text: New York Jets QB Erik Ainge opens up about his years of drug abuse and his ongoing battle with addiction and mental illness
  In a piece that originally aired on Jan. 30, 2011, Outside the Lines reveals the results of a scientific study, that for the first time reveals the level of prescription painkiller use and misuse by retired NFL players. (8:28)
  WELLESLEY, Mass. -- New York Jets backup quarterback Erik Ainge started using drugs when he was 12. It began with a bong hit, and it escalated from marijuana to prescription meds, alcohol, cocaine and heroin. By his senior year at Tennessee, he was addicted to painkillers, downing them by the handful.
  Erik Ainge told his story to ESPN NewYork to help others like him. Matthew Muise for ESPNNewYork.com
  This is the story of a professional athlete who lost control. Ainge fell into a self-destructive lifestyle that included multiple overdoses, drunk driving, extended stays in rehab and relapses, leaving his football career in shambles.
  It wasn't supposed to be this way. Ainge, the nephew of former basketball star and current Celtics GM Danny Ainge, started for Tennessee and became a fifth-round pick of the Jets in 2008. He wanted to do right by the family name, synonymous with success and clean living, but his behavior can be best described by the large tattoo on his back:
  Ainge, 24, who also suffers from bipolar disorder, missed the entire 2010 season because he went on a two-week bender before training camp and landed in rehab, fearing for his life. That was almost nine months ago. He has remained clean since July 17, he said -- his longest stretch of sobriety since he was 11.
  Trying to help others by raising awareness of addiction and mental illness, Ainge recounted his painful journey in an interview with ESPNNewYork.com.
  I'm a drug addict. I was in denial for a long time, but that's who I am. My addiction is with the hardest of hard drugs -- heroin, cocaine and alcohol. During my days of using, I was a really bad drug addict. I would've made Charlie Sheen look like Miss Daisy.
  I always thought of myself as a good kid that liked to have fun. We use the term "rationalization" in therapy. I would rationalize my drug use, and make it seem a lot more normal than it was. But it wasn't, because I was using a lot of drugs at a young age.
  It got worse in high school and even worse in college. By the time I was a senior in college, I was an addict. I played my whole senior season with a broken finger on my throwing hand. It was really badly broken. Just taking the snap, throwing the ball, handing it off, getting tackled -- everything that goes along with playing quarterback -- it was very painful.
  Ainge said his addiction to painkillers went from bad to worse when he made the transition from Tennessee to the New York Jets. Jerome Davis/Icon SMI
  Throughout that process, I became hooked on pain killers. I got them from the team doctor. I went through the prescriptions pretty fast. After he had been giving them to me for quite a while, he said he couldn't give them to me anymore.
  I was hooked on them and I was playing football, and there was no way I was going to cancel my senior year by going to rehab. I started getting them from people, buying them, getting them off the street. I wasn't the only player on the team that was doing it, so we knew people. It wasn't, like, super sketchy or anything. We knew people who had them, and we were Tennessee football players, so they pretty much just gave them to us.
  [When contacted by ESPNNewYork.com, a spokesman for the Tennessee football program declined to comment on Ainge's story of his time in Knoxville.]
  After a point, it got so bad that I was in the throes of addiction pretty quickly. That led to ... one drug to the next drug to the next drug. Then I moved up to New York with a bunch of money, and it was where everything started falling apart.
  My drug problem went from bad to worse. My rookie year, I failed a drug test for taking Adderall and got suspended four games. Adderall is like Ritalin, an amphetamine. I started taking Adderall back in high school, just to stay awake -- a lot of kids take it.
  But most of my rookie year, it was painkillers -- and lots of them. I was taking 25 Percocets at a time. Five hours later, I'd do it again. Another eight hours, and I'd do it again. A drug dealer, a guy I knew, had them. There were other social, party drugs I would do, but I was addicted to painkillers.
  I had a really bad stress fracture in my foot, but I think the reason it got so bad was because I was using so many drugs. I had no idea what was going on with my foot; I was completely out of it.
  I was under the influence pretty much every day, every practice. I mean, I was a drug addict, so it's not like I stopped using drugs for any reason. Did the Jets know? I don't know. That's all they knew me as. I was a drug addict from the first day I stepped foot on the Hofstra campus [site of the team's training base until 2009].
  A few of my teammates knew, but it wasn't their business to tell anybody. They left it up to me. [Punter] Steve Weatherford helped me the most. He's my best friend on the team, and he encouraged me to get help when my drinking got out of control. He's a guy I partied with, but he was always under control and I always got out of control. He tried to comfort me, saying things like, "Let's do some sober, fun things."
  I disappeared in the spring of '09. I was at the McLean detox center [in Belmont, Mass.], in rehab for more than a month. By that point, my drug problem had gotten so bad that I think pretty much everybody knew something was going on. I told the Jets' higher-ups where I was going.
  If I hadn't gone to get that help, I really think my job would've been in jeopardy. That wasn't necessarily the reason I went to rehab, but I was pushing my luck with the Jets. I would miss appointments with Coach Cav [quarterbacks coach Matt Cavanaugh], who was taking his own free time to teach me. I missed workouts like I was a 10-year veteran, and that's not my style. I'm a hardworking person, but my drug problem had gotten so bad that my work started to suffer.
  I got out of rehab and I lasted three or four months, but I started drinking, socially. About four months after I started drinking, I was a hard-core alcoholic. I thought I was a drug addict and didn't have an alcohol problem. I didn't listen to what the people were telling me in my Narcotics Anonymous meetings. They said alcohol is a drug, and I just didn't listen to them.
  Throughout my drinking days, I made some big mistakes. I was driving under the influence almost every night, so I moved into a place I couldn't afford just because it was closer to the bars [in Morristown, N.J.] -- and it was a nice place to bring women.
  I don't feel lucky that I never hurt myself; that was never a big concern. The big concern was that I'd get in an accident and hurt somebody else. If I hurt somebody driving under the influence, I don't think I would've been able to live with myself.
  Erik credits his uncle, Danny Ainge (left), as a spiritual influence and said he still wears the rubber bands on his wrist that Ainge and his Suns teammate Dan Majerle (right) would give him as a kid. AP Photo/Fred Jewell
  Did I ever think about killing myself? Let's put it this way: I've overdosed several times and had to be taken to the hospital. I don't know if you'd call that suicidal or not, but any time you overdose on drugs, you have to step back and think about why that's happening. The last time it happened was before I went to rehab the first time [in 2009]. It was heroin.
  At that point, I was using a lot of heroin. You talk about an expensive habit. I remember I used to go to the ATM and take out hundreds of dollars at a time. Fortunately, I never had to steal -- that's very common for addicts -- but I lied to people and destroyed relationships.
  I made a lot of poor life decisions. I got a roommate, a friend from back home in Oregon -- big mistake. He moved in with me [in New Jersey], and he was a really bad influence. Between the two of us, we were sleeping with a lot of women from the clubs and bars, and it was a recipe for disaster.
  I was getting drug-tested three or four times a week [by the NFL], but I continued to drink daily through the spring of 2010 and into the summer. That's when I relapsed with hard drugs. In July, I went on a two-week bender.
  I went to Tennessee to visit friends, and I had some trouble with the law. It never got reported because the cops were Tennessee fans, and they saw how bad a shape I was in. It was so bad that I don't even want to talk about it. I was cuffed, but instead of busting me, the cops called somebody in town that knew me.
  I went to two different rehab centers in the Boston area, and a halfway house -- a total of almost four months as an inpatient. I was able to remain clean the whole time. The first few weeks were kind of like nails on a chalkboard for me, but I stuck it out.
  For the first time, I was prescribed bipolar medication, which seems to be working. I have what's called rapid cycling bipolar disorder, so I'm up and down and all over the place even when I'm on my medication. That's a daily battle in itself. That was diagnosed by doctors in '09. I've had it for a long time, but I never told anybody about it.
  I've had problems since high school, being manic and being very depressed. I'd get manic a lot and go get tattoos. Suffice it to say that I have a lot of tattoos -- big ones, in fact. The most recent one I got says "Crazy White Boy" in huge letters across my back. I wasn't under the influence, but I don't even remember getting the tattoo.
  It gets easier over time. The first three months were harder than the next three months. I'm doing better now, but it's still very tough. When you get in bad moods or when a friend says something that hurts your feelings, my initial reaction has always been to use more drugs and numb the pain and block out what's really going on in my life.
  I don't have my No. 1 coping mechanism anymore. I'm doing all this sober and I'm dealing with it like a normal person, and I'm just not used to that. It's been tough. I created a lot of problems for myself throughout my drinking and using days. I'm suffering the consequences now, and I have to do all that sober.
  I learned how to be more spiritual than I was before. When you're laying there and you're sick and you're throwing up and you're all alone, it's easier to reach out to God than it was before. That has helped me out through the recovery process.
  A normal day for me consists of therapy with my psychiatrist and/or NA or AA meetings. Five nights a week, I go to meetings. I had four recovery groups, but I can't afford them anymore because of the NFL lockout.
  The lockout has caused a lot of problems for me. My substance-abuse insurance through the NFL and CIGNA got canceled as a result of the lockout. If I were a normal player -- let's say I had a broken leg and I was in the hospital -- they'd have forms they would've sent me to continue receiving insurance through the NFL. Since I'm a drug addict in the drug program, my insurance just got canceled, and I didn't like that.
  My family has been great. When I went back to rehab, some of them were like, "Here we go again." But they never gave up on me. My uncle Danny took me in from the halfway house to live with his family until I decide on what to do from here, which has been huge. He's someone I look up to. When I was a kid, he and Dan Majerle [former Phoenix Suns teammates] used to wear rubber bands on their wrist. They used to give them to me when they couldn't wear them anymore.
  At 24, I still wear those rubber bands on my wrist. My uncle has been a pretty big influence on me, especially from a spiritual standpoint. He's the bishop at the Mormon Church in Wellesley, Mass. I see what kind of man he is, and that's what I want to be someday. Danny Ainge will always be a positive name, but I can make Erik Ainge a positive name again if I make the right decisions from here on out.
  As far as my future in football, it remains uncertain. After eight months, I'm just trying to stay clean and be a better person. It's not like I'm fine and I'm cured and I'm ready to go, gung-ho, back at it. I want this to be the last time that I ever have to try to get clean, and I'm going slowly.
  I still have a lot of work to do, but I am proud of being eight months sober. I've never been sober or clean for this long since I was 11. The best part is being able to help other people. That makes it easier for me to stay clean, knowing I can help other people. I've been going to some high schools in the Boston area, telling my story and relaying my message. If I can help one kid, it would be worth it.
  I'm showing people that love me that I am changing for the better through my actions, and I'm starting to make amends to those people I've wronged. The Jets will be one of those people because I wasn't trustworthy. I should've been there for them, and I wasn't. It's a long, hard process, asking for forgiveness, but I plan on doing it -- for them and for myself.
  The reason I decided to speak so openly about this is because I want to bring awareness to mental health and the disease of addiction. Kids and athletes need to know it's OK to ask for help and to talk to somebody about what's going on in their lives. I was afraid to talk before, but through my NA program and God, I'm not afraid to ask for help or talk openly anymore.
  Cricket and the Olympics might appear to be unlikely bedfellows, but it was one of the original sports listed in the provisional Olympic programme, Des Jeux Olympiques de 1896, published in 1895. Closely identified as being the archetypal play-hard-but-fair game, cricket fitted almost perfectly with Baron Pierre de Coubertin's Olympian ideal.
  At the 1896 Games in Athens it was intended that cricket would feature, but a lack of entries meant the event was quietly shelved. Four years later in Paris, four teams entered - England, France, Belgium and Holland - but in the event only one match was played, between England and France. Holland and Belgium had originally been touted as co-hosts, but when that idea faltered, their entries went the same way. It was symptomatic of the confusion surrounding the Games - the Olympics at that time were a far cry from the slick modern bonanza. Events took place between May and October at 16 different venues, and the word Olympics was rarely used. The 1900 Games were referred to as part of the Great Exposition or the World's Fair.
  The English side was not a nationally-selected XI, but a touring club team, Devon & Somerset Wanderers. The Wanderers were in Paris on a three-match jaunt, starting with the game against France and continuing with two one-day matches (both of which they won).
  The two-day "international" took place at the impressive Velodrome de Vincennes, a 20,000-seater banked cycling track, and started on Sunday, August 19, 1900. The crowd consisted of a dozen or so bemused gendarmes. Potential spectators had hardly been encouraged by an explanation in La Vie Au Grand Air, the official publication of the Games, which described cricket as "this sport without colour to the uninitiated".
  The English side had arrived in Paris the previous day, and after one night at the Hotel des Trois Princes, travelled to the stadium. It was agreed by the captains that game would be 12-a-side (communication between the two sides was not difficult as most of the French team were expat Englishmen). This caught the printers of the scorecards on the hop, and the extra name had to be added by hand.
  Scorecard from the 1900 Olympic cricket tournament. The captains agreed to a 12-a-side game, and so the extra players had to be added by hand © Cricinfo
  England batted first and scored a creditable 117, largely thanks to 23 from Beachcroft, who opened for Exeter, and the Old Blundellian Frederick Cumming, who top-scored with 38. France were then bowled out for 78. England scored 145 for 5 second time around, with fifties from Beachcroft and Alfred Bowerman, setting the hosts a target of 185. In the event, this proved way beyond them, and they were bowled out for 26, with Montagu Toller, who had played county cricket for Devon in 1897, taking 7 for 9. The English side were awarded silver medals, the French bronze ones - both XIIs also received miniature replicas of the 11-year-old Eiffel Tower.
  The English team's journey back to the hotel was eventful. The driver of one of the two coaches had become rather caught up in the day's events and had to be driven back inside his own carriage. The other, apparently in a similarly excitable state, crashed his coach, causing minor injuries to some of the passengers.
  And so ended the competition. Neither side seemed aware that they had taken part in the Olympics, and the match was only retrospectively formally recognised as being an Olympic contest in 1912, when the International Olympic Committee met to compile the definitive list of all events in the five modern Olympiads up to that point. By the time of the St Louis Games in 1904 cricket had been forgotten.
  The newspapers at home completely ignored the match, although a few local papers in Devon did carry reports,
  The Wanderers finished their tour but were left less than impressed with the French - described as "too excitable to enjoy the game," according to one contemporary journalist, who added that "no Frenchman could be persuaded to play more than once. A cricketer in France is a stranger in a strange land looked upon with mingled awe and contempt by the average Frenchman."
  England Twenty20 opener Alex Hales' fine form continued with the bat as he propelled Nottinghamshire back to the top of the Friends Life t20 North Group with a 41-run victory over Durham.