Rhymes Admits That He Used Cocaine

“It could have easily been me,” said Buster Rhymes, a Minnesota Vikings receiver, reflecting on the cocaine-related deaths of athletes Len Bias and Don Rogers.

Rhymes, who said he started using cocaine as a junior at Oklahoma, has twice been admitted to a drug treatment center since the start of 1985, his rookie year with the Vikings.

“I’ve had some reactions myself,” Rhymes told the Minneapolis Star and Tribune in a copyright story Friday. “Once or twice, I went into convulsions. Maybe not convulsions . . . but there were periods when I started to. I had tremors and stuff like that.”

Rhymes, 24, said that he once played a college game under cocaine’s influence but that, although he continued using the drug as a member of the Vikings, he never played a pro game while high.

While at Oklahoma, he said, he paid for the cocaine with money he got from agents seeking to represent him as a pro and from selling his complimentary football tickets.

“The finances were there for me,” he said. “I first started using drugs in 1983, but my use didn’t get real bad until my senior year at Oklahoma. I used them off and on, and it was affecting my play. My performance went down; my school work went down. It messed up my life in every aspect.”