Poor Josh Hamilton. He was such an inspiring story.
I checked my email this morning as soon as I turned off the alarm on my BlackBerry. Lying there in bed blinking the sleep from my eyes I stared at a headline: Baseball MVP Josh Hamilton Suffers Addiction Relapse. The 30-year-old slugger for the Texas Rangers took a drink in a Dallas bar before a teammate ushered him out. Hamilton reported the incident to Rangers management the next day.
This is not the first time Josh has relapsed nor the first time I have blogged about it. In July 2009 Josh was our Guideposts magazine cover story. He told of his hellish battle with drugs and alcohol, how he had gone from being one of the greatest prospects ever (he had it all, scouts proclaimed) to being banned from the game before the age of 25 for drug and alcohol use. Written off by baseball as hopeless, Josh fell deeper and deeper into addiction until, virtually homeless, he was taken in by his grandmother. The love of his family and his rediscovery of faith put him on the road to recovery. Eventually he returned to baseball in one of the most inspiring stories in all of sports and won the American League MVP award in 2010.
Shortly after he appeared on our cover, reports surfaced that he had briefly relapsed the previous spring but was back on his program. The story was big news in light of his return to baseball the year before, and in my blog I noted that relapse is considered nearly inevitable in an addict’s or alcoholic’s early recovery. Few people get sober right off the bat, or as they say in AA, get struck sober. And while I didn’t know Josh personally—I only helped edit his powerful story—I had a longstanding personal relationship with addiction.
At the time I had not yet published my Guideposts book, The Promise of Hope, but I was working on it and coming to grips with the idea that I would have to tell of my own struggles with addiction, depression and spiritual despair, a struggle that had nearly cost me my life in the years before I came to Guideposts. In fact the day I wandered into the offices of Guideposts looking for a job I was pretty much in the same shape as Josh when he crawled to his granny.
But I had not yet revealed that painful story, so in telling about Josh’s relapse I had to be circumspect. I knew only too well what Josh was going through. I’d been there, I’d felt that same sting of shame and self-hatred that all junkies feel when they slip. It’s the price you pay for the buzz, and the ride is not worth the ticket.
In my book I talk about a catastrophic relapse I had while on a business trip in Copenhagen, sitting in a dockside café. It wasn’t the only slip I suffered in early sobriety. I backslid repeatedly. But it was the only one I wrote about, and I tried to convey the insane allure of a substance that could easily kill you, of picking up a drink after more than two years of continuous sobriety, which is what I had done:
“The waiter served the couple next to me two tall glasses of beer—Carlsberg. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the two glasses. I was mesmerized by the gilded hue of the liquid they bore and the inch-thick froth that crowned them. The couple raised the glasses and clinked them in a toast, and for an instant the spell was broken. The glasses came back down, depleted by half. I could almost feel the fluid coursing down my own throat, like a liquefied shaft of sunlight, cold and satisfying, a familiar glow enveloping my mind, a swelling bliss right behind the eyes, a dimensional shift. The feeling rippled through me, a soft spasm of pleasure, and every muscle in my body eased. The waiter returned to my table. Was I ready to order?
‘Yes, a Carlsberg, please,’ I could not stop myself from saying.”
That began a self-inflicted downward spiral that nearly killed me several weeks later when I found myself perched on a hotel windowsill 21 stories above the pavement.
So I believed I understood how Josh felt in 2009. I know how he must feel today and how important it is for him to hold fast to his faith and his sobriety. What I have learned one day at a time is that anything I put ahead of my recovery…my writing, my friends, even my family, I am destined to lose. Only God comes ahead of my sobriety.
Josh knows that, I assume. I hope he gets it straight this time and continues to be a great inspirational story, especially for kids. Yes, addiction is a disease of relapse. But after a time, relapses have a way of becoming permanent.
On another sports note, we all know what’s happening this Sunday. Last year when I was on my book tour for The Promise of Hope, I spent a Sunday night in Indianapolis after a book signing that afternoon. It was a cold foggy spring evening. Some high school was having its prom and the streets were filled with girls in pretty formals and guys in loud tuxes. From my hotel room I could see Lucas Oil Stadium looming up from the gloom right below my widow. I put on a sweatshirt and wandered over to the stadium and walked its perimeter, craning my neck to take in the three-story photo of the great Peyton Manning. I couldn’t help but wonder what the stadium would be like nine months hence when Super Bowl XLVI would be held there. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the crowds, the pageantry, the electrifying atmosphere inside the stadium…and Madonna’s halftime show.
Sunday I’ll finally find out. Enjoy the game for those of you who will be watching. And say a prayer for our friend Josh. Maybe that’s what we should do at halftime.
