Zac Easter’s teenage years revolved around football. In an extract from his latest book, Reid Forgrave looks at how the sport has impacted one family
Zac Easter was 24 years old when, in December 2015, he took his father’s shotgun and turned it on his own chest. For years, Zac had been in a downward spiral that he blamed on the many concussions he’d suffered while playing football from youth through high school in small-town Iowa. He came to believe – correctly – that he was suffering from the same degenerative brain disease that had pushed many longtime NFL players to suicide.
After he died, his parents found Zac’s journal as well as an autobiography he had written that detailed his demise. The story of Zac Easter is a deeply painful tragedy of a young man’s descent, but it’s also a story about vital topics in today’s America: About parenting, about violence, about mental health, about toxic versus traditional masculinity - about what it means to be a man in 21st-century America.
From Love, Zac by Reid Forgrave ©2020 by Reid Forgrave. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
from NFL | The Guardian https://ift.tt/32axP8L
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