My life on the line : how the NFL damn near killed me, and ended up saving my life / Ryan O'Callaghan with Cyd Zeigler.
Publisher:
Edge of Sports,
Copyright Date:
2019
Description:
231 pages ; 23 cm
Contents:
Introduction: Crypt keeper -- Different -- The beard -- Award-winning performance -- The waiting game -- Welcome to the NFL -- The losers' ring -- The ghost of injuries past -- Total sht show -- My coaches and me -- My final off-season -- Completely addicted -- Dear mom. Dear dad -- Someone has been watching -- Getting caught -- On my deathbed -- The longest drive -- The rainbow tour -- A new low -- Coming out, interrupted -- The plunge.
Summary:
Ryan O'Callaghan's plan was always to play football and then, when his career was over, kill himself. Growing up in a politically conservative corner of California, the not-so-subtle messages he heard as a young man from his family and from TV and film routinely equated being gay with disease and death. Letting people in on the darkest secret he kept buried inside was not an option: better death with a secret than life as a gay man. As a kid, Ryan never envisioned just how far his football career would take him. He was recruited by the University of California, Berkeley, where he spent five seasons, playing alongside his friend Aaron Rodgers. Then it was on to the NFL for stints with the almost-undefeated New England Patriots and the often-defeated Kansas City Chiefs. Bubbling under the surface of Ryan's entire NFL career was a collision course between his secret sexuality and his hidden drug use. When the league caught him smoking pot, he turned to NFL-sanctioned prescription painkillers that quickly sent his life into a tailspin. As injuries mounted and his daily intake of opioids reached a near-lethal level, he wrote his suicide note to his parents and plotted his death. Yet someone had been watching. A member of the Chiefs organization stepped in, recognizing the signs of drug addiction. Ryan reluctantly sought psychological help, and it was there that he revealed his lifelong secret for the very first time.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.