Former UGA football player Scott Cochran behind Georgia's new effort to promote addiction recovery
Former Georgia Bulldog and longtime Alabama football staffer Scott Cochran is starting a new venture: advocating for recovery from addiction. He’s helping to launch a new national group based in Georgia.
Cochran resigned earlier this year after four seasons on UGA’s coaching staff as the special teams coordinator.
Now, the former strength and conditioning coach is speaking out about his years of personal experience with opioid addiction, his subsequent treatment and his ongoing recovery.
He’s also partnering with the nonprofit Georgia Council for Recovery to launch a new group called the American Addiction Recovery Association.
“I’m more excited about this than I was when Coach [Nick] Saban called me in 2007 to be his strength coach,” Cochran said at an event at the state Capitol.
The group’s mission includes fundraising and lobbying for more resources to prevent addiction, overdose and stigma, and promote treatment and recovery nationwide.
“I’ve been known as the fourth-quarter guy, right? Everything I’ve done is winning the fourth quarter. I want this to be the fourth quarter of this epidemic,” said Cochran.
A key initiative will be promoting the installation of kits containing opioid overdose-reversal medication naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, at businesses, government buildings, faith-based organizations and schools.
“People are dying in high schools every day,” Cochran said. “People are taking something they’re not supposed to take — it happens — and all of a sudden, there is fentanyl in it.”
Drug overdoses are a leading cause of death in the United States, and overdoses linked to the synthetic opioid fentanyl have also risen nationally and in Georgia.
While fatal overdoses dropped last year, the country saw 107,941 drug overdose deaths in 2022, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Georgia Council for Recovery advocate Jeff Breedlove said the American Addiction Recovery Association also plans to work directly with state lawmakers across the country to promote bipartisan legislative cooperation on addiction, mental health and recovery issues.
“So, we will work across the nation, we’ve already been building the connections, to see that every general assembly can launch an addiction and mental health-based caucus,” he said. “When that happens, it changes tone and the culture in that state Capitol.”
Breedlove said he planned to release more details about the group’s specific policy recommendations this fall.
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