Competition Freaks, the Super Bowl and Alcoholism
Competition Freaks, the Super Bowl and Alcoholism
The link between winning and alcoholism proves elusive for the media
In a recent piece in the Los Angeles Times, “Competition Freaks,”writer Marianne Szegedy-Maszak addressed the question of what motivates those who just have to win. By the fourth paragraph, she connected out-of-control soccer moms screaming at referees, those banned from playing family board games because they ruin the entire evening when they lose, obsessive compulsive disorder, narcissism, road rage, drunk driving and addiction. Hoping she would explore the connection further, I looked for more mentions of DUI or alcohol/other-drug addiction somewhere”anywhere”in the following 48 paragraphs. Alas, I looked in vain.
In asking, “How many people do we walk over to be successful?”and “When is this kind of competition admirable, and when is it pathological?”the piece failed to forge the link between pathological behaviors and alcohol/other-drug addiction. While Szegedy-Maszak mentioned numerous exceptions to professional tennis player Lea Antonopolis-Inouye’s observation that “the most successful athletes that I have known have absolutely no irrational competitiveness,”she failed to consider the possibility that the difference between the rational and irrational is, in most cases, attributable to alcoholism. Szegedy-Maszak also neglected to advance the idea that those described by Denis Waitley, former chairman of psychology for the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Sports Medicine Council, as “take no prisoners competitors [who] can be very successful much more rapidly than win-win competitors,”may be driven by alcohol-fueled egomania.
Szegedy-Maszak pointed out that there’s a story almost every day “about a hyper competitor dragging a company, or a team, or simply himself into a terrible mess.”She described the behaviors of a number of such competitors, including Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens, Oakland Raiders defensive back Jack Tatum and former chief executive Albert J. Dunlap. Owens recently complained about a lack of recognition for his 100th career touchdown, stormed into the locker room and challenged his fellow teammates to a fight. In 1978 Tatum not only didn’t apologize for turning another player into a quadriplegic by hitting him; he justified his action saying, “It was a clean hit.”Dunlap earned the name “Chainsaw Al”while chief of Sunbeam Corp. by firing thousands of employees capriciously, demeaning anyone who disagreed with him and driving his $1 billion company into bankruptcy. Never once did she suggest the likelihood that these irrational behaviors might be rooted in brain damage caused by alcoholism. Instead, we’re left to believe that these are just stupid or awful people. I doubt it.
The example of Ty Cobb, arguably the greatest baseball player ever and a full-blown alcoholic throughout his entire career, baffled me well into the writing of the first draft of my first book, Drunks, Drugs & Debits. The overachieving addict”the highly functional, early-stage alcoholic”became comprehensible only when author James Graham, who had followed in the much earlier footsteps of Dr. Harry M. Tiebout, M.D., connected egomania and the need to wield power over others to alcoholism. Egomania, in turn, was explained by author Vernon Johnson’s observation that alcoholics recall everything they do or say through self-favoring lenses. I realized this must feed on itself, fueling egomania. Graham pointed out that alcoholics tend not to deteriorate into latter-stage alcoholism as long as they are able to successfully inflate their egos. Successful ego inflation drives achievement because there is no more efficient way to insure that others will follow and adulate, allowing the addict to control others with their blessing.
Professional sports often provide the best evidence for this phenomenon. Yet few observers have a clue that professional athletes, who by definition must be superb human specimens physically and mentally, may ironically be driven by alcoholism”the same addiction that will eventually destroy them.
Some examples of extraordinary pro-football players in which alcoholism likely exists include:
• Denver Broncos quarterback Brian Griese, who pleaded guilty to a DUI in 2000 and more recently fell while attending a party, slamming his head into a driveway and knocking himself unconscious. While he claimed it was an accident, a teammate is reported to have confided that Griese “was undone by alcohol, a fist fight, a black eye, a chipped tooth, and seven stitches.”
• Former Raider’s linebacker Bill Romanowski, who agreed to pay former teammate Marcus Williams $415,000 after hitting him in the face.
• Former New York Jets quarterback “Broadway Joe”Namath, who got sober in 1987, relapsed in 2000 and headed back to AA meetings in 2004; Namath loved the company of blondes and Johnnie Walker long before the start of his pro career.
• Raiders’ starting center Barret Robbins, who may have drank “normally”for a time while in high school because, at 300 pounds, he would have required far more alcohol than is typical to trigger alcoholism. Yet, he was nicknamed the “Asshole”by teammates in his rookie year for becoming surly when drinking; he was described as two different people”the good guy Dr. Jekyll and the Asshole Mr. Hyde. In what could be one of the most tragic cases of misdiagnoses ever, doctors determined he was clinically depressed and prescribed medications. He was later diagnosed as not having depression but rather bipolar disorder, which requires different medications. There is no report until 2003 that anyone told him he had the disease of alcoholism, which may explain, and at the very least seriously exacerbates, his bipolar disorder. Nor is there any evidence that anyone, including his wife who at one point agreed to â€monitor his consumption”when he resumed drinking after a hiatus, attempted to coerce abstinence. He completely unraveled two days before he was scheduled to appear in 2003’s Super Bowl XXXVII, when he went to a bar, bought rounds for everyone and ended the bender in Tijuana. The Raiders, while not doing him any favors by keeping his erratic behaviors quiet, were reportedly aware of Robbins’ “mental problems”since 1996.
• Former Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown who, after a long history of arrests for alleged attacks on women, was finally convicted in 1999 at age 63 for smashing his 25-year-old wife’s car with a shovel. He was ordered into anger management counseling but not required to refrain from drinking or using. His wife recanted allegations that he threatened to snap her neck. (As an aside, alcoholism is common in one or both spouses of markedly different ages, increasing as the difference widens, particularly beyond 15 years. Marrying someone much older or younger is ego-inflating.)
• New York Giants quarterback Kerry Collins, who admits to drinking alcoholically at age 13. After being sacked for a series of inappropriate incidents including making allegedly racial slurs, he was arrested for DUI, which he says was a turning point in his life.
• Jacksonville Jaguars’ first-round pick in the 2000 draft R. Jay Soward, who quickly watched his career crumble, drinking “a fifth of Hennessy and a fifth of Alize”from 6 a.m. all day, every day. Soward says the “best thing to happen to me”was being banned by the NFL indefinitely in 2002, which apparently instilled in him a need to get sober. However, in a bizarre stunt suggestive of impending or actual relapse, he recently finished his second season in the Canadian Football League by catching a 43-yard touchdown pass for the Toronto Argonauts and stopping at a concession stand near the end zone for a bag of popcorn”only to watch the opposing Montreal team rally from behind and win.
• 1997 Heisman Trophy winner and four-time Pro Bowl cornerback Charles Woodson, who was arrested for public intoxication following a Raiders’ victory over the Tennessee Titans in December 2004 and for a DUI in 2000, with a blood alcohol level reported at .24 per cent.
• Lawrence Phillips, described in the Los Angeles Times as “one of the best running backs ever at the University of Nebraska, and one of the greatest busts in the National Football League,”recently arrested for allegedly driving into a crowd of teenagers whom he accused of stealing his wallet. He was driving his live-in girlfriend’s car, which he had allegedly stolen after battering her. The St. Louis Rams chose him as their first-round pick in the 1996 draft, even with a pre-draft psychological evaluation that identified “maturity”issues. Shortly after, he was charged with DUI while driving at 78 mph on a flat tire with a blood alcohol level at about .16 per cent. After “giving up”alcohol in 1999, the “maturity”issues that re-surfaced suggest he suffered a severe relapse. As early as 2000, he was charged with attacking a girlfriend and ordered to take anger-management classes. Friends have been unable to reconcile his public misbehaviors with a man they describe as often charming, smart and generous. There is no mention of Phillips ever having been told, “You have the disease of alcoholism, which drives your anger. Therefore, you are proscribed from drinking, and here are the consequences if you violate the rule.”
While watching the upcoming Super Bowl, keep in mind that there may well be players on both sides whom we enable by providing the demand and paying for their talents. We should ask their teammates and managers to do everything in their power to prevent the otherwise inevitable slide into the abyss of addiction by setting and enforcing a basic rule: for anyone whose behaviors indicate alcoholism, he must test clean to play.