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IN THE COACH'S BOX

At 10:10 p.m. on April 14 of this year, Darryl Strawberry, baseball star, cancer patient, husband, and recovering drug addict, was arrested in Tampa, Florida. He was charged with possession of three-tenths of a gram of cocaine and soliciting a female undercover officer posing as a prostitute. On May 26, Strawberry pleaded no contest to the charges and was sentenced to eighteen months probation, during which he will be tested for drugs twice a week. At this writing, he is still on the disabled list from the Yankees as a result of his surgery for colon cancer earlier in the year; he was placed on an indeterminate "administrative leave" by Major League Baseball following his arrest, though no one seems to know what that means—MLB had no such thing as "administrative leave" until this incident. It is uncertain how the team or the American League will deal with him long-term as a multiple offender of Major League Baseball’s drug aftercare program. Speculation is that he’ll receive a ninety-day suspension, his second for a drug offense. The first, for sixty days, came after he tested positive for cocaine in 1995.


How is the average baseball fan supposed to take this latest chapter in the Strawberry saga? Is Strawberry deserving of our pity? Our condemnation? Or should we just ignore him and hope he goes away? (After all, he’s thirty-seven years old; he’s had cancer; he’s abused drugs. How long can his mind and body realistically hold up in the highly competitive arena of Major League Baseball?) I’d like to suggest "none of the above." I’d like to suggest that our best bet is to try to understand what may have happened.


It’s a funny word, "understanding," a dirty word these days in some quarters. Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines it as "a mental grasp . . . the capacity to apprehend general relations of particulars . . . the power to make experience intelligible." What it’s come to mean in the post-politically correct world, however, is "a way of making excuses for people who don’t deserve them." While I am a firm believer in the concept of personal responsibility, I’d like to suggest that this latter, zero-tolerance redefinition of understanding is a dangerous ideological corruption. I suggest this because I believe, as a friend once put it, that what you don’t know can hurt you. Understanding is, first and foremost, about knowledge, and therefore more about the observer’s approach to the world than a judgment on that which is observed. It’s about increasing one’s "capacity to apprehend general relations of particulars." It’s about "the power to make experience intelligible."


So how do we begin to understand Strawberry’s latest transgressions? What can we learn from them? Although we don’t know yet whether Strawberry tested positive for cocaine use following his arrest (where there’s smoke, there’s often fire, but not always), we must wonder why someone would jeopardize both a promising career comeback (from multiple off-the-field problems) and a physical comeback (from cancer) for a quick high, chemical and/or sexual. How does this make sense?


The answer is, it doesn’t make sense—unless you view it in the context of the nature of addiction.


While I grant that the notion isn’t universally accepted, the fact is that the overwhelming majority of medical and mental health professionals and organizations now believe that drug and alcohol addiction is a disease. As such, addiction is not the result of a lack of character or weak will or moral degeneracy. Addiction is both a mental and physical disease, an obsession of the mind and a craving of the body that play off one another. Thus, for the addict, once the chemical is introduced into the body, a chain reaction begins wherein the mind seeks to reproduce endlessly the initial ecstatic experience while the body powerfully reinforces that obsession with intense relief-seeking messages, messages that threaten imminent consequences ranging from mild discomfort to excruciating pain. These are sometimes referred to as withdrawal symptoms. While addiction is a disease that can be treated and brought into remission, it cannot, apparently, be cured.


To understand the case of Darryl Strawberry, I believe one first needs to accept these fundamental facts: 1) that addiction is a chronic relapsing illness that, untreated, usually progresses to the patient’s untimely death, and 2) that Darryl Strawberry is an addict. How does this help us understand Strawberry’s arrest in April? Because of something called cross-addiction.


Cross-addiction is the idea that anyone addicted to one mood-altering substance is, for all intents and purposes, addicted to all mood-altering substances. Addicts may have strong preferences for how one drug makes them feel over how another affects their sense of physical and mental well-being, but the addict’s brain doesn’t really care what gets the dopamine flowing. Thus, when a heroin addict smokes pot, for example, the brain reacts pretty much the same way it would with heroin and initiates the same inexorable descent into the cycle of physical craving and mental obsession. Over time, the addict trying to get high with a new, presumably safe drug usually ends up either addicted to the new drug or, as is more likely the case, back using the original drug of choice.


A friend of mine, a competitive long-distance runner and recovering alcoholic, had ten years of sobriety when she was struck by a car while out running and seriously injured. She was sent home from the hospital to begin her rehabilitation with narcotic painkillers. All she had to do was use them as directed, and she would have been all right, isn’t that so? After all, they were prescribed by a doctor. How could they hurt her? Unfortunately, that’s not how the neurochemistry of addiction works. Within a short time she was abusing narcotics. Soon, she was using alcohol again. Fortunately, another round of chemical dependency treatment brought her back into remission, and she is sober once again.


Now I don’t know how closely Strawberry’s medications were monitored following his surgery, so it would be irresponsible to accuse his physicians of not taking into account that fact that he is a drug addict in prescribing them. But the truth is, as my friend’s story shows, many doctors don’t know much about addiction; many don’t realize how easily prescription medications can lead an addict into relapse. Many of them don’t understand cross-addiction.


Neither do many people in Major League Baseball. Several years ago, Steve Howe was with the Twins making one of his several comebacks from cocaine addiction. He seemed to be doing pretty well, pitching decently, staying out of trouble. Then, on a trip to Detroit, he went AWOL. They found him three days later in full drug relapse. The Twins players expressed surprise; no one saw it coming. He seemed to be doing so well. One player, I remember, was particularly shocked. He said Howe seemed in great spirits, determined to make it. Howe was just one of the fellows, this Twins player said, a normal guy who supported the other players in the clubhouse and would even go out with them after the game for a beer. Anyone else see what’s wrong with this picture?


None of this absolves Strawberry in any way. Even if his claims are true, that he only meant to joke with the undercover policewoman, that the twenty dollar bill with the cocaine belonged to someone else, what was he doing hanging out with someone who had cocaine? What was he doing in a place frequented by prostitutes? Diabetics are responsible for taking their insulin; hypertensives are responsible for eating right and remembering to take their medications as well. An addict is responsible for going to meetings, working a program, and hanging with sober people. If he doesn’t, he doesn’t have much of a chance of keeping his disease in remission. I don’t care if this particular addict can still hit 400 foot home runs in the big leagues; I don’t care if he’s a superstar or a millionaire. His money and his ego aren’t going to save him. Baseball isn’t going to save him. Alcoholics Anonymous, the "Big Book" of AA, calls alcohol "cunning, baffling, and powerful." One may be certain that cocaine is, for those dependent on it, no less formidable an adversary.


Psychologist James Garbarino, in his recent book about violent children, Lost Boys, writes: "We are willing to [punish violent boys] but not to understand them. Perhaps we feel that understanding them is unnecessary because punishment is the only issue, or perhaps we feel that an attempt to understand them is dangerous because it might excuse their actions." On the one side is the "simple moralism" of an eye for an eye. On the other, "an impulse to understand and, if understanding is possible, to rescue." Garbarino stands with the latter. So do I.


Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what Major League Baseball decides to do: ban Strawberry for life, suspend him for a long period of time, slap him on the wrist, look the other way. Whatever punishment Strawberry receives isn’t going to deter anyone from following his path, and it isn’t going to save him. But understanding the nature of drug addiction and then seeing clearly how it has played out so disastrously in Strawberry’s life just might help others. And as for the man himself, understanding the truth about his own addiction will be particularly crucial in the months and years ahead. It may determine whether he lives or dies. —EFQ