Ricky Williams Returns

By: Rebecca Leung

The real reason he left, he told 60 Minutes, was to avoid the public humiliation over news that he had just failed a drug test, his third failed drug test.

"All right," Williams said. "Here's what happened, OK? The thing that I had the most trouble with was that after — after you fail your, your third test then it becomes public knowledge that, that you failed the test. And that's the one thing that I couldn't deal with at the time: People knowing that I smoke marijuana."

The problem with failing his third NFL drug test was that it would be made public.

"That was my biggest fear in my whole entire life," the athlete responded. "I was scared to death of that."

So, rather than face the music and the media about his failed drug test, he quit football and ran away, far, far away, to Australia, where he lived in a tent community that cost him just $7 a day.

"In my tent," he said, "I had about 30 books, and every morning I'd wake up about 5 in the morning, and I'd take my flashlight and I'd read for a couple of hours."

Books about what?

"Everything from nutrition to — to Buddhism to Jesus, to try to figure out, you know, what am I? What am I? So I just kept reading and reading. And couldn't figure out what I was, but I learned a lot."

It was there he learned about that ancient healing science from India called Ayurveda.

"It's using nature to heal yourself," he says, "to put yourself in balance … It's a journey that people spend their whole lives on."

What's balance?

"To talk about balance, it's easier to talk about what's out of balance," Williams said. "And I think anytime that you have any disease, and disease meaning lack of ease, lack of flow … dis-ease. So any time there's disease, you're out of balance, whether it's jealousy, anger, greed, anxiety, fear."

And Williams has, he believes, experience with all of the above.

"I've had a little bit of all of it, yeah," he says. "Most people have."

So last fall, a year ago, he enrolled at the California College of Ayurveda. Freed from the structured life of the NFL, he immersed himself in the search for his soul.

"Playing in the National Football League, you're told, you know, where to be, when to be there, what to wear, how to be there," Williams says. "Being able to step away from that, I have an opportunity to look deeper into myself and look for what's real."

Massage, 60 Minutes learned, was just part of his training to become a holistic masseur. Ayurvetic healing techniques also include aroma therapy, music, and special foods. And while he thoroughly enjoyed his sublime studies, he remained unapologetic for deserting his teammates and the fans, and destroying their season.

"When would it have been OK for me to stop playing football?" Williams says. "When my knees went out? When my shoulders went out? When I had too many concussions? When is it OK? … I'm just curious. I'm just curious, because I don't understand. When is it OK to not play football anymore?"

A year ago, Wallace asked Williams this: "Do you care about what people think who are looking in … right now?"

And Williams said, "No."

Then Wallace read to him an excerpt of a column written by Paul Attner of The Sporting News: "Ricky's always been one of the most selfish, unpredictable, purposely bizarre and more-than-slightly-off-kilter athletes. He doesn't care how his behavior might affect anyone around him. It has always been about Ricky."

Wallace asked Williams for his reaction to that.

Said Williams: "Half of it's accurate. But how could I expect him, if I don't even know who he is, to know anything really about me?"

After reading Attner's quote aloud himself, the athlete added: "He got the name right. No, I mean, I am unpredictable, but who's — what is supposed to be predictable?"

Wallace presented a quote from another columnist: "To some, Williams is a selfish quitter. To others, he's a hero who took his job and shoved it, leaving a brutal game before it brutalized him. To close friends, Williams is a deep-thinking free spirit who despised the stereotypes that came with football, fame and fortune."

Williams' reaction: "That's a little more accurate, yeah."

So who is William's hero, if any?

"I'd say Bob Marley, probably," he says.

Bob Marley, the legendary reggae star from Jamaica, inspired Williams to wear dreadlocks for years, and he and his hero have something else in common: "He smoked a lot of marijuana, yeah ... I have done the same."

"Could you pass an NFL drug test today?" Wallace asked him last December, and Williams said, "No."