Lafayette, Indiana

Steroids: It’s about more than just numbers!

In the past 10 years five professional wrestlers have died prematurely and in each case the cause of death was complicated by steroid use. And now this week a heinous tragedy occurs in Atlanta when wrestling champion Chris Benoit, 40 years old, strangled his wife Nancy and suffocated their 7 year old son Daniel. He then hung himself. Sure enough steroids were in the house. And this discovery raises suspicion that performance-enhancing drugs may have been a contributing factor in his eruption as a family annihilator.

The term “Family Annihilator” is a real descriptor in the psychiatric literature, referring to parents (almost always fathers) who for some reason explode and kill their family, including children. The cause of this horror is not well known, but the psychotic break that triggers the action comes from some anomaly in their makeup. And mental health experts suspect that the sustained use of anabolic steroids might be a cause for the chemical imbalance that leads to this violent catastrophe.

What is it about us that so many are willing to take dangerous risks - putting our lives in danger - in order to be famous? The use of steroids has been a headline story for many years now, fueled especially by accusations about Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa and several others. But those controversies focus on the impact it has on performance - cheating and inflating statistics.

Today we are talking about another matter entirely. More significant than Bond’s home run numbers is the possibility that steroids can trigger aggression and violence to such a degree that innocent families are at risk for their lives!

If anything constructive comes from this latest hideous episode, maybe it’s taking the issue more seriously than simply couch potato debates about the “integrity of the game.” Swollen sports statistics is an important issue, but creating family annihilators takes precedent.

Let’s start talking about steroids and the lives of children.