‘Drugs quieted my inner loathing’: Todd Marinovich on the NFL, addiction and the power of art | NFL

Marcus Allen knew this and tried to help him. Howie Long too. But many of Todd Marinovich’s teammates on the Los Angeles Raiders in the early 1990s didn’t know their young quarterback was using drugs.

Marinovich came to the Raiders from USC, where he guided the Trojans to a Rose Bowl victory as a freshman. By that time, he had accumulated two nicknames: “Robo Quarterback,” named for the legendarily demanding training regimen instilled by his father, former Raiders player and assistant coach Marv Marinovich, intended to foster excellence in athletes. The other nickname was much less flattering: “Marijuana-vich,” for his marijuana use, which became a taunt from opposing fans in high school. When Marinovich reached the NFL, he wasn’t just abusing marijuana.

“I couldn’t raise my head after another bout of ecstasy, cocaine and alcohol,” he writes of one inauspicious morning in his new memoir, Marinovich: Outside the Lines of Football, Art and Drug Addiction. “My body looked like the Tin Man.”

Who woke him up in time for practice that day? It was “a bug-eyed Marcus Allen impatiently examining his watch” and then “returning to his hot, idling Lamborghini.”

For a time, the rising star’s drug problem was a closely guarded secret. Until it wasn’t, when a third unsuccessful urine test the following season, in 1992, left Marinovich off the team.

“I had watched these guys my whole life – now I was their peer,” Marinovich says of his Raiders (and ex-Trojans) teammates Allen, Long, Ronnie Lott and Riki Ellison. “I didn’t want to disappoint them. However, I had things to do that I couldn’t share with them.”

Although he enjoyed a brief career renaissance in the Arena Football League as a member of a rookie team, his once seemingly charmed life spiraled into a new drug addiction and its consequences under the law: “I quenched my inner hatred with a range of drugs over the next three decades, including ecstasy, acid, cocaine, heroin, crack and methamphetamine in lethal doses to disconnect me from the misery within,” he writes. The memoir is co-written with author Lizzy Wright, who sees it as much more than a sports biography.

“It’s the kind of story that has so much to offer,” she says. “It’s so complex.” She cites Marinovich’s emotional awareness and lifelong passion for art – one of his paintings appears in the book.

Wright’s husband, Steve, is a former NFL player himself. In fact, he was an offensive lineman who protected Marinovich on the Raiders. Lizzy Wright helped her husband write his memoirs. It went so well that Steve Wright recommended her to Marinovich as a collaborator.

Now that the book is finished, Marinovich says, “It’s almost like talking about another life.”

In college, a dramatic USC victory over Washington State prompted a phone call from then-President Ronald Reagan. Marinovich’s Raiders years were marked by R-rated, drug-fueled nights in Los Angeles. His youth came to the fore when he started at center in a 1991 NFL playoff game – the first rookie to do so for the Silver and Black. During this period of his life, the quarterback was partying with celebrities such as Flea and Charlie Sheen.

“Thank God for Lizzy,” Marinovich said. “She did all the heavy lifting. She made it easy for me, [did] what a higher level teammate does for me: help you, assist you, bring out the best in you.

“Todd’s rise to fame is remarkable,” says Wright. “He was the best high school athlete coming out of the country. A Rose Bowl win as a freshman. The first sophomore in history to declare for the NFL draft. He had to have his own group because he was too young. He’s the Doogie Howser of football.”

Yet, she adds, there was “so much pressure” and “needing medication to survive that, it becomes a vicious cycle. How do you get out of it? How do you untangle it? It’s practically impossible.”

Long after Marinovich returned to the Arena Football League, he got another chance at football in 2017 at the age of 48 – first as a quarterbacks coach, then as a signal caller to throw seven touchdowns in a semi-pro game. He let the match be billed as his first drug-free match in 33 years. In fact, he writes, he was still using: “By the time the drugs hit my system I was fucked, I lost another round in the dogfight to stay clean.” »

Throughout the book, Marinovich does not spare details. You’ll learn all about how he falsified NFL drug test results using other players’ urine samples – and about the time he wore blackface while appearing as Jimi Hendrix on Halloween, for which he now expresses regret.

That said, there are also sweet moments, including Marinovich’s love of art, which he believes helped save him. His paintings now adorn the Raiders art gallery – yes, the Raiders have an art gallery – in their new Las Vegas home.

Marinovich laments wasting the patience of longtime Raiders owner Al Davis, who died in 2011. Seeking to atone, Marinovich sought out Davis’ son, current Raiders owner Mark Davis, at a Palm Springs restaurant. Mark Davis warmly welcomed Marinovich into the Silver and Black alumni family and displayed his celebrity portraits at Allegiant Stadium. The reader is treated to an image, that of Johnny Cash smoking a cigarette. Marinovich also created portraits of Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra – and his former teammate Allen.

Wright views art as one of “the outlets where you can almost be away from yourself and at peace. There’s a freedom that happens with art. I think that’s something interesting to talk about.”

Art helped to reestablish another, more personal relationship. During Marv Marinovich’s final years, as he battled Alzheimer’s disease, the once-famous and competitive father and his son became friends through artistic collaborations. Marinovich says his father didn’t really recognize him once illness took hold, but he was aware they had a special partnership.

“A lot of people don’t know that Marv was an extremely creative painter and sculptor,” Marinovich says. “We were able to create together, two artists doing what we did. There wasn’t a lot of talking, just a rhythm that was better, and he loved doing that with me…Who would have thought that art would really take us to another level?”

Other parts of the narrative were more difficult for Marinovich to discuss with Wright. This includes his multiple arrests over the years.

“The last thing I want to do to start the day is talk about the arrests,” Marinovich says. “It’s embarrassing. I know it wasn’t easy for my family.”

In 2000, Marinovich was arrested for sexual assault – a prosecutor later decided not to charge him, and Marinovich denies the allegation in his book. Years later, in 2016, he was arrested for drug possession while naked. Marinovich writes that the reason he was naked was because he was skinny dipping in what he thought was his in-laws’ pool. This was not the case.

“From my perspective,” Wright says, “in writing about the arrests, my perspective is just to be honest about everything. Some books try to downplay the bad, focus on the positive” — an approach she calls “neither real nor honest.”

Marinovich says he’s in a good place now. Based in Hawaii, he watches his own children grow up, while creating the art that has been his anchor and speaking out about the dangers of drugs in hopes of helping the next generation.

“I try to find a balance,” he says. “I have to practice every day – practice doing the right thing, being honest, helping someone else.”