Athletes and painkillers

In the wake of all the scandals surrounding "performance-enhancing substances," I came across this article a couple weeks ago about a category of these drugs that should have been obvious to me, but was only so in hindsight: painkiller use. Duh - makes total sense that in addition to enhancing your reflexes and awareness in stimulating or steroidal ways, you might also want chemical help to manage those irritating pain signals your body keeps sending that might slow you down or cost you your edge. This particular article focuses on the prevalence of painkiller use among athletes at the collegiate level:

The NCAA does conduct a periodic survey of drug use among college athletes in a variety of sports, the last one in 2005. The extensive questionnaire asks about anabolic steroids, ephedrine, nutritional supplements, tobacco, alcohol, ecstacy, amphetamines, marijuana, hallucinogens and cocaine.

Everything but prescription narcotics.

"We don't have a targeted effort looking at that issue," said Mary Wilfert, NCAA associate director of education services. "We don't identify it as a category. We don't ban analgesic narcotics, so we haven't focused on that for student-athletes."

Ooops! Gotta love a good loophole. The downside here - well, one downside among several options, I suppose - is the addictive property of common opioid painkillers, which can lead to an appetite for stronger stuff later on in life. Ooops! Admittedly abuse of these drugs is on the rise all across society, but the line is a little blurrier when you start off genuinely wanting to treat an owie, then you move on to wanting to finesse smaller and lighter pains, into full-fledged addiction because - of course - they're fun.