Favre’s admission about addiction hits home & means A LOT for this fan/addict
Joe Johnson
|
Back when purplePTSD.com started gaining some semblance of relevance not a week would go by where I wouldn’t receive an email about the ‘PTSD’ part of the name. It reached a point where I started coding in a section of the site in which people could access and donate to PTSD groups/charities, however, at the time (around 2016/17) were part of or referencing the military.
If you can’t tell by my personality (or what I call a personality), I am not a, nor ever have I been, a member of the armed forces. I didn’t want people to think I was implying that I was a veteran, even before the term ‘stolen valor’ became known across the same aspects of the internet that we inhabit.
Those emails typically take offense (real or otherwise) that I/we are making light of a “real mental health diagnosis”.
My typical response was first to ask how our name makes light of, or implies the validity of, post traumatic stress disorder. Secondly, I would let those people know that while it is none of their actual business not only was I diagnosed with PTSD in the year before purplePTSD was founded, but it was actually the impetus for the site(s) being formed in the first place.
The year was 2014 and after three years on a methadone maintenance program I ran out of money to pay for the program out of pocket. Because of that, I did a Rule 25 with my counselor and was totally honest about the fact that I had recently relapsed on alcohol and benzodiazepines.
Because I thought that I was essentially filling out financial forms. I wasn’t aware that the powers that be could rule for me to either go to treatment to get off of at least some of the substances I was using, as someone who had a (inevitably) deadly combination of a genetic predisposition for addiction, trauma, and a level of intelligence that is counterproductive in addiction, to self medicate.
The ruling came down and essentially I was told that I would have to cold turkey off of methadone, a synthetic opioid agonist that has a terrifying half-life when it comes to withdrawal (which, if I could’ve handled regular opioid withdrawal I wouldn’t have started methadone in the first place), OR I could go to intensive inpatient treatment for 90 days.
Back then I was wheeling and dealing online, doing guerrilla internet marketing, and while the money wasn’t much it was a source of pride for this once hyper-successful wunderkind. I begged and pleaded with the case worker on my case to lower that amount and they decided that I should go to Saint Joseph’s Hospital in downtown St. Paul for 27 days.
I was angry. I was scared. I was in DENIAL. Perhaps I still am.
Let’s go for a ride. I promise, it’ll make sense (because it took awhile for me to piece this together, and Favre helped me put it together which is something I’m grateful for).
Up until the previous six months I had been “sober” from everything but methadone. Alcohol had always been my jam, something that had a power over me that it’s hard for this “writer” to describe.
The best way to explain it is as follows. Every single time I drank, which was a “weekend thing” (the textbook justification of a binge drinker) for years, I wouldn’t even start unless I could drink myself to the point of blacking out.
The point wasn’t to black out, per se, but I basically HAD to drink until I passed out because I loved it that much. It was like being as thirsty as you’d ever been, but deeper than that. Thirsty in your soul. Risk your job thirst. Drink mouth wash in a pinch thirst.
Beyond that, I was also a TERRIBLE drunk. I was angry. Actually? I was incredibly sad, and drinking would replace that sadness with anger, an arena I conflated with happiness because I’ve always enjoyed righteous indignation. But, this indignation wasn’t righteous. It was textbook and borderline pathological.
Despite the above, I was hyper successful basically my entire life. I, along with my sister, was always the kid at my Minneapolis Public School that they’d pull aside before standardized tests because they needed me to do well so the school looked serviceable.
I started high school in 7th-grade. I, unlike my sister, stopped caring about my schooling in high school because I found it to be a means to an end. I vividly remember my first day of my senior year of high school, in a math class so advanced that it was held before school started (which was a non-starter for me, as sleep is my favorite thing EVER) and was me, a kid with Asperger’s that got a 36 on the ACT, a 1600 on the SAT and got into every Ivory League School, and a TI-83 plus taped to an iMac (I’m old).
I dropped that class mid-way through.
I never planned on not going to the University of Minnesota. I hadn’t taken the ACT or SAT and I can’t remember how it worked exactly, but I knew I had automatic admission to the U. I didn’t study for the ACT, but I ended up getting a 32 and would’ve scored higher but I couldn’t remember simple geometry formulas because I took geometry in 6th grade and, again, didn’t study.
Humble brag?
I bring this up because I was always capable of handling things with minimal effort. I was hired at an internet start-up straight out of college (after double majoring with degrees in Political Science and Sociology of Law/Criminology/Deviance with a perfect 4.0 GPA and an unofficial record for a 0.0 attendance rate) as the first person who didn’t have 5-7 years experience in corporate B2B sales.
After basically everyone around me told me to stop drinking, including a girl I really liked, I panicked. I needed some respite from reality to look forward to, as I hated my life, my job, my everything.
I had, of course, had multiple “boxer breaks” in my dominant hand during college and recalled really loving the feeling of vicodin (again, I’m old). I decided that the best solution to getting “sober” was to buy some vicodin. Bingo! It “helped me” at work because it made the mundanity of bothering HR people via 10 hours a day of cold calling… Okay? It wasn’t great, but I stopped caring that most people treated me like the human gnat I was.
There was no (at first) hangover. No more dry heaving Monday morning in the shower. No more blacking out and waking up to a litany of problems I’d caused. I had it all figured out.
You can fast forward this part because like every episode of ‘Intervention’ has taught us, vicodin became Oxycontin, which became heroin, which became fentanyl.
This all happened as I lost my job, and somehow I had begun drinking a liter-and-a-half a day of vodka, snorting an amount of opioids that’d buy a Nintendo 64 a day (have I mentioned I’m old?), and taking enough Benzodiazepines to make my heart and respiratory system engage in a ballet of who will give up first.
Then I got “sober”. But after finding out I’d signed a non-compete that ended with me losing my house/car/girlfriend/dog and must importantly my HD TV, I relapsed as for the first time… I couldn’t fix it.
Treatment taught me that I had a lot of trauma I was burying. It was HARD at first, but I opened up and for the first time in years (after some toxic relationships) felt unencumbered and like “myself”.
That’s hard to admit to the internet masses. Just as it must’ve been much more difficult for former Vikings (and no one else) legend Brett Favre to do the same recently and back in the late ‘90’s.
Favre recently spoke with TMZ Sports about his relationship with Vicodin, and how it almost killed him. I related, HARD, with how Favre wrestled with flushing his stash down the toilet and then instantly regretting it, even if I had to use methadone and then hospitalization to wean my demons (two of which are the only two substances that you can die from if you don’t withdrawal correctly). His admission forced me to make further admissions of my own.
The fact that Favre did so, and was an active addict, during his “prime” (three MVP’s and a Super Bowl trophy?) and also couldn’t rely on any non-OTC painkillers during his amazing Iron Man streak?
Hats off.
But the larger hats off goes to Favre shedding light on addiction during a time where addiction run rampant which makes me want to stop hiding aspects of my addiction out of shame because there’s nothing to be ashamed of here. Outside of my haircut, wardrobe, the fact I used to rock JNCOs, etc.
But addiction? Methadone? Abject depression? Yeah. No.
So. I’ve always said that Randy Moss is my favorite player and the reason I love the Vikings nearly as much as bottom shelf vodka and elephant painkillers, but I have to say that the player I relate to most and would love to have on my radio show is Favre.
Thank you, Brett.
I’m here humble bragging about standardized test scores from the same time Favre was overcoming an addiction that was ingrained in how the NFL used to do business.
Painkillers were everywhere. As someone who is now clean and sober, I can’t imagine being around opioids on a daily basis after I got sober (or properly diagnosed). Outside of my mental/emotional pain, I can’t imagine the physical pain Favre endured and could only abate with Advil.
So. Hats off Brett.
What you’re doing gave me the courage to admit parts of my addiction I’d never written about, and I’m just one person (albeit with an okay sized soapbox). Imagine how many people have found solace in what Favre said beyond that?
Because, addiction is nothing to be ashamed about and that’s something that even with as honest as I’ve been up until now, I haven’t realized fully until now.
Now if only I could get Favre on my radio show.