The long road back from drug addiction
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July 9, 2009, 12:38 pm
Quaranta’s Goal a Boost for U.S. and the Player
By Jeffrey Marcus
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press
Santino Quaranta lets the cheers of the Washington, D.C., fans soak in after he scored for the U.S. national team on Wednesday at RFK Stadium.
The United States men’s national team victory over Honduras in the Concacaf Gold Cup, 2-0, in Washington, D.C., gave American soccer another heartening storyline: Santino Quaranta.
In his first appearance for the national team since 2006, Quaranta scored by rocketing a low shot from the top right of the penalty box past Honduras keeper Donis Escobar. It was his first goal for the U.S. The Washington Post’s Paul Tenorio called Quaranta’s strike in the 75th minute, “another inspiring step in his comeback from a drug addiction that nearly derailed his career and his life.”
The hometown crowd erupted in glorious applause for Quaranta, the D.C. United wing who made his professional debut with the club in 2001, when he was just 16. Steve Goff of the Washington Post wrote this article about Quaranta’s struggles. And I talked to the player when he returned to United in 2008.
“I got a lot of things handed to me very early on,” Quaranta said last year. “You hit the top, playing for the national team, but what else is there? Once I got to that point, it started spiraling.”
He struck a redemptive tone Wednesday after his goal helped propel the U.S. to victory: “It’s hard to explain how special it is,” Quaranta said. “I was trying to tell myself just to enjoy it, but it was difficult.”
“And to be able to do it in front of my wife and my two kids was very special and that’s the most important thing to me now,” he added.
A cautionary tale of pain killers and alcohol addiction and success too soon
By Steven Goff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 14, 2008; Page E01
Santino Quaranta's right hand was throbbing, the consequence of a Toronto player stepping on him during D.C. United's home opener in early April. The swelling spread past his wrist and toward the freshest and most poignant tattoo on his ink-covered upper body: "10-23-07," a time stamp marking the turning point in his self-destructive life.
This Story
'I Should Have Been Dead'
United vs. Red Bulls
After being examined in the training room at RFK Stadium, he was told the second metacarpal was cracked. Injuries were nothing new to him -- his tally of ailments approaches his career goal total -- but this particular setback presented an immediate challenge: managing pain.
"I told the medical guys, 'You know where I am, right?' " Quaranta recalled. "They laughed because, of course, they knew. No painkillers. They just wrapped it up and gave me some ibuprofen. It didn't hurt that bad. There is no pain like the pain I went through before."
On and off for five years, mostly unbeknown to team officials and teammates, Quaranta grappled with pain -- both emotional and physical. He dulled it by taking drugs, lots of them. Between practices and games, on road trips and U.S. national team duty, his days and nights were spent visiting dealers, partying late into the night, behaving erratically and watching his once-promising career crash.
In an interview this week, Quaranta, 23, estimated he spent $250,000 during his troubled times on alcohol and a variety of drugs, including OxyContin and cocaine. He tested positive for cocaine in 2006, but because he was a first-time offender, MLS did not suspend him and the results were not made public. In the following 18 months, however, his addiction grew progressively worse, culminating with a three-month stay at a treatment facility in Malibu, Calif., last winter.
On Feb. 1, he returned to his home town of Baltimore and began rebuilding his shattered family and resuscitating his career. Convinced that Quaranta had been changed by the ordeal, United signed him as a free agent for barely more than the minimum salary for a senior roster player -- $35,000, a fifth of what he was making at his peak.
Quaranta's admissions are the first of this scale in MLS since the league was launched in 1996. The only other known case involving serious drug or alcohol use was Los Angeles Galaxy forward Edson Buddle, who in 2005 while with the Columbus Crew was suspended under MLS's substance abuse policy.
"I was a one-dimensional alcoholic and addict," Quaranta said in his most extensive public comments on his addictions. "When I tell you nothing else mattered in my life, I am not lying. To know there was a way out was a blessing."
Quaranta's introduction to painkillers came through prescriptions issued for injuries, the first a sports hernia that interrupted his second season, in 2002. "I was like, 'Whoa, this is not bad,' " he said of painkillers Vicodin and Percoset. "It wasn't an instant addiction. It was on and off. I don't know when I crossed the line, but it really got bad. I was a mess."
The injuries -- a knee problem in 2003, a groin ailment that he said required six surgeries in 2004 -- made life easier because he could justify requesting painkillers from doctors.
"The worst time was when I was healthy, because I had to go out and find more pills on my own on the street," he said. "Even when the doctors gave me pills, it was just 20 or 30. I would go through those in a couple hours. I would eat 10 at a time.
"There weren't enough pills in the world for me. You could have put me in Iraq and I would have found a way to get pills. I should have been dead a long time ago."
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#2 12 Minutes Ago
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I always wonder what happened to him. He looked pretty promising coming up the youth ranks.
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#3 7 Minutes Ago
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July 9, 2009, 12:38 pm
Quaranta’s Goal a Boost for U.S. and the Player
By Jeffrey Marcus
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press
Santino Quaranta lets the cheers of the Washington, D.C., fans soak in after he scored for the U.S. national team on Wednesday at RFK Stadium.
The United States men’s national team victory over Honduras in the Concacaf Gold Cup, 2-0, in Washington, D.C., gave American soccer another heartening storyline: Santino Quaranta.
In his first appearance for the national team since 2006, Quaranta scored by rocketing a low shot from the top right of the penalty box past Honduras keeper Donis Escobar. It was his first goal for the U.S. The Washington Post’s Paul Tenorio called Quaranta’s strike in the 75th minute, “another inspiring step in his comeback from a drug addiction that nearly derailed his career and his life.”
The hometown crowd erupted in glorious applause for Quaranta, the D.C. United wing who made his professional debut with the club in 2001, when he was just 16. Steve Goff of the Washington Post wrote this article about Quaranta’s struggles. And I talked to the player when he returned to United in 2008.
“I got a lot of things handed to me very early on,” Quaranta said last year. “You hit the top, playing for the national team, but what else is there? Once I got to that point, it started spiraling.”
He struck a redemptive tone Wednesday after his goal helped propel the U.S. to victory: “It’s hard to explain how special it is,” Quaranta said. “I was trying to tell myself just to enjoy it, but it was difficult.”
“And to be able to do it in front of my wife and my two kids was very special and that’s the most important thing to me now,” he added.
A cautionary tale of pain killers and alcohol addiction and success too soon
By Steven Goff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 14, 2008; Page E01
Santino Quaranta's right hand was throbbing, the consequence of a Toronto player stepping on him during D.C. United's home opener in early April. The swelling spread past his wrist and toward the freshest and most poignant tattoo on his ink-covered upper body: "10-23-07," a time stamp marking the turning point in his self-destructive life.
This Story
'I Should Have Been Dead'
United vs. Red Bulls
After being examined in the training room at RFK Stadium, he was told the second metacarpal was cracked. Injuries were nothing new to him -- his tally of ailments approaches his career goal total -- but this particular setback presented an immediate challenge: managing pain.
"I told the medical guys, 'You know where I am, right?' " Quaranta recalled. "They laughed because, of course, they knew. No painkillers. They just wrapped it up and gave me some ibuprofen. It didn't hurt that bad. There is no pain like the pain I went through before."
On and off for five years, mostly unbeknown to team officials and teammates, Quaranta grappled with pain -- both emotional and physical. He dulled it by taking drugs, lots of them. Between practices and games, on road trips and U.S. national team duty, his days and nights were spent visiting dealers, partying late into the night, behaving erratically and watching his once-promising career crash.
In an interview this week, Quaranta, 23, estimated he spent $250,000 during his troubled times on alcohol and a variety of drugs, including OxyContin and cocaine. He tested positive for cocaine in 2006, but because he was a first-time offender, MLS did not suspend him and the results were not made public. In the following 18 months, however, his addiction grew progressively worse, culminating with a three-month stay at a treatment facility in Malibu, Calif., last winter.
On Feb. 1, he returned to his home town of Baltimore and began rebuilding his shattered family and resuscitating his career. Convinced that Quaranta had been changed by the ordeal, United signed him as a free agent for barely more than the minimum salary for a senior roster player -- $35,000, a fifth of what he was making at his peak.
Quaranta's admissions are the first of this scale in MLS since the league was launched in 1996. The only other known case involving serious drug or alcohol use was Los Angeles Galaxy forward Edson Buddle, who in 2005 while with the Columbus Crew was suspended under MLS's substance abuse policy.
"I was a one-dimensional alcoholic and addict," Quaranta said in his most extensive public comments on his addictions. "When I tell you nothing else mattered in my life, I am not lying. To know there was a way out was a blessing."
Quaranta's introduction to painkillers came through prescriptions issued for injuries, the first a sports hernia that interrupted his second season, in 2002. "I was like, 'Whoa, this is not bad,' " he said of painkillers Vicodin and Percoset. "It wasn't an instant addiction. It was on and off. I don't know when I crossed the line, but it really got bad. I was a mess."
The injuries -- a knee problem in 2003, a groin ailment that he said required six surgeries in 2004 -- made life easier because he could justify requesting painkillers from doctors.
"The worst time was when I was healthy, because I had to go out and find more pills on my own on the street," he said. "Even when the doctors gave me pills, it was just 20 or 30. I would go through those in a couple hours. I would eat 10 at a time.
"There weren't enough pills in the world for me. You could have put me in Iraq and I would have found a way to get pills. I should have been dead a long time ago."
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#2 12 Minutes Ago
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I always wonder what happened to him. He looked pretty promising coming up the youth ranks.
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#3 7 Minutes Ago
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