Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 12, 1994 TAG: 9411140081
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
He was a first-round draft pick of the Dallas Cowboys. He was regarded as one of the best linebackers in NFL history. He played in three Super Bowls. His talent and flair landed him on the cover of Newsweek.
Yet for all his athletic prowess, for the flamboyance that earned him a nickname that has stuck like glue through the years, Henderson is remembered now for how that great flight ended, downed by drug and alcohol addiction.
Henderson's seven-year pro football career was nipped in 1982 by a prison term.
But his fall from grace was his saving grace, Henderson said Friday from the Southwest Roanoke County office of Father Martin's Ashley, a Havre de Grace, Md.-based treatment center for the chemically addicted.
"Thomas Henderson would have died of cocaine intoxication," he said. "I just couldn't stop. I was making $178,000 a year. When you've got that kind of money, you can buy a lot of quantities of that stuff. And so you just never stop."
Henderson, who this week celebrated his 11th year of sobriety, travels the country counseling, consulting and lecturing on drug and alcohol rehabilitation, in part on behalf of Father Martin's Ashley. He was in Roanoke on Friday to cap Substance Abuse Awareness Week, sponsored by Blue Ridge Community Services.
"I played in three Super Bowls as a Dallas Cowboy, and where those should have been great times in my life, the only thing I regret is that I wasn't present for it," said Henderson, now 41. "I was always under the influence of pills, alcohol, cocaine, crack - whatever I could get my hands on."
Henderson said he was introduced to cocaine at the 1976 Super Bowl. He was unaware then of the drug's potential for devastating lives. When people ask him why he did cocaine, he tells them simply that he liked it.
But it turned on him - and almost killed him, he said.
"People would look at me and say, 'Boy, you could have played another seven or eight years,''' Henderson said. "People don't know. If I had played another year, I probably would have died."
Henderson now uses his story to counsel. He has worked with professional athletes, including professional golfer John Daly, who credits Henderson with being the catalyst for his treatment for alcohol abuse; with actors; and with just plain folk. He also promotes recovery through books and educational films.
To young people, he speaks of sobriety as an option, that it may be legal to drink at 21 but ``it's also legal not to."
For people in recovery, "I say that if a guy like Thomas Henderson can go where he's been and do what he's done and then end up with 11 years sober, it's OK to be a sober person."
"As embarrassing and as suicidal and as horrific as one could paint my past, it all has value," he said. "It really gives me credibility to understand the pain, suffering and consequences of alcohol and drug addiction."
by CNB