It’s been more than 16 months since Brittney Griner, the U.S. basketball star who was imprisoned in Russia in 2022, was released as part of a prisoner exchange with U.S. authorities. But only recently has she given her first interviews about what it was like to be arrested and jailed for bringing a small amount of cannabis oil into the country.

“I wanted to take my life more than once in the first weeks,” Griner told ABC News in an interview that aired this week. “I felt like leaving here so badly.” She added she decided against it because she feared Russian authorities wouldn’t return her body to her family.