Suspended Browns wide receiver Josh Gordon publicly disclosed his long history of drug abuse and expressed a desire to redeem himself in an online mini-documentary released Tuesday morning by Uninterrupted.com.
"I've used alcohol many, many occasions," Gordon said. "Xanax, many occasions. Cocaine, several occasions. Marijuana, most of my life. Codeine cough syrup, promethazine, very prevalent where I'm from. It's what I grew up using.
"I've been enabled most of my life, honestly. I've been enabled by coaches, teachers, professors, everybody pretty much gave me a second chance just because of my ability."
Gordon has missed 43 of the past 48 games and hasn't played in the regular season since Dec. 21, 2014, because of recurring violations of the NFL's substance-abuse policy. The league rejected his most recent petition for reinstatement in May and told the 2013 All-Pro selection he could reapply this fall. He's eligible to petition for re-entry, but it appears he has yet to do so. An NFL spokesman declined to comment Tuesday on whether Gordon had reapplied. In the past year, the Browns have vacillated between whether they would welcome Gordon back or get rid of him should he return.
In the 13-minute documentary, Gordon said his suspensions and trips to rehab have been "brutally" humbling. His fourth known stint in rehab lasted more than three months in Florida, and it ended two weeks ago, he wrote on a Snapchat video at the time. The documentary was filmed while Gordon took a three-day break after 70 consecutive days in rehab.
"When you're put in a position to be constricted socially, financially, just all resources exhausted, the ego is diminished to just about nil," said Gordon, who led the NFL with 1,646 receiving yards four years ago. "The only thing I know I have to go off of is my faith, family and my ability with football.
"I need to live out my amends, try to make right for all my past transgressions and mistakes and show and prove that I can be a better person, a better man, somebody that is accountable, reliable, because I know what's on the other side of that. If given the opportunity, I believe I can prove my worth."
In response to the short film, LeBron James voiced his support for Gordon on Twitter.
"Easy 2 judge some 1 over wrong doings but u never know what they're going thru! Addiction is a REAL ISSUE! Love the direction u headed JG," said James, who founded Uninterrupted.com with business partner Maverick Carter.
Gordon, 26, revealed he has met with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell many times to express concern about his career and ask for advice. Whether Gordon is ultimately reinstated will be determined by Goodell.
"I respect Roger Goodell," Gordon said. "He gets a bad rap because people don't understand him and they don't know him, but for me, he's a great guy. He's a great man. He's been a friend to me. He's been a mentor to me in a way in which he may not even understand. And I voiced my opinion to him and told him how bad and desperately I want to get better, wanted to stop drinking. I don't want to do this anymore. I want to get the opportunity to get my life back."
Gordon admitted he didn't take the warnings about jeopardizing his career seriously enough.
"It never really set in the severity of, 'If you fail a drug test, this is over. They're not going to let you keep playing,'" Gordon said. "I never really took it serious. I thought I can keep on doing and getting away with it."
The pattern of behavior goes back to Gordon's college days. He failed two drugs tests at Baylor, which suspended him indefinitely, and then another at Utah.
"Not too long after I got arrested for possession of marijuana at Baylor, one of my coaches came by saying, 'You are going to get drug tested by the compliance office. This is how it's going to work. This is what they are going to do. If they do call you in, here goes these bottles of detox,' " Gordon said. "He showed me how to drink them, showed me how to take them. That was my first real experience with getting over on the system and that authority not really being taken serious because it was kind of being guided by somebody that's employed by the same university."
Gordon explained he failed a drug test at Baylor when he ran out of the masking agent and the coach didn't replenish his supply in time.
"I failed the drug test because I was getting high," Gordon added with a laugh.
The documentary suggests Gordon's latest trip to rehab was spurred by an awakening he experienced while searching for drugs on the streets of Gainesville, Fla.
"That night in particular, I couldn't find anybody with drugs, and I just began to have a flashback and remembered all the negative things that have happened in my life that transpired," said Gordon, who's shown training with former Olympic sprinter Tim Montgomery in the film. "Like, 'What led up to this point? How did it get this bad? It's so dark out here. I'm all alone. What the hell am I doing? I was scared. I was scared for my life.'
"Something clicked in my head at that point. It's like, 'Man, you did it again. You're willing to throw away everything you ever work hard for, everything you ever had out of life.' It's so strange, but I just had a desire to stop. I had the desire to get help, invest myself 100 percent into whatever was going to help save my life."
Selected by former Browns general manager Tom Heckert in the second round of the 2012 supplemental draft, Gordon conceded his first known trip to rehab in 2014 was a sham.
"My first thought was, 'This is a publicity stunt. This is just going to help the media deal with me. It's going to help the fans be able to deal with it. I don't know what they're so worked up for anyway,' " Gordon said. "I definitely wasn't listening. I definitely wasn't paying attention. I was there for like 14, 15 days. It was a joke. It was pretty much a vacation. I had a bunch of good gourmet meals and took a little break."
Gordon served a 10-game suspension to begin the 2014 season after he tested positive for marijuana. He played in five games, then the Browns suspended him for the season finale after he failed to show up to a walk through the morning of the team's flight to Baltimore because he had been partying the previous night.
"We had to be up in the morning for like a 7:30 team meeting. I didn't wake up until 10 o'clock, 10:15, coming out of a blackout," Gordon said. "I'm getting a bunch of texts and calls from coaches like, 'Where are you at? We're heading to the tarmac already.' I'm like, 'Aw, s---.' So I drove up to the tarmac. (Former Browns GM Ray Farmer) kind of pulls me to the side, talks to me, he's like, 'I'm sorry Josh, but you're not going on this plane.' I was watching the plane go off. I was like, 'Well, f--- it. Let's go home. Let's party.'"
Gordon hasn't played in a regular-season game since. After he pleaded guilty to driving while impaired July 5, 2015, in Raleigh, N.C., alcohol testing became part of his substance-abuse program mandated by the league. He drank alcohol Jan. 2, 2016, while he and several teammates flew to Las Vegas on a private jet, and it led to the NFL banishing him.
"Everybody kind of was like, 'Oh, you know you're a piece of s----. You're a drug addict. You're a junkie, whatever. You're an alcoholic,'" Gordon said. "So at that point, I was like, 'If they want me to be this guy so bad, that's just what I'm going to be.' "
The NFL reinstated Gordon on a conditional basis last year and suspended him for the first four regular-season games. He played in the final two games of the 2016 preseason but left the Browns to check into rehab for alcohol less than two weeks before he would have been eligible to play in the regular season. It happened during a paternity case in which Gordon was proved to be the father of a Maple Heights girl. He was later hit with another paternity lawsuit.
In the documentary, Gordon explained he hadn't seen his father since 2005 or 2006 _ "I can't even really remember," he said _ and he hadn't met his daughter.
"Soon as I get out of rehab, I'll be back in Ohio and looking to be a father, man," he said.
