After a successful college football career,
our next guest was one of the most sought after quarterbacks entering the NFL.
But his career as a football player would be short-lived as he
began his life again as in spiral out of control.
He struggled with drug addiction, which ultimately landed him in prison for
nearly three years.
And here to share his inspiring story on how he turned his life around,
please welcome Ryan Leaf.
So, it was Peyton Manning and you were number two, right?
>> Yeah. >> Yeah.
>> If anybody knows.
Knows who Peyton Manning is.
>> Yeah. >> [LAUGH]
>> That was between us.
>> Yeah. >> It's funny to look back on it now.
>> Cuz you grew up your whole life with football.
You played for four years, right?
>> I grew up in Montana, I played football my whole life.
I wanted to be a professional athlete.
Young men, young women from Montana
don't make it to the professional levels that often.
And I will always believe that because
I was a great football player that that made me better than you.
And that's not the case at all.
We're all flawed human beings just try to be a better person on a daily basis and
I didn't figure that out for a long long time.
>> Right.
Well I think that, as you know now, that happens to a lot of people.
They go straight from high school to college football to pro.
So you played for
four years professionally and then you went back to Montana?
>> I did. I didn't know who I was.
The identity was I was this football player, A.
And now I was this failed football player B and I couldn't rationalize that or
justify that in any way.
So I'd been introduced to Vicodin while playing,
because of all of my orthopaedic surgeries.
And I used it to mask those physical pains and now I was taking them
to mask the emotional ones of not being able to live up to those expectations.
All the things that come with mental illness.
And I just started medicating.
>> How much were you taking a day?
>> Well, I had to figure out where to get 100 milligrams, somehow whether that was
10 pills or at some points 20 to do it, and just to be normal.
>> And how were you getting the pills?
>> I ends up going to doctors at first of course.
But ultimately, I didn't know a drug dealer,
I wasn't a good criminal or anything.
I went into people's homes, friends I knew.
I went to open houses in Montana, pretending to be interested in buying
the home, and go through medicine cabinets, or cabinets in the kitchen.
And the shame of it was terrible, but
once they were in my hand, that obsession dissipated.
>> Yeah. >> This effects that opiates have on
a person's brain, it disappeared, and the ends justified the means.
>> And how long were you living that way?
>> I started taking pills at 28, and
I probably >> Until my arrest at 35, it was off and
on for seven years.
>> And you got arrested for what reason?
>> I got arrested for having Vicadin without a prescription
in my golf bag and charged with burglary in my hometown.
Or I was supposed to be- >> A hero.
>> A hero.
>> So the reason you're here, that we heard about you,
is that you were watching me, you were watching this show in your cell.
>> Yeah so I had a 13 inch television at the end of my bed, and I'd watch you.
And you lived this public life, and
had a platform of service on a daily basis, and it made me feel something.
I felt like a human being again.
It gave me my humanity back, it really did.
An hour a day, when I didn't have it, I went and found it,
because I saw your face.
>> Wow, wow.
>> [APPLAUSE] >> [APPLAUSE]
>> That is so touching to me that,
I mean I feel like I am so lucky that I come here and there's so
much joy in this room and I get to >> Get this from.
But to know that I'm touching people, to know that I'm reaching people in that way.
I hear it in different ways, when people are in the hospital or sick.
But it means a lot to me that I was able to,
in a place like that, to be in prison and that I could reach you.
>> So then you started, you were in prison,
you started then teaching other inmates how to elevate themselves.
>> Yeah my roommate would come in and he'd see me be there bawling or
laughing uncontrollably, watching your show.
And one day he came in and he said, let's go down to the library,
you're gonna help these guys who don't know how to read, learn how to read.
And it was the first time I was ever to service to anybody but
myself my whole life.
[APPLAUSE] >> Now it feels good, right?
[APPLAUSE] So, you started the foundation [APPLAUSE] So
tell everybody about the foundation you started.
I started a foundation called the Focused Intensity Foundation,
focusedintensity.org.
What I do is, I raise money for scholarships for
people you can't afford mental health treatment.
When I got out of prison, I couldn't afford to go to treatment.
If the NFL didn't have grants available to me,
I wouldn't have been able to get the help I needed and I don't ever want somebody.
Who really wants help and
wants to change their life, not be able to do it because they can't afford it.
>> Yeah.
You're a great guy, and you're an example of why we need to have
programs in prison to actually help people to get better, and
put programs in there that will make people have humanity.
Again, like you said, Shutterfly cares about supporting organizations
like Focus Intensity, so they wanna give you a check for $10,000.
>> [APPLAUSE]