Eryk Anders took the water bottle and shoved it in his pants. No, it wasn’t filled with water. It was filled with urine.
The method had worked a few times already. “It’s a foolproof plan,” Anders thought as he chuckled to himself.
Later that day, Anders laughed again, this time externally, as he told his friends how he circumvented the system to pass another drug test, using his buddy’s clean urine.
“While they were filling out the paperwork in there, I’d just dump it in there, and I could essentially do whatever I wanted,” Anders recently told MMA Junkie. “I’m not going to get caught now. Takes a lot of balls. But it’s something I laughed about. I thought it was funny, like ‘haha, f*cking use so-and-so’s piss.'”
‘Partying, drinking and doing party drugs’
While it’s less funny now, Anders understands the position he was in. He was a star football player at the University of Alabama. He was the man. Everyone knew him. He was Eryk “F*cking” Anders.
But Eryk “F*cking” Anders had already been caught once by then-head coach Nick Saban’s drug tests. It was just for weed, but Anders still had to go through a drug education course. A second failure would mean continuing care. A third failure would mean a 21-day inpatient program. He couldn’t have that interfering with his life.
As hard as Anders worked on the football field, never missing a practice or even being late, he might have partied even harder off it.
“I was just partying, drinking, and doing party drugs,” Anders said. “Molly, acid, ecstasy, you name it. I wasn’t under a bridge with a needle in my arm smoking crack or nothing like that. I was just out all night, doing all that stuff, just drinking, smoking, doing all that stuff.”
Anders remembers the lifestyle was fun. Even now, if he were to resume that lifestyle, Anders still recognizes the enjoyment that would come from it.
But at 37, Anders also wonders what he could’ve been. Even as much of a beast as he was as key player in on a national championship Crimson Tide team, what if substance abuse was the barrier between him and NFL notoriety?
“I never missed practice,” Anders said. I was never late to practice. I always trained hard, but if we were only given 75 to 80 percent of what you could give, could you give 100 percent going into the fight? I don’t care what nobody says. You can’t get the most out of training hungover, you know?”
“… My dream was to always play in the NFL and do all that good stuff. So now, I’m like, ‘Yo, how good could I have been?’ Even then, I ask myself that, even since I’ve been fighting. I was like, I think I like fighting more than I like playing football, so whatever anyway. I’m just kind of glad I didn’t make it. At the end of the day, I could’ve lived out a childhood dream for at least a little bit.”
An easy decision
Outside of hangovers and missed-out potential, Anders never had a real reason to stop since he started at age 13. But when he reached a fork in the road of life, Anders found it an easy choice to pick family over substances.
Anders remembers the exact moment he put his priorities in order as he stood in the stands watching his alma mater play. Once back home, he made good on the promise he made to himself. From there, things became easier.
“You start realizing all the good stuff that’s happening as a result of having a clear mind: winning fights, prospering financially, investing my money,” Anders said. “Just a lot of good things. Then finally I got custody of my kid, and that was just a nail in the coffin. Because she’s forever going to try to catch me slipping and try to get him back. So it’s up to me to do the right thing and do what I need to do to continue to have a better life over here and all that good stuff.
“… I love my kid more than anything. I’d literally do anything. If that’s what I’ve got to do, then it’s not a hard ask I think to be home being that you’re not getting nothing from nobody out there, than what you get from your kid.”
‘Best foot forward’ at UFC 309
While the motivation was for his son, Anders has been positively impacted in other facets of life outside of family. Drug-free for a year, Anders feels like a new fighter and is eager to prove it to those who doubt the small sample size of non-alcoholic appearances.
“Half my losses are super close fights that, if I was able to push harder in training and things like that, I get those wins,” Anders said. “You look at my last fight with Jamie Pickett, I think two of those rounds were 10-8 rounds. For me, that’s the proof right there.”
Saturday’s UFC 309 might be the biggest fight of his life to date. Anders (16-8 MMA, 8-8 UFC) competes at Madison Square Garden against former UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman (16-7 MMA, 12-7 UFC). It’s a dream come true.
“I had this opportunity when I fought (Lyoto) Machida,” Anders said. “I fumbled that. I’ve definitely got my best foot forward to go out there and get this.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 309.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Party’s over: UFC’s Eryk Anders reinvented after ending 14 years of substance abuse
