Former running back Herschel Walker, a Heisman Trophy winner who starred in the USFL before becoming a mostly average tailback in the NFL, discloses in his new book that he once played Russian roulette with a loaded gun.

Walker has dissociative identity disorder, which was formerly known as multiple personality disorder. 

“Make the jokes, that’s all well and good,” Walker said, according to USA Today.  “I’d just like to get it out there that [DID] isn’t a demon.  We’re not freaks, we’re not aliens, we’re people.  We’re people who need a life adjustment.”

Walker also says that he named his various alter egos:  Warrior, Sentry, General, Daredevil, Different Drummer, Enforcer.  (Apparently, Walker’s personalities also starred on American Gladiators.  Hey, he said to make the jokes.)

Walker was regarded during his playing days as an odd bird.  Once, in 1991, Walker’s wife found him in his car with the motor running and the garage door down.  Walker scoffed at rumors of a failed suicide attempt.  “I had been traveling,” he told the New York Times in 1995 as part of a profile that we highly recommend.  “I was tired.  I got into my car to take a drive, and I put a tape in the deck.  It was a song I liked.  I stopped to listen, leaned back, closed my eyes, and I guess I got too relaxed.  Man, it wasn’t anything like suicide.  It was just a good tape.”

More than a decade after his playing career ended, Walker is still best remembered for that October 1989 trade from the Cowboys to the Vikings, in which Minnesota got one man in exchange for a truckload of players and picks.  In hindsight, maybe it was a fair deal after all; the Vikes also got Warrior, Sentry, General, Daredevil, Different Drummer, and Enforcer.