Former Viking Eller Says He Spent Most of His Income for Drugs

While he was dazzling professional football fans with his ferocious play at defensive end for the Minnesota Vikings, All-Pro Carl Eller was also spending most of his income on the purchase of illegal drugs, he testified here Tuesday.

“I was then one of the highest-paid defensive ends in the league, earning about $100,000,” Eller told the House of Representatives Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control during a hearing on cocaine abuse.

“I figure I must have spent about $2,000 a week on drugs because almost my total income went into chemicals.”

Eller, 43, who first admitted several years ago that he had played under the influence of drugs, was on a witness panel with other cocaine abusers: actor Stacy Keach of the television series “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer,” and Bernice Carrington, a Washington bank employee who said she was driven to prostitution, armed robbery and two suicide attempts by her addiction.

“Cocaine certainly ended my career prematurely and caused me tremendous financial and personal loss,” Eller said. “I’m a very lucky person not to have gone to prison. I was always paranoid that I would be arrested.”

Eller, now a consultant to the National Football League in drug abuse programs, told members of Congress that athletes face a special problem with drugs because an athlete is “the most discriminated-against person in society today,” and is “addicted to the sport.”

Eller cited statistics showing that young athletes use drugs at about the same rate as others in society. “But they do not seek help at the same rate as the other kids,” he said. “They feel they will be jeopardizing many of their opportunities for career advancement in sports.

“Many athletes have died from a syndrome I call ‘Hero-ism,’ the voluntary effort toward self-destruction. They have died as much from that as they have from drugs.”

Eller called the world of sports a fantasy world in which athletes “will stop being human beings and they will start playing the role of the hero.”

Athletes are coddled and worshipped from the time they are 14, Eller said, and when their playing days are over, the cheering abruptly stops and they can’t make the adjustment, because they are addicted to sport and the hero-worship that comes with it.

“Bill Robinzine, a basketball player, committed suicide from carbon monoxide poisoning, running his car in his garage--he couldn’t handle it and there was no help,” said Eller. “Larry Mickey, a hockey player for the New York Rangers, committed suicide after not being able to make the adjustment to the world from pro life, from the world of fantasy to the world of reality.”

Eller said that these special kinds of problems are at the heart of athletes’ drug problems, and that special drug abuse and prevention programs should be instituted for athletes at all levels of play. He said there is no problem finding drugs but that only “a few” athletes use drugs.