It sucks...

It sucks that Taylor Hooton hung himself. My heart goes out to his family and all of his friends. I hope and pray that I never have to go through a similar situation. It seems like he had a lot going for him and nothing good ever comes out of a teenager taking his own life.

It sucks that Mr. Hooton has become convinced that steroids were the catalyst for Taylor’s suicide. Just because you find a couple of syringes in the room, would you automatically assume they were the cause of his death? If you found a pack of cigarettes or a bag of marijuana, would you jump to the conclusion that they caused Taylor to hang himself?

It sucks that Mr. Hooton has started using his son’s name to jump on the “Anti-Steroid” bandwagon. I know that he is going through an emotional hell and he wants something tangible to blame for taking his son. Just because you want something to blame, it doesn’t mean that there is something there. Like the Columbine shootings, we will never know what was going through the young mans mind at the time. Sometimes mysteries just can’t be solved.

It sucks that Congress is bringing Mr. Hooton to testify. If this were a hearing on teen suicide, Mr. Hooton would be an expert witness. If he is asked any questions about his son’s steroid use and the role of that in Taylor’s suicide, it will all be hearsay. He has no knowledge if the steroids caused the suicide or not. Any testimony he gives will be emotional, but not factual.

It sucks that Congress has taken the time to call baseball players to testify. This time could be better spent working on dead beat parents and alcoholism in families. Tens of thousands of more children will be affected by those two than will be affected by steroids.

It sucks that people jump to conclusions about steroid use due to undue media attention and inaccuracies. Most of the side effects of steroids are due to abuse, not use. The same thing can be said of many other drugs, from aspirin to Viagra.

It sucks that people are judging these baseball players based on the word of Jose Canseco. Jose Canseco! This is a man who went through all of his money and was on the edge of bankruptcy; then he magically found a way to get himself back into the forefront of the public’s eye.

It sucks that people are guilty until proven innocent on a topic where they can’t be exonerated because there is no evidence.

It sucks that the media is making this such a big deal. This is essentially almost a non-story. Now everyone and their mother thinks that steroids are prescribed by Satan himself and the psycho on the corner is suffering from “roid rage”, not good old fashioned alcoholism.

It sucks that I get mad every time I read an article talking about keeping Mark McGwire out of the Hall of Fame because he did something that wasn’t against the rules of the game.

It sucks. The whole thing.