Sports Addiction

Sports are amazing because they provide a natural and safe escape for people struggling in their lives. For example, somebody who is battling a personal demon such as an addiction can benefit greatly from playing sports for many reasons, it could be used as an escape from reality, to become more accountable to themselves and others, and last but certainly not least people may choose to play sports in order to learn better leadership skills, instead of following what others do all the time. These skills aren’t just important as an athlete. The greatest thing about sports is how all of these skills can translate into the real world. Whenever I read The Basketball Diaries I always seem to notice how much tougher Jim’s battle with addiction

So, after several weeks in treatment, I came out with a new and fresh mindset, I was no longer going to touch drugs. The day I got out from rehab though was one of the most tough and worst of my life. I was playing some pickup basketball with some of my clean friends who I had been super close with before I got heavy into the drug scene and I received an absolutely awful phone call from my buddy Dillon that I one-hundred percent didn’t see coming. This is an absolutely awful story about heroin, which is obviously super dangerous. The effects of heroin are what makes it the most scary, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “heroin enters the brain rapidly and binds to opioid receptors on cells located in many areas, especially those involved in feelings of pain and pleasure and in controlling heart rate, sleeping and breathing”. Two of my buddies overdosed on some heroin that the authorities then later found had fentanyl in, and one of them whom I had been especially close to before I went to rehab was named Mitch (actually a different Mitch then I had been referring to earlier) was found in his car passed out at the wheel by Dillon who thought he was just messing around, but then realized this wasn’t a joke. Mitch was dead, and apparently had to be brought back from narcan, which thankfully was successful.

While there have been many bumps along the way for both of us we are still friends to this day. We both wasted talent, I could’ve been very good at basketball if I would’ve put in the effort but it just wasn’t there all the time. Mitch could’ve had some awesome opportunities to play lacrosse and wrestle in college. Our friendship at this point is almost unbreakable because of everything we have done together, we were basically like brothers for a few years. We would go on each other’s vacations with family, we would eat at each other’s houses, and would even stay at each other’s houses for weeks at a time over summers. Through the ups and the downs, Mitch is the one true friend that I was able to tell things that I wouldn’t tell any other friend, and to me that is a very admirable trait in a