After an alcohol-filled Sun God, capped off with the annual Guardian vs. Koala sloshball game — the ultimate mix of drugs and sports — I began to ponder the relation between the two as I trekked to the Guardian office Sunday morning while the majority of UCSD slept in a drunken stupor or nursed raging hangovers.
Other than sloshball, which is really more of an excuse to drink and brawl than to actually play softball, there actually is a definite yet quiet connection between sports and drugs.
There are two different categories, although at times they might not seem quite so distinct from each other.
Category No. 1: athletes who use performance-enhancing drugs. There’s really not too much to say about them, I think they should all be shot.
I have no idea why serious athletes, who spend countless hours toning their bodies in order to perform highly skilled functions that demand quick reactions and extraordinary focus, would jeopardize their bodies with drugs that destroy exactly what they are trying to enhance.
For example, steroid users. While recent innovations such as Creatine may have decreased the overall use of anabolic steroids, there are still cases of college and professional athletes getting caught with ‘roids.
For those two UCSD students not majoring in biology, steroids are chemical substances derived from cholesterol used to encourage muscle growth. Steroid users are characterized by rapid and vicious mood swings, from aggression to depression as the chemicals act on various parts of the brain. In males, high dosages have been proved to cause an inability to perform sexually, as well as baldness, infertility and breast development.
I know athletes face huge pressure to perform, which is the motivating cause behind most performance-enhancing drug use. But why anyone would subject his body to this, I don’t understand.
Besides steroids, other performance-enhancers include gonadotropin, luteinizing hormone, and human growth hormones among others; but the basic concept behind them remains the same: Use an illegal substance to unnaturally shape your body at the cost of other natural body functions. These drugs are banned for a reason, and athletes with any pride at all should not debase themselves and stoop to the level of requiring drugs to compete. Basically, by taking performance-enhancers, these athletes are admitting that they aren’t able to contend at the same level as their competition without the drugs, so either way they lose.
Category No. 2 is athletes who use drugs for recreational purposes. Now there is a fine line between the two, as there are some athletes who use recreational drugs, namely marijuana, with the belief that it enhances their performance.
And these athletes are probably right. They do play better with their favorite drug in their system — but most likely because they psychologically believe they will play better, not because the actual substance helps them.
Then there is the athlete who truly uses drugs recreationally — to relax from the intense pressures of competition, for entertainment, etc. As far as college athletes doing drugs recreationally, I don’t see a problem. College is a place to try new things, a place to have as much fun as possible before the rigors of the “”real world”” chain you down into the lifeless drudges that American society molds and spits out by the millions. Most college students use drugs to enhance their fun, which I think is the only acceptable reason to use drugs.
However, as far as professional athletes using drugs recreationally, I think that’s a different story.
Professional athletes are role models, whether they like it or not, and as such, they constantly have people imitating them. When professional athletes are busted for marijuana, alcohol or cocaine abuse, kids who idolize these athletes see drug use as cool, and they see their heroes rarely getting penalized for it either, which tells the kids it’s not a big deal to use drugs, and that the consequences of being caught are very light.
Additionally, these are professional athletes — meaning they either are incredibly gifted athletically, and/or they have spent thousands of hours training/practicing/playing their respective sport. So why they would want to dull their bodies and senses with drugs, and go against all the training they did to get into the professional sporting ranks, I have no clue.
However, as far recreational drug use goes for editors of college newspapers, especially the sports section — especially the sports section at UCSD — fortunately, it’s quite acceptable and even encouraged.
