When Florida State quarterback Wyatt Sexton went nuts in streets of Tallahassee, I thought it was a funny story. Pretty clearly, the dude was whacked out on some ‘shrooms or acid and developed himself a God complex (and a son-of-God complex as well). The one nagging thought that kept me from being too flippant about the whole thing was the possibility that the kid had developed some schizophrenia. College is a common age for that sort of thing and having seen a guy in college flip out from that (well, that and copious amounts of weed), I’m a bit sensitive. Athletes getting stupid on drugs is funny. Going crazy – not so much.
Well, the good folks at FSU made it very clear that drugs were not Sexton’s problem, that it was something medical. So I assumed it was mental illness and left it alone.

Then last week they announced that Sexton’s wild, shirtless romp through the night was caused not by LSD or funky fungus, but by Lyme Disease. Lyme Disease! That’s great. No worries that no reputable description of the disease mentions anything about causing craziness. Instead, they trotted out a self-proclaimed expert on the disease, a general practitioner named Dr. S. Chandra Swami who said that Sexton was suffering from “neuropsychiatric deficits” from the disease. BTW, Swami has apparently never published any peer-reviewed papers on his research on Lyme disease.
The really interesting thing about this is that it now turns out that infectious diseases have been discovered to be the cause of previous FSU QB wackiness. Chris Rix, the good Christian soldier who liked to park in handicap spots, alienate teammates and skip exams? He wasn’t just a colossal hypocrite, he had Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
Dan “Mr Wizard” Kendra? When he blew himself up first with steroids and then his home chemistry set, that was due to a previously unnoticed case of Avian Flu.
Remarkably, medical researchers have explained some other, more notable cases of odd behavior. If you’ve seen “Helter Skelter,” you may believe that insanity and large amounts of psychedelic drugs drove Charles Manson to lead his followers to murder. You’d be wrong. Nope, it was actually the direct result of Gingivitis.
Sirhan Sirhan? Measles.
Pol Pot? Diverticulitis
It all just makes so much more sense now.