Tourette’s Syndrome

I wrote these comments over a year ago regarding the use of steroids in sports. They’re still relevant today.

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One difficulty in introducing a review of the stats is the allowance for anomalies. Go through a prolonged difficulty of, say, a divorce, and you could find yourself in either the hitting season of your career or the longest slump only to find the next year back to ho-hum normalcy.

Another is the very definition of “enhancing” drugs. Like Robin Williams (and Eddie Izzard before him) joked, marijuana isn’t much of an enhancement (except for cancer treatment and glaucoma), but as a Tourette’s sufferer, I take drugs that “normalize” me, allowing me to concentrate and excel at sports, while the same drug leaves others catatonic. Caffeine is allowed by many sports although a cyclist was reportedly tossed when after a sprint he - through cups of coffee, NoDoze, suppositories, et al - had the equivalent of some 40-50 cups of coffee in just 5 minutes. Sure, that’s off the charts but the point is easy to see: where do you draw the line when each drug affects different people in different ways?

Physiologically speaking, Tim Howard, who has Tourette’s, manages to play for Man U without medication although the twitches associated with the condition are like having twice the twitch muscles of others. Ditto Jim Eisenreich. (The Baseball Hall of Fame talk about Jim’s “handicap” but in the world of TS, one has to tread carefully and wonder if in some cases this isn’t an advantage.) This added quickness could be “dumbed down” with medication, but are we to create a world of Harrison Bergerons to have a “fair” game? I say this because in the world of enhancing drugs, we’re also faced with Harrison Bergerons … in reverse: those with shortcomings are driven to be the best no different than those born with gifts - better vision, cardio, old-fashioned prodigies. Larry Bird did it the honorable way, with hard work. But he was 6′9″. I could work twice as hard but I’ll never gain an inch. So, what are we doing? Barring the hard work, we’re rewarding those in society who are, well, oddities.

On last point - work ethic. Tiger Woods, Larry Bird are two who come to mind with peerless work ethic and a clean stream of urine. What strikes me as odd is the rumored increased work ethic of steroid users. “Why take them if you’re not going to use them?” They’re juiced, they work harder, they stop juicing, they still work hard. The stats peak, they taper off a bit, but in the end they’ve raised their level of the game, and by extension the game as a whole.

This is not to say I approve of or otherwise endorse performance-enhancing drugs. But the field is not level to begin with, either. The former we can ban, investigate, find a new drug, ban it. Rinse, repeat. And the battle will rage on forever like Iraq, always with a new twist, excuse, and mea culpa. In a similar vein (sorry) we must face the ups and downs of psychology and physiology and simply shrug at the inequities while applauding the gifts.

So let’s do that. Let’s applaud the gifts, be grateful that they enrich the lives of others. As for the drug users, no, appointing a United States Handicapper General is not the answer. It’s better to battle the drugs and their users as best we can but when it comes to the stats, let’s embrace the magic. Did Sosa and McGuire juice? Sure. Did we let it happen? Sure. In so doing, we’re all guilty. And I’m not endorsing collective sin when I say let’s revel in it.

After all, it’s just a game.