He's going down the drain because he chose meth. It's the same with heroin & cocaine users. I just believe pot isn't dangerous like those drugs are, I've seen myself how it has helped heal someone. People try to say it's a gateway drug. I don't believe that either. If someone starts by smoking pot then goes to a harder drug, it's because they want to.
Marinovich has battled both amphetamine and heroin addiction for years.
His father pushed him
very hard.
This is from a
Sports Illustrated article back in 1988.
...What's fascinating about Marinovich, a 6'4½", 212-pound lefthanded redhead, is that he is, in a real sense, America's first test-tube athlete. He has never eaten a Big Mac or an Oreo or a Ding Dong. When he went to birthday parties as a kid, he would take his own cake and ice cream to avoid sugar and refined white flour. He would eat homemade catsup, prepared with honey. He did consume beef but not the kind injected with hormones. He ate only unprocessed dairy products. He teethed on frozen kidney. When Todd was one month old, Marv was already working on his son's physical conditioning. He stretched his hamstrings. Pushups were next. Marv invented a game in which Todd would try to lift a medicine ball onto a kitchen counter. Marv also put him on a balance beam. Both activites grew easier when Todd learned to walk. There was a football in Todd's crib from day one. "Not a real NFL ball," says Marv. "That would be sick; it was a stuffed ball."
Meanwhile, Todd's mother, Trudi, worked on the region above the neck by playing classical music (lots of Bach and Beethoven) and jazz (plenty of George Shearing and Woody Herman) in his room. Cartoons were forbidden because they were too violent. Instead, Trudi tuned her son in to old movies like Hitchcock and Agatha Christie thrillers to spark his intellect. She dragged Todd along with his sister, Traci, now 21, to museums. To this day, when Trudi makes an unexpected turn in the car, Todd says, "Uh-oh, Mom's taking us to another museum."
Eventually Marv started gathering experts to work on every aspect of Todd's physical condition—speed, agility, strength, flexibility, quickness, body control, endurance, nutrition. He found one to improve Todd's peripheral vision. He enlisted a throwing coach and a motion coach and a psychologist. These days 13 different experts are donating their time in the name of science...
..."I think I'm a tyrant," says Marv. "But I think you have to be to succeed. The best thing about it is my relationship with my son. We wanted to have the healthiest possible mom and the healthiest possible child. It's fanatical, but I don't know if you can be a great success without being a fanatic." He pauses and then continues, "I suppose it was a little overdone."
Maybe. Todd has obviously not had a normal childhood, but he's a surprisingly normal teenager for one who has never permitted beer or even Coca-Cola to cross his lips...
http://www.si.com/vault/1988/02/22/117185/bred-to-be-a-superstar-todd-marinovich-was-groomed-from-infancy-to-be-a-top-notch-quarterback