If addiction is an illness — and it is — Josh Hamilton shouldn’t be suspended


K

Kendrick

Administrator
Staff member
Where was this sympathy for Josh Gordon?

We don’t yet know what Major League Baseball will do with Hamilton. I do hope, however, that whatever happens with him, it is not couched in disciplinary terms and is not treated like a suspension as we have come to know them (i.e. exile from team functions, forfeiture of salary, requirement of remediation/apology/etc.). My knowledge and experience with addiction is pretty limited, but what I have read and what appears to be the case is that rehabilitative, as opposed to punitive measures are far more successful in limiting relapse among addicts. And what seems to be pretty clear is that talking about an addict’s relapses and the challenges he faces as if it were misbehavior, as opposed to illness, is counterproductive and potentially harmful.

Baseball’s assistance and substance abuse programs are said to be good and progressive. I trust that Hamilton will be steered into a situation that helps him get healthy again and helps him find the tools he once had at hand but has, apparently, lost and which have allowed him to overcome his addiction for so long. I do hope, however, that whatever rehabilitation and assistance he is provided is not paired with the usual trappings of punitive action. That whatever else they do to him beyond getting him into a good program does not contribute, inadvertently or otherwise, to the public’s tendency to treat addicts as miscreants or subjects to be shamed.

If that were to happen, I feel like it would be a bad message to send to baseball fans and the public at large, which is likely watching Hamilton’s struggle with addiction far more closely than it would a normal person’s struggle and thus may draw some bad overall conclusions about addiction from this episode. I also feel like it would probably be a bad thing for Josh Hamilton.
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http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2...nd-it-is-josh-hamilton-shouldnt-be-suspended/
 
I was wondering the same thing. The media was calling Josh Gordon everything but a child of God. Josh Hamilton relapse numerous of times and now he on cocaine. its really no public outcry.
 

Multiple chances. Multiple relapses. Cocaine AND alcohol.

Not trying to compare apples and oranges but if this were the NBA or NFL it would leading Sportscenter and be all across ESPN.... especially if it were a black athlete on the caliber of Hamilton.
 
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