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The Hellitorial: Drugs Can Be Good For Sports

May 29, 2008, 7:00 PM UTC

Welcome to The Hellitorial. In this space, once a week, Spencer Hall will defend otherwise indefensible things. These posts may upset your delicate sensibilities, so try to remain calm. Enjoy.

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â†µâ†µDeacon Jones, NFL sackmeister before they even kept the stat, maintained satanic pregame ritual: two cups of coffee on an empty stomach. The caffeine made him mean, he said. â†µ

â†µâ†µJones is right: caffeine can make you mean and aggressive, as anyone who’s ever ingested black coffee on an empty stomach can attest. Throw a donut on top of that, and murder becomes a distinct possibility for anyone crossing your path. Had Jones known this, the NFL would have banned him from the game for maiming hapless quarterbacks in a sugar-fueled, caffeine-addled rage. â†µ

â†µâ†µJones practiced a time-honored tradition in professional sports: better play through chemistry. Jones’ example pales in comparison to some. Marion Jones’ and other U.S. track athletes recently publicized use of steroids, Dock Ellis’ pitching of a no-hitter while tripping on LSD, and Pat Riley’s lifelong habit of abusing hair gel come to mind. All arguably improved their performance in one way or another, though the punishment for the offenses varied wildly. (Riley did have to coach this past season in Miami, a form of karmic punishment if ever there were one.) â†µ

â†µâ†µThe question is not whether drugs should be allowed in sport. At this point, that’s not even a valid question -- they’ve been part of sport since boxers got drunk before bareknuckle matches “for courage.” The question is this: Which drugs belong in sport and which ones don’t? The answer is a murky one thanks to the rapidly evolving chemistry pushing “cognitive-enhancement” drugs and the widespread use of steroids. â†µ

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â†µâ†µProvigil and Ritalin are the two drugs of particular note. Both are widely available as treatments for insomnia and ADHD (respectively,) and both are already allegedly in wide use by athletes. (To wit: American sprinter Kelli White lost a medal thanks to a positive test for Modanifil, the prescription name for Provigil, all the way back in 2003.) â†µ

â†µâ†µTo be honest, I’ll go one step further: both are awe-inspiringly effective according to the evidence and from personal experience. People in all fields and disciplines who take these medications are faster, cleverer, and perform at a higher level with few side effects. (There are always side effects. Getting drunk or gulping down eight cups of coffee a day have their side effects, too.) Having taken Ritalin off-and-on as an adult and consumed coffee for over a decade at this point, Ritalin is by far the kinder mistress. (It never ate a hole in my stomach lining, for example, though I haven’t taken it for over a year now for no reasons other than my reluctance to pay for it.) â†µ

â†µâ†µBaseball players have been getting ADD diagnoses for years to legally obtain Ritalin; Provigil is surely also in play now, and may even be a better fit for baseball players seeking to maintain mental focus on the field. â†µ

â†µâ†µThis bears little resemblance to the steroid argument in one critical sense: Drugs like Provigil and Ritalin have been through clinical trials, have few side effects, and are legal with prescription. â†µ

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â†µSteroids, on the other hand, remain a Wild West of pharmacology. The new film Bigger, Faster, Stronger makes the point abundantly clear that while steroids may be bad/good/evil/the next step in human evolution, there is scarcely enough clinical evidence to make any judgment because so little is understood about how they work or what they do in the first place. â†µ

â†µâ†µNot so with the well-studied effect of drugs like “brain-boosters.” If a player can take Provigil or Ritalin, though, with no ill side effects and earn a few million more than they would otherwise, then why not? Stockbrokers, scientists, and truckers are only different in the market than athletes by degrees of money made and hang-cleans performed in the gym, and many of them, and other professionals, use them daily with little or no effect. Athletes deserve the same autonomy and choice. â†µ

â†µâ†µThe confusion with drugs in sports comes in the confusion of drugs as a policy issue with drugs as a moral issue. With an illegal drug, there are serious legal implications in their use -- see Marion Jones, who eventually landed in jail thanks to her involvement in steroid use. The use of a prescription drug, however, is one between a medical practitioner and patient. â†µ

â†µâ†µTurning it into anything else is rank Puritanism, and a substitution of our laws and the logic that govern them for cheap, emotional moralism. â†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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