The NFL's Secret Drug Problem

[Jimx29]

The NFL's Secret Drug Problem (http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/print-view/the-nfls-secret-drug-problem-20121127)

[woodbuck27]

The NFL's Secret Drug Problem (http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/print-view/the-nfls-secret-drug-problem-20121127)

That has to get the Packerrats RECORD for the longest LINKED Article (story).

I need to schedule 30 minutes tomorrow to read it more carefully. :-)

Thanks.

[denverYooper]

That has to get the Packerrats RECORD for the longest LINKED Article (story).

I need to schedule 30 minutes tomorrow to read it more carefully. :-)

Thanks.

Yeah, it was just about 500 words shorter than one of your average posts ;).

[Guiness]

Not a new story, Favre had his own Vicodin problem and there have been a few other admissions over the years. I wonder just how prevalent it is, among players past and present. Wasn't there a story about a Saints coach stealing pain pills a little while ago?

[denverYooper]

Not a new story, Favre had his own Vicodin problem and there have been a few other admissions over the years. I wonder just how prevalent it is, among players past and present. Wasn't there a story about a Saints coach stealing pain pills a little while ago?

While it's not a totally new story, this one comes out with some numbers to show the depth of usage for a few individuals and starts to shift blame from the individual-as-junkie to team-staff-as-pusher.

I haven't gotten around to it but would like to read Nate Jackson's Slow Getting Up. He lives in the area and does radio spots on the local shows. He's got a more nuanced view, from what I can tell of his speaking, of the injury/rehab/painkilling process. Apparently, because of a snippet in the book in medical marijuana, he's also become a go-to quote for reporters seeking to argue that the NFL should stop testing for pot.

[LP]

For all those complaining about the Packers medical staff and why it takes so long for players to come back from seemingly minor injuries, maybe Green Bay is taking a little bit different view and approach to these things lately. Maybe they've seen the handwriting on the wall, or maybe TT's years of being on he bottom of a roster has given him a different way of seeing a players future. Could the team actually care about more than player performance? Nahhhh!! C'mon LP, wake up!!!! You're dreamin again!

[woodbuck27]

Yeah, it was just about 500 words shorter than one of your average posts ;).

I'd be severely challenged to top that one denverTooper. I'll read it after taking my courage pill.

I glanced at this article and went WOW! It's length reminded me of a quote by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

“Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering...” .. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I'm into suffering. I'm a Green Bay Packer fan. :mrgreen:

I'll read Jimx29's LINK and immediately report my impression of it.

I just need a large plate of sandwich's and a liter of milk to wash them down while doing that.

GO PACK GO !

[bobblehead]

Yeah, it was just about 500 words shorter than one of your average posts ;).

Yea...repped this post :)

[Bossman641]

Sounds very similar to the MLB story about greenies that became public a few years back

[woodbuck27]

I've read the article and will provide an & edit &...so that Packerrats can cut through the chaft of it to the heart of the story.

& ...My edit in no manner compromises the article or otherwise prejudices that same article. My edit is simply to bring some brevity to the rather bookish article.

If this post and the next one or Post #11 violates anything ...PLEASE Mad (or Packerrat Mod's) simply delete this post #10 and also post #11 of this thread.

[COLOR="#008000"]THANKS: woodbuck27


Waiver Packerrats:

If 'in fact', I compromised the article (LINK - Post #1) in any manner; or under any other circumstance... of or concerns an error or omission:

This edit of the article is NOT any position of Packerrats Ownership or as we affectionately name him ...Mad. ( MadTownPacker) or anyone else responsible for the actions and ownership of Packerrats.

This is entirely 'my edited synopsis' of the article of and in it's entire state; for more brevity ... "complete with all quotes".

The Article is long, or the longest 'I've read personally' and LINKed from a thread here @ Packerrats, or since I've been a member, March 2006.

************************************************** *******

My edit (woodbuck27):

"Your body ain't made to go through a wall 50, 60 times a game," FB Fred McCrary (Super Bowl 2003 ...NE Pat's), now belabored by bum shoulders and daily migraines. "By week three, they'd give you whatever you wanted – and, still, guys smoked weed for the pain." ... Fred McCrary

"Our doctors, who've seen everything, were shocked when they saw these guys; their prescription-pill addictions were literally deadly," *** Jennifer Smith ***

*** Jennifer Smith, the player-*program director of PAST (Pain Alternatives Solutions and Treatments), a consortium of surgeons and specialists who repair the bodies of NFL veterans free of charge.

Pain-pill dependence is the NFL's dirty secret, and the next wave of trouble to breach its shore.

In a months-long investigation involving dozens of former (NFL) players, as well as their attorneys, physicians, and addiction counselors...what emerges is a picture of a professional league (THE NFL) ... so swamped by narcotics ... that 'it closes its eyes to medical malpractice by many of its doctors and trainers'.

The game itself could not survive without these powerful drugs.

"The wear and tear on our spines and knees – we all had to take that to play," ... Richard Dent (HOF). A member of those great Chicago Bears defenses of the 1980s -90s, now hobbled by back pain and headaches.

"We got pills from a trainer, and where he got them, I don't know. But we were all involved with that." ... Richard Dent

************************************************** *****************

Ray Lucas goes into pneumatic shakes, like a kid who's stuck his pinkie in a light socket.

Now 40 years old the ex- NY Jets QB ... 6-foot-3, 240 pounds; puts his head down on the table waiting for the sizzle to stop..... 'Jennifer Smith - Program Director of ... PAST ... (Pain Alternatives Solutions and Treatments) is there to comfort Ray Lucas.

Now....18 months after a drug rehab during which he torturously withdrew from the pain pills he was taking just to get out of bed – six or eight Vicodins with his morning coffee, half a dozen Percocets to wash down lunch, double that to make it to bedtime.

Loved by his wife and three daughters, who've flourished since he weaned himself off narcotics in 2011, shucking the 800-pill-a-month prescription-drug habit that had turned him into a red-eyed monster. While he's lost his dream house, his NFL savings, and the small air-conditioning business he built after football...it ...was almost worse... Ray Lucas was in danger of becoming the next ex-NFL player to kill himself'.

"I had it all planned: I was going to do it that Sunday, when my wife and kids went to church," says Lucas.

" I was gonna drive straight off the George Washington Bridge, and if I didn't clear the barrier – I got a big truck – I was gonna get out and jump. I was on 17 different drugs: narcotics, psych meds, sleep aids, muscle relaxers, and nothing, man – none of them worked. "

** A New Jersey internist named William Focazio, has stepped into the void and saved the lives of men who've been ditched by the richest league on Earth (THE NFL).

"We've taken guys in their forties who were weeks or days from dying on a 1,000-Vikes-a-month-and-tequila diet." William Focazio " And trust me: We don't quit without a fight, "


** "I drove (Jennifer Smith) crazy with my addict bullshit, stunts she doesn't even know about to this day. " Ray Lucas

" Like what? " says (Jennifer) Smith

" Like copping a gang of Percs at the Super Bowl and gulping 'em before the plane ride down to rehab." Ray Lucas

In February 2011, (Jennifer Smith) had flown him to Dallas to come clean before the national football media, telling hundreds of reporters during Super Bowl week about the pain-pill epidemic beneath their noses.

Lucas did face the writers (who largely ignored him), then hit the streets of iced-in Dallas for one last brain-freeze binge.

"That's just friggin' wrong, Ray. If you'd gotten arrested trying to score, or . . . or something worse had happened " Jennifer Smith

** "I know," says Lucas, " An addict's gonna do what he's gonna do."

When it comes to pro football, the news is no longer new: We all know the wages of this sport.

Brain death - Bountygate - Concussions. Crippled ex-players living in penury ( or poverty; destitution), unable to support themselves and their children.

" This is a game with a 100 percent injury rate, according to the league's own stats, " says DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA).

" The avg. career length is three and a half years; then ... the NFL fights in court to deny the retired players lifetime insurance for the injuries that forced them out. That's the state of play: They're fungible assets." DeMaurice Smith


Comment woodbuck27:

How does it get right here? Here's what the article goes on in an attempt to inform us... anyone:

The sport's most transparent scandal has gone untold, if not unseen for decades; and certainly since the advent (1980s) of modern narcotics like Vicodin and Percocet, and then later OxyContin. Team doctors and trainers have dispensed pills in the millions to keep hurt players practicing and playing. That fact has long been an open secret among writers who cover the game, an unspoken pact between league and press to protect what's left of the sport's mythos.

In the wake, however, of the concussion pandemic and the cluster of ex-player suicides, the football media has begun to stir.

Cont'd in PART TWO (2) as a continuing edit for brevity and this article without any compromise.

GO PACK GO !

[woodbuck27]

PART TWO of my Edit of the Article LINK in post #1 and without compromising the article:

** Last year, ESPN filed a report on the plight of ex-players with toxic narcotics habits, releasing the results of a survey of pain-pill abuse it had commissioned with a team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The survey found:

1.) That more than half the league's retired players, had taken narcotics during their playing days.

2.) That almost 75% of that group had misused the drugs, taking them longer, and in greater amounts, than suggested.

3.) That the majority (63 percent) received their drugs from a nonmedical source or ie
'a NFL Team Trainer' ... instead of the team doctor.

4.) That 33% of them were using them habitually in retirement.

Given the population of 18,000 current NFL retirees ... 3,000 are taking narcotics, and at least 1,500 suffer from pain-pill dependence that compounds their chronic conditions.

"They addict these guys to drugs to keep a product on the field, then cut them when they're too hurt to play," ... Mel Owens Ex OLB LA Rams ... A disability lawyer in S. California with 100's of ex-players as clients.

" The guys file for workmen's comp, and the NFL teams say...'Why should we pay you? You're nothing but lowlife addicts!' ... It's the next big front in our battle with the league: a class-action suit for drug malpractice. " Mel Owens

** When you talk to retired players, the thing you're always struck by isn't their size or what's left of their physical pride. Instead, it's the love they still bear for the game that took years, or decades, off their lives. They revere the coach who made them play hurt, give thanks to the trainer who shot them up at halftime, and praise the opponent who hit them head-high for the top plays on SportsCenter.

** But even for a true believer like Lucas, who entered the league in 1996 as a special-teams gunner and backup QB, loyalty has its limits.

"If I ever see ( name withheld ... read the LINK ) on the street, there's gonna be a bad misunderstanding," ...

(Ray Lucas) snarls as we drive to an appointment with Dr. Arash Emami, the PAST surgeon who will repair his neck.'

Comment woodbuck27:

Please and if you care to. Read the article to see why Ray Lucas feels that way over a former Head Coach. I'm not going 'to the personal attacks or claims' and this article. It's 100% my position and this post to try to add some brevity here. I know...am I the best member 'of Packerrats' for such a task!? :wink:

Right now ... as I undertake this... I hope so. Right now my position is one of neutrality. There's a lot here to digest ..absorb and investigate for a personal position/stance. Y'all have that same privilege as I do on this open forum.

The Other Side...The Official NFL View on this ... 'becoming an issue serious claim of many and presently it seems at this time... 'a monority of assertive retired NFL players'; in terms of their present pain filled lives:

** NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was among those, who declined to comment on this or any of the allegations in this article.

Instead, the league put forth Adolpho Birch, an NFL vice president who handles substance-abuse policy: (Adolpho) Birch denies that such things happen, then or now.[

" Every pill is accounted for, to the dose, and noted in players' records," Adolpho Birch, said by phone.... " We have an intricate system to regulate inventories and auditing conducted by outside experts that cross-reference against prescriptions written."

When told of players' insistence that they got pills by hand, instead of via prescription, Birch scoffed:

"This isn't something we've heard anecdotally." Furthermore, he added, the league has drug-tested players for narcotics since 1989, "and the levels don't have to be excessive."

The "retired players" comeback response:

The players I spoke to burst out laughing at Birch's comments, particularly in response to being tested.

"Test for narcotics! There would be no one to play – they'd have to suit the ball boys up," says (Ray)Lucas.

" Do we know that our players are seeking meds, both before and after games? " says DeMaurice Smith, the Union Chief.

" Yes, we've done our own internal surveys. But when we spoke to the league (NFL) about the bucket-of-pills problem, its response to us was ... 'nothing' ... no new proposal."

" 'In fact', when we demanded that they get informed consent before injecting guys with Toradol, they said they'd only do so if players signed a waiver holding them harmless in future lawsuits."


Doctor William Focazio does nothing by half-measures.

Dr. Focazio created PAST or Pain Alternatives Solutions and Treatments.... in 2008.

" I'd seen a TV thing about NFL vets who were busted up and needed a little help, " he says, referring to an HBO Real Sports piece focusing on Brian DeMarco, the thirty* something, back-broken former Jags lineman whose story was first told in these pages in September 2007.

Recruiting from his circle of distinguished peers – surgeons, neurologists, presidents of medical boards – Focazio assembled a tier-one crew of volunteers to patch up vets, retool their medications, and send them back to productive midlife work.

What showed up, however, was a series of men with what Dr. William Focazio is calling:

" Pan-Athletic Traumatic Syndrome"...

That is...crippling injuries to spine and soft tissue, front-brain damage coupled with mood disorders, and – a condition new to him – "polypharmacy," ... Meaning mass consumption of many drugs at once, all or most of them prescribed. " Ten, 12 scrips written by different doctors, none of whom knew what they were treating," says Focazio.

"Sleep stuff, benzos, antipsychotics for mood – half this stuff was blocking other drugs. Some guys were so toxic, we couldn't operate on them. They'd have stroked out on the table during surgery."

Comment woodbuck27:

OK ... I've read enough...

I've tried to edit this best I can to offer the issue in a somewhat briefer format and I do so without prejudice to either side. Frankly, it's a lot to absorb and meditate (think) on. I must investigate all of this on my personal time. I always say that TIME delivere the TRUTH.

The TRUTH often doesn't mean a better or improved overall result. Especially and way too often in my lifetime view and experience. It's a hard and cold 'fact of life' that the almighty dollar trumps .... all else.

As a Final Note:

Mad anyone else... please try to understand me in these two posts.

This is a step I took because of the length of the LINK Article see Post #1.... and 'at least' try to understand my direction here as I'm not trying to break any forum rules or otherwise offer a problem to (You Mad). In terms of any restrictions you need to abide by and Copyright Laws.:..If I've committed an error in that direction PLEASE Mad, simply delete these two posts.

The article was edited by me so that any Packerrat who desires to; may get the gist of this story.Yet covered in it's entirety by clicking on the LINK offered by Jimx29... in post #1 of this thread.

GO PACK GO !

[woodbuck27]

For all those complaining about the Packers medical staff and why it takes so long for players to come back from seemingly minor injuries, maybe Green Bay is taking a little bit different view and approach to these things lately. Maybe they've seen the handwriting on the wall, or maybe TT's years of being on he bottom of a roster has given him a different way of seeing a players future. Could the team actually care about more than player performance? Nahhhh!! C'mon LP, wake up!!!! You're dreamin again!

"Could the team actually care about more than player performance?" LP

LP:

Maybe your hitting the nail on the head?

We don't know.....not yet.

GO PACK GO !

[woodbuck27]

Yea...repped this post :)

Then your giving me 'a back handed slap' complaint!? :???:

Length or not. I see things my way and I present things or my views (perspectives) 'my way' here bobblehead. I do so without low ball idiotic attempts to 'flame' any poster here. Some members obviously "fail in that regard", because they don't know any different in their manners and ignorance.

Such are the type IMO that anyone should avoid. That's just me. My standards are high in terms of who I like or not. At the same time I'll deal as I must with anyone here. I hope in so doing I'm fair.

Please ... I accept any of your enlightening and constructive view (s) and me as a member here bobblehead... and that 'only' in respectful terms or tone.

Please...keep the back handed BS sarcasms and low blow indignations out of our open correspondence and Packerrats. Let's be models of manners here and your issue (s) and me. :idea:

You are given carte blance and what do you require of me...woodbuck27.

You get that as I respect you. NOT every member here deserves such.

bobblehead..."YOU" get the same as I would; have offered anyone here that I do respect.

Please bobblehead ... Inform me of what you need differently from me as a member here?

I look forward to that.

GO PACK GO !

[Guiness]

The comment from Birch

"Every pill is accounted for, to the dose, and noted in players' records," he said by phone. "We have an intricate system to regulate inventories and auditing conducted by outside experts that cross-reference against prescriptions written." When told of players' insistence that they got pills by hand, instead of via prescription, Birch scoffed: "This isn't something we've heard anecdotally."

Having a whole lot of trouble believing that. Every pill is accounted for?

And the next bit

Furthermore, he added, the league has drug-tested players for narcotics since 1989, "and the levels don't have to be excessive."
They test for it? I've never heard that. Never heard of anyone getting suspended for narcotic use, unless it just falls under the larger 'PED' umbrella.

[pbmax]

The comment from Birch


Having a whole lot of trouble believing that. Every pill is accounted for?

And the next bit

They test for it? I've never heard that. Never heard of anyone getting suspended for narcotic use, unless it just falls under the larger 'PED' umbrella.

They probably try to account for every pill. But the Saints case of a couple of years ago points out the difficulty when the staff themselves are caught up in use and distributing. The chain of custody isn't exactly secure when the training staff needs to hand the stuff out to the coaches if I remember correctly.

[Guiness]

They probably try to account for every pill. But the Saints case of a couple of years ago points out the difficulty when the staff themselves are caught up in use and distributing. The chain of custody isn't exactly secure when the training staff needs to hand the stuff out to the coaches if I remember correctly.

I touched on the Saints case earlier, and was going to bring it up again in that post, but went looking at could find NOTHING mentioning it since the original articles in May 2010. That one got swept under the carpet, and good. Santini either got paid off or whacked.

[pbmax]

I touched on the Saints case earlier, and was going to bring it up again in that post, but went looking at could find NOTHING mentioning it since the original articles in May 2010. That one got swept under the carpet, and good. Santini either got paid off or whacked.

Yeah, the idea that self-policing is adequate is interesting. The idea its foolproof is idiotic.