"I wasn't contemplating suicide - if I gave that impression, I’m sorry," he said. In an interview with ET's Kevin Frazier on Wednesday, Favre clarified that his addiction never led him to contemplate suicide. I went to please her and to show everyone that I was serious. I've heard it so many times.' And I said, 'You're right. So I had said, 'I am not drinking anymore.' My wife said, 'I don't want to hear it. It was what I did when I drank, the choices I made. However, at the insistence of his wife, he went back to the same center in Topeka, Kansas, that he had initially gone to for his drug abuse. The day before he entered rehab for a second time, this time for alcohol, Favre vowed to quit cold turkey. Then you're driving, or you're making some other idiot decision, taking other drugs, street drugs, which I did all that." Why drink one beer? Why not drink 20?' That's a problem," he said. "When I drank, did I drink one beer and go home? I thought, 'What a waste. Unlike with pills, Favre wasn't so sure he had a problem with alcohol, recalling that he thought, "I didn't drink every day, so I don't have a problem." It wasn't the frequency with which he drank, but rather what he did after he consumed alcohol that was cause for alarm. "The desire was there, but slowly but surely, by the grace of God, I got beyond. "It took me probably a couple of months to where I started getting over the, 'I want these pain pills really bad.' That urge," he added. No matter where I was, what I was doing, I would take the pills at nine o'clock," he said. "That was the last time. "Every night at nine o'clock I just shook, because every night at nine o'clock was exactly the time I took them. He detoxed cold-turkey, a decision he doesn't recommend for anyone "because it could kill ya," and spent two weeks shaking. I was so mad at myself, because now what was I going to do?" I could not believe that I had actually done that. I could almost want to kill myself because of doing that. Eventually, I dumped the pills in the toilet, flushed them.
"I was low, and I said, 'It's one of two things I die, or I flush these pills down the toilet,'" he recalled. And so I fell right back into the cycle again."Īfter his Super Bowl and MVP win, Favre was "as low as I could possibly be," as he had only eight pills remaining, which would've given him "zero buzz." I tried them, I can't say if it helped with pain or not, but I was taking a pain pill for effect. That's the addictive nature that I was going through. Let me tell ya, if you take 20 of 'em, it'll work," Favre said. " said, 'OK, if you need pain pills, we've got a non-addictive pain pill that you can take'. However, he was still struggling with his addiction throughout it all. The 1996 season became one of the most memorable of Favre's career, as the Packers went on to win the Super Bowl.
Though he did stay, Favre said he began "manipulating" the experience and figured out that he needed to "agree with what they're saying." When he got out, he said, "I continued to do what I was doing." I fought them, that's why I was there 75 days," he said. "At 28 days they were like, 'You ain't going nowhere,' and I said, 'Bulls**t, I'm going somewhere.' And the league said, 'If you don't stay, you don't play.'"