NFL star’s pre-game ‘weed and booze’ ritual

The talented Browns receiver, who has been suspended far more games than he’s played due to drug violations, is back in the NFL.

But he admits the news of his partial reinstatement after almost three years away, which he received last week from commissioner Roger Goodell, is ancillary to the epiphany that is saving his life.

Gordon, 26, believed that moment had come in March after a stay at an inpatient rehab facility for his years-long drug addiction led to six months of sobriety and “probably the best shape of my life,” he told GQ Magazine.

Gordon felt so good, he went looking for a way to reward himself. A couple of drinks at a bar turned into drinks and drugs every night, and that turned into his “rock bottom.”

The NFL denied his first reinstatement appeal in May, and Gordon checked himself back into rehab, where he stayed for over three months.

Why is this time different? Gordon says this reinvented version of himself wants to live, not just play football.

“I said, If I plan on having any type of a career, I’ll stop. But at this point I thought, If I want any type of a life, if I wanted to live, (I’ll stop),” he said.

“It was like: You’re never going back to f***ing work ever, if you can’t figure out how to live. Because at this point in time, the trajectory, you’re going to die. You’re going to kill yourself.”

Gordon, taken by the Browns in the 2012 Supplemental Draft despite the red flags from his college years at Baylor and then Utah, looked like he was on his way to becoming one of the elite receivers in the league.

A breakout rookie year — his only full season — followed by a Pro Bowl second season, including becoming the first player to record back-to-back games of more than 200 yards receiving, were soon overshadowed by penalties that added up to him missing 51 of the Browns’ last 56 games.

Add the suspensions to a DWI arrest in 2014 and another in 2016 for dodging multiple subpoenas for a paternity test, and the NFL wound up banning Gordon indefinitely without pay last September.

Now opening up about his drug and alcohol-filled pregame rituals, Gordon realises how twisted his rationale was, trying to beat the system though he was “proven wrong every time.”

The itch to use reaches all the way back to the seventh grade, when he got high for the first time on Xanax.

“If I had already been drug tested that week, or the day before the game, I knew I had a couple of days to clean my system,” he said.

“Even before I was getting tested for alcohol, prior to my DWI in 2014, I would take the biggest bong rip I could. And try to conceal all the smell off all my clothes. I’d be dressed up to go to the game.

“I would have these little pre-made shots. I used to love Grand Marnier. I could drink it down smooth. I could usually drink a lot of it. But if it wasn’t that, it might be a whiskey or something.

“And I would drink probably like half a glass, or a couple shots to try and warm my system up, basically. To get the motor running. That’s what I would do for games.”

On game days, Brown admitted to leaving the team before indulging in his pre-game ritual of weed and alcohol.

“We would stay at the team hotel and then players are allowed to go back home, get what they need and then go to the game.

“So I’d leave the hotel early morning, go home, eat breakfast and do my little ritual, whatever it may be, some weed, some alcohol, and then go to the game.

“And then I’d definitely be partying after every game, win or lose. Every game.”

The consumption didn’t stop after the games, when Gordon would ramp up the partying.

It didn’t help either that he and his family members were often assailed by Browns fans, he said, especially after he became a known liability to the team.

“Living in Cleveland, sometimes it could be a nightmare. I’ve been harassed, had drinks thrown at me,” Gordon said.

“I’ve been followed in the grocery store, heckled everywhere. At the games, people harassed and heckled my brothers and my mom. My brothers got into fights in the stands. Cars been jumped on. Somebody dented the hood of the car. Had to sue a guy and get the money back cause he damaged the car. People are throwing money, pennies, to break the windows. So Cleveland was rough, man.”

But he returns to the Browns in exactly two weeks’ time, partaking in team activities until he will be eligible to be activated for games on Nov. 27.

Most importantly, he’s coming in with a mentality he’s never had before.

“The past times, every time I would try to stop, it would be for the wrong reason. It’d be a publicity stunt; it’d be for somebody else; it’d be for the coach, or whomever thought it was in my best interest to try to do that. Last time, I wanted to do it to save my career. Just for the job,” he said.

“Only thing saving me at this point and time, and the difference between now and then, is that I’m doing it for myself. And I want something more for myself. I’m trying to do it for myself. I could give a f**k what anybody else is doing, honestly, at this point and time.”