Orlando Bloom Opens Up About ‘Near-Death Experience’ As A Teenager

etcanada.com:

Orlando Bloom gets vulnerable as he recalls his brush with death. The actor shared a video to Instagram for UNICEF in support of World Mental Health Day.

The organization posted his video to their account with the caption, “When I was 19 I was told I may never walk again. It was one of the darkest times of my life.

This is how I got through it.” READ MORE: Katy Perry Teases Her Wedding To Orlando Bloom: ‘I Love A Big Celebration’ “When I was 19, I fell three floors from a window and broke my back.

I was very fortunate to survive the fall because my spinal cord was still just intact,” he recalled. “And when I was in hospital, I was told for the first four days that I may never walk again.” The life-changing moment had the actor rethink his entire life and decide to turn over a new leaf. “That was really the beginning of what was a long and painful journey for me into recognizing and understanding some of the patterns that had been in my life that had led me to having numerous accidents,” he continued. “And the culmination was breaking my back, which was a near-death experience.” While he would go on to recover with surgery and intense physical therapy, his recovery period was plagued by mental health issues. READ MORE: Orlando Bloom Displays Washboard Abs During Shirtless Workout, Comments On Doctors Claiming He’d ‘Never Walk Again’ “I would say the months after the fall were quite a dark time/ As somebody who’d sort of always been very active in my life, it felt very restrictive all of a sudden and I was in a lot of pain,” said Bloom. “And I would say that, for me, the injury created time and space for me to look at my life, recognize what was good and great in my life, and the fact that I had this recovery,