In a sport where pain is a constant companion, it’s not that hard to find relief.
It seems self-medication, either with alcohol or pharmaceutical-grade opiates, may be as much a part of the good old hockey game as stitches and a gap-toothed smile.
“I used to go see the guys who had just had surgery and ask them if they had any extra [painkillers] I could have,” said retired defenceman Denis Gauthier, who played for four NHL teams during his 12-year pro hockey career.
“Percocets,” he insisted, “are golden in the hockey world.”
The recent deaths of Wade Belak, Rick Rypien and Derek Boogaard have lifted the veil on the mental and physical toll of being an NHL enforcer, but another issue is emerging as the hockey world grapples with its loss.
Professional hockey, several current and former players say, has a problem with pain pills.
“Of the 17 teams I played on, the majority of the fighters were the ones who dove into those substances,” said Brantt Myhres, a former NHL fighter and drug addict who is now a substance-abuse counsellor. “It’s a situation that needs attention.”
All hockey players endure pain but enforcers often play with more than most.
Gauthier, who played alongside several fighters, including Belak, said people don’t “appreciate what a tough guy goes through just to be healthy for the game. Everyone in hockey plays hurt, an enforcer usually hurts more than another guy – and they can’t back down, they always have to be physically ready.”
Several scientific papers published in the past two decades have established links between chronic pain and depression – and between depression, head injuries and acute stress – few athletes face greater exposure to the main risk factors than hockey players.
Philadelphia Flyers centre Ian Laperrière, who is slated to spend the year on the injured list due to a concussion, said it’s not at all uncommon to try and “numb yourself down” from the demands of playing in the NHL.
“The pill issue is a big thing … it’s a problem, and people need to start talking about it,” he said.
The NHL has a highly-regarded rehabilitation program for substance abuse, but that hasn’t prevented situations like Boogaard’s, who died after taking the pain-killing drug oxycodone while drinking alcohol.
“I don’t know if Belak took these things or not, and I don’t want to speculate, but I will say this: Show me a tough guy and I’ll show you someone who pops pills,” Laperrière said. (It’s not known whether Belak, who was prompted to retire by an arthritic hip, ever used pain medication.)
Former Flyers enforcer Riley Cote, now an assistant coach with Philadelphia’s top minor-league affiliate, remarked on his Facebook.com page this week that “someone needs to step in and speak up about these very preventable deaths. This absolutely crazy. These [painkillers] are mass produced, way overprescribed and are flooding the black market with pharmaceutically made, very highly addictive drugs. This is a growing epidemic all across North America. We need some action ASAP otherwise there will be plenty more of these sad stories.”
Sometimes, hockey players will take pills to ease the pain of an injury, many of which aren’t reported to team officials lest the player be taken out of action. But sometimes, they’ll take pills to ease a more ephemeral hurt.
“I’ll tell you a story,” Gauthier said. “When Philadelphia sent me down to the minors, I went from 10 years of five-star hotels and first-class airplanes to riding the bus for 12 hours. It was a huge shock, it was tough. So, sometimes, I’d take a pill to try and relax and get some sleep, forget about everything for a while.”
According to a former minor-leaguer, painkiller use may be even more widespread in the lower leagues than it is in the NHL. At the same time, said Justin Bourne, who played in the AHL and the ECHL, they are “100-per-cent essential.”
“It’s not like you can just take them away for most guys, a lot of players need them to be able to keep playing,” said Bourne, who now writes and blogs about the game and recently recounted his own experience with oxycodone.
