Substance Use & Misuse, 49:1211–1218, 2014 Creative Commons Copyright ISSN: 1082-6084 print / 1532-2491 online DOI: 10.3109/10826084.2014.925737
AN AFTERWORD
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
HUMANING . . . (Anti-)DOPING Looking at “doping” sideways1 Stan Einstein Middle Eastern Summer Institute on Drug Use (MESIDU), Jerusalem, Israel uscan [Klein]. Sense of “behavior” is first recorded late 14c. Meaning “a document with blanks to be filled in” is from 1855.
This trek and quest explores a range of man-made anomalies and challenges which are rarely considered by their stakeholders in the complex, dynamic, nonlinear, multi-dimensionalities of both “doping” and antidoping, closure-driven certitudes.
commodification (n.)
Keywords anti-doping, doping, commodification, compete, enhance, harm, participate, sportsmanship, win
1968, from commodity + -fication. Originally in Marxist political theory, “the assignment of a market value,” often to some quality or material the user of the word feels would be better without it.
Selected Doping and Anti-doping Concepts and Processes
compete (v.)
1610s, “ to enter or be put in rivalry with,” from Middle French comp´eter” be in rivalry with” (14c.), or directly from Late Latin competere” strive in common,” in classical Latin “to come together, agree, to be qualified,” later, “strive together,” from com-” together” (see com-) +petere” to strive, seek, fall upon, rush at, attack” (see petition (n.)). Rare 17c., revived from late 18c. in sense “to strive (alongside another) for the attainment of something” and regarded early 19c. in Britain as a Scottish or American word. Market sense is from 1840s (perhaps a backformation from competition); athletics sense attested by 1857. Related: Competed; competing.
appearance (n.)
late 14c., “visible state or form, figure; mere show,” from Anglo-French apparaunce, Old French aparance” appearance, display, pomp” (13c.), from Latin apparentia, abstract noun from aparentem, past participle of apparere (see appear). Meaning “semblance” is recorded from early 15c.; that of “action of coming into view” is mid-15c. Phrase keep up appearances attested from 1760 (save appearances in same sense is 1711). form (n.)
early 13c., from Old French forme” physical form, appearance, pleasing looks; shape, image,” from Latin forma” form, contour, figure, shape; appearance, looks’ model, pattern, design; sort, kind condition,” origin unknown. One theory holds that it is from Greek morphe” form, beauty, outward appearance” (see Morpheus) via Etr-
enhance (v.)
late 13c., anhaunsen” to raise, make higher,” from AngloFrench enhauncer, probably from Old French enhaucier” make greater, make higher, or louder; fatten, foster; raise in esteem,” from Vulgar Latin∗ inaltiare, from Late Latin
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Suggestions to you, the reader. This “tour de force” narrative ??? can be read out loud, sections-at-a-time, mindfully enhanced, by tempo, tone, and muscle movement over a 3 weeks period, alone or with others in a reading-Tour de France; the annual multiple stage, at times “doped,” bicycle race primarily held in France that was initially organized in 1903 to increase paper sales for the magazine L’ Auto; an early commodification of sportsmanship and competition. downloaded 4/17/14. My thanks to my friends and colleagues who read my writing, helpfully criticized and taught me—Manuella Adrian, Shirly Clute, Denis Diamond, Sam Friedman, Ted Godlaski, Michael Montagne, Azenildo Santos, and Michael Bahrke helped me to improve my never-ending quest. Address all correspondence to Stan Einstein, Middle Eastern Summer Institute on Drug Use (MESIDU), Jerusalem, Israel; E-mail: [email protected]
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inaltare” raise, exalt,” from altare” make high,” from altus” high” (see old). Meaning “raise in station, wealth, or fame” attested in English from c.1300. The -h- in Old French supposedly from influence of Frankish ∗ hoh” high.” Related: Enhanced; enhancing. participate (v.)
1530s, back-formation from participation, or else from Latin participatus, past participle of participare” to share, share in, participate in; to impart,” from particeps” partaking, sharing,” from parti, past participle of partir” to divide” (seepart (n.)) + -cip-, weak form of stem of capere” to take” (seecapable). Related: Participated; participating. perform (v.)
c.1300, “carry into effect, fulfill, discharge,” via AngloFrench performer, altered (by influence of Old French forme” form”) from Old French parfornir” to do, carry out, finish, accomplish,” from par-” completely” (see per-) +fornir” to provide” sportsmanship (n.)
“conduct worthy of a sportsman,” 1745, from sportsman + -ship. win (v.)
“be victorious,” c.1300 fusion of Old English winnan” to labor, toil, struggle for, work at, strive, fight,” and gewinnan” to gain or succeed by struggling, conquer, obtain,” both from Proto-Germanic ∗ winn(w)an” to seek to gain” (cognates: Old Saxon winnan, Old Norse vinna, Old Frisian winna, Dutch winnen ” to gain, win,” Danish vinde” to win,” Old High German winnan” to strive, struggle, fight,” German gewinnen” to gain, win,” Gothic gawinnen” to suffer, toil”), from PIE ∗ wen- (1) “desire, strive for” (source of wish; see Venus). Related: Won; winning. Meaning “gain the affection or esteem of” is from c.1600. win (n.)
Old English winn” labor, toil; strife, conflict; profit, gain,” from the source of win (v.). Modern sense of “a victory in a game or contest” is first attested 1862, from the verb. A Preface:
ENDEAVERING . . . ENDURING PERFORMING . . . PARTICIPATING COMPETING . . . BEING WINNING . . . LOSING SUCCESS . . . FAILURE2 2
The reader interested in the complex processes, implications, and outcomes of losing and failing are referred to: Sandage, S. A. (2005) Born losers: A history of failure in America. Cambridge Mass. Harvard University Press; Ormerod, Paul, (2005) Why most things fail: Evolution, extinction and economics. Faber & Faber, UK; Miller, Matt, (2010).The tyranny of dead ideas; New York: Henry Holt & Co. and Einstein, Stanley, (2013), (ed.) Substance use(r) intervention failures., Substance Use and Misuse, 47:13–14
VICTORIOUS . . . VANQUISHED ATHLETE . . . COMMODITY DEHUMANIZED ICONS . . . STIGMATIZED LOSERS STAKEHOLDERS . . . STAKEDRIVERS W.A.D.A . . . .WHOA SPORTING . . . ??? SPORTSMANSHIP??? A beginning: For Whom is it Permitted to play? To try? To perform? To appear? To compete with and against self and with and against others? To move a muscle, “filled”-formed with free-choice temporary or more permanent materials, or “natural”-begotten, for fame, or fortune, or a ligament? A foot. A leg. A hand. A “bicepted” arm. To focus an eye toward a distant target, to the end of the race against . . . To Whom is it Permitted to “head” a ball to fame, and fortune. To create an-ever-circling wheel, powered by self-inflicted exhaustion, observed by leisured, co-opted, complacent, fans∗ -ofwinning at almost any “costs” to body parts and to commodified and commodifying systems. To Whom is it Permitted to train countless seconds, or even less, measured minutes, heartless, heavy hours. Enduring. Exerting. Excreting. Exhausting. Days with no-sense-giving dividers, wherever the sun, the moon, and the stars.
AN AFTERWORD
Through parching deserts, drenching rains, lung-bursting inclines, iatrogenic slopes; slipping, sliding, into gamed-injuries. Panoramic scapes, and challenging paths. “Fanned”∗ onward, downward, upward, INTO bodies of others who may still know the sportsman-like-behavior mantra from a myth-manufactured Grecian Olympics exploited by modern entrepreneurs. By “doping’s” enablers and enhancers.3 Onward. Enkephalined onward to winner “take all,” or a bemedalled, metallic “trinity” of . . . by comfortable, but less-than comforting or concerned, cheering- “beering” disappointed rowdy fans who, at times, can, and do, violate in the name of . . . untargeted by WADA’s4 ways. 3
Personal and team doctors, soigneurs—a romantic French term designating “one who cares for others,” individual athletes and team managers, team owners, sports medicine clinic directors, and staff who instruct athletes in how to use, but do not themselves administer the pharmacological-helpers in order to avoid “chemical culpability,” mechanics when needed, hotel room maids who removed the doping athlete’s trash bag filled with syringes and empty vials from the enhanced temporary hotel room guest’s waste can, spouses, and other significant “others . . . ” who “mule” the enhancers across geographical and other borders and boundaries; all able, if they choose to, to innovatively rationalize their abetting the chemistry of cheating—both the competitive and the doping testing—even by: it’s not cheating when everybody is doing it. And many people and systems KNOW and have known. Just as the “anti-dopers” can, and do, legitimate their potential, and actual, violating of others by “mathematicalizing” 2 of 3 man-made, sports prohibition-listings of a substance or a method having (1) the potential to enhance performance; (2) representing a potential health risk, and/or (3) violates the (unmeasurable, stakeholders-designated) spirit of sport. Going beyond, this Holy Trinity for “clean” sports and sporting is prohibiting the use of substances which can and do potentially mask “doping.” Akin to anti-doping groups and activities enabling fans to feel and be secure in their beliefs that someone else is taking care of “clean competitions;” the soigneurs of prevention. 4 WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, was created as an international independent agency, November 10, 1999 subsequent to the first International Conference on Doping in Sport initiated by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and held in Lausanne, Switzerland, during February 1999. Its mandate is to “set unified standards for antidoping work and coordinate the efforts of sports organizations and; public authorities.” WADA arose 31 years after the term “commodification,’ and its processes, was introduced into the English language but long after athletes had become commodities. Intervening in what could be relevant to de-commodifying athletes, clean
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Observers who CAN and DO feed the unsated appetites of selected sponsors of forged sportsmanship. Winning is about achieving, once or more. Sportsmanship is about ongoing caring. We know how to create achievers in our children. Are we as adept in facilitating caringness-competitions in a world which creates, sustains and violates “the other” daily? In a world in which resource-advantaged athletes, and countries continue to take unfair advantages of resource-limited competitors while complaining about . . . and decrying enslaving “doping” as being against the “spirit of sport,”5 when this mantra exemplifies the tyranny of a dying, if not dead, idea, ethic and reality for many, if not for most. TODAY.6 or “dirty” ones, and their activities, is not part of its fairness in sports mandate. downloaded 4/15/14.T The IOC’s and WADA’s relationships between sports, sportsmanship, athletes, their performances, their wellbeing and their necessary contingencies, their unending efforts to raise money for . . . their relationships with their major sponsors and the communities of “fans” whom they are to serve is not an easily understood one. 5 Consider the mega-irony of tainted Western colonizers who, for hundreds of years exploited, and enhanced, the endurance of their overworked, colonized, and often enslaved, less than/human-worker/profitsource commodities with “imported” alcoholic beverages . . . ” enslaving spirits” . . . and/or native-natural-” intoxicants and violating techniques . . . performance enhancing drugs and methods . . . and OUR God’s WORDS . . . and who have yet to be sanctioned for the creating of a vibrant, valued, culture of “getting-away-with-it.” Jankowiak, William and Bradburd, Daniel Eds. (2003) Drugs, Labor and Colonial Expansion. Tucson: The Arizona University Press; Jos´e C. Curto, (2003) Enslaving spirits: The Portuguese-Brazilian alcohol trade at Luanda and its hinterland, York University, Toronto. 6 The word “doping” was first mentioned in an English dictionary in 1889, describing a mixture of opium and other narcotics which were administered to horses at races. Horses continue to be “doped” throughout the world; maimed and dying to perform. Define “doping” as a violation of ethics, morals, sportsmanship, and fair play, which merits sanctioning and temporary or more permanent punishment, is not an easy task given the vagueness of these terms and processes. Creating a consensualized list of what is prohibited by “consensualizing adults” resolves any legal problems. If the + tagged athlete can’t read in his or her mother tongue, hopefully the coach and/or the soigneur can. The current and official definition of doping, based on the World Anti-Doping Code, reads as follows: “Doping is defined as the occurrence of one or more of the anti-doping rule violations set forth in Article 2.1 through Article 2.8 of the World Anti-Doping Code,” which, simplified, note: Presence of a prohibited substance in the body (pursuant to the updated Prohibited List); (Attempted) use by an athlete of a prohibited substance or a prohibited method;
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Who are the coaches for “caring?” What’s the training regime . . . and where? How much time does . . . can . . . it take to develop? To sustain? To transmit? Is there a local, national, and Olympic record for sportsman-like caring? Medals? Sponsors? Caring as an available and accessible commodity? By, and for, fans co-opted into institutionalized, consensualized, precision-trained, somatic movement(s), wound(ed) to WIN, at any cost for the designated performer who has “made it” this FAR, as a child, as a young adult, as an aging, temporary to-be-replaced commodity in a voracious ever-hungry culture for winners, who were, are, and will be quickly forgotten, albeit sometimes remembered as an example that . . . and which brooks no losers. Losers as failed identities, and not as situational outcomes. Are there sufficient, sensitive soigneurs to solace the inevitable loser(s)? For Whom is it Permitted not to consider ever-present uncertainty and its unsportsmanlike companion unpredictability and their outcomes in the daily “games-of-life,” played in temporary fields, whatever the “commodity’s” in put, and output? For Whom is it Permitted to risk one’s balanced, healthy, wholeness, in gyms, on slopes, stadiums, rings, and race tracks, and in ice(d) rinks created by . . . . Sustained and maintained by an US to enjoy a temporary THEM Refusing or failing without compelling justification to submit to sample collection; Failure to file whereabouts information (“whereabouts filing requirements”); (Attempted) tampering with any part of doping control; Illegal possession of prohibited substances or methods; (Attempted) trafficking in any prohibited substance or method; (Attempted) administration of any prohibited substance or method.
who are dangerously challenged by performing and overcoming and WINNING. And enable losing and loses of limbs and lives, and levels and qualities of functioning? Image up the helmeted/unhelmeted-hells, speedily running their ramming heads and their following well-trained bodies into choosing-to-be opponents in the “clean” value-vacumed collision (a.k.a “contact”) sports of football, soccer, boxing ???, ice hockey, and rugby hailed and “heroed” on by untainted-sports(manship) fans.7 This is enough to take one’s breath away! Someone’s breath, As well as taken off-the-field-breadth. And as the list of forbidden enhancers continues to grow, university student-athletes8 7
Cerebral concussion is common in collision sports. The chronic effects of recurrent concussion, such as cognitive impairment, “mild” or “other,” which are part of “the game” are not well understood. In a general questionnaire-based health survey of a subset of 758 “collisioners”, from a sample of 2,552 retired US professional football players, with an average age of 53.8 (±13.4) years and an average professional football playing career of 6.6 (± 3.6) years, 61% reported sustaining at least one concussion during their professional football career, and 24% sustained three or more concussions. There was a statistically significant association between recurrent cerebral concussions, clinically diagnosed and self-reported significant memory impairments. Retired football–collision players with a remembered history of three or more concussions had a five-fold prevalence of a mild cognitive impairment (MCI) diagnosis and reported having three times more significant memory problems when compared with retirees without a history of concussion. The study noted that although they were not able to statistically document a generalizable relationship between “recurrent concussion and Alzheimer’s disease”, “we observed an earlier onset of Alzheimer’s disease in the retirees than in the general American male population.” The authors concluded “that the onset of dementiarelated syndromes may be initiated by repetitive cerebral concussions in professional football players.” A caveat. Collision-contact-athletes, their families as well as additional “significant others,” including sports organizations who are/should be ostensibly sensitive to the wellbeing of their sport and its community of performers and leisured-time observers, may have some difficulty discerning between substantive and statistical significance. Guskiewicz, Kevin M. et al, (2005) Association between recurrent concussion and late-life cognitive impairment in retired professional football players. Neurosurgery. 57:4,719-726. I remain challenged in a “doping”/anti-doping culture, and context, to adequately understand the value boundaries and necessary enabling, acculturating, and institutionalized conditions between tainted performance enhancing and “clean” collision enhancing. 8 College-university, student–amateur athletes is often a misnomer. First, it is important to distinguish between a university’s revenue producing sports and nonrevenue producing sports. Second, these athlete-students are really “employed” fulltime athletically. They somehow have to fit their studies into their daily “work,” solutions being created and “enhanced” by a range of academic and nonacademic
AN AFTERWORD
continue to enhance the reputations and salaries of their coaches and trainers, the name and reputation of their “employer” universities, the donations of alumni, chests enhanced and expanded by “the win” of university student-athletes who all-too-often are losers even as they “win” a new sports center, a new stadium. To Whom is it Permitted to stand up to pounding head-blows to the helmed-selected few, to inescapable, trapped, oxygenated brain cells, blood vessels, and other limbs in an andrenalized public “belt-contender”, goal-achieving, slope-sliding, hoping-to-win, before a cheering, booing, sober, as well as an intoxicated crowd what she/he will, staff who, by the nature of this college–sports reality, can be and are engaged in corrupt and, at times, criminal activities which become traditionalized and institutionalized. Third, these athlete-students can and do graduate from university without the education that the university was created and mandated to give. They graduate, in a sense, with a “dirty education” and not a “clean education” even if their urines were clean. Athlete-students have been and are accepted into the university not equipped to successfully carry out college level studies even as they successfully “carry the ball.” This situation worsened in 2008 when the US NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) changed entrance requirements and lowered SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test—which measures critical reading, math, and writing abilities) scores depending upon a student’s GPA scores (grade point average; e.g. average grades earned over a period of time during high school). The GPA is used to determine the student’s educational achievement during his/her course of studies. The NCAA, mandated to determine impermissible and academic benefits for the student-athlete, was created due to President Theodore Roosevelt’s demand to reform college football because even then football, a contact—competition, was an extremely rough sport which caused many serious injuries. The contacts which student—athletes can and do make with important and influential alumni who can help them during their college years as well as after college, enhancing their lives, are yet to be adequately studied in terms of their physical-contact costs on the playing-field or “playing” in independent study “paper” courses in which a single paper and no classroom attendance or contact with a teacher denotes academic achievement. More than 150,000 student-athletes apply to universities in the United States annually. Readers interested in enhancing their knowledge about this piece in the “doping” puzzle for a very specific population are referred to: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student athlete downloaded 5/11/14; http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/05/11/2057064/unc-chapel-hillmight-take-action.html#storylink=cpy She had to tell what she knew Joe Nocera, New York Times, May 6, 2014, page A25.
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sooner or later LOSE before the same or an other cheering, booing, crowd in an acculturated, institutionalized, “normed” and valued ritual of anticipated joy(s), and unpredictable and uncontrollable immediate and future pains, harms and havocs. For Whom is it Permitted to be an accomplice, to create, to transmit, to root for and in in order to maintain having an edge in order to defeat, to WIN, and not BEING a needed, supporting, outstretched helping-hand to achieving “success” by simply participating. BEING part of horizontally, and not hierarchically, with and among the many; from the individual DOER, to dyadic participating, and including the marathoned-multitudes. with the many, and not alone, acclaimed vertically as a temporary, depersonalized, commodified, somatic icon. Paradoxically with a famed-name, in a globalized nano-time reality, entered onto lists, and into “Halls of Fame,” and into the mouths of many, and into and out of the pockets and credit cards of many, and the thoughts of the MANY. Talent scouts searching for winners to BE formed from . . . Coaches, trainers, and the necessary soigneurs-for-success, and also, at times, “doping” suppliers available for “hire.” And not to forget one’s team mates. Fellow competitors. Sportscasters. (Anti)-doping wheelers and dealers. Doping dealers and healers.
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Sports products producers.9 Etc. Etc. (Specify ) Winning-is-everything inducers! All of this within an ambience of pacts of ignorance, and conspiracies of silence. For Whom is all of this Permitted? For Whom is it Permitted to introduce guilt by urination through infallible testing of licensed labs,10 who can, and do, lose their licenses, by God’s fallible creations? For Whom is it Permitted to carry out sterilized “bloodletting” to verify the purity-of-performance in a less-than sportsmanlike, politicalized, cesspool, of a range of complacently justified ENHANCING by and for some, but not for others? Special training and coaches. Special equipment. Special garb. Special foods for those selected few from places where malnutrition and hunger can and do reign. Side-by-side repeat performances by tainted trainees, trainers and traffickers, and pure fans, sports organizations and sponsors. Special promises for GOLD, silver, and bronze current and about-to-be humanoid commodities. Special trophies. Special lime-lighted, one-time, 9
Lance Armstrong, conqueror of cancer and competitions, treading the line between dying and winning in his linear, legitimizing, lean, lacerated, (L4 ) “traitorizing” of one of his many sponsors—the Trek Bicycle Corporation-claims that Trek’s revenue was $100 million when he signed with the company and reached $1 billion in 2013. “Who’s responsible for that?” he asks, before cursing and saying, “Right here.” He pokes himself in the chest with his right index finger. “I’m sorry, but that is true. Without me, none of that happens.” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/sports/cycling/end-of-theride-for-lance-armstrong.html downloaded 3/2/14. Was Lance the rare lancer of the legacy of peripheral, pasteurized purity? 10 The interested reader can Google Victo Conte and the Balco scandal for a case study in-site/insight into the realities and limitations doping testing and its false +s and −s. More than 20 elite athletes were investigated. Marion Jones, Olympic field and track champion, for example, tested negative more than 150 times for performance-enhancing drug (PED) use during her career, lied about her use of PEDs to a grand jury, was sentenced to six months in jail for perjury but was not tripped up by a positive drug test. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion Jones downloaded 4/22/14
more than one-time, public, winner-hero-worshipping. Special achieved dreams, with or without the nightmare(s) of ensuing injuries to diseased cells, unstable limbs, malfunctioning, and autopsied brains. To ears no longer responsive to changeable, cheering, booing, adulation of the winner-reifiers, or to the words and support of the long-since-gone SPONSORS who have moved on to yet another “crowned” and selected winner-commodity, leaving behind maimed, mourning, or orphaned families. For Whom is it Forbidden to interfere with the “normal” childhood DEVELOPMENT(S) of a talented, able, resource-FULL pre-winner son, daughter, sibling, grandchild, friend, and neighbor? Sought out. Tagged. Documented, and finally enveloped into a winner-producing training-trek into which many may enter, and from which relatively few achieve the sought after . . . Have these childhood-kidnappers helped THEM to experience that just to “play,” to be part of is TO BE! IT IS A REPEATABLE, unbeatable WIN. Have the less-than-sportsmanship stakeholders,11 their mindless mantras set aside, helped the about-to-be’s to be aware that to WIN can be 11
Readers interested in the roles, influences, sources of powers and impacts of individual and systemic stakeholders in the broad area of substance use(r) interventions and which are critical to an understanding of “doping” and anti-”doping,” and which remain under-researched, are referred to Beccaria, Franca, et al. (eds.) (2013) Stakeholders in opioid drug user treatment policy: Similarities and differences in six European countries. Substance Use and Misuse 48:11
AN AFTERWORD
to lose a great deal by damaging-success. As “doping’s” blood and urines’ tests assess the macros, and not the micros, of a PERSON’S functioning and adaptation, NOW, and in what is yet to be, in a stakeholder-winner-take-all-driven reality that does not, chooses not to, PERCEIVE or ACKNOWLEDGE the cries and lies of both doping’s and anti-dopings’ existential micro AND macro dimensions. Medals and memorials (re)place sports MEN and WOMEN; People like YOU and me, co-opted into a yet-to-be considered, need-to-be delineated champs and chumps. For Whom is it Permitted . . . For Whom is it Forbidden. . . For Whom is it an Obligation? To perform? To compete? To partake? To support? To question In which the queries For Whom is it a Choice to . . . For Whom is it an Obligation to. . . What Do I Need to Know in order to . . . are not yet “adequated” by blood, sweat, urine, and autopsy answers. THEY never were! Doping and anti-doping are no longer clear in their boundaries.12 THEY never were! Nor are they in terms of the necessary conditions which enable, or which may serve as barriers, to, and for, selected enhanced performance(s) and “norming,” modified appearance(s), when taking an “anti-doping” shortcut becomes the whole route.13 12 “What is doping?”, the question enveloping the quest for a useful and useable delineation is shorter than Shakespeare’s to be or not to be. Both questions have triggered a great deal of unresolved controversy. 13 In a binary world of winners and losers, of “clean” competers and “dirty dopers”, of positive and negative urine and blood testing results, you, the reader, are invited to learn about the outrageous human rights abuse associated with the “testosterone tyranny”—testing of tagged female athletes. “The Trouble with too Much T,” Katrina Karkazis and Rebecca Jordan-Young, NYT, April 12, 2014, page A 21. Current policies of international sports governing bodies (i.e. IOC—International Olympic Committee and the IAAF—International Association of Athletics Federations amongst others) test women ath-
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The shadows of random and institutionalized mendacity blur, and challenge the relatively recent-reasons trafficked by national and international organized sports organizations for their antidoping activities, policies, regulations, LISTS, and rhetoric: • doping undermines the integrity of the sport, which becomes sportsmanship-LESS in a winner-take all culture, in a competing-semantic surrealism between: Performance enablers Performance engenderers Restoratives Performance enhancers Assistive additives, and the more neutral supplements. REMEMBER:
In the beginning there was the WORD14 , letes whose bodies produce testosterone levels which are higher than is typical . . . (remember the bell-shaped curve . . . ). When the judgment, which is a consensualized one and not an empirically informed one, is made . . . most often by men . . . that the T level is too high, the group’s chosen medical team . . . another consensualized judgment . . . creates a “therapeutic proposal.” A socially constructed, influential-stakeholderagendaed, gender-associated, medicalized-mongered PROBLEM becomes resolvable either through irreversible and medically unjustified surgery (removing a nondiseased woman’s “guilty”-gonads, which causes sterility, or partial surgical removal of the clitoris, which impairs her and not his sexual functioning and sensation) or using non-doping hormone suppressing medicine—drugs, which potentially are associated with life-long health risks, to lower the naturally heighten T level to a consenualized “normal” T level. The tagged high-T level female athlete, if successfully, and invasively, treated will be allowed to return to compete, and if she becomes a special kind of winner, even to BECOME a commodity. If, however, she . . . gender-sure of WHO she is, and who she is not . . . refuses to cooperate in the investigation and its subsequent “medical mongering,” she is banned, permanently, from competing in elite women’s sportsmanship-like events. A caveat is obviously necessary to distinguish between “doping” testing and testosterone testing; the former is self-inflicted, the latter is . . . It takes lots of testosterone and genderless-b s to create and sustain such an intrusive, shameful, and humiliating policy and its procedures. 11 The American legendary college football coach Knute Rockne stated that, “Show me a good and gracious loser and I’ll show you a failure” and the professional football coach Vince Lombardi contributed his philosophy that, “winning isn’t everything—it’s the only thing.” Unpublished manuscript by M. Bahrke. 14 It’s written here: “In the Beginning was the Word!” Here I stick already! Who can help me? It’s absurd, Impossible, for me to rate the word so highly I must try to say it differently If I’m truly inspired by the Spirit. I find I’ve written here: “In the Beginning was the Mind.” Let me consider that first sentence So my pen won’t run on in advance! Is it Mind that works and creates what’s ours? It should say: “In the beginning was the Power!” Yet even while I write the words down, I’m warned: I’m no closer with these I’ve found The Spirit helps me! I have it now, intact. And firmly write: “In the Beginning was the Act!” Faust Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe lines 1223-1237 http://www. gutenberg.org/files/14591/14591-h/14591-h.htm downloaded 4/30/14
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and seducing Satan soigneurs? Many words since then. • doping threatens the health of the competitors15 , and • doping scandals result in adverse public relations that threaten the financial viability of the sport. Not the profits of free-marketing commodification. which include the high stakes (financial and other) for elite athletes and their support systems (and “wanabe-others”), corporate sponsors, unincorporated complacent customers and buyers, the TV broadcast and cable industries, and sport governing bodies,? As the have-an-edge “dopers” and their necessary minions continue to outplay the resource-limited testers and their mantras and manifestos within a contemporary “evidence-informed” information-drowning culture which mistakes an absence of generalizable evidence for evidence of a generalizable, reality of an absence of . . . . This mendacious “trinity” has been “nosologized” into • a (small?) group of athletes who are not using any banned performance enhancers; • representing a second undetected group (larger?), who either take drugs that aren’t tested for, use low levels of tested-for drugs which remain undetected, or take substances that mask the presence of the drugs in their system at testing time and. • those relatively few “doping” athletes who are actually caught. The unfairness of being a CHEMICALIZED LOSER! REMEMBER The “sporting” “bread and circuses” (panem et circenses) used by the emperors of Rome to control their power, THEIR social, political, God-given, and economic systems THEN, and have been used in our more modern, enhanced, co-opting and complacent “doping” times, and methods used by national doping programs: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, 15 When athletes, coaches, trainers, and the other co-opted and co-opters do not and did not debate the morality or propriety of “doping”; debating, rather, which drugs were/are more effective, and when national doping programs go beyond the documented, collusion of a few blamed, sanctioned, elite athletes, coaches, “rogue physicians”, laboratories and sport scientists?
East Germany, and Communist China, amongst others . . . Not to be forgotten: “Doping” remains somewhat retarded in the institutionalized, acculturated, historical process of drug use(r) • moralizing (a sin and a sinner) • stigmatizing (a deviant “other”) • criminalizing (an adjudicated felon, or less), and • most recently “liberally” medicalizing and pathologizing. Consensualizing selected caregivers and their innovative social-problem Creators, has yet to diagnose a doping disorder. Their close kin, the pharmacology-industry, who shed few tears for the demise, and knowledge, of the neighborhood’s chemist-of-caring pharmacist, has yet to create, and patent, an addiction-dependency free, zero-tolerance-side-effects, cost-effective, antidote to chemical-enhancing athletic-performance and appearance. THEY may . . . if market strategies “suggest . . . ” Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. Samuel Becket Declaration of Interest
The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the article. THE AUTHOR Stan Einstein, Ph.D., clinical and social psychologist; student; academician (emeritus); researcher; journalist (newspaper and radio); editor/author (25 books; 58 topic-oriented special issues of Substance Use and Misuse listed as editor 7; unlisted as editor 51); journal editor-founder (Substance Use and Misuse; Drug Forum; Social Pharmacology; Violence, Aggression and Terrorism; Altered States of Consciousness); consultant, lecturer, conference, and training program organizer, exhibit curator, volunteer; awards (Pace Setter award, NIDA; Mayor of Jerusalem Outstanding Volunteer Award). Area of interest: the parameters of failure.
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AN AFTERWORD
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
HUMANING . . . (Anti-)DOPING Looking at “doping” sideways1 Stan Einstein Middle Eastern Summer Institute on Drug Use (MESIDU), Jerusalem, Israel uscan [Klein]. Sense of “behavior” is first recorded late 14c. Meaning “a document with blanks to be filled in” is from 1855.
This trek and quest explores a range of man-made anomalies and challenges which are rarely considered by their stakeholders in the complex, dynamic, nonlinear, multi-dimensionalities of both “doping” and antidoping, closure-driven certitudes.
commodification (n.)
Keywords anti-doping, doping, commodification, compete, enhance, harm, participate, sportsmanship, win
1968, from commodity + -fication. Originally in Marxist political theory, “the assignment of a market value,” often to some quality or material the user of the word feels would be better without it.
Selected Doping and Anti-doping Concepts and Processes
compete (v.)
1610s, “ to enter or be put in rivalry with,” from Middle French comp´eter” be in rivalry with” (14c.), or directly from Late Latin competere” strive in common,” in classical Latin “to come together, agree, to be qualified,” later, “strive together,” from com-” together” (see com-) +petere” to strive, seek, fall upon, rush at, attack” (see petition (n.)). Rare 17c., revived from late 18c. in sense “to strive (alongside another) for the attainment of something” and regarded early 19c. in Britain as a Scottish or American word. Market sense is from 1840s (perhaps a backformation from competition); athletics sense attested by 1857. Related: Competed; competing.
appearance (n.)
late 14c., “visible state or form, figure; mere show,” from Anglo-French apparaunce, Old French aparance” appearance, display, pomp” (13c.), from Latin apparentia, abstract noun from aparentem, past participle of apparere (see appear). Meaning “semblance” is recorded from early 15c.; that of “action of coming into view” is mid-15c. Phrase keep up appearances attested from 1760 (save appearances in same sense is 1711). form (n.)
early 13c., from Old French forme” physical form, appearance, pleasing looks; shape, image,” from Latin forma” form, contour, figure, shape; appearance, looks’ model, pattern, design; sort, kind condition,” origin unknown. One theory holds that it is from Greek morphe” form, beauty, outward appearance” (see Morpheus) via Etr-
enhance (v.)
late 13c., anhaunsen” to raise, make higher,” from AngloFrench enhauncer, probably from Old French enhaucier” make greater, make higher, or louder; fatten, foster; raise in esteem,” from Vulgar Latin∗ inaltiare, from Late Latin
1
Suggestions to you, the reader. This “tour de force” narrative ??? can be read out loud, sections-at-a-time, mindfully enhanced, by tempo, tone, and muscle movement over a 3 weeks period, alone or with others in a reading-Tour de France; the annual multiple stage, at times “doped,” bicycle race primarily held in France that was initially organized in 1903 to increase paper sales for the magazine L’ Auto; an early commodification of sportsmanship and competition. downloaded 4/17/14. My thanks to my friends and colleagues who read my writing, helpfully criticized and taught me—Manuella Adrian, Shirly Clute, Denis Diamond, Sam Friedman, Ted Godlaski, Michael Montagne, Azenildo Santos, and Michael Bahrke helped me to improve my never-ending quest. Address all correspondence to Stan Einstein, Middle Eastern Summer Institute on Drug Use (MESIDU), Jerusalem, Israel; E-mail: [email protected]
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inaltare” raise, exalt,” from altare” make high,” from altus” high” (see old). Meaning “raise in station, wealth, or fame” attested in English from c.1300. The -h- in Old French supposedly from influence of Frankish ∗ hoh” high.” Related: Enhanced; enhancing. participate (v.)
1530s, back-formation from participation, or else from Latin participatus, past participle of participare” to share, share in, participate in; to impart,” from particeps” partaking, sharing,” from parti, past participle of partir” to divide” (seepart (n.)) + -cip-, weak form of stem of capere” to take” (seecapable). Related: Participated; participating. perform (v.)
c.1300, “carry into effect, fulfill, discharge,” via AngloFrench performer, altered (by influence of Old French forme” form”) from Old French parfornir” to do, carry out, finish, accomplish,” from par-” completely” (see per-) +fornir” to provide” sportsmanship (n.)
“conduct worthy of a sportsman,” 1745, from sportsman + -ship. win (v.)
“be victorious,” c.1300 fusion of Old English winnan” to labor, toil, struggle for, work at, strive, fight,” and gewinnan” to gain or succeed by struggling, conquer, obtain,” both from Proto-Germanic ∗ winn(w)an” to seek to gain” (cognates: Old Saxon winnan, Old Norse vinna, Old Frisian winna, Dutch winnen ” to gain, win,” Danish vinde” to win,” Old High German winnan” to strive, struggle, fight,” German gewinnen” to gain, win,” Gothic gawinnen” to suffer, toil”), from PIE ∗ wen- (1) “desire, strive for” (source of wish; see Venus). Related: Won; winning. Meaning “gain the affection or esteem of” is from c.1600. win (n.)
Old English winn” labor, toil; strife, conflict; profit, gain,” from the source of win (v.). Modern sense of “a victory in a game or contest” is first attested 1862, from the verb. A Preface:
ENDEAVERING . . . ENDURING PERFORMING . . . PARTICIPATING COMPETING . . . BEING WINNING . . . LOSING SUCCESS . . . FAILURE2 2
The reader interested in the complex processes, implications, and outcomes of losing and failing are referred to: Sandage, S. A. (2005) Born losers: A history of failure in America. Cambridge Mass. Harvard University Press; Ormerod, Paul, (2005) Why most things fail: Evolution, extinction and economics. Faber & Faber, UK; Miller, Matt, (2010).The tyranny of dead ideas; New York: Henry Holt & Co. and Einstein, Stanley, (2013), (ed.) Substance use(r) intervention failures., Substance Use and Misuse, 47:13–14
VICTORIOUS . . . VANQUISHED ATHLETE . . . COMMODITY DEHUMANIZED ICONS . . . STIGMATIZED LOSERS STAKEHOLDERS . . . STAKEDRIVERS W.A.D.A . . . .WHOA SPORTING . . . ??? SPORTSMANSHIP??? A beginning: For Whom is it Permitted to play? To try? To perform? To appear? To compete with and against self and with and against others? To move a muscle, “filled”-formed with free-choice temporary or more permanent materials, or “natural”-begotten, for fame, or fortune, or a ligament? A foot. A leg. A hand. A “bicepted” arm. To focus an eye toward a distant target, to the end of the race against . . . To Whom is it Permitted to “head” a ball to fame, and fortune. To create an-ever-circling wheel, powered by self-inflicted exhaustion, observed by leisured, co-opted, complacent, fans∗ -ofwinning at almost any “costs” to body parts and to commodified and commodifying systems. To Whom is it Permitted to train countless seconds, or even less, measured minutes, heartless, heavy hours. Enduring. Exerting. Excreting. Exhausting. Days with no-sense-giving dividers, wherever the sun, the moon, and the stars.
AN AFTERWORD
Through parching deserts, drenching rains, lung-bursting inclines, iatrogenic slopes; slipping, sliding, into gamed-injuries. Panoramic scapes, and challenging paths. “Fanned”∗ onward, downward, upward, INTO bodies of others who may still know the sportsman-like-behavior mantra from a myth-manufactured Grecian Olympics exploited by modern entrepreneurs. By “doping’s” enablers and enhancers.3 Onward. Enkephalined onward to winner “take all,” or a bemedalled, metallic “trinity” of . . . by comfortable, but less-than comforting or concerned, cheering- “beering” disappointed rowdy fans who, at times, can, and do, violate in the name of . . . untargeted by WADA’s4 ways. 3
Personal and team doctors, soigneurs—a romantic French term designating “one who cares for others,” individual athletes and team managers, team owners, sports medicine clinic directors, and staff who instruct athletes in how to use, but do not themselves administer the pharmacological-helpers in order to avoid “chemical culpability,” mechanics when needed, hotel room maids who removed the doping athlete’s trash bag filled with syringes and empty vials from the enhanced temporary hotel room guest’s waste can, spouses, and other significant “others . . . ” who “mule” the enhancers across geographical and other borders and boundaries; all able, if they choose to, to innovatively rationalize their abetting the chemistry of cheating—both the competitive and the doping testing—even by: it’s not cheating when everybody is doing it. And many people and systems KNOW and have known. Just as the “anti-dopers” can, and do, legitimate their potential, and actual, violating of others by “mathematicalizing” 2 of 3 man-made, sports prohibition-listings of a substance or a method having (1) the potential to enhance performance; (2) representing a potential health risk, and/or (3) violates the (unmeasurable, stakeholders-designated) spirit of sport. Going beyond, this Holy Trinity for “clean” sports and sporting is prohibiting the use of substances which can and do potentially mask “doping.” Akin to anti-doping groups and activities enabling fans to feel and be secure in their beliefs that someone else is taking care of “clean competitions;” the soigneurs of prevention. 4 WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, was created as an international independent agency, November 10, 1999 subsequent to the first International Conference on Doping in Sport initiated by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and held in Lausanne, Switzerland, during February 1999. Its mandate is to “set unified standards for antidoping work and coordinate the efforts of sports organizations and; public authorities.” WADA arose 31 years after the term “commodification,’ and its processes, was introduced into the English language but long after athletes had become commodities. Intervening in what could be relevant to de-commodifying athletes, clean
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Observers who CAN and DO feed the unsated appetites of selected sponsors of forged sportsmanship. Winning is about achieving, once or more. Sportsmanship is about ongoing caring. We know how to create achievers in our children. Are we as adept in facilitating caringness-competitions in a world which creates, sustains and violates “the other” daily? In a world in which resource-advantaged athletes, and countries continue to take unfair advantages of resource-limited competitors while complaining about . . . and decrying enslaving “doping” as being against the “spirit of sport,”5 when this mantra exemplifies the tyranny of a dying, if not dead, idea, ethic and reality for many, if not for most. TODAY.6 or “dirty” ones, and their activities, is not part of its fairness in sports mandate. downloaded 4/15/14.T The IOC’s and WADA’s relationships between sports, sportsmanship, athletes, their performances, their wellbeing and their necessary contingencies, their unending efforts to raise money for . . . their relationships with their major sponsors and the communities of “fans” whom they are to serve is not an easily understood one. 5 Consider the mega-irony of tainted Western colonizers who, for hundreds of years exploited, and enhanced, the endurance of their overworked, colonized, and often enslaved, less than/human-worker/profitsource commodities with “imported” alcoholic beverages . . . ” enslaving spirits” . . . and/or native-natural-” intoxicants and violating techniques . . . performance enhancing drugs and methods . . . and OUR God’s WORDS . . . and who have yet to be sanctioned for the creating of a vibrant, valued, culture of “getting-away-with-it.” Jankowiak, William and Bradburd, Daniel Eds. (2003) Drugs, Labor and Colonial Expansion. Tucson: The Arizona University Press; Jos´e C. Curto, (2003) Enslaving spirits: The Portuguese-Brazilian alcohol trade at Luanda and its hinterland, York University, Toronto. 6 The word “doping” was first mentioned in an English dictionary in 1889, describing a mixture of opium and other narcotics which were administered to horses at races. Horses continue to be “doped” throughout the world; maimed and dying to perform. Define “doping” as a violation of ethics, morals, sportsmanship, and fair play, which merits sanctioning and temporary or more permanent punishment, is not an easy task given the vagueness of these terms and processes. Creating a consensualized list of what is prohibited by “consensualizing adults” resolves any legal problems. If the + tagged athlete can’t read in his or her mother tongue, hopefully the coach and/or the soigneur can. The current and official definition of doping, based on the World Anti-Doping Code, reads as follows: “Doping is defined as the occurrence of one or more of the anti-doping rule violations set forth in Article 2.1 through Article 2.8 of the World Anti-Doping Code,” which, simplified, note: Presence of a prohibited substance in the body (pursuant to the updated Prohibited List); (Attempted) use by an athlete of a prohibited substance or a prohibited method;
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Who are the coaches for “caring?” What’s the training regime . . . and where? How much time does . . . can . . . it take to develop? To sustain? To transmit? Is there a local, national, and Olympic record for sportsman-like caring? Medals? Sponsors? Caring as an available and accessible commodity? By, and for, fans co-opted into institutionalized, consensualized, precision-trained, somatic movement(s), wound(ed) to WIN, at any cost for the designated performer who has “made it” this FAR, as a child, as a young adult, as an aging, temporary to-be-replaced commodity in a voracious ever-hungry culture for winners, who were, are, and will be quickly forgotten, albeit sometimes remembered as an example that . . . and which brooks no losers. Losers as failed identities, and not as situational outcomes. Are there sufficient, sensitive soigneurs to solace the inevitable loser(s)? For Whom is it Permitted not to consider ever-present uncertainty and its unsportsmanlike companion unpredictability and their outcomes in the daily “games-of-life,” played in temporary fields, whatever the “commodity’s” in put, and output? For Whom is it Permitted to risk one’s balanced, healthy, wholeness, in gyms, on slopes, stadiums, rings, and race tracks, and in ice(d) rinks created by . . . . Sustained and maintained by an US to enjoy a temporary THEM Refusing or failing without compelling justification to submit to sample collection; Failure to file whereabouts information (“whereabouts filing requirements”); (Attempted) tampering with any part of doping control; Illegal possession of prohibited substances or methods; (Attempted) trafficking in any prohibited substance or method; (Attempted) administration of any prohibited substance or method.
who are dangerously challenged by performing and overcoming and WINNING. And enable losing and loses of limbs and lives, and levels and qualities of functioning? Image up the helmeted/unhelmeted-hells, speedily running their ramming heads and their following well-trained bodies into choosing-to-be opponents in the “clean” value-vacumed collision (a.k.a “contact”) sports of football, soccer, boxing ???, ice hockey, and rugby hailed and “heroed” on by untainted-sports(manship) fans.7 This is enough to take one’s breath away! Someone’s breath, As well as taken off-the-field-breadth. And as the list of forbidden enhancers continues to grow, university student-athletes8 7
Cerebral concussion is common in collision sports. The chronic effects of recurrent concussion, such as cognitive impairment, “mild” or “other,” which are part of “the game” are not well understood. In a general questionnaire-based health survey of a subset of 758 “collisioners”, from a sample of 2,552 retired US professional football players, with an average age of 53.8 (±13.4) years and an average professional football playing career of 6.6 (± 3.6) years, 61% reported sustaining at least one concussion during their professional football career, and 24% sustained three or more concussions. There was a statistically significant association between recurrent cerebral concussions, clinically diagnosed and self-reported significant memory impairments. Retired football–collision players with a remembered history of three or more concussions had a five-fold prevalence of a mild cognitive impairment (MCI) diagnosis and reported having three times more significant memory problems when compared with retirees without a history of concussion. The study noted that although they were not able to statistically document a generalizable relationship between “recurrent concussion and Alzheimer’s disease”, “we observed an earlier onset of Alzheimer’s disease in the retirees than in the general American male population.” The authors concluded “that the onset of dementiarelated syndromes may be initiated by repetitive cerebral concussions in professional football players.” A caveat. Collision-contact-athletes, their families as well as additional “significant others,” including sports organizations who are/should be ostensibly sensitive to the wellbeing of their sport and its community of performers and leisured-time observers, may have some difficulty discerning between substantive and statistical significance. Guskiewicz, Kevin M. et al, (2005) Association between recurrent concussion and late-life cognitive impairment in retired professional football players. Neurosurgery. 57:4,719-726. I remain challenged in a “doping”/anti-doping culture, and context, to adequately understand the value boundaries and necessary enabling, acculturating, and institutionalized conditions between tainted performance enhancing and “clean” collision enhancing. 8 College-university, student–amateur athletes is often a misnomer. First, it is important to distinguish between a university’s revenue producing sports and nonrevenue producing sports. Second, these athlete-students are really “employed” fulltime athletically. They somehow have to fit their studies into their daily “work,” solutions being created and “enhanced” by a range of academic and nonacademic
AN AFTERWORD
continue to enhance the reputations and salaries of their coaches and trainers, the name and reputation of their “employer” universities, the donations of alumni, chests enhanced and expanded by “the win” of university student-athletes who all-too-often are losers even as they “win” a new sports center, a new stadium. To Whom is it Permitted to stand up to pounding head-blows to the helmed-selected few, to inescapable, trapped, oxygenated brain cells, blood vessels, and other limbs in an andrenalized public “belt-contender”, goal-achieving, slope-sliding, hoping-to-win, before a cheering, booing, sober, as well as an intoxicated crowd what she/he will, staff who, by the nature of this college–sports reality, can be and are engaged in corrupt and, at times, criminal activities which become traditionalized and institutionalized. Third, these athlete-students can and do graduate from university without the education that the university was created and mandated to give. They graduate, in a sense, with a “dirty education” and not a “clean education” even if their urines were clean. Athlete-students have been and are accepted into the university not equipped to successfully carry out college level studies even as they successfully “carry the ball.” This situation worsened in 2008 when the US NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) changed entrance requirements and lowered SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test—which measures critical reading, math, and writing abilities) scores depending upon a student’s GPA scores (grade point average; e.g. average grades earned over a period of time during high school). The GPA is used to determine the student’s educational achievement during his/her course of studies. The NCAA, mandated to determine impermissible and academic benefits for the student-athlete, was created due to President Theodore Roosevelt’s demand to reform college football because even then football, a contact—competition, was an extremely rough sport which caused many serious injuries. The contacts which student—athletes can and do make with important and influential alumni who can help them during their college years as well as after college, enhancing their lives, are yet to be adequately studied in terms of their physical-contact costs on the playing-field or “playing” in independent study “paper” courses in which a single paper and no classroom attendance or contact with a teacher denotes academic achievement. More than 150,000 student-athletes apply to universities in the United States annually. Readers interested in enhancing their knowledge about this piece in the “doping” puzzle for a very specific population are referred to: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student athlete downloaded 5/11/14; http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/05/11/2057064/unc-chapel-hillmight-take-action.html#storylink=cpy She had to tell what she knew Joe Nocera, New York Times, May 6, 2014, page A25.
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sooner or later LOSE before the same or an other cheering, booing, crowd in an acculturated, institutionalized, “normed” and valued ritual of anticipated joy(s), and unpredictable and uncontrollable immediate and future pains, harms and havocs. For Whom is it Permitted to be an accomplice, to create, to transmit, to root for and in in order to maintain having an edge in order to defeat, to WIN, and not BEING a needed, supporting, outstretched helping-hand to achieving “success” by simply participating. BEING part of horizontally, and not hierarchically, with and among the many; from the individual DOER, to dyadic participating, and including the marathoned-multitudes. with the many, and not alone, acclaimed vertically as a temporary, depersonalized, commodified, somatic icon. Paradoxically with a famed-name, in a globalized nano-time reality, entered onto lists, and into “Halls of Fame,” and into the mouths of many, and into and out of the pockets and credit cards of many, and the thoughts of the MANY. Talent scouts searching for winners to BE formed from . . . Coaches, trainers, and the necessary soigneurs-for-success, and also, at times, “doping” suppliers available for “hire.” And not to forget one’s team mates. Fellow competitors. Sportscasters. (Anti)-doping wheelers and dealers. Doping dealers and healers.
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Sports products producers.9 Etc. Etc. (Specify ) Winning-is-everything inducers! All of this within an ambience of pacts of ignorance, and conspiracies of silence. For Whom is all of this Permitted? For Whom is it Permitted to introduce guilt by urination through infallible testing of licensed labs,10 who can, and do, lose their licenses, by God’s fallible creations? For Whom is it Permitted to carry out sterilized “bloodletting” to verify the purity-of-performance in a less-than sportsmanlike, politicalized, cesspool, of a range of complacently justified ENHANCING by and for some, but not for others? Special training and coaches. Special equipment. Special garb. Special foods for those selected few from places where malnutrition and hunger can and do reign. Side-by-side repeat performances by tainted trainees, trainers and traffickers, and pure fans, sports organizations and sponsors. Special promises for GOLD, silver, and bronze current and about-to-be humanoid commodities. Special trophies. Special lime-lighted, one-time, 9
Lance Armstrong, conqueror of cancer and competitions, treading the line between dying and winning in his linear, legitimizing, lean, lacerated, (L4 ) “traitorizing” of one of his many sponsors—the Trek Bicycle Corporation-claims that Trek’s revenue was $100 million when he signed with the company and reached $1 billion in 2013. “Who’s responsible for that?” he asks, before cursing and saying, “Right here.” He pokes himself in the chest with his right index finger. “I’m sorry, but that is true. Without me, none of that happens.” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/sports/cycling/end-of-theride-for-lance-armstrong.html downloaded 3/2/14. Was Lance the rare lancer of the legacy of peripheral, pasteurized purity? 10 The interested reader can Google Victo Conte and the Balco scandal for a case study in-site/insight into the realities and limitations doping testing and its false +s and −s. More than 20 elite athletes were investigated. Marion Jones, Olympic field and track champion, for example, tested negative more than 150 times for performance-enhancing drug (PED) use during her career, lied about her use of PEDs to a grand jury, was sentenced to six months in jail for perjury but was not tripped up by a positive drug test. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion Jones downloaded 4/22/14
more than one-time, public, winner-hero-worshipping. Special achieved dreams, with or without the nightmare(s) of ensuing injuries to diseased cells, unstable limbs, malfunctioning, and autopsied brains. To ears no longer responsive to changeable, cheering, booing, adulation of the winner-reifiers, or to the words and support of the long-since-gone SPONSORS who have moved on to yet another “crowned” and selected winner-commodity, leaving behind maimed, mourning, or orphaned families. For Whom is it Forbidden to interfere with the “normal” childhood DEVELOPMENT(S) of a talented, able, resource-FULL pre-winner son, daughter, sibling, grandchild, friend, and neighbor? Sought out. Tagged. Documented, and finally enveloped into a winner-producing training-trek into which many may enter, and from which relatively few achieve the sought after . . . Have these childhood-kidnappers helped THEM to experience that just to “play,” to be part of is TO BE! IT IS A REPEATABLE, unbeatable WIN. Have the less-than-sportsmanship stakeholders,11 their mindless mantras set aside, helped the about-to-be’s to be aware that to WIN can be 11
Readers interested in the roles, influences, sources of powers and impacts of individual and systemic stakeholders in the broad area of substance use(r) interventions and which are critical to an understanding of “doping” and anti-”doping,” and which remain under-researched, are referred to Beccaria, Franca, et al. (eds.) (2013) Stakeholders in opioid drug user treatment policy: Similarities and differences in six European countries. Substance Use and Misuse 48:11
AN AFTERWORD
to lose a great deal by damaging-success. As “doping’s” blood and urines’ tests assess the macros, and not the micros, of a PERSON’S functioning and adaptation, NOW, and in what is yet to be, in a stakeholder-winner-take-all-driven reality that does not, chooses not to, PERCEIVE or ACKNOWLEDGE the cries and lies of both doping’s and anti-dopings’ existential micro AND macro dimensions. Medals and memorials (re)place sports MEN and WOMEN; People like YOU and me, co-opted into a yet-to-be considered, need-to-be delineated champs and chumps. For Whom is it Permitted . . . For Whom is it Forbidden. . . For Whom is it an Obligation? To perform? To compete? To partake? To support? To question In which the queries For Whom is it a Choice to . . . For Whom is it an Obligation to. . . What Do I Need to Know in order to . . . are not yet “adequated” by blood, sweat, urine, and autopsy answers. THEY never were! Doping and anti-doping are no longer clear in their boundaries.12 THEY never were! Nor are they in terms of the necessary conditions which enable, or which may serve as barriers, to, and for, selected enhanced performance(s) and “norming,” modified appearance(s), when taking an “anti-doping” shortcut becomes the whole route.13 12 “What is doping?”, the question enveloping the quest for a useful and useable delineation is shorter than Shakespeare’s to be or not to be. Both questions have triggered a great deal of unresolved controversy. 13 In a binary world of winners and losers, of “clean” competers and “dirty dopers”, of positive and negative urine and blood testing results, you, the reader, are invited to learn about the outrageous human rights abuse associated with the “testosterone tyranny”—testing of tagged female athletes. “The Trouble with too Much T,” Katrina Karkazis and Rebecca Jordan-Young, NYT, April 12, 2014, page A 21. Current policies of international sports governing bodies (i.e. IOC—International Olympic Committee and the IAAF—International Association of Athletics Federations amongst others) test women ath-
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The shadows of random and institutionalized mendacity blur, and challenge the relatively recent-reasons trafficked by national and international organized sports organizations for their antidoping activities, policies, regulations, LISTS, and rhetoric: • doping undermines the integrity of the sport, which becomes sportsmanship-LESS in a winner-take all culture, in a competing-semantic surrealism between: Performance enablers Performance engenderers Restoratives Performance enhancers Assistive additives, and the more neutral supplements. REMEMBER:
In the beginning there was the WORD14 , letes whose bodies produce testosterone levels which are higher than is typical . . . (remember the bell-shaped curve . . . ). When the judgment, which is a consensualized one and not an empirically informed one, is made . . . most often by men . . . that the T level is too high, the group’s chosen medical team . . . another consensualized judgment . . . creates a “therapeutic proposal.” A socially constructed, influential-stakeholderagendaed, gender-associated, medicalized-mongered PROBLEM becomes resolvable either through irreversible and medically unjustified surgery (removing a nondiseased woman’s “guilty”-gonads, which causes sterility, or partial surgical removal of the clitoris, which impairs her and not his sexual functioning and sensation) or using non-doping hormone suppressing medicine—drugs, which potentially are associated with life-long health risks, to lower the naturally heighten T level to a consenualized “normal” T level. The tagged high-T level female athlete, if successfully, and invasively, treated will be allowed to return to compete, and if she becomes a special kind of winner, even to BECOME a commodity. If, however, she . . . gender-sure of WHO she is, and who she is not . . . refuses to cooperate in the investigation and its subsequent “medical mongering,” she is banned, permanently, from competing in elite women’s sportsmanship-like events. A caveat is obviously necessary to distinguish between “doping” testing and testosterone testing; the former is self-inflicted, the latter is . . . It takes lots of testosterone and genderless-b s to create and sustain such an intrusive, shameful, and humiliating policy and its procedures. 11 The American legendary college football coach Knute Rockne stated that, “Show me a good and gracious loser and I’ll show you a failure” and the professional football coach Vince Lombardi contributed his philosophy that, “winning isn’t everything—it’s the only thing.” Unpublished manuscript by M. Bahrke. 14 It’s written here: “In the Beginning was the Word!” Here I stick already! Who can help me? It’s absurd, Impossible, for me to rate the word so highly I must try to say it differently If I’m truly inspired by the Spirit. I find I’ve written here: “In the Beginning was the Mind.” Let me consider that first sentence So my pen won’t run on in advance! Is it Mind that works and creates what’s ours? It should say: “In the beginning was the Power!” Yet even while I write the words down, I’m warned: I’m no closer with these I’ve found The Spirit helps me! I have it now, intact. And firmly write: “In the Beginning was the Act!” Faust Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe lines 1223-1237 http://www. gutenberg.org/files/14591/14591-h/14591-h.htm downloaded 4/30/14
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and seducing Satan soigneurs? Many words since then. • doping threatens the health of the competitors15 , and • doping scandals result in adverse public relations that threaten the financial viability of the sport. Not the profits of free-marketing commodification. which include the high stakes (financial and other) for elite athletes and their support systems (and “wanabe-others”), corporate sponsors, unincorporated complacent customers and buyers, the TV broadcast and cable industries, and sport governing bodies,? As the have-an-edge “dopers” and their necessary minions continue to outplay the resource-limited testers and their mantras and manifestos within a contemporary “evidence-informed” information-drowning culture which mistakes an absence of generalizable evidence for evidence of a generalizable, reality of an absence of . . . . This mendacious “trinity” has been “nosologized” into • a (small?) group of athletes who are not using any banned performance enhancers; • representing a second undetected group (larger?), who either take drugs that aren’t tested for, use low levels of tested-for drugs which remain undetected, or take substances that mask the presence of the drugs in their system at testing time and. • those relatively few “doping” athletes who are actually caught. The unfairness of being a CHEMICALIZED LOSER! REMEMBER The “sporting” “bread and circuses” (panem et circenses) used by the emperors of Rome to control their power, THEIR social, political, God-given, and economic systems THEN, and have been used in our more modern, enhanced, co-opting and complacent “doping” times, and methods used by national doping programs: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, 15 When athletes, coaches, trainers, and the other co-opted and co-opters do not and did not debate the morality or propriety of “doping”; debating, rather, which drugs were/are more effective, and when national doping programs go beyond the documented, collusion of a few blamed, sanctioned, elite athletes, coaches, “rogue physicians”, laboratories and sport scientists?
East Germany, and Communist China, amongst others . . . Not to be forgotten: “Doping” remains somewhat retarded in the institutionalized, acculturated, historical process of drug use(r) • moralizing (a sin and a sinner) • stigmatizing (a deviant “other”) • criminalizing (an adjudicated felon, or less), and • most recently “liberally” medicalizing and pathologizing. Consensualizing selected caregivers and their innovative social-problem Creators, has yet to diagnose a doping disorder. Their close kin, the pharmacology-industry, who shed few tears for the demise, and knowledge, of the neighborhood’s chemist-of-caring pharmacist, has yet to create, and patent, an addiction-dependency free, zero-tolerance-side-effects, cost-effective, antidote to chemical-enhancing athletic-performance and appearance. THEY may . . . if market strategies “suggest . . . ” Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. Samuel Becket Declaration of Interest
The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the article. THE AUTHOR Stan Einstein, Ph.D., clinical and social psychologist; student; academician (emeritus); researcher; journalist (newspaper and radio); editor/author (25 books; 58 topic-oriented special issues of Substance Use and Misuse listed as editor 7; unlisted as editor 51); journal editor-founder (Substance Use and Misuse; Drug Forum; Social Pharmacology; Violence, Aggression and Terrorism; Altered States of Consciousness); consultant, lecturer, conference, and training program organizer, exhibit curator, volunteer; awards (Pace Setter award, NIDA; Mayor of Jerusalem Outstanding Volunteer Award). Area of interest: the parameters of failure.
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