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'Am I An Addict? Yes'
Potomac (Va.) News photo
"All my medications are pretty much illegal," says Kamal Ali Salaam-El, who played four season in the NFL.
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Published: December 31, 2007
Updated: 12/30/2007 11:22 pm
TAMPA - Around a table at Mike Ditka's restaurant in Chicago, three retired players from the National Football League met for dinner a couple of months ago.
Mercury Morris, Dave Pear and Tim Harris played for years in the NFL. Pear was the first Tampa Bay Buccaneer selected to the Pro Bowl. Morris was a standout running back for the Miami Dolphins, and Harris was a linebacker for Green Bay and two other teams.
Although they were in town to publicize what they say is the league's indifferent attitude toward its former players, that night they unwittingly became symbols for another problem that has received little attention. At least that's how it seemed to Jennifer Smith, whose organization - Gridiron Greats - works with retired players in need.
"At one point, all three of them pulled out giant baggies, loaded with pain pills," she said. "They started comparing what was in the bags and passing them around the table. It was like, 'Hey, I need some of these.' Or, 'How's that one working for you?' It was amazing."
Alex Stalcup, an addiction treatment specialist in California, has sounded the alarm after seeing significant increases in the number of football players at his clinic hooked on pain medications. Retired players appear to be hit particularly hard. They become dependent on medications to mask the effect from injuries during their careers, and the cycle begins anew after retirement when they often face a daily battle against pain.
Wally Chambers, a once-fearsome defensive end who was a mainstay on the Bucs' 1979 division-championship team, knows about the pain. Now 56, he has endured seven operations on his back, three hip replacements, and various treatments for shoulder, neck and knee problems.
He needs a cane to walk from his couch to the front door, and for most routine chores he gets around on a motorized scooter. He said he alternates his medication every month or so, thinking it helps him avoid addiction. But he also said medications are a daily part of his life.
"There are guys in worse shape than I am, but you'll never know it," he said. "They're ashamed to come forward, or they just don't want people to see them this way. Back when I played, the league was so secretive and closed-mouthed, so it's hard for guys to get over that and come forward and admit they have a problem.
"And there are a lot of things going on that the NFL and players union are trying to keep hush-hush. They don't want people to know."
The strength of pain medicine, such as Vicodin and OxyContin, combined with the large doses many former players use, has long-term health implications. Extended use can damage the liver and kidneys, and there can be emotional repercussions as well.
"Many of them develop severe depression," Stalcup said. "They feel the best thing is to die. No one talks about it, so they feel they're the only person in the world with this problem."
'Pain Changes A Lot Of Things'
The league's insurance benefit covers a player five years after his career is over, with an additional 18 months available under COBRA, a federal program, and the league recently enacted a plan to provide joint replacement surgery.
To Mercury Morris, it's not enough.
"Those players have been excluded from the process by the league," he said. "These people should be taken care of, but the league has appointed itself to be in charge of appeals. I don't think they care that it's a problem."
Players also complain the full effect of their injuries didn't surface until they had been out of the game for a decade or more and their insurance had expired. In that case, NFL Vice President Greg Aiello said, players can petition the league for disability payments.
"The medical needs of retired players is something we're addressing now," Aiello said. "There are ways for them to get assistance."
There is plenty of need.
Reggie Harrison, now known as Kamal Ali Salaam-El, played four relatively anonymous seasons in the NFL. You would have to be a student of football history to remember much about him, although his blocked punt against the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl X helped swing the game for his Pittsburgh Steelers.
Salaam-El, 56, hasn't played the game since being released in 1978, but the game still plays him. It left him with a broken bone in his spine that wasn't discovered until after his career ended, a bad knee, a fractured hip and memory problems related to concussions.
It also left him addicted and desperate with debilitating pain, rarely leaving his home in Woodbridge, Va.
"Am I an addict? Yes," he said. "All my medications are pretty much illegal. I get them any way I can. I will even stoop to marijuana; anything I can to relieve pain, I do it. The day I get caught is the day I'm going to be sorry, but until then I'll do what I have to do. I was never sold on drugs, but pain changes a lot of things."
Former St. Louis Cardinals guard Conrad Dobler, who played in the 1970s and early '80s and said he uses pain medication to combat the effects of multiple surgeries, was even more direct about the cycle of drug use in the league. Now 57, Dobler admits he has battled post-retirement drug problems to combat the effect of 17 surgeries - including five knee replacements - since his playing career ended.
"If you put down 50 former players, I might know one who isn't on drugs," Dobler said. "Who am I to judge how much pain a guy is in? Of course you get hooked on it. With Vicodin, I used to take that by the handfuls for seven or eight years before I began to wean myself off them. Was I addicted to it? Yeah, I probably was.
"I was taking three or four thousand Vicodin a year, with OxyContin in between. The more you take, the more resistance you build up. To me it was just like candy at the end. Could I have functioned without the drugs? Hell, no."
Dobler figures he and other players of that era paid the price to help build the NFL into the giant it is today. And, he said, former players need adequate assistance to deal with the effects from injuries.
"Coal miners who wound up with black lung disease, that's what they had to do to support their families," he said. "With us, I don't know anyone from my era who doesn't take drugs for pain. There are a tremendous number of people who can't function without them. Of course, the NFL doesn't want to hear that. It opens up real big liability issues for them."
Management Is The Key
Stalcup said it's important to make the distinction between those addicted to medications and those who are dependent on them to deal with long-term pain.
"The centerpiece of addiction is that you can't control your use, so when someone goes in with a problem, they are told, 'Oops, this is too much,' and are stopped cold turkey," he said. "There's no logic to it.
"The problem is, some of those people have continuing pain issues. They get set up in two ways - they get taken off the opiates way too fast; it leaves a giant hole in their nervous system. That's called clean. But they can't sleep, they're psychologically negative, and they hurt. So what do they do? That's when they need professional help to manage their pain."
Pear, 54, hasn't played since Super Bowl XV in 1981 with Oakland. He said he played despite suffering a herniated disk in his neck.
"The Raiders just shot me up with drugs and pills and pushed me out on the field," he said. "And when I was done, they pushed me out the door. The Raiders used to have a doctor whose nickname was Needles. His job was to give you a shot. That's the way it was there: give you a shot, give you a pill, go have a drink and go play."
Pear said the league has abandoned him and other players in need.
"It's another one of the deep, dark secrets the NFL wants to push under the rug," he said. "It's like concussions. It's like disability payments to former players. It's a corrupt process. It's rotten to the core."
The full effect of their injuries sometimes isn't felt until they are out of the game for a decade or more. By that time, getting assistance from the NFL, they say, is difficult at best. That assumes they bother to seek help at all.
"The league doesn't understand the problem," Pear said. "I've spent over $500,000 of my own money on surgeries. We're not getting the help we need, and I know a lot of players who are in big trouble and trying to do it alone."
There are no reliable estimates for the number of former players in need, only a suspicion that the number is much larger than most would guess.
Salaam-El said his daily battle to combat pain is all-consuming. He said he is completely disabled and in constant, severe pain.
"It starts when you open up your eyes," he said. "You don't know what time it ends."
His plight sounds way too familiar to other former players.
"It's hell, man," said Clem Turner, 62, who played four seasons with Cincinnati and Denver and later wrestled professionally. Although Turner takes regular medication to combat the effects of 19 surgeries, he said he is not addicted and that his pills are prescribed by doctors.
"I need it to exist," he said. "Honest to God, if I had known I was going to suffer like this for a moment of running up and down the field, oh, hell, no!"
Tim Watson played for the Kansas City Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles and the New York Giants, plus the Barcelona Dragons of the World League and the Arizona Rattlers of the Arena Football League. He retired in 1999 after a serious neck injury: a cracked vertebra similar to the one that threatens the career of Bucs running back Mike Alstott.
Watson, 37, works with the NFL Alumni. The group has asked the league to provide data on the number of addicted former players.
"Because the league is so competitive and the money is what it is, the pressure is there to keep playing no matter what," he said. "Coaches look the other way and say, 'Do what you've gotta do - wink, wink.'"
The Choice You Make
It becomes a game of daily compromises, accepting the risk of long-term damage to stop the pain today.
"There is no fine line. You're talking to a lawyer; it's all gray," said former Bucs nose tackle Brad Culpepper, 38, now a lawyer in Tampa. "Pain management versus addiction? How can someone on the outside who's not feeling the pain decide?
"These doctors haven't lived through 20 years of football and all these surgeries to say that taking 10 Vicodin a day is too much, so you need to take three. If your quality of life is such that you can't even get up off the couch, then I'll sacrifice my liver and kidneys to live my life enjoyably."
Players aren't forced to play football. The violence and speed that lead to injury are also part of the attraction that has turned the NFL into the most successful sports league in history. Even Salaam-El said he'd play again and risk being in the same condition he is in now.
"I didn't say football players are the smartest people in the world," he said. "I do say we're the toughest."
Even the toughest guys need help.
"We as players made a choice to play, but our families didn't," Pear said. "Too many of us are in a situation that creates hardship on families when we are denied benefits.
"I have lived in chronic pain for the last 25 years. When a person is in pain, you'll do whatever you have to do. And if this doesn't change soon, these guys who are playing now are going to find themselves right where we are. I wouldn't wish that on anyone."
Reporter Joe Henderson can be reached at (813) 259-7861 or jhenderson
@tampatrib.com.
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Reader Comments
Posted by ( badbyron ) on December 29, 2007 at 8 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
Oxy-Cotin for all my friends!
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Posted by ( lumi_nara ) on December 30, 2007 at 10:25 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
Ya know, these guys made a choice to play this game. How can you be stupid enough to not realize that all that hitting and tackling WOULDN'T cause an affect on your body? That's stupid to be so naive about that. But what about the rest of us out here that live in constant Chronic pain from back injuries or whatever from NON-football use. We don't get articles and whatnot. I live in chronic back pain, but I'm not whining about how the world or my job didn't treat me fair. What makes these guys better than me or any other chronic pain sufferer? Oooh, they played football... who freakin' cares! They made their choices. They didn't have to get stuck by 'Needles' I mean, no one forces you to do anything. If the coach told you to jump off a cliff, would you? They made their choice, and now they have to live with it. I made the choice to work for a crappy store, and hurt my back there, and now I'm having to live with it... every minute of every day. But you don't see me whining to the media like I deserve the world on a platter or something.
I feel bad for their being in pain, and yes, the NFL SHOULD do something about it... but my God, these boys sound like whiners, and not the men that apparently played on the football field.
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Posted by ( heidi ) on December 30, 2007 at 3:33 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
My name is Dave Pear. I played in the NFL from 1975 to 1980. The issue here is injured and disabled NFL players not being able to access our disability benefits. The Groom Law Group represents both the NFL and the NFLPA. In my opinion this is a conflict of interest. Our union the NFLPA hires the Groom Law Group to find loop holes and schemes to deny valid medical claims to disabled players. If the shoe were on the other foot how would you feel if your employer and union hired lawyers to deny valid medical claims for you and your family if you were hurt on the job. This is about GREED. I would like to add that all of my prescriptions come from a licensed medical doctor (MD)
Dave & Heidi Pear
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Posted by ( TampaBayTom ) on December 31, 2007 at 12:27 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
Free pills for everyone! The world would be a better place.
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Posted by ( cableguy ) on December 31, 2007 at 7:12 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
This is just another side of people in this country that do not have health care. If your a ditch digger or a football player you should have health care. We can send millions over seas, try to fix other country's problem's,fight wars for other's,and let our goverment spend money anyway the see fit.What happened to "FOR THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE" ? Every one should have health care ! Can we take care of our own before we take care of all the world's problem ?
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Posted by ( NancyB ) on December 31, 2007 at 8:47 a.m.
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Posted by ( Melis11577 ) on December 31, 2007 at 12:20 p.m.
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Posted by ( DoctorMelkor ) on January 2, 2008 at 9:31 a.m.
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Posted by ( rvcaban ) on January 7, 2008 at 11:40 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
Thank you so much for explaining the difference between the addiction and physical dependency! My husband sufferes severe chronic pain of the lower back. He has had two surgeries and on his way to his third. He depends on his pain medicine to be able to function. Without it can can barely get out of bed. I am so DISCUSSTED by the way my husband's been treated by members of the medical community! He's been called a "junkie" by his doctors and one nurse actually told me the doctor she works for told her all his patients were nothing but "junkies"! I can't tell you how many times we have been treated like criminals because my husband suffers such horrible pain on a daily basis. Many times we have had to go to the emergency room. He has a medical problem! He did not go out there looking for drugs fo recreational purposes. He is a loving husband of 26 yrs and a father of three wonderful sons. He DEPENDS on the medicine to function. He is not a junkie nor will I allow ANYONE to call him one. I suggest there are many doctors and nurses that need to get in touch with their patients that suffer chronic pain!
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Posted by ( TheDoc ) on January 25, 2008 at 3:53 p.m.
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