Ryan Leaf and JaMarcus Russell have many things in common. They are arguably the two biggest busts in recent NFL Draft history, were top ranked collegiate quarterbacks who never lived up to their potential in the NFL, but when you think about it the most telling thing they have in common is arrests for abuse of prescription opioids.
On July 5, 2010 Russell joined Leaf in the fraternity of prescription opioid users who have been busted for their illegal opioid use. Russell was arrested after an investigation for use of codeine cough syrup, likely being used as an ingredient of the popularly abused purple drank. In 2009 Leaf was indicted for burglary and theft of hydrocodone, a prescription semi-synthetic opioid.
Few argue that either of these athletes lacked the physical tools needed to be top NFL quarterbacks. In 1998 Leaf was the second overall NFL pick, right after Peyton Manning, one of the best all-time NFL quarterbacks. In 2007 Russell was the #1 overall pick in the NFL draft by the Oakland Raiders. Somehow both of these players became remarkable flops at the professional level.
Pain is a part of being a football player. At the professional athlete level access to opioids is unlikely to be difficult. They are probably available from trainers, physicians and less legitimate sources. Some people use pain medications appropriately, and simply don’t fall into the trap of abuse. Others seem to fall into the downhill spiral of continued use, misuse, and abuse that ends in addiction and in the cases of these two athletes, legal trouble.
Star athletes are pampered, sheltered, and are likely to feel invincible; above the risk of opioid addiction. Clearly they are not. Youth in general are at higher risk of misuse and addiction to opioids, and we as physicians need to be diligent in not facilitating the addiction of our young patients. In the case of these two athletes I have no way of knowing if their addiction problems started with the use of opioids to treat football related painful injuries, but it seems likely that is the case. Obtaining opioids is very easy for anyone who wants them badly without the help of a physician or athletic trainer. In sports like the NFL where saying no to star athletes may not be the easiest thing to do for trainers and physicians, and where access to drugs through friends, agents and handlers may be painlessly easy, teams would be well served to be extra diligent to teach their prized property, the players, to avoid opioid misuse.
Would just saying no to opiates have kept these two incredible athletes from becoming dismal failures in the NFL? Is the fall into opioid addiction just a sign of some character weakness that itself prevented them from succeeding as NFL quarterbacks? Which came first? All of these are questions without answers, but one thing is clear. Neither of these athletes, nor any of the rest of the huge numbers of Americans currently abusing prescription opioids, have come out ahead because of their drug use.
Previous posts on Oxycontin and the epidemic of abuse of prescription drugs on this blog have discussed these issues in detail. It’s such a problem that finding a physician to prescribe opioids for chronic pain is difficult because of our skepticism over anyone using opioids. Abuse and diversion is such a problem it’s impossible not to see any new patient who tells us they need opioids as a potentially abusing or selling the drug.
What also makes me angry about their drug abuse is that they stole drugs from someone who probably needed them to cope without suffering. Opiods cannot be replaced when they are stolen. If this is the case, they should also have some kind of criminal charge for the harm they caused the person(s) they stole from.