-Tara Hun-Dorris-

So many of our sports stories have happy endings. You know those stories where the love of the game – baseball, hockey, even chess, whatever it is – becomes the lifeline to a better future, the one constant that saves the hero from adversity, be that adversity life on the streets, abject poverty, or some other horror.

Unfortunately, sport doesn’t always win out. And anyone who has ever tried to build a life with an alcoholic/addict knows that these anti-hero types never stop running from their own demons and are rarely saved by anything external.

And it seems that has happened again on the national stage.

Anyone who read Matthew Perry’s recent bestselling memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing could have – should have – predicted that nothing would be enough to save him. The unusually honest memoir stuck with me and disturbed my sleep. Perry so perfectly captured the self-destructive journey and ceaseless senseless agony of the addict even in recovery. The Big Terrible Thing haunted him always.

And what a shame. Perry was attractive, funny, smart, a great writer, and a decent hockey player and true fan of the sport. Not a ‘Canes fan unfortunately – that would have made him a little too perfect. Perry grew up in Canada playing a lot of hockey, and was a supporter of the Canadian NHL teams, the Ottawa Senators, and later the LA Kings. He even played celebrity hockey. With his dad (see lead-in pic). He loved the game so much and was such a well known fan that arenas have been playing the Friends theme song, and the Ottawa Senators even tweeted in tribute to Perry.

No one is here to tell us about Perry’s last moments on earth. The logical guess would be that he washed down a Vicodin (or 20) with some booze and went to sleep in his hot tub. A sad but hopefully painless passing for him, leaving his friends and family behind – as addicts so selfishly do – to grieve and ask how someone can literally have everything and yet never enough. There’s no lonelier place than the human brain.

We have an epidemic in this country. Fourteen percent of Americans aged 12 years and older have used drugs in the last month – and its not all marijuana. Twenty-five percent of these folks have a drug abuse disorder, and 25% of that subset have an opioid abuse disorder. Even in the age of Narcan, we lost >100,000 people to overdose death in 2021. And if we open our eyes we see the consequences of this crisis even in our relatively blessed opioid-free lives. I know several people who have lost family to addiction. Seattle – my work “home” – is overrun by homeless people in active addiction to the point the city is putting them in what are basically brightly painted hotwired hardware store sheds. I’m glad these marginalized folks in need of mental health resources have shelter, but America throwing up shanties as if we’re Port-Au-Prince or Mumbai and calling it progress saddens me.

And it’s not just the drugs. I love my can of Storm Brew or plastic cup of wine at a Canes game as much as the next person, but we can all spot that dude in the stands who’s had one (read 10 or 20) too many and is ruining everyone’s good time. And God only knows how he plans to get home. Budweiser may be our national past time, but an estimated 20% of the 139 million Americans who drink alcohol in this country have an alcohol use disorder. The stuff may be legal (and fun!), but it’s also deadly and expensive.

So many of us have loved and alcoholic or addict and struggled with all the whys and what ifs around a disease that should be – but isn’t – as simple as stopping. There’s a reason after all that my son and co-blogger became a hockey fan with his mom. While I am grateful for the time, the origin is in sadness. Because so many Americans, like Perry, can’t just have one. And alcohol and drugs can distort perspective and damage the brain.

It’s too late for Matty the super fan, but I hope his soul is at peace and his people are comforted by all the joy he was able to bring to the world.

As for all the other lost souls suffering with addiction, I wish I had the answers, and I obviously do not. Hockey – and other sports – do play a role if they keep kids focused on health and fitness and the lives of their NHL heroes (one of the reasons it’s great the ‘Canes players make themselves so accessible to kids in the community) and far far away from desperate choices. I am thankful for these beautiful distractions.