From Addiction to Healing to Activism: An Olympic Medalist’s Journey

Dotsie Bausch, Olympic medalist and founder of Switch4Good

I grew up in Kentucky, where I was raised on the regional cuisine of meaty casseroles, BBQ, macaroni and cheese, and of course, fried chicken. I was the typical all-American kid, and I ate the typical all-American diet. When I went off to college at Villanova University, I saw no reason to leave my meat-and-potatoes diet behind. From the outside, my first year of college looked pretty good. I was a successful journalism and philosophy major, became a member of the crew team, and joined a sorority. Like many, my freshman year was the first time I was really away from home, and I loved my newfound independence.

Unfortunately, this thrill wore off, and by my sophomore year things began to go downhill. The joy I once felt had somehow regressed into feelings of self-doubt, fear, inadequacy, and loneliness. On top of that, I had developed a toxic relationship with food and my once-comforting all-American diet and was diagnosed with severe anorexia and bulimia. By this point, I was already malnourished, and within weeks, my hair began to fall out, my teeth began turning black, and my skin took on a grayish hue. My eating disorder was a way to cope, but it wasn’t enough, and so it joined forces with another addiction: cocaine.

The combination of restricting, bingeing, and using made me reckless and wild. I was trying to suppress my feelings with these behaviors, but I was only able to escape for short periods of time. The feelings of loneliness and self-doubt always came back, along with the new issues I was creating with my relentless addictions. I thought a change was what I needed, so I left college for New York City to pursue modeling. When I wasn’t hungover or self-medicating, I landed some jobs, but neither the city nor success changed how I felt inside.

In addition to drugs, I was also addicted to exercising. I would spend up to eight hours a day at the gym hammering away at my body, trying to shrink it to nothing. I wanted to get so small that I would disappear. Self-hatred was running amok inside me. My parents barely recognized me, and they attempted multiple interventions, but my eating disorder was too strong, and I refused to listen to their pleas. After years of struggling and seeing no way out, I attempted to commit suicide by running into the middle of a freeway. I thought it would be a quick way to go, but I survived, and instead of trying again, I slowly began to seek help. It wasn’t easy, but I worked with a therapist four times a week for two years, and she provided me with the tools to heal.

Near the end of this journey, my therapist asked me to rediscover ways to move my body in a healthy way again. It was important that I learned to move for movement’s sake, rather than to burn calories or to punish myself. I picked cycling, really quite randomly, because it felt like something novel to me. I never cycled during my eating disorder, because I thought it didn’t burn enough calories, but once I was no longer inhibited by my addiction to exercise, cycling just seemed right. From the beginning, cycling became my way of switching gears and changing myself. At first, I simply loved how it made me feel. It was absolutely freeing, and I felt like a kid again. Very unexpectedly, I began to get good at it.

I started entering amateur races, and I found that not only was I good, I thoroughly enjoyed it. In 2001, I won fourth place at the U.S. Nationals, and the United States National Cycling team took notice. This launched my career as a professional cyclist, and I spent the latter part of my twenties and all of my thirties traveling the world for races. Along that path, I won eight National titles and two Pan American gold medals and even set a world record. I ended my professional cycling career just months before my fortieth birthday, taking home silver at the 2012 London Olympic Games. It was a powerful moment to end on, for I had defied others’ expectations and my own in more ways than one.

I’ve experienced several rebirths in my life. The first was my full recovery from my eating disorder, the second was my transformation into a professional cyclist, and the third was going vegan. From someone who has changed so drastically in life, let me tell you this—never limit yourself. I never thought I could recover from my eating disorder. But I did. I never thought I would stand on the podium of the Olympics. But I did. And I never thought I would be vegan. But I am.

Unlike my two previous transformations, my discovery of veganism was abrupt and certain. Although I didn’t seek it out, once I knew, there was no doubt. Throughout the first half of my racing career, I ate meat and dairy. Like most, I never really thought about where my food came from or what it went through to make it to my plate. One night I was up late, mindlessly flipping channels, when I stumbled upon an exposé that showed the horror of slaughterhouses. Workers were kicking, shoving, electrocuting, and dragging live animals to their deaths. To say I was shocked and horrified is an understatement. Still shaken by what I had seen, the next morning I immediately cleaned out all animal flesh from my kitchen. I just could not see myself being a party to suffering and torture. However, I still held some hope that what I saw was an anomaly or an exception to the rule. I believed that there were laws against this kind of treatment. After all, this was America. The government protects and serves its people, so that must include innocent animals. I began to research, trying to make sense of the atrocity I had witnessed. What I found is that this disdainful treatment is not an anomaly. It is real, and it happens to millions of animals every single day.

During that time, I was laser-focused on the 2012 Olympic Games. This, of all times, was when I decided to completely upend my diet and go vegan. The truth is, I didn’t know if I could make the Olympic team eating that way. Neither did Olympic coaches and officials. Would I have enough strength? Would I have enough stamina? And good grief, would I ever get enough protein? I was met with criticism immediately. Small-minded coaches and skeptical sports scientists asked what I was doing and why was I doing it. The pushback was relentless. “It’s a really big risk,” they said. “You may lose your dream of going to the Olympics. You are much older than the others, and you will need adequate protein to recover.”

I was thirty-six at the time, which is great-grandmother old for an intense Olympic sport such as team pursuit cycling. I had only three and a half years before the Games, which would put me on the Olympic Team just six months shy of my fortieth birthday. Coaches grilled me about this “plant-based BS,” as they called it. They were basically saying that vegans can’t be Olympians. I don’t know what I found more offensive—the “you must eat meat” message or the condescending attitude.

I knew deep in my heart that this was my moment. The Olympics might bring temporary fame and glory, but my decision to be vegan had the power to shape what I stood for and who I was for the rest of my life. I told my coaches, “I don’t care if I fade away on this diet. I don’t care if I shrivel into a raisin, because this is more important than anything I have ever done or ever will do, and it’s much more important than any Games. These are lives we are talking about. Living, breathing, creatures who feel love and pain and sadness, and I will not idly stand by and eat the flesh of animals because I think it will make me strong for a sporting event. It’s just not right, and for once in my life I am going to stand up for what’s right.”

After this bravado, I raced home to research what in the world I was going to eat. Thank goodness for Google! I discovered a whole new world of food, which was not only accessible but also tasted far more glorious than any meat I had ever consumed. What happened next still stuns me. I began recovering between workouts in literally half the time of teammates who were ten years my junior. I became stronger, faster, and more resilient. I was turning into a plant-eating, muscle-producing, endurance-building machine! And it was all because I stopped eating animals and their by-products. I trained hard, put in the work, ate in line with my ethics, made the 2012 USA team, and gave it my all at the Games. Winning my Olympic medal may be one of the proudest moments of my life, but not because of the obvious. It is because I earned it later in life and still hold the record for the oldest competitor ever—male or female—in my discipline, and I earned it on a plant-based diet!

I returned home, full of pride and unleashed energy—yes, even as a forty-year-old—and decided to dive deep into veganism and activism. During my research, I became particularly disturbed by the dairy industry. It just didn’t make sense to me that we were drinking the mothers’ milk of another species, and the cruelty involved seemed much worse than the meat industry. There are approximately 264 million dairy cows worldwide, who every single year endure a vicious cycle. Dairy cows are forcibly impregnated, carry their beautiful babies for nine months, give birth, and are only allowed to experience the joy of motherhood for the first twenty-four hours of their newborns’ lives. When this time is up, the calf is taken away from its mother, either to be sent to slaughter (if male), or deposited into the same hopeless system as the mother (if female). This cycle of terror happens over and over again, until the mother cow is considered “spent” and can no longer produce enough milk for profit. She is then slaughtered, no different than a cow raised for meat. Dairy is indeed the very bottom of the dirty barrel on the cruelty food chain.

There are few things we cannot change, and I truly believe that we can change our food system. Together, we can stand up and say no more. We can make different choices. We can stop supporting the industry with our hard-earned dollars. Every time you buy a cow’s-milk latte or eat cow’s-milk yogurt, you are encouraging this abominable treatment of mothers and their children. I believe we can do so much better, so, earlier this year, I decided to do something about the dairy industry.

It was actually the Olympics that compelled me to take action. In early 2018, I was watching the Olympic Trials when a milk commercial came on. The ad claimed, “9 out of 10 Olympians grew up drinking milk. It has natural proteins and balanced nutrition.” First off, I bet 100 percent of Olympians grew up drinking water, too, and as someone so eloquently posted on Twitter, “I bet 9 out of 10 serial killers grew up drinking milk, too.” As for nutrition, cow’s milk can encourage hormonal-based cancer tumor growth in humans, which is far from health-promoting. I was struck instantly by the need to tell the truth, so I got six other vegan Olympians together to tell their stories. I enlisted the incredible Asher Brown at Pollution Studios to produce a network-quality anti-dairy commercial that aired on NBC during the Olympic Winter Games closing ceremonies and on ABC before and after the Academy Awards broadcast. This was the beginning of Switch4Good, the dairy disrupter team here to reveal the truth.

When we stand up for what’s right, we gain not only confidence but also momentum, and momentum can carry a movement into the stratosphere and start a revolution. A revolution is my dream for Switch4Good, which launched officially as an anti-dairy nonprofit organization in late August 2018. We are two hundred athletes strong and growing. We welcome a wide range of active individuals into our family. For too long, the dairy industry has been funding multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns that mislead consumers. The truth is that dairy is not a health food, and we are exposing the industry’s vast lies while unleashing a strategic fight that advocates for social, health, and environmental justice.

Looking back on my journey, I see there are so many different roads I could have taken, and so many different lives I could have touched. I could have continued to model and influence young girls. I could have been hit on that freeway and devastated my loved ones and the innocent driver. I could have ridden that Olympic glory and been content with post-career sponsors and campaigns I didn’t believe in. But I chose to follow my passion and to stand up for what I think is right. Among everything I am—daughter, wife, mentor, Olympian—I am an activist, and that is what I am most proud of.