I looked up at him and had only one thing to say: Hey, I have some weed. You want to smoke? We ended up in a squash court, breaking up the bud and cleaning the seeds on the copy of the winner’s bracket they gave him. Amateur Wrestling News voted mine the best performance.
If they only knew just how true that was, in ways nobody could see yet.
◆◆◆
I returned to campus for the end of my junior year one of the top wrestlers in the country and a genuine campus celebrity. To the victor goes the spoils: I started dating the most popular girl on campus. My notoriety grew as I took down Penn State’s number-one recruit at the Eastern Freestyle tournament held at Rec Hall. He was a local hero who was not only the top-ranked high school wrestler in the nation at my weight class, but also the top recruit in the nation period. A kid who was a big fan of that recruit came over afterward to compliment me on the beating and say how he was glad some of the wind was taken out of his friend’s sails, because his head was getting too big.
When our recruit arrived on campus that fall, he did not challenge me at my weight class. Instead, he cut down and dropped a weight class, in which he also became an All-American. We even became good friends. Because that’s what wrestling does. It humbles you…just not enough for me when it came to cocaine, which now filled most of my non-match days. My girlfriend and I made quite the striking couple, and we met a guy that controlled all of the drug traffic in Happy Valley. He threw parties in his opulent homes and liked to be around beautiful women. He loaded me with cocaine so we’d grace him with our presence. I was happy to oblige.
But while I now had a source for cocaine, I was even more determined to make it to the top of the NCAA podium in my final college season. That summer, before my senior year, I often woke up in the middle of the night replaying the moment I got pinned in the semifinals. I was so close and knew I could get all the way to the top. I vowed to get stronger, and took a summer job with my sister’s boyfriend, who had a large DC-area landscaping company. I mowed steep hills at apartment complexes, tying a rope to the back of the mower and then lowering and pulling it up with my feet planted in a wrestling stance. As I shuffled along each hill, I imitated pulling a leg attack on my opponent—never relenting, or else I would slip under the mower blades and cut myself up.
I got stronger every day, pushing my physical limits in the humid DC heat. But I was also getting weaker. I was still working for the construction company for my bags of coke. Plus, it wasn’t just the cocaine that threatened my life that summer. One hot night, driving out of DC, I got arrested for drunk driving on the George Washington Parkway and thrown into lockup at Washington National Airport. I was released the next day and ended up with reduced charges after I faced the court and admitted I had five or six drinks. Apparently everyone who came before that judge lied about his or her drunken state, and he took the opportunity with me to lecture the court. This young man is the first ever to come in front of me and say anything other than he had one or two drinks. What do people take me for, a fool? I’m so sick and tired of hearing, “One or two, Your Honor.”
My candid response coupled with my otherwise clean driving record led to his leniency. But did my honesty with the judge make me honest with myself about how far gone I was? No. My addiction was pushing its way into everything I loved and pushing me further and further from the truth and honesty I had been raised to honor. I was living a lie, testing the limits of my God-given talents, and my body, and now my life.
Then, I pushed even farther. That summer, I injected cocaine for the first time in a sort of blood brother ritual with a friend. We knew it was dangerous, but that didn’t stop us. We agreed before inserting the needle that if one of us died and the other one lived, that person should take the body and put it up by the creek that separated our neighborhoods and not tell anybody. No one should get blamed.
We never discussed what would happen if we both died.
We lived, and I went back to Penn State my senior year with dreams of winning my first NCAA title and a big bag of cocaine in my duffel. No more needles, though—as if that was some kind of moral victory and meant things weren’t falling apart. Which they were. The first sign was that I returned to campus senior year without having lined up a place to live, like every other student had done. I ended up living out of my Honda Civic for the first weeks of the semester, crashing wherever I could, and using the team’s locker room at Rec Hall to shower.
I managed to get clean before the season, which started with high expectations, as I was ranked second in the country behind Dave Schultz. I had only wrestled with Schultz as a junior, but even then he was clearly one of the very best in the entire world. We finally met in a dual meet in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and prior to the match, I found myself nervous in an unfamiliar way. I had seen Dave perform and realized his potential to put me in situations I had never visualized. Dave was dangerous. Sure, I had broken someone’s neck, but Dave had the power to paralyze an opponent with his explosive technique and unique positioning. I thought about Susan. I wondered if that could be me, but then I fell back into my pre-match ritual of turning my anxiety into fuel.
Our battle began. I took the first shot on Dave with an explosive deep single leg, but Dave was able to get around my neck and tighten the head and arm lock like a boa constrictor, cutting off the blood supply to my brain. Let go of the leg or go unconscious was what his hold told me, but I came up with another option and, with my last moment of pre-suffocation consciousness, tried to drive us out of bounds. The ref, who had no idea I was being strangled, blew the whistle and stopped the action. Able to breathe again, I attacked with a different approach—a head in the gut double—that scored the first takedown on Schultz that season. But with Schultz in top position in the second period, I got stuck on my back in one of his patented spine-breaking leg rides. I submitted and turned to my back. Done.
I met Schultz one more time before the national tournament started, at the East-West All-Star event where I represented the East. He beat me again and opened a deep cut around my eye socket in the process. I got stitched up at the arena and upped my determination to beat him at nationals.
I returned to Penn State as a man on a mission. No one was going to beat my work ethic. I had never missed a practice, a match, or ever lost a challenge match since taking that varsity spot at the beginning of my Penn State career, and I wasn’t about to start now. I would lead by example and groom the next generation to take my place—but they would have to fight for the right. Every day, I walked into the wrestling room with the intent of not only breaking my opponents, but also protecting myself in the process. I figured the only way a challenger could take me out would be by injuring me during practice.
Which did happen. One of the underclassmen had thrust his hand toward my face as we battled, and his finger knifed deeply into my eye socket, cutting the white of my eye. I fell to the mat clutching my face and screaming obscenities. The trainer pulled my hands away and wrapped the eye, which was bleeding from the socket, and got me to the hospital. Coach met me at the hospital. With my eye patched up, the doc said I would be fine, but we were only concerned about one thing: could I wrestle? We faced Lehigh University the next day. Doc said I could, and I did. And I won.
There would be no excuses for losing in this part of my life—no lies, no blame. After letting my pre-match anxiety wash over me, I walked into every match fueled with confidence, regardless of who was on the other side—even Schultz. I had doubled down on wrestling again. My addiction could never break through here.
Until it did. The night of my last home match.
WINNER & LOSER
I stood in front of thousands of cheering fans, the opposing team, referees, my coaches, and my team, high on the cocaine I did beneath the bleachers where everyone was standing for me now.
Can they tell? Do they know I am unworthy of their praise right now?
I felt weak as I walked onto the mat. I was tentative, thinking my heart was exploding. As the match began, the crowd, given nothing to cheer about and sensing I was off, had grown silent, which only made me more aware of the sound of my racing heart. Well into the second period, I was still thinking I was going to collapse, EMTs would whisk me to the ER, doctors would order blood tests, and all would