Feud & drug administration
Honest mistakes easy to make under NFL policy
Tyler Sash was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa, a town of around 11,000 people, most of whom probably consider Des Moines, over an hour northwest, a real city.
Now Sash lives in New York, a town of more than 8 million, where after a nice career at the University of Iowa he plays safety in the NFL for the Giants. As a 24 year old, he was set to have a base salary of $425,000 this season. About four days a week, after he finishes his work on the field, he has to walk into a locker room where media swarm like bees to honey, any one of them with the opportunity to walk up to Sash and ask him a question, write his answer in a notebook, and send it out to millions of readers.
So Sash says he kept doing what he was doing, kept taking the Adderall pills that his doctor back in Iowa told him would help him with his anxiety, with his fear of public speaking.
“He took the drug in late February/early March for anxiety issues,” wrote his agent Jack Bechta in an email to The Post, “obviously not for any performance advantages, as there were no team activities that time of year.”
Adderall normally is prescribed to deal with Attention Deficit Disorder and hyperactivity, mostly in children. But there are other reasons the drug is used.
“It’s an amphetamine,” said Dr. Lewis Nelson, a professor of emergency medicine and medical toxicologist at NYU. “Like amphetamines always have, they give you more energy and help you in training.”
Asked if controlling anxiety is a possible use of Adderall, Nelson said, “No. I don’t think that’s a reasonable usage.”
So now it comes down to believing Tyler Sash or not. He was the third Giant to be suspended for Adderall this season, including fellow safety Will Hill, whose suspension started with Sunday’s 26-3 win over the 49ers, and running back Andre Brown, who had his punishment completely lifted in June because of what was described as a misunderstanding in the paperwork.
They are three of nine NFL players who have claimed prescribed Adderall use as the reason for their failed drug tests, including the Buccaneers’ star cornerback Aqib Talib, whose suspension came down Oct. 13 and will cost him close to $500,000 in salary.
An NFL source close to these situations says the problem arises with the filling out of a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE), which would allow a player to take Adderall and similar drugs by proving their medical necessity before the test. It is not a terribly complicated procedure, the source said, but something that needs to be done promptly and correctly or exceptions cannot be made.
“The amphetamine is composed of compounds that have both legal and illegal usages,” Nelson said. “It’s a pretty broad spectrum.”
But because of the conf i dentiality agreement between the league and the players association, the specifics of any failed test cannot be publicly disclosed, only vetted by the players in whatever manner they choose. That means, no matter what drug was found in the test, the player can claim it to be something as benign as Adderall and the league cannot publicly refute them.
It leaves the public with a very shady understanding of the whole matter. At stake are the reputations of players, either in the wrong or just negligent in their paperwork.
“To have this blue collar kid from Iowa labeled as a cheater, suspended for four games without pay and publicly embarrassed is just wrong,” Bechta said.
Bechta went on to say Sash is entirely responsible for what he puts in his body, but the league should not be so closed-minded when the offseason process was rushed because of the lockout.
“Those guys never got the education, warnings and reminders that are normally given prior to the start of the season,” Bechta said.
The NFL now has a situation on its hands that is of their own making, and does not have an easy solution around the corner.
“The FDA [ Food and Drug Administration] goes out and identifies the possible uses of drugs based on their data,” Nelson says. “But doctors are allowed to use a drug for whatever they want as long as there are concrete support in the [FDA’s drug] literature. It’s really a very complicated situation.”
bcyrgalis@nypost.com