Last month, Daniel Agger opened up about the reasons for why he retired - hoping that his message about taking so many anti-inflammatories during his career to deal with injuries would send a warning to athletes.
In the NFL the same has been happening. Ex Ravens tackle Eugene Monroe retired aged 31 in relative good health, but was unwilling to continue the policy of pumping his body full of pain medication to be able to play.
Now though, future Hall of Famer Brett Favre opened up further about his well-documented vicodin addiction. Fans of the TV show House will know the effects of the powerful pain killer. Favre announced that he had a problem in 1996, the year before he lead the Green Bay Packers in 1997. The legendary quarterback was the one who broke the story, announcing it before rumours grew to get ahead of it.
But the story is much worse than it seemed. Favre had had a problem for the three years prior - and it wasn't until the week of his victorious Super Bowl that he felt he had to stop.
Speaking to Graham Bensinger, Favre tells the horrifying story of how his dependency on the drug grew, how he constantly had to look for more than his prescription would allow, and how he went cold turkey on the week of the Super Bowl.
I took 15 Vicodin at one time.Two gave me an effect I liked. After a month, two didn’t do anything, so I’d take three, and then four and so on. . . . I knew that 15 was hard to come by. A month’s prescription is 30 pills or something, depending on what they prescribe for you, and I was going through that in two days. I would ask this guy for pills and that guy for pills, after a while I was going back around pretty quickly.
I’d hit rock bottom and I said, I’m going to flush these down the toilet. I remember when I poured them in the toilet and it started to flush, I almost crawled into the toilet to go after them because I thought, ‘What in the world did you do?’ I was so dependent on them.
That was the worst month. I shook every night, cold sweats, it was a constant battle.
How does someone win the Super Bowl whilst going through severe drug withdrawals?
