The Nightmare Of Steroids

I was also going through a personality change. I was becoming a hard-ass, one of the meanest guys on the team. It was a dramatic change, and the coaches loved it. So did I, in a way, because being passive hadn't done anything for me. But I also knew my behavior was becoming erratic, and that frightened me. Images of violence often filled my mind. I'd drive along and find myself thinking about sick things like crushing people to death, tearing off their limbs. I'd be grinding my teeth and gripping the wheel so hard that my arms would hurt.

Because of the tension at my house, I started spending a lot of time at my supplier's place in the summer of '85. Hyder and Myers came up from school, and we sat around injecting ourselves with all kinds of steroids, whatever was there.

One night we all injected each other, then went out drinking and got crazy. George had a pistol and we picked up a friend who had a shotgun, and I drove everybody out into the country in George's pickup. As we went past signs, those guys would blast away at them. They blew out the spotlight and security camera in front of an estate, and then shot the windows out of a bus parked in front of a church. One of the bullets went through the bus and killed a cow in the nearby pasture, and the cow slumped over the fence and rolled into the road. Blood was dripping from its head. I freaked, but the other guys were laughing. One of them wanted to shoot the cow again. Right then a cop car started chasing us, but we drove down some paths in the woods and lost the cop.

This hadn't been my way, but it had become my way. Steroids ruled my life.

That fall, my second varsity season, I played pretty well, but we finished with a 5-6 record. The high point for me came when we played Michigan, a team I'd dreamed about playing against since I was a little kid. Ohio State-Michigan, that was what college football was all about. And if I played for South Carolina against Michigan—well, that was pretty damn close.

To get really fired up, I started taking a steroid called Halotestin a couple of weeks before the game. Its only effect, as far as I could tell, was that it enhanced aggression. It should have been called Holocaust, judging by what it did to me. My aggressiveness was out of control. I was cheapshotting people in practice, clotheslining them, ripping scout team quarterbacks' helmets off in noncontact drills. The coaches liked my enthusiasm, but they had to sit me down a few times for being a little too wild. I played great against Michigan, even though we got our butts kicked. Against Georgia the next week, we lost again, 13-6, but I was named defensive player of the game.

I started getting sick toward the end of the season, though. During the game against East Carolina in late October, I had bad chest pains, numbness in my arm and chills, and I had to come out in the second half. I thought I was dying. They cut off my jersey and took me to the hospital in an ambulance. The doctor said my cholesterol level and blood pressure were off the charts, probably because of the steroids. The pain was from angina, a pre-heart attack condition. Still, the coaches didn't seem to notice. My dad told Washburn he wanted me tested weekly for steroid use, but nothing came of it. And me—all I could think of was football. I was obsessed. We players even had a motto: "Bury me massive, or don't bury me at all."

I stopped taking steroids for a while because I'd been so sick, and after the season I had knee surgery. Then, over spring break, I went down to Fort Lauderdale. I was back on steroids and was very big and cocky, and after a few drinks one night, I got into a hassle with two cops in front of a bar. They told me to move, and I told them that if it wasn't for their guns and badges, I'd beat their asses. The next thing I knew, they'd clubbed me across the neck and legs, beat me up pretty good, and taken me to the station. When I went in front of the judge the next day, though, he just looked at me and said, "Trying to be a Fighting Gamecock, huh?" Then he let me go.

Not long after that I had a pain in my side, which I thought was from the beating. But when I went to a doctor I found out I had a swollen liver from the steroids. About this time Dr. Akers asked me if I was on steroids. I told him I was but asked him not to tell anybody. He turned right around and told Morrison, who called me in to find out who else was taking them. I told him I wouldn't talk about anybody else. Morrison looked at me and said, "Don't do it anymore." That was it. He's very quiet, not real communicative. He played for the New York Giants for 14 years, and he's very old school and tough: You hurt? Put a little dirt on it. So the whole thing just sort of went away.

Just the same, I vowed to turn over a new leaf. I was going to watch what I ate and if I used drugs at all, it would be very little. I was getting sick a lot, and even though I'd been doing O.K. academically, I was having a hard time concentrating on school. I'd either be up all night or I'd be listless and sleep a lot. Also, the way my sex drive came and went was bizarre. And when I got drunk—oh brother! One night in my dorm room, I pulled a shotgun on the pizza delivery boy, threw him down and put the gun in his face. It was loaded and I could have blown the kid all over the floor, but I was just fooling around. It was the kind of thing I thought was funny.