Todd Marinovich: The Superstar Quarterback Who Lost Himself In Drugs & Found Himself In Love

My experience with addiction, I was on a different frequency. I couldn't stand me or what I did. I wanted so out. Oh, it was just it felt so fake. It's my duty, what I've lived through to share my experience. And, you know, I hope I can connect with one, you know, because I do know what it's like. If you happen to be in my general age range, then there's a chance that, like me, you grew up following the life trajectory of today's guest. One of my generation's most promising professional athletes who befell a fall from grace of such astonishing proportions, his life became synonymous with a cautionary tale about perfectionism and performance, poor parenting, and generational trauma. From his first breath, Todd Marinovich was raised to be the world's greatest quarterback. Beginning well before Pop Warner, throughout high school, and during his early years at USC, this dream, at least on a surface level, seemed to be unfolding beautifully. Courtesy of a dad, I think it's fair to say, was far too invested in it becoming reality. A former football player himself, Marv Marinovich, had taken USC to a national championship in 1962, but his career in the NFL with the Raiders was cut short due to overtraining. This, in turn, prompted Marv to develop this obsession with understanding training techniques, this investigation, this journey that he went on that led him to studying Soviet and Eastern Bloc conditioning philosophies, learnings that at the time he was well ahead of his time, he then put to work in his own home by raising his son as if in a lab, a lab designed to optimize every single facet of Todd's young life and a lab Marv oversaw pretty much with authoritarian rule. Ever eager to win over his dad's approval, Todd basically did everything he could to live up to his father's expectations and public expectations, exceeding them at times by doing all kinds of things, breaking high school records, taking USC to a Rose Bowl victory in his freshman year, which marked the first time that a USC freshman had started at quarterback since before World War II. But things were not all as they seemed. Behind closed doors, Todd is a kid who began self medicating with marijuana in high school and using alcohol to relieve himself of the burdensome expectations being placed upon him everywhere he looked. Nonetheless, the kid continued to win often in stunning fashion and eventually took his talents to his father's beloved Raiders as a first round NFL draft pick, but he was hanging on by a thread by that time, and his life would soon fall completely apart. And I'm gonna let Todd share the rest, but suffice it to say that addiction took hold of Todd to such a depraved extent. He would end up in the darkest and most desperate of places, gambling with his life for a needle to the neck without a care …