Bear Grylls talks candidly about his parachuting accident that resulted in him breaking his back in three places.

Evening Standard

Transcript

00:00 I'd broken my back in three places.

00:01 I was in Africa at the time, spent months and months

00:03 back in military rehabilitation in the UK afterwards.

00:07 Sorry, can we just freeze the moment?

00:08 What goes through a man's or a woman's mind

00:11 when they've jumped out of a plane, full of confidence

00:14 and gung-ho, they pull the ripcord and nothing happens,

00:17 and you carry on hurtling to the ground?

00:19 What goes through your mind?

00:20 I think at the time, you're just desperately

00:22 trying to sort it out.

00:23 It was getting dark.

00:24 You're just in a sort of fuzz of, what's wrong?

00:27 Can I sort this?

00:28 Have I got time to go for this reserve in time?

00:31 And then in a heartbeat, boom, my world sort of went black.

00:36 And I came to a long journey back to eventually

00:41 to this African hospital.

00:43 And I remember the doctor sticking

00:45 the syringe in my back.

00:47 And suddenly the pain going, and me just thinking,

00:49 I'm better, trying to get up.

00:50 And then they were going, you're not better.

00:53 So your life doesn't flash before you?

00:55 No, it was more just desperately trying to sort it out.

00:58 So I figured this out.

00:59 Yeah.

00:59 So did you open the reserve?

01:00 No, no.

01:02 I thought I could land this thing.

01:04 It was ripped.

01:05 So it was open, but it was ripped.

01:08 But you know what?

01:09 We replay these moments, don't we?

01:11 And I think in a way, the hard time for me

01:13 then was actually the rehab.

01:14 Because it's like, you put so much confidence in your--

01:19 for me, in my physicality.

01:20 I was doing a job I loved.

01:21 And that was a hard bit for me, those long months

01:24 of not much progress.

01:26 Yeah, was that really tough for you?

01:28 Because of the type of person you are,

01:30 when you have a setback like that,

01:32 it must be difficult for you from a mental health

01:36 perspective to be able to get your head around, OK,

01:38 what does this mean for me?

01:39 And how do I deal with this?

01:40 Yeah, and people say, oh, you must

01:42 be very positive to go from that to all the other stuff

01:45 and the Everest climb.

01:46 But actually, it wasn't like that.

01:48 It was a really stumbling, difficult journey

01:50 where I felt like I'm going two paces back, inch forward, back.

01:54 Couldn't reach a bathroom without agonizing pain.

01:57 I thought the chance of ever returning to any sort of job

02:00 that was the job I loved at the time was gone.

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