On this week’s “Heart of the Matter,” he talks with Elizabeth Vargas about the impact of his addiction during and after his football career, and his work helping current and retired athletes get the treatment they need.
Randy Grimes, welcome to Heart of the Matter. Great to have you on the show.
Thank you for having me. What an honor.
Oh, gosh, what an honor for us. I have two boys who are massive football fans.
Oh, good. How old are they?
They are 18 and 21.
Oh, okay.
So right in the wheelhouse of major NFL … Anyway. My dad’s a big football fan, too, so it’s really, really great to meet you and have you on the show.
Well, thank you.
So I just want to talk about your journey into recovery, but let’s go back to when you were a huge star in football, both college and then professionally. You started taking opioids, right, after being injured, as so many players do?
And I always say, from everything that I’ve learned, this shouldn’t have happened to me. I didn’t have any childhood trauma. I had a great upbringing. Football came easy for me. Football wasn’t religion in my family, but it was a close second. And it just seemed to come easy for me, and I had a great opportunity to go anywhere in college that I wanted to. I chose Baylor. I had a great career at Baylor. I met my wife my very first day, my freshman year.
Really?
We got married after our junior year, and everything was just going great. I had a great college career. I was drafted in the second round, 45th player taken in the NFL by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And we were so excited. We had been married a year. We were going to go to …
And I was the kid from East Texas who had never even seen the ocean. So to be going to the seaside community of Tampa, Florida, we were so excited, and we loaded up everything we had in a small little U-Haul and hooked it up to my burgundy Cutlass Supreme. And out, I-10 East, we went from Waco to Tampa to start our lives together, our family, and my career in pro football.
And this shouldn’t have happened, but, as we both know, this disease, it does not discriminate. And it can happen to anybody.
How soon after you began your professional career in Tampa did you get your first injury and you were prescribed opioids?
Yeah, well, it wasn’t prescribed. We had a big drug safe in the middle of our training room, and you got to kind of realize what the culture of the NFL was back then.
What year is this?
This is ’83.
Okay. So in ’83, it was pretty lax?
Yeah. I mean, you do whatever you have to stay out on that field. And I can remember the greatest player the Tampa Bay Buccaneers ever had, Lee Roy Selmon, who was the very first pick of the Buccaneers in ’76. I remember having a conversation with him, and the first thing I learned from him when I got out there in my rookie year … I had a locker right next to him, and first thing I learned was that football was not a game anymore. Now it was a job. And the second thing I learned was you do whatever you have to stay out on the field. And I’m sure Lee Roy didn’t mean to throw down handfuls of opiates every day, but that’s what I was willing to do.
And, Elizabeth, I justified it so easy because I wanted to be the best center that played the game. I wanted my career to last forever. I wanted that next big contract. I wanted to be all pro. And the main thing was I didn’t want anybody else out there in my position. And so that’s how I justified throwing down a handful of pills every day and just not reporting my injuries, not complaining because if you ever got the reputation of always being on the injury report or always missing practice, always in line to seeing the doctors or the trainers or something, then you never got away from that reputation in what was sure to be a short NFL career.
So I’d throw those pills down, and I’d get up there or get out there. And I would just practice, play right through my injuries. And it wasn’t just opiates. It was benzos, too, at night to get to sleep through the throbbing pain. And it progressed to the point to where I don’t even remember playing my last two years of my career. And I was playing every down at start and center. Who’s the quarterback of the offensive line? I’m changing blocking assignments. I’m listening to the snap count. I’m trying to read defenses. And I’m doing all this, but I’m doing it all in a blackout.
I would be home at night on the couch, 11, 12 o’clock at night after playing a one o’clock game that afternoon somewhere in the country or at home at our stadium, and I would start coming around. And I’d be all beat up and scratched up and dehydrated and bruised up and everything you are after an NFL football game, and I didn’t remember any of it.
Really?
And I played the whole game. I played the whole game. I was throwing down so many opiates and throw so many benzos to get through that game that, yeah, I didn’t even remember it.
Didn’t that scare you?
It did. It did. More than being scared, I was more ashamed that God had been so good to me and put me in the right places around the right people at the right times. And this is how the last two years of my career is going to end? Where I don’t even remember being out there playing games in a blackout? So there was a lot more shame than there was fear, but I couldn’t stop.
Did you try?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
And what would happen when you tried?
Well, you would go into withdrawal, and then you had all kinds of problems then. And then that becomes the reason why you continue to use because the fear of withdrawal. But for me to come home after a long practice or and just crash on the couch or crash in bed or whatever, that wasn’t a real red flag for my wife or family because we were out there in 110-degree heat. And she knew I was beat up, and she knew I was tired, and she knew I was hot and dehydrated. So that wasn’t a red flag for them.
So nobody knew that you were taking all these drugs?
Well, I don’t know that they did or if they didn’t. All I do remember is that for the eight years, really, that this was going on … I said ’83, but really, it kind of started in ’85. For the eight years that this was going on, nobody once said, “Randy, why are you nodding off in meetings?” Or “Randy, why are you slurring your words?” Or “Randy, why are you late to practice every day?” Or “Randy, why are you the last to leave the building every night and pills are missing out of the drug safe?” Nobody ever asked me those questions because I was always playing good. And if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?
So despite the fact that you were taking … Toward the end there when you were playing in a blackout, what are we talking about that you’re taking?
Oh, probably 15 Vicodin or 15 Percocet on top of five to six or seven or how many ever Xanax I could … Well, back then it was Halcion. I don’t know if you remember that medication.
I do.
It was kind of the granddaddy of Xanax. So whatever I could get my hands on, because I had built a tolerance up at that point to where I could have taken more had I had it. And the occupation I was in, every time after we would leave the game at our home stadium and even flying back on a plane from an away stadium, a manager would walk around and hand you a little white envelope, one of those little dental envelopes, and it had two Percocet and two Halcion in it. And they’d also hand you two beers. And even as you’re walking out the door of the home stadium to meet your family, who’s waiting for you outside, with your car keys in your hand, there’s a manager standing at the door handing you two Percocet, two Halcion and two beers as you walk out. What other occupation in the world does that?
So when guys don’t want their pills, then all you got to do is say, “Hey, if you’re not going to use those, can I have them?” And they go, “Sure.” We’re a bunch of 20-something-year-old kids. Nobody understands addiction back then. I just know that I needed more and more and more all the time.
So your teammates didn’t know. Your wife didn’t know.
There was probably one or two that knew that were probably just as deeply involved as I was because it was …
So the only reason they knew is because they were doing the same thing. They recognized it.
Right, right, right. And the drug safe that was in our locker room, the narcotics safe, whatever where they kept the medication, it was always open. But I got to say I don’t blame the Bucks. I’ve never blamed the Buccaneers, the medical staff, training room, all that. I’m responsible for everything that I put in my mouth, but it was easily available.
And why do you think your wife didn’t know?
Like I said, it wasn’t unusual for me to be beat up or to be crashed out on the bed or the couch. She knew I needed …
And she obviously didn’t see you taking the pills.
She didn’t see a lot of it. I hid a lot of it. Yeah, I was very good at that. And she didn’t understand what was going on. She didn’t understand addiction back then and probably never even … She was busy raising kids and making sure that everything was good in our two homes. We had a home back in Houston in the off season. So she was busy taking care of our family, and she counted on me.
You did, at one point while you were playing, have shoulder surgery after an injury.
I did. I did.
And after that shoulder surgery, you suffered a seizure. What happened?
Yes. I was on the beach in St. Petersburg. My kids were playing volleyball, and I was just kind of hanging around. My mom had come out there to visit, and I had a seizure. And the reason why was because I had to come off the Halcion for the surgery, and I didn’t have any idea you’d have a seizure if you quit taking that medication. I didn’t realize you had to do that under a doctor’s supervision, and I had a seizure on the beach.
Well, they put me through all these epileptic tests, all these brain tests and seizure disorder tests and couldn’t find anything. Nobody could explain it. And I just kept my mouth shut because I didn’t know at the time that that was probably it. But I suspected it had something to do with it. And then as the years went on and on, I had multiple seizures as a result of withdrawal from benzodiazepines. And I probably had 10 or 12 different seizures over the next decade or so.
But if you were suspecting that the seizures were a result of you suddenly stopping the Halcion, a benzo, why didn’t you go to a doctor and say, “I need help weaning myself off this.”
Pride, guilt, shame, ego, all those, and I didn’t really know. I just kind of suspected it. I mean, this is before you could go online and just Google something and say, “Why did I have a seizure?” I just kind of suspected something. But Elizabeth, I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to quit taking them yet.
Yeah, of course. That’s the hallmark of addiction.
Right.
So you retired from the NFL in 1992, but you continued taking both the opioids and the benzos?
Yeah. See, I never thought I would take that into my retired life. I always justified it as part of my work life to stay out on the field. And I can remember Sam Wyche putting his hand on my shoulder after that ’92 season and saying, “We’re not going to need you out here anymore.” And I can remember thinking, “God, that’s how it ends?” And I’d gotten injured about halfway through that season, and I mean really injured. I dislocated an ankle, so I couldn’t really go try out for anybody else. So I knew it was over.
But I can remember thinking, “That’s how it ends? All the years since fourth grade? All of the blood, sweat and tears I’ve left on football fields all over this country since fourth grade, and that’s how it ends?” And you think you’re ready for it. You think you’re tired of it until it really happens. And then it’s like … I can remember just raking everything out of my locker into a black trash bag and walking out the back door, and
the football player didn’t exist anymore.
And the reason I tell you that story is because I already had this raging addiction going, and now you throw in the fact that I’m not Randy Grimes the football player anymore, that I don’t have a playbook anymore, that I don’t have an itinerary to go by. I don’t have that identity. That was just throwing gasoline on an already raging dumpster fire, and I didn’t transition well out of the league. And the addiction had a lot to do with that.
A lot of people and a lot of businesses, in practically every walk of life, we are all focused on the ascent and getting to the top and working so hard and sacrificing so much and attaining that goal and that euphoria that comes with that success. And nobody ever considers that it’s the wheel of life that what goes up then also goes down for everyone, everywhere. Think of every person you’ve ever known at the very pinnacle of success and fame and fortune. You don’t stay up there. You come back down, and nobody prepares for that part of it.
And that’s whether you’re an athlete or CEO or a veteran or a first responder.
A movie star, a network news anchor, the President of the United … I mean, you’re up there, and you’re at that pinnacle. And it never, ever lasts. You have to think about what comes next.
In your case, what did come next? Because you also had this secret addiction, a serious addiction, that nobody knew about, including Lydia, your wife.
And I faked it for many years, for a long time, and I had some great jobs after football. I mean, obviously, nothing ever compared to being out on that field or running out of that tunnel behind the cheerleaders between the bleachers. But I had some great jobs, and Elizabeth, I lost them all because of the addiction. Eventually, I would lose them all. And houses, cars, I went through all our savings and again…
And I think I’m a pretty tough guy. I’ve been in a lot of battles. You don’t get to stay as a starting center in the NFL unless you’re pretty tough and can win most of your battles. But I could not stop. As much discipline as I had to be an athlete, I couldn’t stop the addiction. And even with my empire crumbling around me, even with my marriage. I mean, my wife, she’ll always say she wanted to leave me, but God wouldn’t let her, that God promised her he was going to heal our family. So she hung in there but almost to a fault, and I just couldn’t stop.
Where were you getting the drugs now that you no longer had the drug locker in the middle of the locker room?
Oh, I was a professional doctor shopper all over Houston, Texas. That was a full-time job, basically. That was the real full-time job, even though I had other full-time jobs. This was back when you could go to multiple doctors and multiple pharmacies and …
You still can, unfortunately, but it’s less easy.
Well, yeah, they’ve made it harder. So they’ve shut down a lot of that doctor shopping, thank God.
But that was a full-time job, and I had a little calendar book that I knew when I could go here and go there and get this and get that. The main thing was where was the money going to come from because everything had to be cash. So that was a lot of the downfall of my finances. But friends, I had great friends. I lost them all. I went through all our money. Houses, cars, all that stuff, all because of addiction. And I couldn’t stop. And here I was…
And I can remember laying in the floor, the last house that we had, and this is before I went to a rehab. The last house we had, we didn’t lose it in foreclosure, but we did have to lose it in a short sale. But the new owners weren’t going to take possession of it for another 90 days. So we moved all the furniture out, cut the utilities off so we wouldn’t have to pay for all that. My wife moved in with her parents because she needed a place to live, and because of my pride and ego, I wouldn’t move in. And I stayed in that house with no utilities, no furniture.
And I can remember laying on the floor of that house one night, and this was towards the end. I can remember thinking, “I was a College All-American. I was the second round draft pick of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I was the 1988 NFL man of the year for the Buccaneers. I married my childhood cheerleader, sweetheart, wife, dream girl, and I had two great kids. And here I am sleeping in the floor of an empty house with no utilities, no car out in the driveway, no money in the bank, no job to speak of. What am I doing?” And that was the beginning of the end.
Wow. So what happened then?
Well, and the perfect storm was coming together in that spring and summer of 2009. And I had a good friend that I played with out in Tampa named Tom McHale, played next to him for many years, and he was doing the exact same thing I was doing. And he was self-medicating the injuries he got while he played with the Bucks, and one morning, he just didn’t wake up. And that got my attention.
The seizures. I had a seizure in the pool by myself, and just by the grace of God, I was on the steps of the pool. My wife had to step back. She moved in with her parents. She couldn’t stand to watch me continue to kill myself. And the big one was, I mean, those were all big, but the one that really hit me was my daughter wouldn’t let me come around her first baby because I wasn’t fit to be around her baby. That crushed me. All those things together is when I finally put up my hand and asked for help.
And my wife was willing to make one more call for me because she was so sick of the “I’m sorry”s or me telling her how crazy she is. She’s making a mountain out of a mole hill. She’s overplaying this. I’ve got this under control. She was all sick of those lines, and she was willing to make one more call for me. And whoever she called that day at the NFL office up in New York on Park Avenue, there was nothing for former players back then, but whoever she talked to that day at the league office knew somebody who knew somebody.
And that’s how I got on a, airplane that night, September 22nd, 2009. And I flew to Fort Lauderdale and drove an hour north to West Palm Beach and stayed there 90 days. I got a knee replaced while I was in rehab. I got some neck surgery. I got the other knee operated on. I went in with a plan that got me out of some of the pain that I was self-medicating, but here’s the crazy thing. A lot of the injuries that I thought I had went away when I quit taking all that crap. Isn’t that crazy?
What do you mean?
Well, I mean, I had some back issues that would never go away. I had some other neck issues that just never would go away. Ankle pain. When I quit taking the opiates, they went away after 3, 4, 5 months. It was like my brain had manifested all this stuff as an excuse to take more and more and more.
It’s funny, I don’t drink. I’m in recovery from alcohol. And I drank to soothe my anxiety. And there were all sorts of things that I thought, “I can’t do this. My anxiety is too high. I need to have a glass or three of wine.” Once I stopped drinking, my anxiety dramatically dissipated. It’s not completely gone. I still have it sometimes, but it’s a much lower level. That’s the thing.
So you can relate, yeah.
You’re medicating this condition, and then you find out once you stop, like, “Oh, my God. I didn’t actually need it in the first place.” Or “What I was doing was actually exacerbating it.” Which we do know that alcohol exacerbates anxiety after a while. It boomerangs. But that’s so interesting that your own physical injuries that you were medicating for…
So you had tried to stop before and couldn’t. Why did it work now, after this? Was it the treatment center? Was it 90 days in treatment? What is it that changed for you, do you think?
I think it was a combination of all those things. Yeah, good treatment, 90 days, accountability, consequences. The consequences finally got to the point to where they were greater than the addiction. And I can remember, even after I did the 90 days, they told me I should move into sober living. Here I was, 49 years old, moving into sober living with a bunch of 20 something year old kids.
So I was willing to do whatever they told me to do. And when that door hit me in the rear end after treatment, I was scared to death to be out there by myself. I moved into the sober living, but I would go back to the treatment center every day, even though I’d been discharged. I wasn’t a client. They would let me come back on to the campus, and I would just walk around and pick up cigarette butts all day, just to be around my safe place, my safe people.
As an athlete, I thrived on accountability. I felt like, I needed them to see my eyes and hear my voice every day. And I did that for six months. I stayed in sober living for six months, and then I finally moved in by myself to a higher level of sober living. And eventually, my wife joined me out there.
And here she was, back in Houston, working as a school teacher, trying to get things back in order, trying to recover everything that I had crushed through my addiction, helping our kids get through college and school and all that, getting married. But she was not willing to join me in Florida yet until she knew for sure that I was going to stay sober. And we talked every day, and I would come home as often as I could on weekends. She would come out there, but she was not willing to give up her job and her life in Houston, here around her parents and family, until she knew for sure that I was going to stay sober.
So we stayed … I don’t want to say separated, but we did not live together for seven years.
Wow.
She was here. I was out in West Palm Beach doing my thing.
She’s the real hero of the story. She’s the one that kept it all together. She’s the one that wouldn’t give up on me but learned to love me from a distance. And even the kids, the kids are the heroes, too, because they learned the same thing. And had it not been for them, the outcome wouldn’t have been as good.
But also, I can remember sitting at a picnic table on the campus of the rehab, and this was a couple weeks into my detox, and I was sobbing uncontrollably. It was 15 minutes before the first group on a Wednesday, I’ll never forget it, 8:45 in the morning. And I was sobbing uncontrollably. It was, like I said, two weeks in, and for the first time in a long time, I was having to deal with all the destruction that I left back in Houston, Texas with my finances, relationships, everything. I was having to deal with that clean and sober. Life on life’s terms, clean and sober for the first time. And the guilt, the shame, was overwhelming.
And this was my burning bush moment, Elizabeth. It was like while I was sitting there, it was like somebody came up behind me and draped a warm, heavy quilt on my shoulders. And the reason I say quilt is I remember feeling weight and warmth on my shoulders, and it was like … And up until then, I couldn’t get over that obsession to throw pills down. I felt like I was the one who needed them the rest of my life. Y’all are crazy. Even at this rehab, you’re crazy. I need these pills. Look at all these injuries. And it was like that obsession to use was lifted off of me right then. And not only that, but I had this overwhelming confidence that I could complete this because up until then, no, I didn’t think I could.
I knew that I had played with and against a lot of guys. I knew that a lot of guys were out there struggling in silence. And I knew that there was nothing out there for NFL players. And I didn’t know. I mean, it was kind of the birth of what I do now, but I didn’t know what that was going to look like because I still had a lot of work to do on myself. But I did know that I wanted to make everything that I had put everybody through back in Houston, my family, my friends, my reputation, all that, I wanted to make it mean something. I wanted my addiction to mean something. And that’s the start of Pro Athletes in Recovery. Everything that I’ve done, the book, everything, kind of started right there at that picnic table, and I didn’t know what it was going to look like. But …
Talk about Pro Athletes in Recovery and what you’re doing in paying it forward, in helping other incredibly talented, gifted athletes avoid what you went through and what you lost and what you suffered.
Well, like I said, I knew there was a lot of guys out there that I’d played with and against that were struggling. I knew there was nothing out there for former players. I knew that nobody was helping them or addressing the fact that not only did they self-medicate because of their injuries or what I call transitional trauma. They didn’t transition well out of football, too. I knew that there was nothing out there for them.
And after I worked on myself for a year or even longer, I reached out to a friend of mine at the NFL Alumni, and the NFL Alumni kind of split in two. And they formed the Player Care Foundation, and they kept the alumni department, too. And this was back when the alumni was down in Fort Lauderdale, and we started reaching out to these guys. We started offering them the opportunity for treatment. The Player Care Foundation was paying for treatment, and I started going out and sharing my story. And guys started throwing up hands all over the country. “Yeah, me. Here I am.” Family started calling and saying, “My husband, my son is struggling.” And next thing you know, Major League Baseball’s getting involved with it, the baseball assistance team.
Pretty much now, I work with every sport you can think of that has an organization that supports their former players, the Jockeys’ Guild, NASCAR, MMA, NBA, NHL, a lot of college. A lot of college. I feel like it’s God’s way of keeping me connected to a game that I love so much. And it is not just football, but it’s athletes and everything that they struggle with. And hey, we talk a lot about transitional trauma because that’s the root of most of it.
Yeah. I don’t think people fully appreciate, getting back to the point I was making earlier, what that’s going to be like once that wheel begins to turn and you begin your descent. And sometimes it’s sudden and catastrophic, and sometimes it’s gradual and a slide. But either way, it’s all going down, and nobody prepares for it, even though every single human being will experience it.
Well, you’re exactly right.
Randy Grimes, it is such an honor to meet you. What an extraordinary career and life. Your recovery is a true example for others, and the fact that you are helping so many athletes in so many different sports and walks of life, not only manage the transition, but also recover, sometimes, from addictions of their own to painkillers. They are all putting themselves and their bodies through so much. It’s really, really a wonderful thing.
Thank you.
Randy Grimes, great to have you on Heart of the Matter. Thank you for joining us.