« 2008-07-04 | HomePage | 2008-07-07 »
Saturday, 05 July 2008
The non-drug addict
Well they are at it again!
Ben Cousins has signed to play footy again and the press is having a field day. Ben Cousins is the Australian Rules Football version of David Beckham. Very high public profile and with a much publicised drug problem. He was delisted and now he has just “re-listed” to play again.
There is one question that I have always wanted to ask and no one seems to have asked it. Here is a man who is repeated called a drug addict although one must say that all he has publicly stated is that he has a “drug problem”. That term could mean a wide variety of things but he has admitted to this.
I worked in drug rehab for a number of years and worked with many addicts who were on parole. Part of their parole was often court ordered drug tests usually once or twice a week. They would test for about 10 different substances such as cannabis, amphetamines, heroin, cocaine and so forth. It always surprised me at how often they would present with a positive test. Sometimes they would come back with all ten substances indicated in their urine!
Busted!
They would have known that this would be the case and I used to think why bother having the test in the first place. They should have just refused the test or made up some excuse like “I missed the bus” or my “Grandmother had a stroke”. I must admit some of the excuses they came up with were pretty creative.
But that is the nature of drug addiction. They know taking the drug will lead to bad consequences and yet they find it really, really, really hard not to. That is what a drug addict is.
Now over a period of a couple of years Ben Cousins was subjected to pre-planned and random urine tests as were all footballers in the league. But they were onto him so he would have also been target tested. He would have been ‘piss’ tested (as they impolitely call it) on numerous occasions over an extended period. Guess what, in all those tests he never returned one positive urine test. Yes every single one of his urine tests was clean.
Hello? Hello? Is there anyone out there? Did I miss something?
How can a man who is apparently a drug addict be tested on numerous occasions over an extended period of time and not return one positive urine test?
I would like someone to answer that question for me?
This question is just sort of ignored and no one seems to ask it and everyone just carries on like nothing has happened.
Is this for real.
To my mind there are 3 possible answers
He isn’t a drug addict and his drug use is minor
or
The league’s drug testing regime has more holes in it than swiss cheese
or
He has an effective masking agent
This seems a fairly important question to ask because if a ‘drug addict’ can repeatedly give clean urine tests then any other footballer could easily use drugs recreationally and give clean test results.
However in the words of the great man himself - Benny Cousins - Such is life!
The great man with his 'Such is life" tatt.
Graffiti
10:35 Permalink | Comments (33) | Email this