Chad Furlong was born and raised in the heartland of Ohio, high school football country. He was a fullback with full ride offers to none other then Ohio State and many other Div 1 schools. He would rather stay in state even though his upbringing was horrible. Active Alcoholic, mentally and psychically abusive dad and a mom who stood by the carnage as well. Stockholm Syndrome combined with co-dependency is quite common these days. Chad was banged up by his senior year with 2 concussions and a knee that was already blown out. Some old school coaches think by beating on their players during practice and doing full contact Oklahoma drills at 6 am day after day that this makes them tougher and better players. He didn't tear it up his senior year mostly due to his injuries as well as his apprehension of getting another concussion. He also had to deal with an alleged rape charge. It was one of those don't stop situations where the girl didn't even remember herself because she was so drunk but had her friend convince her to press charges. Chad was willing to swear under oath that it was consensual but he still had to go through the wringer. He was also prescribed a myriad of prescription drugs over the years-Adderall and Vyvance. for his ADD or at least that is what they told him he had. The only Div 1 school that took a chance on him was UNLV, the other schools didn't want to deal with the headaches to go along with the bad press. Chad had a tremendous amount of potential however he suffered another concussion during training camp and exacerbated his bad knee and essentially lost his scholarship. His entire life was football and being a warrior but then his dreams came crashing down in an instant. Chad was a binge alcoholic to go along with his Adderall medication so this wasn't a pretty picture because he had a lot of emotional triggers due to his dysfunctional upbringing. He now had no way to afford school, his dad was a factory worker caught up with his own alcoholism demons. He didn't have many options but staying in school didn't seem like a viable one. He had his sights on an NFL career after college but if football didn't work out then what was the use of school? He decided to enlist in the USMC but was circumvented by a recruiter that was willing to take a shot at getting him into Ranger school. The recruiter wasn't too happy about the rape charge combined with his prescription Adderall use but ultimately green lighted it. Warriors were only supposed to use drugs after they get back from war. The recruiter said "do you want to be a Devil Dog but with better gear and cooler schools combined with an unlimited budget? A lot of high speed warrior training to go along with longer deployments to take out bad guys? " This sales pitch worked quite well so before long Chad was off to Ranger school after boot camp. AIT, Airborne school and one full deployment.The only problem was that he couldn't swim that well and was afraid of heights. He became an attrition casualty to go along with most of his warrior comrades. Nothing seemed to be working out for Chad, to add insult to injury he had to go back to a regular Army unit until he could give Ranger school another shot however they weren't so sure they wanted him back. He did well in the train up but when the actual training started he had mental and physical blocks. To make a long story short he was given a less then Honorable Discharge in between alcoholic binge outbursts of physical violence. Chad floated from one jail to the next in between stints of detox. His family took the position of tough love, if he wanted help he would reach out. His dad basically had a friend tell him that even though he never knew of anybody that tried AA that stayed sober one was supposed to reach out for help. Also this meant that if his kid had alcoholism then he would be forced to at least acknowledge his own so he wasn't too interested in doing this. Chads life became a nightmare. These state run facilities would diagnosis him with bi-polar with anti social tendencies to go along with alcoholism. One drunken night he was Backer Acted and sent to a new psychiatric facility subsidized by the state. This one had a medical director that was very interested in ECT or electric shock therapy to treat bi polar depression combined with violent tendencies in alcoholics. In fact this became the primary method of treating what are known as constitutionally incapable or incorrigible cases. With no emergency contact to intervene Chads brain was blown out, they must have charged his head with too many electrodes. He had no memory from that day forward and basically stayed a ward of the state. After his dad died of an alcohol induced brain hemorrhage a friend of Chads mom told her that she needed to do a professional intervention on her son to get him into the program. She didn't even know where her son was, it was years Chad was now 29 years old. It was too late Chad mind was shot, day late dollar short. Alcoholics have built in forgetters however I don't advise ECT or full contact drills in practice every day to make players tougher and game ready. I definitely don't advise waiting for an alcoholic to reach out for help either, lets just look at the Chad Furlong story as an example.
No comments:
Post a Comment