Ex-Cardinals tackle Luis Sharpe is clean but fighting 2nd battle

Luis Sharpe is preaching as he’s talking, which shouldn’t be much of a surprise because that’s what he does these days, sharing his testimony with church congregations in Detroit, where he lives, and around the country.

He talks about addiction and jail time, relapses and redemption. Even in an interview, it feels like there’s a practiced sense to his words, not in a bad way, but reflective of a sermon he’s told countless times.

“I’m doing well,” he says. “I feel a sense of purpose now. I feel more significant than I ever did when I was playing professional football. My life is better today. I tell people all the time, ‘What I thought was my greatest curse has turned into my greatest blessing.’”

It’s a story Sharpe once thought he would never tell. It’s become a story he’s eager to tell.

Soon after the Cardinals arrived in the Valley in 1988 Sharpe became one of the team’s more recognizable players. He was a Pro Bowl left tackle in 1988 and ’89 and a smart, personable family man who was fluent in Spanish as well as English (he was born in Cuba) and spent much of his down time doing volunteer work.

“Personable. Articulate. Bright. Educated. Family oriented,” former Cardinals director of public relations Paul Jensen told me for a 2011 article I did on Sharpe for the Arizona Republic. “He seemed to be the total package. He was a go-to guy for anything we needed, whether it was a media interview, a community appearance or to appear on a local broadcast.”

Underneath that façade, however, Sharpe slowly was becoming a crack cocaine addict. In 1992, the Mesa Tribune reported that Glendale police had linked Sharpe to cocaine purchases from an indicted dealer. It was the first sign that Sharpe was living a double life, NFL star and devoted husband and father in public, in private a drug user who would become estranged from his family and get shot twice while cruising for drugs.

By 1995, his 13-year career, including seven seasons with the Cardinals, was over and Sharpe had moved out of his home into a Tempe hotel, his life devoted to his addiction. One day, former teammate Eric Swann showed up at Sharpe’s hotel room and offered to help. Sharpe declined.

“I wasn’t ready to be talked to by anybody,” Sharpe told the Phoenix New Times in 1996. “I just wanted to find me a crackhead woman, check in at some fleabag joint, smoke some crack, watch some porno and get after it.”

In November 1995, former teammates Roy Green and Larry Lee, worried about Sharpe’s decline, essentially kidnapped Sharpe, wrapping him in duct tape and driving him to the Betty Ford Clinic in Palm Springs, Calif.

Sharpe stayed at the clinic for a couple of days and then, desperate for another hit, walked out, hailed a taxi and drove back to Phoenix. The fare: $550.

Over the years, Sharpe was convicted of nine felonies related to his addiction. He was in and out of jail, unable to shake the lure of the pipe. In 2002, Sharpe, after being released, began preaching the gospel at the Salvation Army Rehabilitation in south-central Phoenix. He said his life was starting over.

Less than two years later he was back behind bars.

Five years ago, Sharpe, 59, made a decision. He could no longer stay in Arizona. He moved to Detroit, where he was raised and still has family.

“I just had to get away from old playmates and old playgrounds,” he said.

He also had to escape the place where his daughter, Leah, was shot to death in 2007 in an apparent drug-related incident. Sharpe’s ex-wife, Kathi, told me Leah had turned to men twice her age trying to fill a need for a father figure in her life.

“Being in that area, running into certain people, neighborhoods, the heartache from losing my daughter there, there were a lot of things I needed to get away from,” Sharpe said.

Sharpe said he’s been clean and sober for more than four years. He’s come to understand, through his sobriety, how his identity as a physically superior, macho professional athlete contributed to his inability to beat his addiction.

“I always had the mentality of, ‘I’ll find a way to come up with the victory.’ I had that mentality in my own personal life as well,” he said. “I had to make some adjustments and admit to myself that I’m alone, I’m weak, that I need to reach out to other people to support me. I had to make some changes in terms of my thinking to get to this point.

“That’s the biggest problem for athletes. They have to surrender to win and that’s not what they do. I had to recognize I don’t have all the answers and that it’s OK to reach out for help and to be honest with yourself by saying, ‘I have character flaws.’”

Sharpe has come to peace with his past. In his testimony he tells people being an addict isn’t a moral failure. Addicts, he said, need to understand they’re not bad people. They simply need help.

“My message is that they can stop using substances and live a different life,” Sharpe said.

Sharpe has done just that. Now, however, he’s fighting a different battle.

Sharpe first noticed it a couple of years ago. His short-term memory wasn’t as sharp as it used to be. He started having constant headaches. He believes the symptoms, whatever may be the cause — chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) can only be formally diagnosed after an autopsy — are a direct result of the thousands of head-on collisions he had during his days at UCLA to his 13-year career in the NFL.

“I’ve probably had an innumerable amount of undiagnosed concussions,” he said. “I remember we used to use our head as weapons. We were taught to get your head in there. If you didn’t do it, you were seen as less of a man and weak. We did a lot more hitting in practice than they do now, too, and in games, they’d give you smelling salts, ask you what day of the week it was and if you answered right it was, ‘Get back out there.’”

Although Sharpe willingly opens up about his addiction, he’s reluctant to share details of his cognitive decline. It’s embarrassing, he said, adding that talking about it can send him into a depressive spiral. He sees a psychologist to help him come to grips with the changes in his life.

Among them: Sharpe said he can’t hold down a full-time job because it’s difficult to focus. He’s turned over payment of his monthly bills to family members because he’s worried he’ll forget when they’re due. He avoids, if he can, casual conversations with strangers.

“What’s really embarrassing is sometimes you’ll be having a conversation and you find yourself losing your train of thought,” Sharpe said. “You’ll have something you want to say and it completely leaves your mind and you’re stuck there looking stupid.

“I just do the best I can on a daily basis.”

Sharpe said he’s scared about what the future holds because by definition a cognitive decline is only going to get worse, not better. He’s trying to prepare but at the same time, “I don’t want to call it an eventuality because I’ll speak it into existence.”

So he fights. Until the COVID-19 crisis, he was at the gym nearly every day, trying to keep his body strong. He relies on his faith to keep his mind right. Every morning, he listens to a sermon, reads his Bible and meditates over scripture.

“My faith is what really gives me hope and keeps me going on all levels,” he said. “Really, I’m a different man. My negative sense of self has been replaced by a positive concern for others. I recognize today I have the life I have because I’ve overcome so many obstacles and so many challenges.

“God wanted me to go out and do exactly what I’m doing, to share my life with others, to tell them my fall from grace and say, ‘If I can stand before you today as a productive member of society, so can you.’ ”

He’s preaching. Again. Always.

Using, as long as he can, his weakness to help others become stronger.

(Photo of Luis Sharpe blocking against the Eagles in 1990: Mitchell Layton / Getty Images)