Racing Demons

Use of performance-enhancing drugs may

grab sporting headlines, but the real tragedy

is what happens later.

 

Once the worst-kept secret in sport, doping has become so common that many fans now see it as inevitable. But behind the casual use of drugs designed to improve athletic performance is a tragedy carefully hidden from view: the transformation of many athletes into drug addicts. Nobody knows how many develop dependencies that continue after their careers end. But the numbers at risk are probably larger than fans or even athletes realize.

In France, studies have indicated the scale of the problem. A report by experts at Paris’ Monte Cristo drug treatment center found 18% of the 5,000 high-level athletes surveyed reporting drug dependency – most consequent to sports doping. The enquiry was launched after the discovery that 20% of the clinic’s patients seeking methadone treatment for heroin addiction had backgrounds in elite sport. Generally, French sport medicine experts believe around 10% of the nation’s 13 million registered athletes have used performance-enhancing substances – a practice that will ultimately lead to addiction in 300,000 – 350,000 athletes, according to some estimates. And that’s just in France. Says Charles Guyon, one of a handful of French doctors authorized to conduct drug tests at sport events: “No country or sport has a monopoly on doping, and all will be affected by the problem of addict-athletes as doping spreads.”

Although full-blown addiction among active athletes remains rare, experts say use of drugs for improving performance vastly increases the threat of substance abuse and dependency when a doping athlete is sidelined by injury or forced to retire from sport. “Doping requires athletes to defy social aversions to using drugs and syringes for nonmedical purposes,” notes Patrick Magaloff, director of the French Olympic Committee’s anti-doping mission. “Because the taboo has been broken during their careers, athletes who have doped are often less inhibited about using drugs in normal life than clean athletes or nonathletes.” The risk is confirmed by officials at the Monte Cristo Clinic, where 20% of patients seeking methadone treatment for heroin addiction report a background in high-level sports.

Even when clean, many athletes suffer a heavy psychological blow when forced to leave the athletic elite. “When you remove an athlete from that obsessive, glorified lifestyle and place him in the ‘real world’, he’s going to feel lost, anonymous and often severely depressed,” says Gerard Cagni, director of a drug clinic. When such a competitor also has a history of doping and drug use, the risk of addiction – and unwillingness to recognize it as a severe problem – can complicate matters. “The continued use of drugs can, in the athlete’s mind, constitute a link to the sporting past,” says Cagni, himself a former French track champion. “Even after abuse is recognized as destructive, the psychological associations remain very hard to break down.”

Also difficult to undermine is the fan-assisted denial that doping is somewhat different from drug abuse; that it involves only euphoria-free, high-tech products like muscle-building steroids and blood oxidizing agents administered by attentive medical experts. Sports fans protect the heroic image of athletes by using the term doping rather than taking drugs in sports.

In reality, the drugs of choice for athletes today are amphetamines, cocaine, heroin and huge doses of caffeine – substances which, experts say, often escape detection through a combination of masking agents, passage of time and connivance of officials. A popular injectable cocktail of those substances contains drugs that are purer and far more addictive than those sold on the streets.

“Only the very top athletes are supplied and administered by doping experts,” says Pierre Dolivet, director of the French drug center catering to athletes. “The non-stars usually improvise with drugs and doses – often even sharing syringes, despite the AIDS threat. When you see what those people are doing to themselves you understand the darker meaning of ‘winning at all costs.’”

Because the biggest star-turned-addicts can afford the luxury and privacy of exclusive detox clinics in Switzerland, the public rarely learns the risk of dependency posed by doping. Dolivet’s Thianty clinic costs $130 a day for its five- to seven-month courses. It receives some outside funding to help less well-off athletes, but dozens of others cannot afford the treatment. Sports clubs and federations could help but don’t. “They don’t want to be associated with the problem,” Dolivet laments. “If you admit your athletes have become addicts from doping, you admit doping is a real problem. No one will do that.”

Given the refusal of sports authorities to affectively tackle drug use – and consequent addiction – there’s little hope the tide will turn any time soon. Indeed, health-care professionals helping pick up the pieces of lives shattered by doping dependency say the only real hope is that fans stage a revolt – not out of love for the game or the players, but from fear that their children, intent on attaining sporting glory, may wind up with the booby prize of addiction.

(From ‘Time’)

 

Choose the best answer to the following questions.

1. People don’t see the problem of doping in sport as dangerous because

A. doping has become quite common.

B. they are not aware of the danger doping presents.

C. few athletes develop drug dependencies after their careers end.

2. Why was the sports doping problem brought to the attention of drug experts in France?

A. Many drug addicts who sought treatment had been top athletes.

B. A special inquiry into the problem was launched.

C. Sport doping is spreading.

3. Doping athletes run a high risk of becoming drug addicts because

A. they take drugs as pain-killers when they sustain injuries.

B. they continue doping when they are forced to retire from sports.

C. being used to doping they may consider other drugs permissible.

4. Which of the following points does not contribute to the risk of top athletes becoming drug addicts after they retire?

A. They are forced to change their lifestyle.

B. They become severely depressed.

C. Drugs become a psychological link to the glorious past.

D. They are unwilling to recognize drug abuse as a severe problem.

5. What main factor connected with public opinion makes it hard to fight sport doping?

A. Top athletes are viewed as heroes.

B. Sports fans refuse to admit that there is no difference between doping and drug abuse.

C. People are certain that doping can’t harm athletes since doping agents are administered by medical experts.

6. There are certain circumstances which make doping permissible. Which of the following factors does not belong in this group?

A. Athletes take doping agents well in advance.

B. Doping agents escape detection.

C. Athletes take special agents to conceal doping.

D. Officials choose to disregard doping.

7. Sports federations don’t help former athletes to get rid of their addiction because

A. treatment is too expensive.

B. they feel former athletes themselves should deal with the problem.

C. it would automatically mean that doping can lead to drug abuse.

8. The only way to solve the problem is

A. for sports fans to come out against doping.

B. for sports authorities to tackle drug abuse.

C. not to let children go into professional sport.