Drugs, Sports and Society
Friday, May 15, 2009 16:50
It appears that the entire sporting world has subscribed to the Lindsay Lohan school of career-scarring substance abuse.
Drugs in sports are nothing new, but recently we’ve been subject to an alarming upswing. In just the last two weeks the following headlines have disgraced the front pages of the sports sheets:
- Manny Ramirez tested positive for a MLB-banned women’s fertility drug commonly used to boost testosterone production by steroid users.
- Jeremy Mayfield tested positive for a drug which NASCAR refuses to name; the AP reports that the drug is not a performance-enhancer, thus implying it is a narcotic or controlled substance.
- Former Buffalo Bill Bruce Smith was arrested and charged with driving under the influence.
- St. Louis Cardinals minor league pitcher Ken Maiques suspended for a violation of the minor league drug program.
And that’s not to mention Michael Phelps’s return to the pool after his bong-pipe fiasco and Alex Rodriguez’s first regular season games post his steroid revelations. No matter what the sport, no matter what kind of drug, someone, the truth is coming out.
While all of us sports fans can only shake our heads disappointedly and grumble about the ego, greed and stupidity driving these players to illegally enhance–or in some cases–waste their god-given talents, perhaps we should be looking at matters from another perspective. The foibles of our athletes, just like those of other celebrities, are representative of the ills in society at large. The stage on which they occur, under tight public scrutiny of celebrity-driven media, only magnifies their specific abuses, but the root causes are everywhere.
Case in point: the corporate greed that has brought our global financial system to its knees.
This is by no means an excuse. What these athletes are doing is wrong by any and all measures. I just ask, until society as a whole takes responsibility for itself and cures its attitudes, its mindsets, its motivations, are we fooling ourselves by expecting these so-called heroes to be any better? Emblematic as they are, their failures should shed light on the issues everywhere around us, instead of causing us to ask what is wrong with these people who have everything?
ernessa
says:
May 21st, 2009 at 1:44 am
I agree! I was thinking about this yesterday, and it seems like a lot of what is wrong w/ our financial systems is also what's wrong with sports. The need to not only make a lot of money but make more money than you did last year has driven execs to make decisions that they shouldn't have made and take risks that they shouldn't have taken. Same goes for sports. Imagine what would happen if you had to get better and better at your job despite aging, and with no room for "bad seasons." I wonder if our priorities are messed up when it comes to this. I hope that I am becoming a better writer as I get older, but if my worth and talent were completely monetized, I wonder what kind of effed up decisions I would make in order to assure my continued success. Would I stop taking chances, never try anything new, pander to the lowest common denominator, take "writing enhancers?"
Interestingly enough, I was reading about Adderall the other day, and I got very concerned for my unborn child. Think about it, this ADHD drug allows you to concentrate for hours, focus all of your intelligence on one task, AND not procrastinate. Doesn't that sound dreamy? Yes, it's illegal, and yes, it has bad side effects, but if you don't get caught and if everyone else in college or high school is on it, wouldn't you be tempted to try it out? No wonder so many college kids are abusing it nowanddays.
One more point, and then I'll stop: My best friend once wrote a paper on a sports study that asked a broad spectrum of athletes if they'd be willing to give up ten years of their lives if that were the side-effect of a pill that would allow them to win the highest honor in their respective sport. The vast majority of them said Yes. How do you fight against that?