The Nightmare Of Steroids

In 1986, my third varsity season, we lost some close games and finished a miserable 3-6-2. I moved around from nose to tackle and even played a little linebacker. After the season, though, I developed a tumor on my chest and it grew to the size of a handball. I was in bed coughing up mucus, and I was very depressed and fighting bouts of severe anxiety. Right before spring ball, I started another steroid cycle and, boom!, my blood pressure shot right up. I was sweating and had hot flashes. I knew my body was rejecting the drugs, so I stopped taking them.

I went to Dr. Akers and showed him the tumor, and he said, "Don't worry about it, it'll go away." But I didn't trust him, so I went to another doctor, and he said I needed surgery right away. I also had a tumor on my right hand that he said needed to come out. The tumors, he said, were caused by steroids, but the athletic department said they weren't football-related injuries, so the school wouldn't pay the medical bills. My dad's insurance paid for the surgery, which was performed at Baptist Medical Center in Columbia in February of '87. As I lay in bed recovering, I began to wonder what this was all about. I was very depressed and I needed time for rehab, but spring drills would begin soon. Since the school hadn't paid for the surgery, it was as if it hadn't happened. You refine, get your ass out there, boy—that was their attitude.

I said, "Screw it, screw all of you," and I quit the team and moved out of the Roost. I was sick, but I still had the desire to play, to excel. I couldn't kill that. I was reading a lot of philosophy, and I started thinking that this mindless aggression and physical self-destruction wasn't what life was all about. But I couldn't quit football before my senior season—I just couldn't come to terms with that. So I wrote a letter of apology to Morrison, and he took me back. It was a phony apology, but I would have done whatever was necessary to get back on the team. My sense of self-worth was tied up in the game.

About this time I was starting to battle anxiety attacks that I was sure were caused by the steroids. I can't really describe an attack, except to say that it's like your mind is a car engine stuck in neutral with the gas pedal to the floor, just screaming. There is terror mixed in, and you think that you're going to explode. The anxiety attacks were the worst mental pain I'd ever experienced.

By the end of the summer of '87, though, I was getting a handle on things, feeling better, working out a lot, doing it the natural way. I had vowed never to touch steroids again, but once again, I did. I couldn't stop. Just before I went back to school, I did a shot of Parabolin, yet another steroid. I blew up to 270. I couldn't bench much because of a shoulder injury, but I could squat 650 pounds. I also started to get that edgy feeling again. My mind started racing, and I felt out of control. The night before two-a-days began, I went out drinking with the other players, and we got crazy, head-butting each other, getting ready.

The next morning I had an anxiety attack, a big one. I sat in my room for hours, just trying to hold on to reality. I had another attack a few days later. I didn't think anybody could help me. I had tried to explain the feeling to my parents, but they couldn't understand. They didn't think I was doing steroids anymore, and so they tried to reassure me. "Don't worry, you're just tired and worn out," they said.

But the attacks got worse and worse. Somehow, I was still a starter. I spent a lot of time in my room because I was so afraid, so paranoid. I'd wake up in the morning and everything was gray—I swear to God—everything had lost its colors. It was the worst thing you can imagine. There was a roaring in my ears, and I saw trails behind moving objects. I couldn't read, because I couldn't concentrate. One minute I would think the mental illness was over with, and the next minute it would come racing back. Thoughts of suicide came into my mind. Every day was torture, and I started saying, "Please, God, let me make it through one more practice." I had to make it through practice so I could play in the games. That was all that mattered. I didn't care about my health, just football. I wasn't going to quit, by God, and I didn't want anyone to take my position. I didn't care if I died, as long as I completed the season, as long as I finished like a man.

I had a good game against Nebraska, but I don't know how. On the plane to Lincoln I'd had an anxiety attack and had to lock myself in the bathroom to try to calm down. In the game, though, my technique was almost flawless, and I had a lot of tackles. But I was like a fist, ready to squeeze myself to death.

Then in the sixth game of the year, at home against Virginia, I was overwhelmed with anxiety, almost panic. The crowd seemed like it was closing in. Except for that one shot of Parabolin, I hadn't used drugs for five months, and I kept wondering what was happening to me. I finally just walked off the field in the third quarter of the game and took my pads off and sat on the bench. The doctor asked me what was wrong, and I just said, "I don't feel good."

The coaches let me go home to see a psychiatrist, who agreed that steroids were to blame. That's when I got on Stelazine, which was supposed to help me. It didn't, and I saw another psychiatrist in Columbia, who put me on an antidepressant to go with the Stelazine. One day in class I felt the room start to sway. I staggered out of the class and down the stairs, even though they seemed to be moving. I weaved past people, but I couldn't hear anything. I got outside and I lost control of my bladder and my bowels. I urinated and defecated all over myself. I was praying to God I could make it to my car. Somehow I got there, drove back to the dorm, showered and lay down in bed. That was the end. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't practice. It was over.