For a split second, McLane Stadium was visible, brightly aglow alongside Interstate 35. The Waco arena was comparable to the Roman Coliseum for Texas football— no other collegiate stadium is quite like it— where it is football players who compete for glory instead of gladiators.

For a split second, that green glow of the arena on the Brazos River represented the limelight that Baylor football once basked in. Even in the offseason prior to the 2016 football season, the inevitable success that Baylor was primed for was depicted in that glow.

In an instant, however, the blink of an eye, all of that was gone.

Specifically, it was the blink of Johnny Jefferson’s eye. One moment the star tailback was driving past McLane, buzzed and intoxicated, when he closed his eyes for a split second. When Jefferson came to, he woke up slumped over the steering wheel with a pole staring him straight in the face.

This isn’t another story about the trails and tribulations of the Baylor athletic program; about bigger than life Texas football or denial of accountability or failed execution of implementing mandatory Title IX protocol.

This is a story about one man: his story of stardom, addiction and recovery. This is the Johnny Jefferson story.

Johnny did not even step onto a football field until he was 11-years-old. Raised in Clarksville, Mississippi, Jefferson came from a broken household. He grew up living in cars and trailer parks with separated parents in a drug filled environment within gang riddled neighborhoods. His mother dated different men and his father was mostly absente, which led to Johnny’s low self-esteem.

But he did have a rock solid foundation in his grandmother. She was the best part about his childhood, and she kept him sane. A turning point in Jefferson’s life was when his grandmother passed away from a heart attack when he was only eight or nine years old. Her last words she told Jefferson were "I love you, and you can do anything you put your mind to."

Yet, Johnny grew up feeling angry. He felt like he was never good enough. One time, he recalls, one of his mom’s boyfriends was hitting her and he stepped in to challenge the abuser and to protect his mom. The police were called. Although, when they showed up his mom changed her story. "My mom told me to take the blame," explained Johnny.

Johnny felt betrayed. He realized his mom cared more for her suitor and would rather stay in an abusive relationship than to back up her son’s word. Perhaps Jefferson had already mentally checked out of Clarksville, MS, but this was the final straw that forced him to physically check out.

Johnny then went to Texas to live with his father. "I never knew what football was until my dad introduced it to me as an 11-year old," Johnny remembers. From those first few carries, he knew that this was what he was meant to do.

It was where Johnny got to unleash his anger; where he got to be angry: at his parents, his self-esteem, and his life. All the stress would melt away as he cut through the backfield bulldozing defenders and sprinting into the end zone. It was a way to cope, to bring a sense of normalcy and stability into his life for really the first time.

At Shoemaker High School in Killeen, Texas, Johnny finished with 2,839 rushing yards and 32 total touchdowns. One thousand and ninety seven yards and 21 touchdowns came during his senior season in 2012 where he was named as an honorable mention to the All-State 5A team. Knowing little of Baylor University, he found himself accepting a scholarship to play football in Waco.

The cruel irony is that the sport would ultimately lead Jefferson to his ultimate addiction. But not before it lead him to a mountain of success. All state in high school? Check. A scholarship to Baylor University? Check. A Big XII championship, a 1,000 rushing yard season and a bowl game MVP? Check, check and check.

After redshirting in 2013 at Baylor, Jefferson rushed for 1,524 yards and 14 touchdowns in two years as a key contributor in the Art Briles’ offense. Jefferson’s athleticism and slashing style of play was God-gifted; he also practiced hard to be able to be the 205-pound bowling ball that Baylor fans saw pummeling over defensive pins every Saturday.

Johnny Jefferson was a natural, he had the "IT" factor, and he was poised to be the next great running back at Baylor. But injuries started to pile up.

Jefferson suffered a devastating hamstring injury in 2014 in the Bears’ 28-7 victory over Texas. He would sit out the following week’s 61-58 victory over TCU. A game that put Baylor on top of the world, and put Jefferson on a slow decline into a formidable abyss.

Johnny had never been around painkillers before: not during high school football and not even in small town Clarksville, MS. Football is grueling as Johnny attested, "my body was hurting, legs were hurting, shoulders were hurting after practice." One of his friends introduced him to oxycodone— an opioid derivative. According to Johnny, his friend said, "this pill would take all the soreness away and you won’t need to worry about the pain." His friend also showed him how he could purchase more when it became necessary to ease the ever-reoccurring pain.

Everything hurts when you play football; Johnny’s legs were hurting all the time. Add to that a hamstring injury during the middle of conference play and the detrimental advice of someone he thought he could trust, and Jefferson commenced his addiction with Oxycodone 30 Mg.

It was a seemingly harmless blue pill; and more importantly, it was something that was supposed to give relief to Johnny’s aches and pains. And it did; Johnny would casually take this pill for the remainder of the 2014 season and in the months that followed as needed.

One morning, sometime in February about five months after first taking the painkillers, suddenly and without warning Johnny woke up in a cold sweat. His temperature fluctuated; he had vast mood swings and was abnormally sweaty. He angrily called the same friend who had introduced him to the narcotics in the first place. Unbeknownst to Johnny, he was experiencing the side affects of withdrawals.

Johnny was devastated and heart broken.

It was simple peer pressure and mistrust that put Johnny on the path to addiction. He had the wrong friends, trusted advisors who presented him with the wrong solution for his sore muscles. These painkillers became a gateway drug to heroin, which is a cheaper form of Oxycodone.

This habit became necessary to continuously sooth the aches and pains of Division I football. And soon, the actions became so habitual that Johnny could not even do the most mundane of activities without his fix.

"Drugs became my priority over everything even food, water and sleep," Johnny recalled. "That pill was my religion and my God; addiction was the captain of my life."

It was a temporary remedy, a half-baked idea that kept Johnny going, as if discounted gas was fueling a Maserati. What the young student athlete was pouring into his body finally caught up with him by the 2015 Baylor football season, when he needed it on a daily basis to function properly.

"I forgot how to live sober," depicted Jefferson, " like how to do the basic stuff, everything seemed weird doing it sober." It was as if the life of a narcotic was the only life he had ever known.

Johnny was the same guy; he lived the same life: Baylor classes, football practices and spending time with his friends and fiancé. Internally, however, he was deteriorating faster than his 4.41 forty-yard dash time. Jefferson could not function on a daily basis without the drugs, and he was miserable every waking hour.

Johnny emphasized, "I hated, I hated, I hated waking up everyday and having to go look for [drugs]. When I woke up in the morning I was miserable unless I had [drugs] right there to take." He reiterated, "Sometimes I wished I went to sleep and never woke up."

Nobody was the wiser, however, about how physically and mentally unhealthy Johnny truly was as he hid it well. Johnny did not want to practice most of the time; he would show up late or not at all. And when he was on the practice field, Jefferson would have others take the reps.

Lies, stories and excuses were what Johnny told in order to take a backseat at practice. One time before a game, Jefferson even told fellow running back Devin Chafin to "take this one Chaf." Quite literally Johnny was done with everything: football and life. In 2015, Johnny needed to have his pill before the game:

"When I took the pill before the game, the pill gave me more energy, more drive to compete. I felt like I was on top of the world. I cannot explain it any other way; without the pill I was going through the motions"

He financed his addiction by selling off everything he owned; but did not commit any NCAA infractions by selling official Baylor gear. The pain meds and heroin had taken Jefferson to an extremely dark place.

Just how dark of a place was it? For Jefferson, it was a grim grotto of despair devoid of hope with no way out. All anyone on the outside ever saw was a green light emitting from Johnny’s cave of stardom and the sound of cheers echoing throughout.

Addiction was a cave that Jefferson refused to leave; was afraid to leave it. It would be a step into the unknown; he would be taking the risk that nobody would understand his pain or his life’s story. He accepted the nightmare that this was his new normalcy: playing football and living everyday life with hourly doses of heroin. It was as if this was all he’d even known. Overall, he was shy and embarrassed about the situation that he had put himself in.

So the green light of his cave grew dimmer with every intake of a blue pill. Even throughout his 1,000-yard rushing season in 2015, Johnny was slowing down in life. No one would believe it from watching him play on December 27, 2015?

That was the day of the Russell Athletic Bowl between the Baylor Bears and the North Carolina Tar Heels. A day Johnny Jefferson rushed for 299 yards and three touchdowns. Even in the highlights today you can see an energetic Jefferson race 80 yards down the right sideline for his final score early in the third quarter and celebrate enthusiastically as he embraced with his teammates on the bench.

How could anybody know that the whole game was a mask that covered Johnny’s pain? A façade where Jefferson became the ultimate team player by gutting it out for his squad yet mentally was reduced to thinking only about where and how soon he could return to his habit and ingest the life giving poison.

Every Baylor fan must have done the math on what Johnny needed to get to 1,000 yards on the season by the end of the bowl game. And how incredible it was to do this without the top offensive trio in the nation (Seth Russell, Corey Coleman, and Shock Linwood all had injuries). That he could decimate a powder blue defense who knew what was coming in the Wild Bear formation.

The only thought in Jefferson’s mind, however, when he was on the MVP stage was ‘I can’t wait to get back to Waco. Let’s board the bus so we can hop on the plane to get back… so I can feel somewhat normal again.’

In fact, that was how Johnny felt all week. Five days alone in his Orlando hotel room, he only went to the team practices and the game— and barely at that. He partook in none of the scheduled bowl events with his teammates throughout the week. Jefferson was experiencing heavy withdrawals since he was in a new environment and did not know where to get the drugs.

Yet, despite the withdrawals and apathy and the need to return to addiction, Jefferson knew that he had to play. He suited up in pads for what was ultimately the best, and at the moment last, game of his life. How did he manage to pull himself together?

"It was just drive," Jefferson stated bluntly. "I knew my team needed me, and we came this far and we had already lost so many players and so I knew this game was bigger than myself. Coaches and team doctors helped get me feeling somewhat normal again and I just played the game."

Minutes before the game, the Baylor coaching staff and athletic trainers pumped Johnny full of electrolytes and protein to give him the stamina to play the game. Although his first few carries, he did not feel great. All of sudden, by carry five, his addiction melted away as if an internal miracle had been performed. Johnny knew what he had to do and amazingly and stunningly got stronger as the game went on.

Jefferson reminisced, "I just forgot about the withdrawals—put them to the back of my mind— and just played in the moment right there."

It was this courage to play that foreshadowed Jefferson’s ability to potentially battle this addiction, but not before he reached two of his darkest hours.

It was late, and Johnny was buzzed, high on heroin, as he retold the events: "I took a couple of hits of heroin; it was late and I was driving looking at the stadium," with his drug dealer asleep next to him driving along Interstate 35. The same stretch of highway where millions of people travel daily. And he saw the same thing that everyone else does: McLane Stadium.

And suddenly, the stadium vanished. "I blinked and it was gone; I woke up face planted in the steering wheel with the car in the poll just in awe." Jefferson was fine, however, no injuries whatsoever, which led him to the conclusion that he had a bit of invincibility within him. "It was crazy to me because I wasn’t in pain or anything; I couldn’t believe the moment I was in." But he also knew that his web of lies containing his secret was starting to unravel.

Even so, this was not what Johnny would classify as his darkest hour. In fact, he went back to the dealer’s house to do another hit of heroin after reporting the incident. According to Jefferson, it took so long for him to come clean for help was because he had not reached his breaking point.

A few days later, Johnny was lying on his bed with his daughter. His fiancé had left to run errands, and Johnny was left feeling utterly depressed. He turned over to lay on stomach; it was hard for him to be motivated to do anything anymore. And there was large, sharp knife on the bedside table. Johnny was at death’s door and nothing seemed more satisfactory than walking right through it.

Johnny’s testimony of his darkest hour is as follows:

"When I was there on my bed, I had a knife right there on my bed. The thought of suicide and ending it at that moment occurred to me. The craziest part about it was my daughter just crawled over to the front side of the bed and just stood up on my back. Then she laid her head there [on me] and I just started crying. I asked God, please help me if you’re up there, if you can hear me. I can’t do this anymore. I just surrendered because if I continued to do [these drugs], then I should be taken away now. I was crying on my knees. I was so defeated; I couldn’t do it anymore. I was mentally and physically done and had to surrender. If my daughter wasn’t there I don’t know if I would’ve killed myself or not. I was so low."

As those thoughts wisped through his head, and his daughter began to crawl up his back Jefferson was flooded with memories. Memories of not having a father figure for a large part of his childhood. He knew that he could not leave his daughter in the same position that he himself had when growing up. He had to flip the script and reverse the cycle. That breaking point for Johnny was his daughter. Johnny is sure that he would be dead today if not for her being with him in his room that day.

That’s when Johnny sought out professional help.

Jefferson checked into a rehab clinic in Pennsylvania that provided full time schooling for a month on the drugs for the addicts. Thirty days of classes from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. that included but were not limited to doctor sessions, depression courses, religion teachings and even brain chemistry lessons. There was no TV or phones allowed; instead there were books, chess and Ping-Pong to use for entertainment. In addition, patients learned from each other’s stories and experiences.

Johnny was able to learn who he was with his counselors; specifically Ben who always reminded him who Johnny is: a father, a son and a man of God. He expressed his self-esteem issues and learned how he can work on repairing relationships with friends and family.

On his daughter’s first birthday, Jefferson was finally released. He had gone from an addict, a man riddled with anger due to his withdrawals to a student under his mentor Ben to an enlightened person who is ready to be a mentor. Because he knows himself.

And who is Johnny Jefferson exactly?

"He was an addict for sure, a proud addict" echoed Johnny the smile could almost be heard on his face. "For the first time, I have good relationships with my family, I’m funny, love music and dancing, have a big heart, open-minded, down to earth, and easy to talk to."

Johnny understands that this addiction does not discriminate against anyone. It is a disease that is responsible for multiple deaths each day; a disease where the brain chemistry is altered to force a need for drug use. He aspires to be a mentor to anyone from a young student athlete in high school to the millionaire businessman.

Johnny Jefferson has started Rehabilitate, a foundation to continue the education, outreach and support for athletes and addicts to ensure that they get the help they need. The courage that Jefferson has to continue to share his story as a proud addict is remarkable. Just like him playing football to deal with his anger at his parents, this foundation is helping him unleash his anger against the drugs that overwhelmed his life for two years.

Johnny was in a deep hole; covered by the dark dirt of depression and despair; sin and sorrow; anger and apathy. Jefferson has two gifts from God: one is football and the other is courage. Now he wants to make sure that his story is brought into the light; that the dangers are known for any and all who will listen.

Jefferson wants to ensure that his story gets as large a platform as possible so that he can positively benefit as many people as he is able to. He understands that being around football can serve as a great platform for his message.

Johnny Jefferson has plans to get back into football. But does that mean playing again? And if so, where—college or professional? Ultimately he wants to leave his football future up for debate and "a surprise."

Currently Johnny has a full time job as a waiter at Crickets, and has begun to work out again with a personal trainer to get back into football. He will begin classes again at Baylor this summer to complete his degree. He is also working to mentor and raise money for others through his foundation Rehabilitate, and is planning on having a fundraiser.

Lastly, he is a family man with his fiancé and daughter. He will have to fight this battle for the rest of his life, but he doesn’t want his story to end here, nor does he think it should.