Pain and pain management in NFL spawn a culture of prescription drug use and abuse
Part 2
By Sally Jenkins and Rick Maese, WashPost, Saturday, April 13, 7:53 PM
When Fred Smoot, a former Washington Redskins defensive back, fractured his sternum and had to spend four months sleeping in a recliner because he couldn’t lie flat, he said his team doctors gave him a choice: Miss the rest of the season or “figure out a way to play.” Worried about his livelihood, he made it on the football field each Sunday thanks to a syringe full of a drug called Toradol.
“Painkillers are like popping aspirin,” Smoot said. “They get to that point.”
When the throbbing in his surgically repaired right knee made it hard to walk, much less play, Chester Pitts, a former offensive lineman for the Houston Texans, found a way to prolong his career one more year: a cocktail of Toradol injections on Sundays, with anti-inflammatories and narcotic painkillers the other days of the week.
“If I was really hurting, I would take a mix,” he said. “I could do Tylenol with the Indocin or the Vicodin. Couldn’t do Vicodin with certain things. You could take one NSAID and one acetaminophen, whatever they said.”
When former Redskin Mark Schlereth, a veteran of 12 seasons and 29 surgeries, underwent a kidney-stone operation on a Sunday night and suited up for a game less than 24 hours later, he drew the strength to do so from a needle and pill bottle.
(More here.)
By Sally Jenkins and Rick Maese, WashPost, Saturday, April 13, 7:53 PM
When Fred Smoot, a former Washington Redskins defensive back, fractured his sternum and had to spend four months sleeping in a recliner because he couldn’t lie flat, he said his team doctors gave him a choice: Miss the rest of the season or “figure out a way to play.” Worried about his livelihood, he made it on the football field each Sunday thanks to a syringe full of a drug called Toradol.
“Painkillers are like popping aspirin,” Smoot said. “They get to that point.”
When the throbbing in his surgically repaired right knee made it hard to walk, much less play, Chester Pitts, a former offensive lineman for the Houston Texans, found a way to prolong his career one more year: a cocktail of Toradol injections on Sundays, with anti-inflammatories and narcotic painkillers the other days of the week.
“If I was really hurting, I would take a mix,” he said. “I could do Tylenol with the Indocin or the Vicodin. Couldn’t do Vicodin with certain things. You could take one NSAID and one acetaminophen, whatever they said.”
When former Redskin Mark Schlereth, a veteran of 12 seasons and 29 surgeries, underwent a kidney-stone operation on a Sunday night and suited up for a game less than 24 hours later, he drew the strength to do so from a needle and pill bottle.
(More here.)
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