The Victims: Ricky Williams, Nate Newton, Isaiah Rider, probably a bunch of dipshit snowboarders
The Danger: Marijuana is cheap, plentiful, all-natural, has very few known side effects, is not chemically addictive, and even has some healing properties. That’s what makes it so dangerous. Pot’s inherent harmlessness is what draws so many athletes to it, and that can be very harmful. It’s understandable why so many jocks love the chronic. You train all day long, then spend all night busting your ass in front of a crowd of forty thousand people throwing ice at you. You can hardly be blamed for heading home, sparking up, and then just chilling the fuck out with some strongass ganja that makes everything look like it’s in Claymation. But beware! You may grow to enjoy chilling the fuck out so much that you decide you don’t really feel like doing much else. Ask Ricky Williams. That guy loves pot almost as much as I love reading Sally Forth every morning.
Pot also makes you fat. I can tell you my physique is the direct result of numerous evenings smoking up and then eating Coffee-mate straight out of the canister. Pot can also make you gay. No joke. One time, in college, I smoked up and thought, You know, under the right circumstances, I’d consider nailing a dude. That freaked me out for, like, a week.
Worst of all, smoking pot makes you, almost instantly, a staunch defender of pot. One toke, and you’ll soon find yourself calling the DEA “fascist pigs,” organizing progressive rock festivals with Tom Morello, and taking up the inevitably futile cause of legalizing pot in America. If there’s a bigger waste of time than smoking pot, it’s fighting for your right to smoke it. That’s the one side effect of weed no one talks about: it can make you the world’s laziest tightass.
Cocaine
The Victims: Steve Howe, Shawn Kemp, Len Bias, Dwight Gooden
The Danger: Cocaine can cause heart attacks, overdoses, brain damage, and, worst of all, sniffles. George Carlin once said that cocaine makes you feel like having more cocaine. But he never said why. Well, I’ll tell you why. If you happen to be someone who is insecure and unhappy, there’s no quicker way to speed right through life than snorting rails off a toilet seat every morning. You’ll be fifty years old in no time flat, and that much closer to the end.
Cocaine’s allure also lies in the fact that it’s a huge party drug. It makes women extremely libidinous. I mean, look at Lindsay Lohan. That girl’s had more men inside her than FedExField. Once a woman does cocaine, she loses all her inhibitions and becomes singularly obsessed with finding a cheap sexual thrill. That’s why I suggest not doing cocaine yourself, but rather keeping it on your person at all times to give away to the honeys.
Ecstasy
The Victims: None that I know of, but if you see another player extending his touchdown dance past the nine-hour, fifty-five-minute mark, he’s probably on it.
The Danger: Ecstasy can cause severe dehydration and accelerate your heart rate. But, more important, it will turn you into a real dipshit. One hit, and you’ll find yourself making weekend trips to Ibiza, listening to Sasha & John Digweed albums that were passé even before the turn of the century, sucking on glow sticks, and walking up to other men and saying, “Oooh! Can I touch your hair? I feel so incredible!” Guhhhhh. Leave ecstasy to the Eurotrash. Real Americans do drugs that come from Latin American rebel war zones partially funded by the U.S. government.
Besides, ecstasy is too easy to take. If you want to get high, it shouldn’t be as simple as taking a pill with a lightning bolt on it. You should have to bust your ass trying to smoke, shoot, or snort that shit. An earned high is way more rewarding.
Heroin
The Victims: None that I know of, but if you can shoot heroin and then go out and play quarterback an hour later, then you must be some kind of superhero or something.
The Danger: Are you kidding? Did you not see Trainspotting? You see babies crawling on ceilings, man. That’s fucked.
Meth
The Victims: Todd Marinovich
The Danger: Preferred drug of choice for thirteen-year-old Nebraskan white trash, meth is the rare drug that causes you to lose your teeth and develop open sores all over your body. The appeal of that is undeniable. And, for the many young people in Middle America who get hooked, it totally beats hanging out outside the Old Navy again. Still, I’d suggest avoiding it. Any of the above drugs gives you a way better high, and are far more fashionable.
Crack
The Victims: Lawrence Taylor, Darryl Strawberry, Dexter Manley
The Danger: See the following page.
HEAR IT FROM A CRACKHEAD!
Help! There are centipedes all over me!
by Darnell Taylor, Crackhead
Help me!
Help me!
My God, you have to help me! There are centipedes all over me!
Can’t you see them? How can you not see them? My God, they’re all over my body! I feel them burrowing into my skin! My lips are turning white! My fingertips are cracked! Ahhhhhh! Help me!