Is Tiger Woods the next Mike Richards? | Sam Donnellon
Tiger Woods looks to be the latest athlete to be affected by painkillers.
HERE'S WHAT happens to me lately when it comes to our fallen heroes in sports. I quickly morph from any feelings of judgment, disdain and pity into empathy, understanding more than I have in the past how their once idyllic lives could devolve so quickly into Greek tragedy.
It starts and ends with drugs. Not the recreational use of them, although that's how much of the hockey world still views Mike Richards' rapid slide, and how much of our world originally assumed when Tiger Woods' swollen-faced arrest photo from Monday morning accompanied a story that indicated he was pulled over on a DUI charge in Jupiter, Fla.
Too much of enjoying the good life. It's an easy and easily understandable narrative, one that encapsulated Woods' notorious marital infidelities and earlier car mishaps. We all saw the photos of Richards out and about the town while he was here. We are all now well-versed about the "Dry Island" contract promoted by then coach Peter Laviolette that he and Jeff Carter refused to sign.
But when Richards played the entire 2008-2009 season with two bum shoulders - each of which required surgery afterward, he was not enjoying the good life. He was playing through some trying pain, at the ripe old age of 24.
Here's an excerpt from an NHL.com story at the time:
" . . . He used anti-inflammatory medication to keep the pain down.
"There were certain days that were a lot worse than other days," Richards said Wednesday. "But it wasn't like I was in agony or throbbing pain. It was more of like achy and sore. Like if you slept on it bad, you would wake up sore. But it wasn't like it was really bad pain where I couldn't bear it or anything."
We lauded his toughness back then, just as we marveled over Woods when he gutted out that 2008 U.S. Open victory despite what was later revealed to be stress fractures in his tibia and knee - injuries that occurred because he rushed back from a knee surgery earlier in the season.
What a competitor, said most of us then. It's the inherent and unavoidable hypocrisy that so often accompanies our admiration of great athletes, and of great athletic achievements. Bite one bullet as they carve the other from your leg, the way heroes from those old westerns used to do it. So what if they needed a little whiskey to ease the pain.
Oxycodone is no whiskey. It is a highly addictive opiate that can lead to the use of recreational drugs. It has been linked to the overdose and suicide deaths of former professional athletes. Not to mention a shortening of careers like those of Richards, who, at 32, is no longer in the NHL.
According to a police report obtained by the Palm Beach Post, Woods registered 0.0 on an alcohol breathalyzer administered after officers found him asleep with his car running (and the car stopped but still in drive) Monday morning.
In the original police report, one officer listed as medical conditions four painkillers with notable side effects: "soloxex," "vicodin," "torix," and "viox."
A few of the spellings are slightly off, but since Woods later blamed his condition on a reaction to prescription painkillers, and the four above have side effects that include drowsiness, fatigue, confusion and depressed breathing, it is likely his condition traced to one or more of the above.
Turox is a pain-killing, swelling-relief drug that is illegal in the U.S. Vioxx, which was once prescribed to reduce swelling, was discontinued in 2004 after being linked to heart trouble. Vicodin is the brand name for a combo painkiller that mixes hydrocodone, an opiate, with acetaminophen, the active ingredient of Tylenol.
It may also explain why he would even get in a car in the first place, why he originally said, when an officer asked him where he was, that he was coming from Los Angeles and heading toward San Diego and that he was behind the wheel because he, "Just likes to to drive."
He was a wreck, his 2015 Mercedes, with two flat tires and dented, was a wreck. And his career - well, that's not going so well either.
And it all seems to be - literally - killing him.
At the ripe old age of 41.
Provoking, inevitably, the cautionary tales about too much of the good life, of taking things for granted, ignoring the darker roots to their demise:
The win-it-all-costs mentality that led to Richards trying to smuggle oxycodone over the Canadian border two Junes ago.
And the telescopic drive that has made a wreck of Woods' body, and now threatens to do the same to his mind.
@samdonnellon
Columns: ph.ly/Donnellon