The Fall and Rise of Erik Ainge? - ESPN New York
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What ever happened to Erik Ainge? He was a fifth-round pick of the
Jets in 2008, spent two years carrying a clipboard and, suddenly, he
was gone. He didn't report to training camp last July, with no
explanation from the team. He reportedly had entered drug rehab ...
and disappeared. He missed the entire season.
Well, I caught up with Ainge recently and, in a series of interviews,
he gave a candid account of what he calls is "personal war" -- drug
addiction and his fight to get his life back. He said his clean date
is July 17, meaning he has been clean and sober since then.
In several conversations with Ainge, I found him to be extremely open
and remorseful. He realizes he messed up, ruining a lot of
relationships and perhaps his football career, and I think he
genuinely wants to make things right and straighten out his life.
Here's an except from his first-person account:
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.