On the prowl for pills, the big man with the shiny black loafers and fancy pickup truck broke into houses on the high plains of Montana.

When startled homeowners came upon him, he muttered something about being in the wrong residence, so sorry. And they wondered: Could this intruder really be the former N.F.L. quarterback, the Heisman Trophy finalist, the local kid paid $14 million before he tossed a single ball into opposition hands?

Yes, it was Ryan Leaf, police and prosecutors say — everybody’s All-American, arrested twice in the last week for burglary, theft and drug possession. See the mug shot: a familiar pose by now. The authorities say he turned predator toward Great Falls, the town that nurtured him on the way up and took him back a decade later, after he became one of the biggest busts in professional football.

The next address for Leaf, now 35, is likely to be prison, for parole violation. In 2008, he’d been granted his freedom instead of jail after pleading guilty to eight felonies in Texas, another state where a fleet-footed man with a football can do no wrong.

Getty ImagesRyan Leaf was arrested on April 12 in Great Falls, Mont.

When not stewing in a Montana cell, Leaf’s been out promoting his insipid new book, “596 Switch,” named for the last play he was going to run in his losing 1998 Rose Bowl effort — if only he’d been given a few more ticks of the clock. Just one more chance. In public, he extolled the new man, rehabbed and reborn. “My story has a positive ending to a negative experience,” he told Steve Kelley of the Seattle Times.

I never believed a word of it.

What do you call a coach who steals prescription drugs from his players, as Leaf did while tutoring quarterbacks at Texas A&M during one of many second chances?

What do you call a hometown hero who steals from the neighbors and friends who idolized him?

What do you call a man who risks being shot dead in his tracks in a gun-happy state, just to get his hands on another bottle of oxycodone?

A junkie, of course. And Leaf is the kind of junkie who shows all the odious traits — the convincing lies, the please, baby, please, you-gotta-believe-me vows and, worst of all, the vanity of his “recovery.”

Unless someone invents a cure for the dopamine-deprived, addiction will always will be with us. More than 23 million Americans need treatment for drug and alcohol abuse, and barely 10 percent of those tortured souls get that opportunity. Leaf was given his full rehab, his freedom, his book contract, because, you know, he doesn’t look like a criminal.

But perhaps it’s time to lock up Leaf and let somebody who’s done jail time but can’t throw a football have a shot at redemption.

Ryan Leaf in August 1998.

We’re smarter about junk now than we were during the fruitless War on Drugs. At that battle’s peak, more than 20 years ago, moralists like the former drug czar William Bennett warned of society’s being overrun by crackheads. Well-off whites caught sniffing cocaine got sabbaticals in luxury spas. Poor people taking the same drug in different form went to prison.

Back then, it was about race and fear and ignorance. The crack epidemic leveled off, faded, as these things do. But the American gulag filled up, with nonviolent drug offenders’ accounting for nearly a fourth of all people in prison.

And then, a different kind of addict appeared: the celebrity junkie, without hoodie or a hint of menace. Chris Herren, a white basketball phenom, went from the Boston Celtics to scrounging around bus stations in the middle of the night looking for heroin. Rush Limbaugh admitted that he had a problem with pills.

(Even Limbaugh’s hero, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, is a pill popper, according to a new book, “Inside the Circus,” by Mike Allen and Evan Thomas. The authors say Perry was on prescription pain meds — legal, and certainly no indication of addiction — while undergoing self-immolation in the presidential debates. A Perry spokesman has denied the story, but the authors have solid journalistic credentials, and one detail, Perry singing, “I’ve been working on the raiiiillllroad, all the live-long day” while relieving himself, rings true.)

Here’s my takeaway: Drug addicts are all alike in one sense, whether black or white, rich or poor, gifted or stupid, except some of them get more chances than others.

Leaf was pampered and insulated, and felt entitled from the get-go. Flush with cash after having been picked second over all in the 1998 NFL draft (Peyton Manning was first), Leaf returned to his alma mater, Washington State University, at homecoming. He shouted “I could own you!” to somebody in a bar. Classy.

To his credit, he now says he was a jerk for much of his life, calling himself “an egomaniac with a self-esteem problem,” an apt oxymoron.

But I’ve had enough, thank you, of fallen celebrities sharing stories of the road back. “I’m using the tools I’ve learned to move forward rather than backward & will B open 2 talking about the details in days 2 come,” Leaf said in a Twitter message last Saturday, just before the second arrest.

His message proves only one thing: that he doesn’t seem to have taken an English composition class during his days as B.M.O.C. In books, at the least, he might have learned something about life.