Favre: I used to take 15 Vicodins at a time
Brett Favre used to take 15 Vicodin pills in a single sitting, the soon-to-be Hall of Fame quarterback admitted in a recent interview that provided a chilling account of his addiction to painkillers.
Favre entered the NFL's substance abuse program by his own volition in 1996 due to his Vicodin addiction.
The three-time NFL MVP discussed his experiences during an appearance on "In Depth With Graham Bensinger," describing how he abused the painkiller during the middle of his career.
"I tell people all the time that I took 15 Vicodin ES at one time," he said, according to CBS Sports' Will Brinson. "And they're like, 'It didn't knock you out?' It did totally the opposite - I was up. And that's kind of the way with addictions, too. What it's supposed to do, it doesn't. So when you take two pain pills, you're knocked out and you don't feel pain and you wake up, what, four, five, six hours later. I would be up just talking, I didn't want to sleep. Until about 10 o'clock the next morning when we were in offensive meetings was about the only time I wanted to sleep. Not a good time to sleep! And I would doze off, leaning back into a coat rack in our quarterbacks' meeting room."
Favre didn't think his teammates would notice his appetite for the painkiller, even though he was going through an average month's supply in two days.
"A month's prescription is 30 pills or whatever, depending what they prescribe to you, and I was going through that in two days," Favre said. "So I was having to hustle. I'd ask this guy for pills and that guy for pills. After a while I was going back around pretty quickly. I was the last one to know, it's one of those things. No one knows what's going on.
"Like my wife says, everyone knew. But I thought no one knew."
Favre quit cold turkey and flushed the remaining pills he had in the toilet.
"Any expert would tell you that's not the way to wean yourself off. ... That was the worst month, in terms of any kind of recovery, I ever went through. I shook every night, cold sweats, it was a constant battle."
The 46-year-old will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in August.