Photo: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre has been open aboutspending time in rehab— once.
But in a new interview with departingSports Illustratedwriter Peter King, the legendary Green Bay Packers Super Bowl winner reveals thathe actually went to rehab three times, including when it appeared he was at the pinnacle of his career.
“Oh, I remember that week,” Favre told King during a recent phone interview. “You thought, ‘Man, this guy’s high on life.’ You didn’t know there was a reason for it. It is really amazing, as I think back, how well I played that year. That was an MVP year for me. But that year, when I woke up in the morning, my first thought was, ‘I gotta get more pills.’ ”
Favre, 48, then got specific about just how serious his problem was at the time.
“I took 14 Vicodin, yes, one time. I was getting an hour or two of sleep many nights. Maybe 30 minutes of quality sleep. I was the MVP on a pain-pill buzz. The crazy thing was, I’m not a night owl. Without pills I’d fall asleep at 9:30. But with pills, I could get so much done, I just figured, ‘This is awesome.’ ”
It wasn’t actually awesome, of course, and caused his then-fiancée (and now-wife), Deanna, to be concerned enough to flush the pills down the toilet whenever she discovered them.
Favre, who retired from the NFL in 2010, went to rehab a few months later for his Vicodin addiction, spending 72 days in a Kansas City clinic. Although one rehab stint was public knowledge, it was not publicly known until now that he went to rehab two others times to battle prescription drug and alcohol abuse.
“I actually went to rehab three times,” he reveals. “A year or two before you saw me, I went to a place in Rayville, Louisiana, just outside Monroe. It was pills then too. Deanna and [agent] Bus [Cook] talked me into it. I didn’t think I had a problem, but they talked me into it.”
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He said that initial rehab stint worked “for a while,” but things took a negative turn when he began binge drinking.
“When I drank, I drank to excess. So when I went in the second time, to the place in Kansas, I remember vividly fighting them in there. They said drinking was the gateway drug for me, and they were right, absolutely right, but I wouldn’t admit it,” he said.
He returned for his final rehab stint in 1998, and was finally able to fully address his issues.
“This time it was strictly for drinking. I didn’t go back to the pills,” Favre told King. “I admitted my problem. I was in there 28 days, and it worked.”
“When I got out, the toughest thing was the first three months, because I had to change my thought process,” he also said. “When I played golf before, I realized the only reason I wanted to play was to drink. After a while, instead of thinking, ‘How many beers can we drink in 18 holes?’ I fell into a pattern of what could I do to get good at golf. I realized with each passing day I really didn’t like drinking.”
source: people.com
