Suzy Favor Hamilton Opens Up About her Call-Girl Experiences, Being Bipolar

Folks, I am stunned.

Suzy Favor Hamilton, who I wrote about back in 2012 after the story broke that she’d become a high-priced Las Vegas escort, was interviewed by Elizabeth Vargas last night on ABC’s 20/20 news program. (Here is an article about the show from ABC News.) I watched this online, and was riveted. Not by the admission that she’d had sex with five guys in one night (though that didn’t surprise me much; if you’re an escort, you do what you’re paid to do), but because it appears being bipolar and being misdiagnosed sent her into her double life and downward spiral in the first place.

But let me unpack that a little.

Suzy Favor Hamilton is now 47. She’s still the best female runner to ever come out of the state of Wisconsin, and one of the best female athletes the United States has ever had. She’s a three-time Olympian, had multiple endorsements because of her good looks and running success, and, according to the story on 20/20, major anxiety issues.

Unbeknownst to anyone, Favor Hamilton also had bipolar disease. At the time, she was diagnosed with depression and anxiety, and thought her problems were solved. But the antidepressants that were given to her made her hypersexual, more willing to try risky behaviors — and isn’t becoming a high-priced escort the epitome of risky behavior?

Anyway, Favor Hamilton’s husband continues to stand by her, and I don’t understand why. (Neither does Vargas, who asked him point-blank why he’d stayed. Mr. Hamilton admitted he didn’t know why; he just did.) He is obviously an incredibly patient man, insofar as he’s stayed with his wife as she’s endured many ups and downs — most particularly this last, major scandal of being exposed as a high-priced Las Vegas escort.

(Even though I don’t understand it, more power to him. I hope their marriage will survive. But I digress.)

Look. I know many people with anxiety, depression, and even bipolar disorders. But I hadn’t any idea that being bipolar could make you do anything close to how Favor Hamilton behaved…that it could make you hypersexual to the degree that you could sleep with five men in a night, and still want more, is much more information than any doctor has ever told me (or any of my friends with bipolar disorder, either).

So just by being willing to discuss what she did before being properly diagnosed as bipolar, Favor Hamilton has done a great service.

Favor Hamilton has written a book called FAST GIRL, a play on words that makes perfect sense. In her book, she discusses her mental illness, along with what Vargas called her “scandalous life in Vegas” (my best paraphrase, as I don’t have a transcript). And she also has gone further, discussing what she’s done since to heal herself and her marriage, including moving to California, being honest with herself about her health and her personal needs, and much, much more.

As sportswriter Christine Brennan said during the 20/20 episode, what Favor Hamilton is doing today in discussing her bipolar disorder and all the things that she did until it was properly diagnosed is possibly the best thing Favor Hamilton has ever done.

While I’m still shocked that anyone with the looks, brains, and money that Favor Hamilton had would ever become an escort, I’m glad that Favor Hamilton has healed. She’s become an advocate for mental illness along with physical fitness, and it seems to me that she’s doing all she can to rebuild her life.

More power to her.

Suzy Favor Hamilton Outed as Vegas Call Girl

This afternoon (December 20, 2012 to be exact), news broke that Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton — one of the biggest female sports stars to ever come out of Wisconsin — has admitted to working as a high-priced call girl for a shady Las Vegas outfit called Haley Heston’s Private Collection.

Here’s a link to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s story and a relevant quote:

Suzy Favor Hamilton, a three-time Olympian who capitalized on her wholesome image as an elite runner, mother and wife to land lucrative endorsement deals and motivational speaking engagements, has admitted to leading a double life for the last year as a high-priced call girl.

In a stunning confessional via her Twitter account, following a story published on thesmokinggun.com, Favor Hamilton wrote that she was drawn to escorting “in large part because it provided many coping mechanisms for me when I was going through a very challenging time with my marriage and my life.”

The 44-year-old Favor Hamilton, a Stevens Point native and former University of Wisconsin track star, admitted to working as “Kelly Lundy” with Haley Heston’s Private Collection, one of Las Vegas’ premier escort services, in the thesmokinggun.com story.

“I do not expect people to understand,” she wrote on her Twitter account. “But the reasons for doing this made sense to me at the time and were very much related to depression.

“I have been seeking the help of a psychologist for the past few weeks and will continue to do so after I have put things together.”

What troubles me here is not just that Favor Hamilton is a married woman with a seven-year-old child, though that’s bad enough.

Nope.  What bugs me is that Favor Hamilton is quoted as admitting that her husband “tried to get (her) to stop” and that he “wasn’t supportive of (her) need to do this at all.”

Which, mind you, is the way most husbands are likely to behave when it comes to thinking about their spouse being a paid escort who gave away the “full girlfriend experience” and was rated quite highly by The Erotic Review, which is called by the Smoking Gun article that the Journal-Sentinel references as “the Zagat guide of the escort business.”

So it seems that Suzy Favor Hamilton has more than a few problems here — she’s been working as an escort when she’s not destitute (her husband is employed, she owns a realty firm and they live in a $600,000 home), she’s been fighting depression for the past year or more and if her marriage isn’t in trouble because of all this, she must have the most supportive husband in the history of the universe.

While I have never understood the need for men or women to go outside their marriages, I do know that not everyone is meant to be monogamous.  So for those people who have admitted open marriages and the like, I made up my mind a long time ago not to judge them even though I freely admit that I don’t get it.

So the sex part of the equation isn’t what is so very troublesome, even though I don’t really understand what would drive a high-powered woman like Favor Hamilton to go outside her marriage and have a number of risky sexual encounters for money.

It’s the lack of trust issue that bothers me more.

Favor Hamilton is someone who’s had a squeaky clean image.  She’s had endorsement deals with Disney, various running firms, has been a model in more ways than one and has been someone female runners have looked up to for the past twenty years or more in Wisconsin and much of the Midwest.

So apparently, in order for her to somehow feel better about herself, she had to throw this all away and construct an alter ego of “Kelly” the escort.  Who was willing to do just about anything if the price was right because she still had the body and panache and knew how to speak the high-powered language of well-heeled men in order to better separate them from their money.

Why this intelligent, beautiful woman couldn’t find herself in some other way, I just don’t know.  Why would she would risk her career for this, much less her marriage?  Why would she ever entertain such a thing, considering that it’s well-known that women who become prostitutes (the not-so-nice name for “call girls”) rarely retain custody of their children?

And what about the IRS audit that has to be on the horizon?  Because it would be ridiculous to assume that she’s declared all of the money she’s made as a $600-per-hour escort on her tax forms.

All of this happened because Favor Hamilton apparently enjoys risky sex in extremely expensive hotel rooms with men she doesn’t really know.

This seems so off-the-wall, so uncharacteristic, and so utterly absurd that I feel like I’ve fallen into a parallel universe.

Yet it’s the truth.

Suzy Favor Hamilton, runner and Olympian, mother and realty owner, is also a call girl.

What a terribly sad thing to have happen . . . and she did it to herself.