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Touchline • Issue 15 • 9
he cocaine gave me that adrenaline rush,” said
Josh Hamilton in a 2008 interview for Esquire. “It
was easy to keep doing it when I was away from
baseball.”
Hamilton, then in his early 20s, was a former Minor League
outfielder struggling with an addiction to drugs and alcohol.
Once a shining prospect to the game, he squandered both his
money and his rookie season in the Major Leagues by missing
practices in order to get high. It wasn’t until his grandmother
staged an intervention that Hamilton was able to get back on
track and return to the field. Today, he credits baseball with
helping him overcome his addiction.
“Not [playing] -- not hearing that crowd build up, and then the
play happens and they erupt -- that’s why I kept going back to it
and kept going back to it and kept going back to it,” he explained.
Without the rush provided by baseball, he sought a rush by other
means.
His words merely confirm something that athletes have known
all along: Sports can offer a valuable alternative to drugs and
alcohol. Many all-star players have come from poor backgrounds
and bad neighbourhoods, yet with dedication to their favourite
game, they were able to resist the cycles of poverty and addiction
that first led their families astray.
Everyone knows, of course, that football isn’t just football.
Hockey isn’t just sticks and pucks. Sporting events are major
cultural touchstones across the globe, and actually participating
in athletics can do everything from improve your cardiovascular
health to prolong your life expectancy. What’s less known,
however, is that playing a sport can also reduce your risk of
addiction and offset the chances of you needing to attend a
California opiate and heroin recovery program for example
further down the line. Not only do they offer innumerable
benefits both physically and psychologically, but they can help
you steer clear of negative influences or break free of the ones
that have already taken hold. It’s all about. . .
No one plays a sport for the “I participated” ribbon. They want
to win, they want to become famous, they want to improve their
talents and dazzle the crowds until they’re the next Michael
Jordan or David Beckham. All of these things require clear,
achievable goals and the discipline to make a plan and see it
through. They’re all about skill building and patience, two things
fundamentally incompatible with drugs.
Drug addicts aren’t, by nature, healthy people. Addiction eats
away at the body. The one silver lining is that everyone knows
that; everyone has suffered through at least one health class
filled with gruesome pictures of meth addicts and heroine
T
CHANGING LIVES
& INSPIRATION:
THERE’S MORE TO SPORTS THAN WINNING
BY EVE PEARCE
GOALS
HEALTH