his transparency about his mental health struggles amplifies why his fans adore him.
Check out Vivid Seats to snag some tickets when Luke’s playing near you this year. They give you free tickets just for going to concerts, not a bad deal, right?
Check out the whole interview while you’re here.
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