A man far ahead of his time: Ricky Williams ‘got it’ on mental health & marijuana

It is a coincidence, but maybe not, that Ricky Williams lives in a place called Grass Valley.

That sounds like it’s preordained.

The former University of Texas and long time NFL running back looks and sounds like he is in a good place with his family in California. He’s 46, and doing his thing.

He retired from one of the most interesting NFL careers, ever, in 2011. It is not lost on him that unintentionally he became a pioneer in two specific areas that he helped to change not only in the NFL, but the American sports culture.

Marijuana. Mental health.

“I take pride in that I got to be a guy who knocked down a big wall,” Williams said this week in an interview via Zoom.

Ricky was a fierce advocate for normalizing marijuana long before that process began, when it was illegal nearly everywhere. He was suspended multiple times by the NFL for violating the league’s policy on marijuana use.

Ricky was an advocate to address mental health long before it became OK to say, “I am not OK.” He “retired” from the NFL in 2004, which effectively amounted to an extended break before he returned.

He has launched a new “hemp-derived Delta 8, Delta 9 and other alternative cannabinoids” at a website called, appropriately, www.gethighsman.com. He won the Heisman Trophy in 1998, and he is the last player from UT to win that award (yes, Vince Young should have won it).

He spoke to the Star-Telegram about marijuana use in the United States, and how people will remember him.

Star-Telegram: When you played you were such an outlier, but now not so much. Were you ahead of your time?

Ricky Williams: Yeah; it occurred to me when I was young I was outlier but it was a rare situation where my athletic ability was so supreme that it allowed me to get away with things that most guys would have been weeded out for. ‘Sensitive’ guys in college and in high school get weeded out really quickly but I had this toughness at the same time athletic ability, so I slipped through the cracks.

When it finally caught up with me I was in the NFL. My experience was I just wanted to feel better. I was just happy that I found something that could potentially make me feel better; once I started to feel better, for me it was having my story coming full circle and I have something meaningful to share with people.

S-T: Do you think there is still a stigma attached to marijuana use?

RW: It’s still there, to an extent in California. It’s still there but in some areas definitely much less. I travel around the country and spend time in dispensaries and around the cannabis industry. You can still hear people say the words ‘cannabis,’ ‘joint,’ or ‘marijuana’ and they lower their voice.

As those things change and those of us who grew up in the age who were conditioned to think these things were horrible and conditioned to think if we are caught with them we will go to jail and that leaves a deep mark. From what I have seen from talking to people we need to heal that.

The stigma exists in the world but where it really exists is inside of us who have gone through cannabis prohibition.

S-T: Where is Texas on the scale of legalizing marijuana?

RW: It depends on who you talk to, and some more conservative people believe Texas is doing that. Texas does have a small medical program, so they are allowing people who are struggling with certain illnesses access to versions of cannabis.

A lot of people would say that is keeping par with the rest of the country and they wouldn’t necessarily be off in saying that.

What seems to be pushing the needle are the states that are doing it successfully are realizing that they are not having the catastrophic negative things happening that some people predicted but they are also seeing an increase tax revenue.

S-T: If someone in Texas wants to buy your product, can they?

RW: Some of our products you could and some you couldn’t.

S-T: Address something that people who came from the ‘Just Say No’ generation of the ‘80s may believe - that marijuana is addictive.

RW: Anything that feels good has the potential to be abused. The same way opioids are addictive because they change your body’s physiology. Cannabis is not addictive in that sense; so they don’t say ‘cannabis addiction’ they say, ‘cannabis dependence.’

We could say I am one of them; I have a sugar dependence. My wife has a coffee dependence. It’s a gray line because cannabis is lumped in with other drugs that have an addictive piece.

S-T: What do you think this country’s relationship with marijuana will be like in 10 years?

RW: Two things. Part of it will be the same way alcohol is marketed. Team sponsors, billboards, all of it. The second part is we’re going to see it marketed the way pharmaceuticals are marketed.

The technology is moving so fast and the big thing now in the cannabis space will be drinks. It’s not going to be so much related to smoking but it will be available in drinks, and infused into food. That’s where it’s headed.

S-T: Have you made peace with your career, and some of the labels that were put on you were as a result of possibly being ahead of your time?

RW: Even if I broke all the rushing records that existed in the record books I have realized with fame, and especially sports fame, it’s generational. Two generations have passed since I played. Kids are like, ‘Oh, yeah my dad used to talk about him but I have no idea who he is.’

I see that going around talking to young people they don’t know me, or saw me play. They might have heard about me as the guy who retired rather than quitting smoking and are inspired by it. I have seen what I have been able to do through football and it’s given me a platform that transcends what I did on the field.

S-T: Not to toot your own horn, but were you too smart for the NFL?

RW: That’s funny; I think I was smart to be appreciated by the NFL, which is slightly different. I was smarter than I needed to be to be a good football player. Mainly what was expected of me was to be a good football player and anything beyond that had the potential to be a distraction.

S-T: Do you still like football?

RW: I tell people I am a football connoisseur. If a game is on I can’t help but watch every time. The timing. The footwork. Do I go out of my way to watch a game? No, because I become so absorbed in it, even though I haven’t played in over a decade. I still don’t feel like I have an offseason because it’s so ingrained in my mind and it runs through my mind three or four times a day. It will always be a part of me.

S-T: How do you want to be known, or even remembered?

RW: The thread I hope that goes through my whole story is toughness. A lot of times we pretend that mental toughness and physical toughness are the same. They’re not. Everything I’ve learned about being a running back, and physical toughness, and started to deal with mental issues, I applied to mental toughness.

I stand with my convictions; to take a year off from playing and get to know myself better. That took a lot of toughness to deal with, all of that push back.

When I meet people who know that part of my story they are all impressed and say, ‘I don’t know if I could have done that.’ I want that to register in people’s minds that, ‘Wow, he was really tough.’