Former Steelers' Quarterback Charlie Batch Opens Up About Smoking Marijuana After 2012 Retirement And The NFL's Shocking Use Of Pain Killers

Former Pittsburgh Steelers' long-time backup quarterback, Charlie Batch recently opened up about how he began using marijuana after his playing career to relieve the pain he had to suffer through everyday. Batch took the stage at the Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference in April of 2023 to explain how marijuana has helped him in his post-playing career by relieving him of pain and substituting his use of various pain medications. 

Charlie Batch's Steelers' Career 

Batch was drafted in 1998 by the Detroit Lions. He played for the Lions for four seasons before signing with the Steelers prior to the 2002 NFL season. Batch would be the Steelers' backup for the next 11 years. For the most part, he would fill in whenever Ben Roethlisberger was injured and for three of the games during Roethlisberger's four-game suspension to start the 2010 season. 

Batch won two Super Bowls as the Steelers' backup quarterback and was a fan favorite throughout his career with the Steelers due to him growing up in Pittsburgh. Batch ended up deciding to retire after the 2012 season and, at the time, he was the second longest tenured quarterback in Steelers' history only behind Terry Bradshaw. 

Batch Discusses Pain Killer Use In The NFL

When Batch spoke at the Cannabis Conference back in April, he explained the pain that NFL players have to go through, especially someone who had a career that spanned 15 seasons. He also opened up about how professional teams will give you medicine for the pain to the point where players will no longer be bothered due to the use of pain killers. 

"One of the issues that we were talking about was opioids and how you're dealing with pain management. If you're dealing with a professional team, they continue to just pump out pain medications. It's just Toradol shots after Toradol shots and eventually you get addicted to pain." 

This is a problematic issue for the NFL. If teams are able to distribute these different pain killers and get players used to the pain, this can be detrimental for players' overall health. Especially when they have to find a way to cope with this issue once they decide to retire and still have to find a way to deal with the pain they experience. 

Batch Opens Up About Marijuana Use

Many NFL players have said that since they stepped away from the game, they have began smoking weed to deal with the pain their football career caused them and some have even said they have smoked weed during the season and before games. 

Former Steelers' Le'Veon Bell and Ryan Shazier have each opened up about their marijuana use with Bell saying he used to smoke weed before games on the Steel Here podcast and Shazier starting his own brand line with Organic Remedies. Batch had said during the conference that following his playing career he was taking six to eight Aleve pills a day to deal with his pain, which began to worry his wife.

"I'm nervous. At this pace you're not going to have a kidney or a liver in 10 years," his wife, LaTasha said to him.

This is when Batch and his wife began doing their own research into alternative options to deal with the pain. They then discovered what different marijuana products could do to help relieve his pain. It seemed like a much healthier substitute than various pain medications. 

"My wife went out to California, educated herself, spent about a week out there and came back and said I want you to try these products."

Batch explained the issues he was still experiencing while taking pain medications before he and his wife began researching marijuana products and how much better and healthier his body felt after he made the transition from pain medications to marijuana. 

"I was having issues walking, sleeping, and it was just irritable, and when I started that transition I started seeing my body react in different ways that it had never reacted before."

Batch finally found himself some pain relief in a much healthier form by using different marijuana products. Batch was a 15 year NFL veteran, but he did not see the field nearly as much as other players who have played that many seasons. This can mean there are countless current NFL players and former players dealing with even more pain than Batch who are struggling to find a healthy way to cope with their pain, who might be hurting themselves more by taking pain killers.