The Nightmare Of Steroids

"What are you talking about?" she asked. She was scared.

"I can't take it anymore," I kept saying. "Please don't think of me as a coward."

I was a 23-year-old football player at a big-time school, 6'1", 250 pounds, a senior defensive lineman who could bench-press 500 pounds. I was ready to kill myself, but I couldn't stand the thought of being seen as a coward. That's all I cared about. Even then. I was a football player, not a coward.

Somehow I got back to the Roost that night and fell asleep. I don't know how that happened, since I hadn't been able to sleep right for months. But when I woke up Friday morning, I felt O.K., and the first thing I said to myself was, "I'm going to play against Clemson. I'll play, goddammit!" We were 7-2, having a great season. I wanted to continue to be a part of it.

But then I started feeling bad again. The waves of anxiety washed over me, I started to tremble, and then I got my gun.

And now my dad was pounding on the door. On reflex, like a dutiful son, I hid the gun and let him in. He looked at me and said, "Tommy, let's go home." He took me to the airport, and we flew to Washington. I tried to compose myself on the flight, but it was horrible. I felt I was suffocating. My mom was waiting at the airport. "We're taking you to the hospital," she said.

All I said was, "I hope it isn't the psych ward, because I'm not going to the psych ward."

In the waiting room at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, I started to have spasms. My body was having a reaction to Stelazine, the drug that a psychiatrist had prescribed for me a few weeks earlier when I'd first come home from South Carolina to get some professional help. That was right after our game against North Carolina State, which we won 48-0. I played well, too. I had six tackles. But off the field I was lost, erratic. Suicide was always on my mind. Suicide and football. The fact that I could play at all in my condition seems strange to me now. The Stelazine was supposed to reduce my anxiety attacks, but it just seemed to intensify them.

Finally my psychiatrist arrived at Sibley. He tried to explain what was happening to me, and I said, "I don't care about any of that. Give me something to help me now, or it's all over."

All of a sudden two guys in white jackets appeared. "We're just going to take you to the top floor of the hospital," one of them said. "You'll be fine."