| 02 September 2011
If you’ve read my writing in the past, you know I am a staunch supporter of the entire idea behind the enforcer in hockey. A big guy to stick up for the smaller players when they get chirped at one too many times. It is the equivalent of being the kid with the plastic-frame glasses befriending the fat kid at lunch in second grade. It’s a symbiotic relationship. It’s how the environment, and society, works. But what happens if the symbiosis breaks down? What happens if the big guy has problems that he was never told it was okay to share?
This week the hockey world lost another enforcer, our third in three months, and second in just over two weeks. These deaths were tragedies not only because the men were so young, so talented, and had friends and families who loved them. They were tragedies because they were avoidable. Derek Boogaard was suffering from depression secondary to his concussion, which no doubt assisted his slide that ended with an accidental overdose of drugs and alcohol. Rick Rypien had been dealing with depression long before he took his own life this month. Wade Belak, however, is an entirely different case altogether. By all accounts, he was telling people he felt great, was working on a television show, and had no outward history of depression, concussion, or any other abnormality. The result, sadly, is a tragically unexpected death.
As has been stated by others (and none more eloquently than the article Loser Domi posted at Barry Melrose Rocks), depression is very much a taboo subject, both in sports and society.
But beyond acknowledging it is a significant problem, the league, and the union, need to focus on providing treatment, and fast. As of now, there is no program in place for the union to help players transition from going full-speed during their career to a full-stop in retirement or injury. For a perfectly mentally stable individual, that’s a rough transition. For someone already on the precipice of depression, it’s the end of the world. To think, the career you spent your life working toward, and your body betrays you, not allowing you to do it any longer. This was the case for Boogaard, who had been struggling for months with his concussion symptoms. Wade Belak’s recent retirement took him from a lifestyle he had been living in for over 75% of his life to…..a front office job. (Note: Some reporters are putting out vague and unsubstantiated tweets regarding whether or not Belak's death was a result of suicide, but whether it was or wasn't isn't central to this point.)
It is imperative that the union have better procedures in place to assist this transition. The worst thing you can do for someone is not mentally prepare them for a change like that, or at the very least not leave them dangling like a worm on a hook when it happens unexpectedly. For that to happen to someone already predisposed to depression for whatever psychological or physiological reason, it’s infinitely worse. Sadly, I say this from a place of experience.
In 2004, I thought I was unstoppable. I had a beautiful girlfriend, was just completing a degree from a world-class institution, and was about to start a job that I had wanted to do for years. Then it all came toppling down. I was hit by a drunken driver, and my knee has never been the same. My girlfriend decided she wanted to change her entire career path to something that took her on the other side of the world….without telling me. I found out through a note the morning after she left. The job I had lined up fell through, due to a combination of my knee rendering me unable to stand and move for long periods of time and general listlessness. I ended up back where I came from, in a shithole of a suburb in Florida, miserable, on a cane, working at a government job and selling auto parts as a part-time job. Everything I had going for me--body, girl, career--all rejected me within the span of a few months.
To go from such a high to such a low in such a short amount of time was too much. Walking into a grey, bland building and spending hours and hours on tedious dreck drove me over the edge. I contemplated various ways to take my life without causing too much need for cleanup, so I wouldn’t bother too many people. I went so far as to teeter on the ledge of a urine-stained parking garage before losing my nerve.
By blind chance one day (it was December 4, 2004--I won’t forget that date), I walked into a bar and saw a bunch of people yelling at a television. I walked up to see what was going on, and saw they were watching a soccer game. I had followed soccer and Chelsea for a few years prior, but more out of some feeling like that was what I was “supposed” to do, rather than any true passion for the game. The Newcastle fans were bemoaning a penalty given, and Mateja Kezman was stepping up to take the shot. He made it, and Chelsea won 4-0, but that wasn’t what caught my eye. These grown men were screaming at the top of their lungs at each other, and there wasn’t a thing wrong with it in their eyes. The next week, I came back to that restaurant to watch Chelsea and Arsenal. Little by little, I became more vocal about the game (a 2-2 draw). To let out the months of built up anger and aggression was like having an epiphany.
In my family, no one ever acknowledged that something was wrong with any of us. I later found out that both parents had suffered from depression and alcoholism, which explained much of my personality issues. There had always been a certain amount of unchecked aggression that was boiling just below the surface. I was in a position where it was showing more than was healthy, and found an outlet in soccer. I was later diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, so at least I ended up with a name for it. I also found that I had more than a few symptoms of Sociopathy, which still concerns me.
However, like a startling percentage of people with a predisposition to depression, the available medication does not treat my symptoms while leaving me as a fully functional adult. Medication either doesn’t treat the depression, or leaves me with such a shallow affect, that I am more robot than human. The downside to not taking these medications, of course, is there are times when I sink into another recurring depressive episode. I get self-destructive, I don‘t sleep, I isolate myself, I drink too much, and I fail at my duties in life, both personal and professional. Thankfully, due to the number of positive outlets I have now, these episodes are fewer and farther between. But even now, they still occur. Hell, I’m in one now, and desperately trying to pull myself out of it. I know that no matter how many positive outlets I have, they will probably always happen. The help isn’t in preventing it. The help is in managing it.
Which brings me back to my original point. Depression isn’t something that everyone can take the same pill for and get rid of it. You can take a dose of penicillin to get rid of the clap, but herpes will stick with you, always ready to rear its head when you least expect it. Depression is like that. You’re never fully rid of it. The trick is to learn to manage it. That is something men like Boogaard, Rypien, and Belak obviously never learned. I was lucky enough to stumble into an outlet. Many others aren’t. Without an adequate program to help those battling this illness to learn how to mediate it instead, we will be faced with a growing list of hockey players dying far too soon. That list is long enough as it is.
Thanks, RD. All of these deaths suck. If any good is to come from them, we--you, me, the NHL, everybody--have got to drag this stuff out into the open. Even if we don't want to. I'm one of the lucky ones--after a bit of trial and error, I've found a medication that controls my own despression, with a minimum of side effects. But I suffered for far too long before I got my ass to a doctor. Because I didn't want to talk about it. So if anyone reading this recognizes just a bit of themselves--please, go talk about it.
