fell just short again in Iowa City. Dan was there to watch the matches and saw me make a great run through the Greco-Roman bracket, even beating the number-one “Dream Team” recruit from Kansas in the semifinals. In the national finals, however, I butted heads with my opponent from Illinois and split my head open above my eye. It got taped up enough for me to finish the match, but I lost, collecting another national runner-up award before heading to the hospital to get stitched up. The doctor advised me to withdraw from the Freestyle event that evening. But instead of returning to the arena to bow out, Dan took me to a bar downtown.
The beer helped to relieve some of the pain—as did all the old guys around us telling their wrestling stories, especially the one about an Iowa wrestler who lost a bet in this bar and had to strip naked and swim up the river outside. Dan and I were laughing. Offhand, I started joking that I never officially withdrew from the Freestyle tournament. They were going to be calling my name soon for the first round. I joked I should go back and do that match drunk just for fun.
If you do that, Boy Wonder, that would be wild.
I did it. Because that’s what wrestlers do. That’s what I do. Wrestling is what soothes me. It is what I run to, not away from.
Dan yelled out to everybody in the bar that I was on deck up at the arena and how I was gonna go kick some ass. Then we took my bruised, stitched up, and boozed-up body back to the arena. I changed back into my black singlet and put on my black wrestling shoes just in time to hear my name called. I’d wrestled drunk before—even at a tournament a few weeks after State, and it hadn’t affected me at all. But I had never wrestled with a large swollen gash stitched above my eye. Still, I ended up dominating my opponent from Ohio, getting big throws but cracking heads and opening the gash again. I shook hands, felt my arm raised, and then officially withdrew to avoid risking any permanent damage.
Coach Lorenzo found me and shook my hand, talking about how good I looked and seemingly having no idea I had been drinking before the match. The coach of Team Virginia, however, knew I was smoking—at least after the match. I was the only wrestler to place from Virginia that year, and when the coach looked to congratulate me, he caught me doing a bong hit behind a dumpster. He just laughed. He knew me well, having been my elite boys’ club coach and now the coach at George Mason University, which had offered me a full ride to stay in state. He shook his head. You’ll never do anything in college.
I told myself to remember that when I proved him wrong. I wasn’t going to let him spoil my high, and I was high on everything that summer. I decided to get even higher by trying something new: cocaine. Or at least that’s how I rationalized it. I didn’t think of myself as an alcoholic or a drug addict. People like that couldn’t do what I did on the mat. People like that did not win scholarships to Penn State.
No one could stop me. Except me.
I was with my girlfriend, the cover model, who made me a fondue dinner. She lived in an apartment with her mother, who was never home. She had gotten a little coke from her uncle—enough to make me wonder what it would be like to do more. This taste was a tease. It was unlike anything I had ever felt while drinking or smoking. It gave me a feeling of strength that I had only found wrestling up to that point. I was always “foxy” (thanks, yearbook committee), but cocaine pulled me out of my shell and made me feel like more than just an athlete with a pretty face.
I lost my inhibitions. I was talkative. I had broken away from everything that had defined me in the past. And I craved more. But the lure of wrestling for Penn State kept the demon powder at bay for another year. Four years later, it began to take over.
LOOKING DOWN ON MYSELF
What the hell had I done?
I was looking at the beautiful bird’s-eye view picture of my final home match at Penn State as a senior, covered in the local paper.
What the hell had I done?
For the first time in my wrestling life, I had done cocaine before a match.
That’s what the hell I did.
I had been doing coke for years, and had even done it before training sometimes, but until my last match, I’d always kept myself cocaine-free on the mat—kept my healthy addiction to wrestling separate from my drug addiction to cocaine. It was my church and state. The wrestling mat was my temple, where I felt the power I had since second grade. Where I didn’t need drugs to get high. Now I’d broken the wall between my worlds. Ducked behind the bleachers just before they announced my name and done it.
Why?
It had nothing to do with my confidence. In fact, my confidence was peaking. I was the defending national bronze medalist, an NCAA All-American, and the first wrestler in Penn State history to win over one hundred matches. I wasn’t nervous at the pre-match ceremony honoring my career. I never shied away from the spotlight on the mat. And it wasn’t my opponent. He was a three-time New Jersey state champion, but I wasn’t going to let him beat me.
It wasn’t my lack of spiritual strength. I didn’t pray before my battles, but I had learned to quiet my mind before matches, thanks to a sports psychologist who worked with us Penn State wrestlers on relaxation and visualization techniques. I pictured myself winning the fight in every position. Overrode worst-case scenarios with positive imagery. Replayed painful losses so I’d never make the same mistake twice. Made myself aware of any limitations I had: injuries, aches, pains. I heightened all of them in my mind before a match—my way of telling my body to save every ounce of power and aggression for after the whistle was blown.
It wasn’t my pre-match anxiety. That was typical. I loved the stress, which helped fuel my exhilaration once the match started. Unlike the anxiety I felt as a teenager worrying about the future, I had always controlled my pre-match anxiety and used it to empower myself. I took the seeds of self-doubt and sowed them so I never got overconfident, no matter how high my opponent was ranked before we entered the ring. My anxiety kept me grounded.
That was the exact opposite of what cocaine filled me with: fear. Fear I had never felt before. Fear, not of losing, but of having no control in the one place I had felt I controlled my destiny since I was seven years old.
What the hell had I done?
I kept saying that to myself as I paced behind the bleachers like a trapped animal. There was no way out of this. I was going to be found out. The fear overwhelmed me. My heart felt like it was going to explode. I was going to be wheeled out of here on a stretcher to end my career.
What the hell had I done?
I had no explanation. There was no explanation, except that I was an addict, which I refused to admit. I had refused to let this bring me down in my battle arena. That would make me weak. That would make me vulnerable. That would make me a loser. I had refused to feel that way on the mat since I had lost and fought back tears in the third grade. Until now.
I heard my name called. I walked out to an extended standing ovation, the drugs coursing through my veins. I was sick inside but had to perform. The cheers turned into the Nittany Lion chant: We are Penn State.
Yes, “we.” There were two people in front of the crowd right then: John the wrestler and John the addict. I had no idea which one would survive. Wrestling had been my anchor, and now my addiction was pulling it up in front of thousands of cheering fans, all celebrating me being the winningest wrestler in Penn State’s storied history.
ALL-AMERICAN ADDICT
Before that night of my last home match, I had survived everything college, cocaine, and wrestling had thrown at me. In fact, I didn’t even come in contact with cocaine my first year at Penn State. Never sought it out, despite the craving I had the summer before college started. Because I wanted something more: to be the best wrestler at Penn State.
I survived temptation when the roommate I requested, an All-American transfer from another school whom I’d met on a recruiting trip, turned out to be much crazier than I thought. He would jump me from out of the blue, lock me in a hold, and I’d