This story appears in ESPN The Magazines November 14 Pain Issue. Subscribe today!BROKEN LEG, NO big deal: clean line through the tibia. A Chargers defensive back landed on me in the end zone. Didnt feel like much, just a little click in my ankle. I jogged to the sideline, and one of my Broncos teammates ran on for me. Theres always someone ready to run on.You OK? a coach asked. I think so, I said, and tried to walk it off, then sat on the bench. The game ended, and I limped across the field toward the locker room, my cleats scraping the concrete in the dilapidated bowels of San Diegos Qualcomm Stadium.Pain does not deter an NFL player. It lights the way.Every hit induces pain; the very essence of football is to submit your opponent through force. You learn very early that football is pain, that humans covered in metal and hard plastic colliding at top speed is going to hurt. But America rewards the boys who act as if it doesnt. So hit me again! Harder! Thats how you climb the football ladder: one lie at a time.The Broncos put me on injured reserve the day after I broke my leg, ending my 2004 season. Someone handed me a few bottles of pain meds and anti-inflammatories. Make sure you finish these, they said. They only work if you finish them. I was still a young player in the NFL and hadnt yet started to question the protocol, so I ate all of my pills like a good boy, and I disappeared into the dark world of rehab. This is how it starts. My team was on a playoff run. I was on Percocet.Next season, the team moved me to tight end and I had to gain weight: 25 pounds in three months. By June, I had my new body. I still knew how to run like a receiver, but my frame couldnt support the new torque. In training camp, I pulled my right hamstring, high up near my tailbone. No time to be hurt, though. I was trying to make the team at a new position.The pain was manageable, but it wasnt healing fast enough. I looked around the training room, littered with broken bodies and sad men hopping around on one foot, hooked up to machines. I had to get out of there. I expressed my anxiousness to the training staff -- and out came the needles. Two injections of Kenalog into the hamstring attachment, chased with another bottle of pills, and I was back on the field.I made the team, but the hamstring never fully healed and I spent most of the 2005 season on the bench. Come the next April, we were back at it. Pills before practice and a Toradol shot before every game. Toradol is a powerful anti-inflammatory that dulls the pain. It was our Superman juice. A crew of us lined up the night before games. We needed our capes.But nothing comes for free. We would all pay the price in the days that followed, and possibly for the rest of our lives. Toradol thins the blood. Players who filed class actions alleging misuse of the drug say it worsened the effect of concussions, among other things.In 2007, my groin muscle popped off the bone on a kickoff. Thwap! At the hospital, blood was extracted from my arm and put in a centrifuge. Then it was injected back into the muscle attachment, a procedure called platelet-rich plasma injection, or PRP. I went on injured reserve and -- just like that -- my season was over. Percocet again followed, along with his trusty sidekick, depression.But I was older now, and I knew what was waiting at the bottom of that bottle: addiction. I watched it eat up my friends. So instead of diving back into the black river of pills, I decided to exercise the green option. I took no pills. I only inhaled can-nabis, and I healed quickly and com-pletely, through optimistic rehabilitation sessions and $100 worth of marijuana. During practice in Week 12 of my sixth and final season, the same problematic hamstring finally popped off the bone. Thwap! Season over, career soon to follow. A month or so later, I was fired by the Broncos new head coach, Josh McDaniels. His assistant left a message on the answering machine at my parents house. There are no happy endings to this story.Im now seven years removed from football. Recently, I was at the gym and feeling good. Sometimes when Im lifting weights, the blood starts flowing and I taste it again: the Immortal Man.Well, the Immortal Man put 225 pounds on his back and did a set of squats. I felt something jam in the lower spine, and the next day I could hardly walk. Sleeping was difficult. No position was comfortable. I have scar tissue along my lower spine, compressed disks, swollen and inflamed, that will never go away.The difference now is that I get to choose how to treat it. No one hands me an orange bottle. No one puts a needle in my back. Pills might kill the pain, but cannabis reframes it, allowing a speedier recovery and a more complete understanding of the injury. The propensity to kill the pain outright has helped create a dishonest relationship between a players body and the game of football. I guess some would argue that the NFLs approach to pain management works. Look how popular the sport is, after all. Look at the revenue. But in the process, the NFL turns some of the strongest members of our species into pill-popping hospital patients.We shouldnt forget about the human beings -- our brothers, fathers, husbands and sons -- who breathe life into an industry fueled by pain and sacrifice. We all end up broken in the end.Nate Jacksons memoir, Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival From the Bottom of the Pile, was published in 2013. His latest book, Fantasy Man: A Former NFL Players Descent Into the Brutality of Fantasy Football, was published by HarperCollins in September. T. J. McConnell Jersey . 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SPREAD -- Cleveland 2-4, Cincinnati 1-4-1SERIES RECORD -- Bengals lead 46-39LAST MEETING -- Bengals beat Browns 37-3, Dec. 6, 2015LAST WEEK -- Browns lost to Titans 28-26; Bengals lost to Patriots 35-17AP PRO32 RANKING -- Browns No. 32, Bengals No. 19BROWNS OFFENSE -- OVERALL (19), RUSH (11), PASS (22).BROWNS DEFENSE -- OVERALL (29), RUSH (27), PASS (26t).BENGALS OFFENSE -- OVERALL (12), RUSH (24), PASS (6).BENGALS DEFENSE -- OVERALL (15), RUSH (20), PASS (17).STREAKS, STATS AND NOTES -- Bengals have won last three in series by lopsided scores: 30-0, 31-10, 37-3. Win in Cleveland last December was Cincinnatis most lopsided in series and matched biggest margin of victory by either team. Cleveland won 34-0 in 1987 when replacement players were used. ... Browns are off to worst start since 1999, when they went 0-7 as first-year expansion team under coach Chris Palmer. Bengals are off to worst start since 2010, when they finished 4-12. ... Rookie QB Cody Kessler threw for career-high 336 yards and two TDs at Tennessee. Trying to join Brandon Weeden as only Browns rookies to throw for 300 yards in back-to-back games. Weeden did it in 2012. ... WR Terrelle Pryor tried out for backup QB spot with Bengals last year. He leads Browns receivers with 33 catches for 413 yards and three TDs.dddddddddddd Hes also 5 for 9 for 41 yards without an interception, filling in as injuries depleted QB group. ... First of two games for Bengals vs. former offensive coordinators. Hue Jackson went to Browns in offseason. Bengals play Jay Grudens Washington team in London following week. ... Bengals Andy Dalton leads AFC with 1,757 yards passing, trailing Atlantas Matt Ryan (2,075) and Giants Eli Manning (1,788) for NFL lead. ... Dalton got sacked for safety in second half at New England. Hes been sacked 19 times, tied for second most in league. ... Bengals defense has allowed 14 TD passes overall, trailing Detroit (17) and Cleveland (16) for most in NFL. Last season, Bengals allowed only 18 TD passes in 16 regular-season games. ... LB Vontaze Burfict was fined $75,000 for stepping on Patriots RB LeGarrette Blount after Blount scored TD last Sunday. Burfict suffered ankle injury during practice Wednesday but is expected to play. ... Fantasy Tip: Dalton had career-best passer rating of 146.8 in win at Cleveland last December. In two games vs Browns last season, Dalton was 35 of 46 for 454 yards with five TDs, no interceptions and three sacks.---AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and http://twitter.com/AP-NFL ' ' '