Vance Johnson, ex-NFL receiver, is helping Las Vegas addicts on, off TV
Vance Johnson remembers watching “Intervention” during the throes of his addiction and wishing he could receive the kind help offered by the long-running reality series.
Now the former Denver Broncos great has crossed over, assisting others with their recoveries, as part of the show’s seven-episode Las Vegas-based season (9 p.m. Monday, A&E).
It’s the latest step in the transformation that led Johnson to relocate to Las Vegas in early 2020, shortly after the opening of his treatment facility.
“Every single aspect of what we do here at the Vance Johnson Recovery Center, I’m a part of,” he says of the 44-bed complex near Sahara Avenue and Interstate 15. His is a seven-day-a-week job that finds Johnson participating in classes, working out with patients, taking them to church and even going to get them and bringing them to the center, if necessary.
He’s so thankful to be clean after decades of abusing alcohol and drugs that the man who played in three Super Bowls as a member of the famed Three Amigos receiving corps can’t imagine doing anything else.
Coma didn’t cure addiction
Johnson drank too much during an NFL career that spanned from 1985 to 1995. He was injected with morphine and codeine for the pain associated with being tackled for a living, and he began abusing opioids. Throw in some recreational drugs, and Johnson was a veritable one-man “North Dallas Forty.”
Broncos head coach Dan Reeves called Johnson into his office at 5:30 one morning to try to help.
“I didn’t even know I had a problem at that time,” Johnson recalls. “He didn’t even tell me that he knew I had a problem, but he would offer different types of support.”
Johnson leaned further into his addictions after his playing career ended. Despite being arrested “so many times,” his success convinced him that he didn’t have a problem.
“To me,” Johnson says, “the people that had problems with mental health and drug addiction were the ones that were on the streets.”
At one point, he was a million dollars in debt and had left seven ex-wives in his wake. Spending 28 days in a medically induced coma wasn’t even enough to convince him to get clean. Eventually, Johnson’s most recent former wife contacted the NFL on his behalf. Former Tampa Bay Buccaneers center Randy Grimes reached out and, in October 2013, got him into treatment.
“I don’t want to be successful anymore,” Johnson remembers telling God during his recovery. “All I want to do is give my life to offer hope to others that are struggling.”
Part of a community
Once Johnson got sober, his celebrity opened doors on the public speaking circuit. The health care management firm Oglethorpe Inc. hired him as a recovery ambassador. When the company’s executives asked if they could put his name on one of their facilities, Johnson had one stipulation: “I said, ‘As long as I can be where that center is, because I’m not just going to be a name on a program, I want to be part of a community.’ ”
He packed up and relocated from the East Coast to be near the Vance Johnson Recovery Center. Still, he hopes potential clients spend more time focusing on the last two words of the facility’s title than the first two.
“Just because my name, Vance, is on there, it’s not about Vance,” he says. “It’s about them.”
When he isn’t working at the center, Johnson speaks at local churches and other gatherings, sharing his story, the raw nerves of his lowest moments forever exposed.
“It’s very exhausting, but I look forward to it, because that actually shows who I am in my foundation of my recovery,” Johnson admits. “I love it, because it allows me to show people that just because I was famous doesn’t mean I’m above you. I’m actually just like you.”
Learning as he goes
There’s a vast difference between being grateful for your recovery and being so thankful that you dedicate every waking moment to helping others. But Johnson, 58, says he’s still embracing that challenge.
He’s been staging interventions for the past five years, yet still found himself learning through his work on “Intervention,” saying he’s “gotten a thousand times better.”
“There’s so many different ways to come at an intervention,” Johnson explains, “but it all depends on the family and the person, not just the interventionist.”
At its heart, “Intervention” is focused on trying to help addicts get clean through the resources and hands-on approaches of various experts. Having been on the receiving end of the series, though, Johnson understands the greater impact it can have on the viewing public.
“It’s not just about the individual and the families that we’re helping in the scene, but it’s about the people that are watching,” he attests. “And those are the ones that we’re really trying to reach by showing them that it is possible to be saved, no matter how far down you get.”
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence @reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567. Follow @life_onthecouch on Twitter.