The University of Alabama’s Collegiate Recovery and Intervention Services will cap its first year in operation with a new speaker series featuring one of the more polarizing NFL Draft prospects in the Super Bowl era.
Ryan Leaf, who was drafted No. 2 overall by the San Diego Chargers in 1998, will detail the struggles of his NFL career and the drug addiction that led to his incarceration and later recovery during “Vulnerable: A Conversation with Ryan Leaf,” at 2 p.m. Monday, April 23, at Great Hall in the Ferguson Center. The discussion is free and open to the public.
According to his biography, Leaf is “the voice for the recovery community,” and has shared his personal story of mental health issues and drug addiction across the country.
Dr. Gerard Love, executive director of CRIS, said Leaf’s message focuses on his unique recovery and the support he continues to receive from the people in his life, which aligns with the theme of the speaker series.
“We’re looking to bring in people who can share personal experiences with substance use and where they are with their lives as they pursue long-term abstinence-based recovery,” Love said. “We have an active collegiate recovery community on campus, so it helps anytime we can get someone who can come in and highlight recovery. But the second piece is to try and have some impact on the campus at large, so that people are better informed about the consequences of choices.”
Love said CRIS will hold one speaker event each year.
UA Collegiate Recovery Services merged with the Mpact program in Student Health to form CRIS at the start of the 2016-17 school year. CRIS is currently housed in South Lawn Office Building.
CRIS offers a variety of services and programming to student consumers and community members that are “crafted upon the department mission of recovery, unity and development” and adhere to the following wellness guidelines: spiritual, social, academic, nutritional, psychological, financial and career.
“My experience is, whenever you begin a conversation about the role substance use disorder plays with your peers, it doesn’t take long before you realize that other people in the room know people whose lives have been impacted by substance use,” Love said. “There’s a lot of stigma with substance use disorder, and we’re trying reduce that stigma and increase awareness. That’s what’s great about having Ryan Leaf come in – he had everything, had a dream life, so how could this happen to him? It can happen to anyone.”