Recovering Out Loud

In today’s “In Their Words” session, we feature Randy Grimes, a 10-year veteran of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Founder of Pro Athletes in Recovery.

Randy, a Baylor University graduate and 10-year NFL veteran, traversed a dark and secretive world not often talked about in sports. Randy’s story of athletic success, injury, opioid addiction, and loss of identity is a harrowing and cautionary tale. Yet, through his experiences, Randy has been able to help countless athletes who struggled in silence.  

Randy is a powerful example of how all people have the capacity to change, and it all starts with raising your hand.

JJW: Can you tell me a little about your athletic background? How old were you when you started to compete?

RANDY: I started early in 4th grade. My dad was always my coach. He was my hero. And football was something that seemed to come easy for me.

After high school, I was offered a scholarship to play football at Baylor University. I could have gone anywhere in the Southwest Conference that I wanted to, but I chose Baylor because I wanted to play for Coach Grant Taft. I had a great football college career. In fact, I met my wife on the very first day of school in our freshman year. We went out that night and got married after our junior year. Later, she became the hero of my story.

JJW: After college, you played in the NFL for Tampa Bay. What was that experience like?

RANDY: In 1983, I was drafted in the second round by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and spent the next decade as their starting center. I was that guy willing to do whatever I had to do to stay out on the field.  For me, that meant practicing and playing through different injuries and taking handfuls of opiates to deal with the chronic pain that develops from playing professional football.

I justified taking opiates by telling myself that I wanted to be the best center that ever played the game and that I wanted to be an All-Pro. I wanted that next big contract. You know, those are ways that I justified playing in pain and taking opiates.

Early in my career, I learned that you never wanted to get a reputation as being “that guy” who’s always injured and missing practice. That guy who’s always on the injured list, seeing the team doctor, or always hanging out in the training room. You didn’t want to get that reputation because you would never get away from it, and it would surely cut your NFL career short.

I played in an era when we used to beat the hell out of each other all week long. It was that coaching mentality where if you don’t practice hard, you won’t play hard. A lot of my injuries and teammate’s injuries came, not only from playing games but also from hard hits during practice. I never understood that mentality, but that’s how it was back then.

That’s how the addiction started. Then, it turned into something that I had to do every day to keep from going into withdrawals. There was a point eventually where the drugs weren’t working anymore, but I had to keep taking them to keep from getting sick.

Let me also throw in that, being raised in a small town in East Texas, I never saw my parents touch a drop of alcohol or do drugs or anything. I always say this shouldn’t have happened to me because I wasn’t around it. I didn’t have any childhood trauma. I didn’t come from a broken home. My brother and sister were great role models. I’m kind of that guy who this should have never happened to, but it did.

When I finally put my hand up and asked for help in 2009, nothing was out there for former athletes or former NFL players. That day, my wife called the League Office in New York and spoke to someone who just happened to know somebody who knew somebody. That’s how I got in treatment back on September 22nd, 2009.

That was also the moment when I saw the need to help the guys I played with and played against. I knew they were out there silently struggling, just like I was, and for whatever reason, pride, ego, guilt, or shame, they wouldn’t put their hand up and ask for help. That’s kind of the way we were raised. That’s the way our dads raised us. Big boys don’t cry; rub some dirt on it and get back in there.

Looking back now and considering everything I went through, I wouldn’t change a thing because it brought me to where I am now, able to help others.

JJW: How did you go about helping other NFL players?

RANDY: Once I got my story out, we formed an organization called the Player Care Foundation through the NFL. We would go out and share my story, and guys started to come out of the woodwork. We were shocked at how many people raised their hands and asked for help.

Over the last 13 years, I’ve been able to help a lot of former athletes from all sports and their families. I don’t like to box myself in and say I only help athletes. I’ll help anybody who raises their hand and needs the appropriate resources. It’s been an incredible journey. God picked a strange way to keep me connected to a game that I love so much. The fact that I’ve been able to help so many different people is my greatest accomplishment.

JJW: Would you say you were a functioning addict? Was your family or team aware of the extent of your addiction? Did anyone ever come up to you and say, “Randy, you have a problem?”

RANDY: Well, I say all the time, in the nine years since this was going on, not once did anybody ever say, ‘Randy, why are you slurring your words?’ ‘Why are you nodding off in meetings?’ ‘Why are you late to practice every day?’ ‘Why are you the last to leave the building every night,’ Or ‘Why are their drugs missing out of the narcotics safe?’ Nobody ever asked me those questions because I was always playing at a high level. And if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Right? You know, that was the mentality.

The era I played in was rough, and we really took it out on each other. But it was an era where throwing painkillers at an injury was something that went on in the NFL. We used to walk out of the locker room after playing a game with our car keys in our hand to meet our families, and there’d be a manager at the door who would hand you a little white envelope that had two Percocet in it, two Halcyon, and he’d give you two beers. What other occupation in the world does that? But that was the mentality. The same thing happened on a flight home after playing an away game. A manager would walk down the airplane aisle handing out that same envelope and those same two beers.

JJW: Did you realize, while you were playing, that this lifestyle was unsustainable, or did you think this is what I needed to do to keep your career going and maintain your identity?

RANDY: During the last two years of my career, I played games and would completely black out. After a game, either I’d be at home late at night or somewhere in the country at one o’clock that afternoon, and I would kind of start coming out of it. I’d be all beat up, scratched up, fingernails torn up, dehydrated, and everything that you are after an NFL football game, and I didn’t remember.

And I was a starting center. I was the quarterback of the offensive line. I was getting guys going in the right direction. I was changing blocking schemes at the line of scrimmage. I had to listen to the quarterback and the snap count. Listen to see if he audibled and changed the play. And I was doing all of that in a blackout state and didn’t remember any of it.

So yeah, those last two years, I knew there was a problem. I had my first seizure as a result of Benzo withdrawal that last year. The team tested me for a seizure disorder, epilepsy, and all that stuff. And, of course, everything came back negative. So, I knew what was going on, but the team didn’t know.

JJW: When did you realize that your career was coming to an end?

RANDY: Well, I think you know it’s coming. You hope it doesn’t come. You hope you can put it off for another year. You think you’re prepared for it. In my last year, I dislocated my ankle halfway through the season. I still remember head coach Sam Wyche walking by my locker, putting his hand on my shoulder, and saying, ‘Your services won’t be needed anymore here in Tampa.’

I knew I wouldn’t be able to try out somewhere else. And I remember thinking, ‘God, this is how it ends. All the blood, sweat, and tears I’ve left on football fields all over this country since 4th grade, and this is how it ends. With a coach I hardly knew who’s only been here half a year and has no loyalties to me, I have none to him, and it’s over.’

It’s not like I expected to have a parade or a big party or anything, but I guess I just never thought it would end like that. I remember packing everything from my locker into a black trash bag and walking out the back door. And Randy Grimes, the football player, didn’t exist anymore.

I already had this raging addiction. And now you throw in the fact that I don’t have a playbook anymore. I don’t have a uniform to put on anymore. I don’t have that identity. That was just throwing gasoline on an already out-of-control dumpster fire.

JJW: How was the adjustment following your NFL career?

RANDY: I didn’t do well for many years after football because I couldn’t figure out who the heck I was. As crazy as it sounds, it was tough because I wasn’t Randy Grimes, the football player anymore.

JJW: That experience is so common with retiring athletes. Being an athlete is all they know, and it’s how they define themselves. Retirement is often unsettling.

RANDY: If you asked me when I was 20, ‘Who are you?’ I would say, ‘I’m a football player.’ That’s how every athlete will define themselves. So once you rip that away, it’s like, ‘Oh no, now what?’ All I knew was how to play football and how to compete. It’s a harsh reality, especially when you are not going out on your own terms.

JJW: Did your agent look for the possibility of playing for other teams?

RANDY: Yeah, we made some calls, but like I said, I was injured. I had a dislocated ankle, and I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t go try out for another team. This is back before free agency, where guys move around so easily. Back then, it was a little bigger process.

I was also 33 years old. I was at the tail end of my career. It was my first significant injury. I went for eight years, and everything was great. I was Teflon. But that last year and a half or so, everything kind of caught up with me. Like I said, you think you’re prepared, you think about it all offseason. You try to make plans. You mentally prepare for whatever that next step’s going to be. You try to set yourself up financially. But when it actually happens, it’s a whole other story.

JJW: What was your plan for retirement? Were you thinking, ‘Alright, what’s my next step?’ Or did you have no idea what you truly want to do?

RANDY: I had a plan. I was going to go start working for my agent. We were going to form a partnership. And, of course, that didn’t work out. When that didn’t work, I was like, ‘Now what? How am I going to support my family? I had some money in the bank, but I knew it wouldn’t last long.

The money I made back in 1992 was good money, but it certainly wasn’t enough for me to sit back and not do anything. I just wasn’t prepared for what was next. I didn’t know what I was good at. I had allowed football to become who I was instead of just something I did.

JJW: Back to your addiction. When you retired, were you thinking, “Now that I’m not on the field anymore, where am I going to get my little white envelopes?

RANDY: Well, that’s a whole other story. I moved back to Houston after I was cut. Houston was always our home in the offseason.

Doctor shopping all over town became my new full-time job. It was so easy back then. I had so many medical records. I had a big NFL ring on my finger. I had all these injuries. It was easy to walk into a doctor’s office and say, ‘Hey, I need this, I need that,’ and for them just to write a script. That was the nature of the beast back then. Opiates were widely prescribed back in the late 1990s.

JJW: What was rock bottom for you?

RANDY: Every rock bottom I hit had a trap door. It always went deeper.

I can remember the new normal in my life back then. It was hospital stays, ambulance rides, lost jobs, foreclosed homes, and repoed cars. That was pretty much what was going on in my life as a result of addiction.

I can remember the last house we lived in. This was right before I went to treatment. We didn’t lose it in foreclosure, but we did a short sale on the house. The new owners weren’t going to take possession of the house for 90 days, so we moved all the furniture out. We cut the utilities off. My wife just had enough. She just couldn’t sit by and watch me continue to kill myself. So, she moved in with her parents. Because of my pride and ego, I wouldn’t go. I can remember laying on the floor of that house one night, with no utilities, in a dark house, laying on the floor because there was no furniture. All I had was a quilt and a little TV.

I had no car, no job, no money. And I can remember thinking, ‘I was a college All-American. I was a second-round NFL draft pick with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I was an All-Pro. I was a 1988 NFL Man-of-the-Year for the Bucs. I was married to my dream wife and had two great kids who worshiped the ground I walked on. And here I am, lying on the floor of this house with nothing.

Like I said, my wife was so sick of me saying, ‘I’m sorry, you’re overreacting.’ You know, all the things that we say in, in our addiction.

I’d had a series of seizures that summer. This was the spring and summer of 2009, and I had a good friend who played next to me named Tom McHale.  He was my left guard for many years, doing the same things I was doing, self-medicating injuries he got while he played with the Bucs. And one morning, he just didn’t wake up.

So that got my attention. The seizures got my attention. The fact that my wife just couldn’t do it anymore, that got my attention. I knew my marriage was in jeopardy, and I didn’t have any other options. I couldn’t find a job. Nobody would hire me. I was unemployable. I didn’t have anywhere to live. So that whole thing was coming together in the summer of 2009, and that’s when I finally asked for help. That’s when I finally put my hand up and asked for help.

JJW: How difficult was recovery?

RANDY: I convinced myself that I had so many injuries that I needed opiates. I was that one guy who was going to go the rest of my life taking opiates because I was different. You know, I was special, and I had all these injuries. So, it was hard getting over that obsession with throwing pills down every day.

It was hard to learn how to live with a certain amount of chronic pain, but I also came into treatment with a plan, and the plan was while I was in treatment for 90 days, I was going to get a knee replaced. I was going to get the other knee surgically repaired. I was going to have some neck surgery. So, after they detoxed me from everything, I went off and had those surgeries and then came straight back to treatment and began working on those underlying issues that made me do what I was doing.

That was a rough 90 days, but it was the most fantastic thing that’s ever happened to me. I learned so much about myself. I basically reinvented myself in there, but the main thing for me was, with the help of professional therapy and treatment, I finally grieved the death of Randy Grimes, a football player. That was huge, and that was a very, very real thing.

JJW: When you were released from the treatment center, were there still strong urges to use drugs?

RANDY: No, but let me say this. I needed to stay accountable to somebody because I didn’t trust myself out there. It’s easy to stay sober while you’re in treatment. You’re in a protected environment, and you’re around safe people.

But I needed to stay accountable, and even though I was discharged from the facility, I moved into the sober living place close by. I would go back to the facility every day. They would let me come back on campus, and I would stay there all day and just roam around picking up cigarette butts or anything I could to stay in my safe place, around my safe people.

I needed them to see my eyes and hear my voice every day for a long time. A lot of that is the athlete in me, wanting to perform well, be accountable, and have some kind of structure in my life. I credit that for helping me in those rough days. When I first got out, I went to meetings. I got a sponsor. I did everything that I was supposed to, but I needed more. And that accountability of having somebody see me and hear me every day helped.

JJW: It sucks that you had to go through those difficult times.

RANDY: Those tough times helped me to do what I do now because I understand what these guys are going through. I understand the chronic pain, the injuries, and the transitional trauma. I understand not being who you once were, but I also understand what helps. What worked for me and how I got through it all might not work for somebody else, but at least it can be used as a launching pad for whatever next steps they need to take.

JJW: What advice would you give to a current athlete or injured athlete who may be heading down a path of addiction?

RANDY: The main thing is to stay accountable and connected, whether it’s meetings, family, or a good friend base. You have to stay connected, and through that, you stay accountable.

People ask me all the time what I miss most about football. You know, it’s not the game. I don’t miss being on that field and playing the game. I miss the locker room. I miss that camaraderie of being with like-minded people who have been through what I’ve been through. That’s what recovery is giving me: that locker room feeling.

JJW: That’s another issue for the injured athlete. While they are rehabbing, they are not around the team, not going to battle on the field. Their identity is practically ripped away from them, and it can be devastating.

RANDY: Yeah, it’s huge, and people don’t realize how huge that is. I can still remember after my injury in 92, I would still go in and get treatment every day. I would see the guys and talk to them, but all of a sudden, they would disappear because they were out there practicing. And here I was by myself in the training room, and you felt like a real outsider.

JJW: What mental health or addiction services do NFL teams currently provide, or do players usually look for resources outside the organization, especially with confidentiality being a priority?

RANDY: About four years ago, the NFL made it mandatory that there be a licensed clinician at every clubhouse for mental health and addiction. But nobody wants to be seen knocking on his door. The guy eats lunch by himself every day because nobody wants to sit with him, and I understand that. It made good headlines and made the NFL look good like they were trying to do something, but it’s certainly not a solution. However, one thing athletes will do is turn to another athlete for help.

JJW: You wrote a book about your experience in the NFL. Can you tell me a little bit about the book?

RANDY: It’s called “Off Center: A Memoir of Addiction, Recovery, and Redemption in Professional Football.” I wrote the book with my wife. The objective was to give everybody in my family a platform to share how they felt about everything, what was going on with them, and how they handled it back then. It was really just kind of a family project for us all to heal.

We had no idea that it would be as successful as it was. My wife and I are really proud of the book. And like I said, she’s the hero of my story. She hung in there, and it wasn’t easy. She will tell you she wanted to leave me, but God wouldn’t let her.

The book has a lot of great stories. It’s funny. It’s sad. A lot is going on in there. I had a lot of support writing it. Coach Mike Ditka wrote the Foreward. My college coach, Grant Taft, and former Detroit Lions quarterback and friend contributed. I’m just really proud of it. The book really turned out good, and it served its purpose. Our family came a long way during the process of writing it.

JJW: Are you still connected with the Buccaneers?

RANDY: Well, just as an alumnus. I’m still connected with a lot of my former teammates. A lot of them live in the Tampa area. I still attend the Super Bowl every year and talk about Athletes in Recovery. I do about 50-70 interviews over the course of three days on Radio Row at the Super Bowl. I see a lot of guys out there. So yeah, we’re a brotherhood. It’s that band of brother’s mentality that never dies.

JJW: What can I do to help support your cause?

RANDY: Well, getting the word out, whether it’s about me or about anything that’s related to addiction. There’s just so much stigma out there that surrounds this disease and not only addiction but mental health issues as well. I do think it’s getting easier now than it ever has been. It seems like there are more celebrities and visible people talking about mental health; they’re sharing what they’re going through.

JJW: Can you tell me about your organization “Athletes in Recovery”?

RANDY: “Athletes in Recovery” is my nonprofit. When I went into treatment, there was nothing out there for former NFL players. That’s how it started. The whole purpose was for athletes to support and help other athletes. It serves as a bridge between those struggling and the most appropriate resources. Many players didn’t have addiction issues, but they had some serious mental health issues. So, some resources are more appropriate than others. We wanted to be that bridge, support these players, and let them know that there are others out there just like them. That helps a lot. I’m a big advocate for professional therapy.

JJW: Thank you, Randy, for sharing your story and message. How can people contact you?

RANDY: The website is www.proathletesinrecovery.org.  Check it out and see what we’re all about. Read the book “Off Center.” But the main thing is let’s all just keep recovering out loud and keep the word out there that there is hope and there is help.

If you need assistance or support during or after your athletic career, feel free to email me at joe@player-support.com

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