(CBS 8) - The latest issue of GQ magazine is revealing new details about the life and death of Junior Seau. Friends and former teammates of the Charger great spoke to the magazine about Seau's tragic downfall.
Junior Seau was a San Diego icon, and one of the greatest linebackers in NFL history, but according to Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon, "He had never been diagnosed with a concussion. That tells me he wasn't reporting what was wrong with him."
In May 2012, Seau shot himself in the chest at his Oceanside home. Following the suicide, his brain showed evidence of CTE, a neurological disease linked to concussions.
Although known as a gentle soul off the field, the article in GQ describes a desperate man who following retirement began drinking heavily, abusing pills and gambling.
"We landed in Vegas one time and immediately, within hours, he won 800-something thousand dollars. Not even two hours later, he comes back up and hits the table with a glass and starts cussing. I was like, 'Please don't tell me…' he had lost it all," friend Jay Michael Auwae told GQ
Seau's friends say depression and insomnia lead to bad business decisions that Seau would try to make up financially by gambling...
"I knew that what he was doing in Vegas was going to end only one way, and I thought it would be humiliating for him. I tried to talk him out of it. He didn't listen," Seau's financial advisor Dale Yahnke told GQ.
In 2010, hours after being arrest on suspicion of domestic violence, Seau drove off a cliff in Carlsbad, claiming he had fallen asleep at the wheel.
"It wasn't an accident. I've been there lots of times, and it just doesn't work," former teammate Mark Walczak told the magazine.
Two years after his suicide, Yahnke says "I think deep down, Junior was lonely."
"He didn't tell me he owned a gun. I do know this: he had probably never, ever fired a gun in his life before. He somehow lost his mind," Walczak said.
The September issue of GQ magazine hit newsstands nationwide Tuesday.
