Sam Smith. Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Sam Smith had to be rescued earlier this year after a skiing accident that left them unable to walk.
“I completely ripped my ACL. I was skiing. I was an idiot and went on a black slope on the second day,” the 32-year-old singer-songwriter, who uses they/them pronouns, shared during a Thursday, July 18, episode of the podcast “Sidetracked with Annie and Nick.”
The “Unholy” singer, who had to be retrieved by medics from the ski slope, added, “I got taken down in a blood bag. It was the worst. It’s a permanent thing.” As Smith explained, the ACL (or the anterior cruciate ligament) is a knee ligament “in between your bones and helps you jump and spring around.”
Per the Mayo Clinic, these injuries are extremely painful, often requiring surgery to repair and taking upwards of a year to fully heal.
“It completely ripped, and I decided to go down the non-surgical route. But I couldn’t walk for a month on this leg, and it was awful,” Smith continued. Back in January, Smith had been photographed using a cane and wearing a leg brace while walking through New York City, per the Daily Mail.
Smith had spent the previous year on tour for their album Gloria before the accident left them immobilized. “It was the first time I’d ever not been able to move and I was holding onto a bit of weight. I was very anxious,” they explained. “I used it as an excuse to get my s—t together.”
Smith used their time in recovery to focus on healing physically and mentally — this included taking a break from making music and getting rid of social media entirely.
“I actually just got rid of my phone and I got a new phone,” they said on “Sidetracked.” “It’s the first time I don’t have my library of music that I’d had since I was like 11. I started again — fully started again. I needed an American number and my phone was just full of people, like exes and all these different people through the years.”
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They noted: “And I took social media off. Everything. It’s crazy. I find myself sitting on benches now in parks just looking at the trees.”
Smith isn’t the first celebrity this year to suffer a similar injury. Over the weekend, Aubrey Plaza tore her ACL during a game of “knockout” at the Phoenix Mercury practice facility on Saturday, July 20. Despite the injury, she still attended the WNBA All-Star game that same night, sporting crutches and an ice wrap around her knee.
“I feel for Aubrey Plaza. She came this weekend with a healthy knee. She’s leaving with a torn ACL thanks to a hardy game of ‘knockout’ at the Mercury practice facility,” sports commentator Ryan Ruocco said during the game.