#Darren Waller overcame drug addiction, became Raiders’ breakout star

The Oxycontin use began when he was 15, the drinking a year later, and because he was so respectful and reserved and such a good student, and a hard-hitting safety and towering wide receiver for the football team at North Cobb High School in Kennesaw, Ga., he was able to hide the pain in his heart.

Until years later, when addiction does what addiction does … rules a life, and in too many tragic instances, ruins a life.

And on the football field, you may hear the cheers that wash over you, but they are drowned out by the boos you direct at yourself, because only you know who you are and what you have become.

“I remember now, like looking back, I didn’t even really like brushing my teeth in the mirror, or just like looking in the mirror,” Darren Waller told Serby Says. “I just didn’t respect who I was because I knew how much I was performing to just impress other people. I was shutting off parts of myself that were authentically me and putting on fronts, putting on a mask just to impress people, just to fit in. And I knew deep down the spirit inside me, it didn’t fit right. So when I would look in the mirror, it was just like I saw a phony.”

Darren Waller is a 6-foot-6, 255-pound matchup nightmare who plays tight end for the Las Vegas Raiders and put on a show Monday night.

But it is his victory over himself that means more to him than any of the wondrous things he can do with his God-given physical gifts as a 28-year-old football unicorn.

“Football is just an added bonus, honestly,” Waller said. “I’m just more proud of me. I gotta take me everywhere I go. Football’s gonna end some day. I still gotta make sure I got me intact.”

It was such a long road back. If drugs could knock a Lawrence Taylor to his knees, they can knock a Darren Waller to his — and they did, and with a vengeance.

“I started to rely on it for everything, and that’s how it became an addiction — like I had to rely on it to have fun, I had to rely on it to have some peace, I had to rely on it to celebrate, I had to rely on it when I was down about something, when I was lonely,” Waller said. “So it was just like everything in my life revolved around it.”

Waller was suspended for three games at Georgia Tech for what the school called a violation of team rules, but the Ravens drafted him in the sixth round in 2015. It wasn’t long before he was suspended for the first four games of the 2016 season for violating the NFL substance abuse policy. Then he was suspended for one year without pay for again violating the league’s substance abuse policy.

“I sabotaged that whole thing myself,” Waller said. “I willingly failed my tests to be put out of the league because in my mind I’d rather have them put me out of my misery, so I literally orchestrated that to happen ’cause that’s how much I wanted to get away and just be by myself.”

It was, naturally, heartbreaking for his parents.

“It was something I thought about every day,” Darren’s father, Dorian, said by phone. “It affected my everyday life. We kind of want to do something as parents, but it gets to a point where you’re almost handcuffed.”

Darren overdosed in his car in Maryland.

“I was asleep. The sun was out, it was like blue sky, and I woke up and it was black outside,” Waller said.

That was rock bottom.

“I was using new drugs that I’d never even used before at that time,” he said. “I thought I had control over things up until that point in my distorted mind.”

The new drugs?

“Cocaine was the main new one,” he said. “I started doing cocaine, and I was doing a lot of it. “

And a lot of the same-old, same-old.

“I was spending like almost $100 on pills a day towards the very end of my using,” Waller said.

He rallied enough to be clean for a month before heading to a rehab center in Camden, Maine.

“I guess it was just like the fact that it was like I shouldn’t even really be alive,” Waller said. “That was enough to rattle my cage. Then once I got to Maine, that was the first time I had taken a rehab program seriously.”

It was a life-changing 34 days.

“He came back a different person,” Dorian said.

“I learned the value of self-awareness,” Darren said. “I learned how to meditate. I learned just getting things off my chest, how good it felt not to swallow things in, and talked about how freeing it is to talk about things that you’re going through. It doesn’t make you a man to go through things by yourself, and to deny your problems. I learned how to just be myself and accept me for me, the good things and the bad things about me, and just start to like myself because I hated myself for it.”

He took a job stocking shelves at a Sprouts Farmers Market.

“I thought it was a humbling experience that I needed,” Waller said. “Pro athletes, most of their life, they have been told how good they are, and celebrated at every turn, and people think they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. It just taught me not to take myself so seriously. Things could go back to the way they were if I’m not on my P’s and Q’s.”

Waller began training for a return to the NFL. The Raiders signed him off the Ravens’ practice squad in November 2018, and Sunday, Patriots coach Bill Belichick tries to contain him.

“It was the literal act of playing football,” Waller said “Just the competition of it. How I felt when I made a play, have a team and be a part of something that’s bigger than yourself.”

He has been sober for three years now. He participates in group Zoom meetings once a week. He will hold his inaugural Beyond the Wall gala on Monday, the proceeds of which will benefit The Darren Waller Foundation’s mission to support youth in avoiding and overcoming addiction to drugs and alcohol.

“The most satisfying thing you can do is really help others,” Waller says, “and I feel like I’m tapping into that now.”

His parents are proud of him.

“They’ve always been there for me. My dad has always seen greatness for me, not only in football but in anything that I ever tried. It means a lot now honoring our family name in a much better way now,” Waller said.

And now, when he looks in the mirror?

“I see someone that’s trying to live with integrity, treat others people with respect, treat myself with respect,” he said. “I try to bring a strong work ethic to everything that I put myself into. I’m present in the day. I don’t look too far in the past, I’m just trying to do the best I can every day, and I trust that that’s not only gonna make my life better, but make other people’s lives better.”

Asked if he likes himself today, Darren Waller says:

“I do. I can honestly say that I do like myself now.”