NY Times Recovers: Beta Blocker Ban And Anxiety
After a severely overplayed A1 story and a ludicrous examination of average golfers suffering extreme heartburn, The New York Times finally gets around to doing what it does best: taking a story like Charlie Beljan's panic attack and talking to experts about the efficacy of anxiety treatments and PGA Tour drug use rules that ban such treatments (with medical exemptions).
Bill Pennington saves the day reports:
The permissibility of beta blockers in golf’s top level has come into focus anew this week. Charlie Beljan won a PGA Tour event Sunday, two days after being hospitalized with a panic attack. Beljan, who said that this week he was going to consult doctors near his home in Arizona, might be treated with medication to prevent future panic attacks.
For those of you following this epic saga, Beljan got a clean bill of health Tuesday from Jim Rome, Diane Sawyer and Inside Edition. There is no mention in the linked story of the Mayo Clinic that he was supposed to visit on Tuesday (reported here, here and here.)
Anyway, back to beta blockers and their ability to help...some:
“Some level of anxiety is good for performance,” said Richard Ginsburg, a sports psychologist at the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. “It keeps you on your game. A beta blocker can take away some edge, mellow you too much.”
Danforth, who twice played in the United States Women’s Open, agreed, though she added that beta blockers, purely from a golf perspective, had been likened to the stabilizing advantage some find using a long putter.
There are medical concerns for those who acquire beta blockers without a prescription, perhaps through the plethora of Web sites selling the drugs. Singh said there was a serious risk for people using beta blockers without a genuine, long-term medical need for them.
“They are a very powerful class of drugs that have enormous impact on essential bodily functions,” he said. “They are not without adverse effects.”
You can read the banned drug list here (PDF).
Thursday, November 15, 2012 at 12:17 AM
Reader Comments (22)
C"MON MAN!!You have got to be kidding me!! Vicks Vapor makes me a better player? Honestly, I need to have a Doctor who is a low handicap explain to me how any drug can give any player an edge in playing the most difficult game in the history of the planet. I can see the benefit in other sports but GOLF!!
I guess it could be argued that I should not be allowed to officiate the game because these substances are in my system.
Another example of politally correct overkill. Got to have a policy that will fool the public into believing you're always on the moral high ground.
But.... one of the reasons and probably the most important of all, that the Tour went to drug testing was because of the Olympic bid. To be considered for that, they would have to follow along the lines of other Olympic sports and their drug testing regime.
But Vicks Vapor Rub.... Really? What will we do if someone gets a man cold!
But maybe it's not news: the NYT buried it in a story on the last page of a section nobody really pays attention to.
Do remember this list was not developed by the PGA Tour, they are complying with the World Anti-Doping Agency rules.
Too much money makes honest men cheat
The desire to become a part of another sport (the olympics- not golf as we know it, because the ruling body is different, whether the USGA,R&A, PGA, etc will admit )
Common sense reduced to a book/essay we remember vaguely from high school, or college, because the dump that Doug Barron suffered a couple years back, had not even touched on fair play, the law, or yes, common sense. Doug was a throw down player.
And so, all those ''holy as we are'' ''players'' who insist the pros and ams play by the same rules are just wrong right hre right now, or the ams may need to give up a plethora of meds, or die , but - hey- by the rules.
Too delicious.
As for Stanley Thompson's comment about Charlie Beljan needing a drug crutch to play golf, Stanley your knowledge of medicine is non-existent.
Androgel and diuretics for therapeutic purposes are one thing; but there is certainly a role for both of those medications in the world of PED's. The former is a steroid, obviously, and the latter can be used to mask PED's. So, their inclusion is, of course, reasonable. If one were to need hydrocholorthiazide for their hypertension, undoubtedly this would be accompanied by a TUE.
As for Charlie Beljan's situation, since panic disorder is most commonly treated with SSRI's and benzodiazepenes, neither of which I saw anywhere on the list, he should have no problem getting his house in order. And yes, mindful meditation may be able to play a significant role, but given the degree of his symptoms, it is unlikely to mitigate them entirely.
Stanley, if you think that the use of medication to treat panic disorder is a "crutch", you are out of your depth. Mental illness is as much a physiologic anomaly as any illness with physical symptoms is, the difference being that the anomly manifests as psychoemotional symptoms, rather than pain or fever or weight loss or hypertension. The medications used to treat panic disorder are no more a crutch than the medications used to treat back pain or asthma are. It's Tom-Cruise-like thinking such as yours that has made many people forego much needed treatment of severe psychological illness. Imagine if society were as prejudiced against diabetes or heart disease as it is against mental illness.
On the other hand, there's no medication that can help old CB if he thinks it's okay to call the POTUS a d-bag on Twitter. The POTUS can fairly be -- and has been -- called many things, but a "d-bag" is about as inaccurate an epithet as I've come across.
Ty: Are you on drugs, Danny?
Danny: Yes.
Ty: Then what's the problem?
I'm aware of where the list originates. What I don't understand is how any major sport and I'm including golf on that list:; how can the list be all-inclusive for all sports. This is how you get athletes who have no intention of circumventing the guidelines getting nailed for violations and then carrying that stigma on their resumes and being branded a cheater.
Two of my neighbors are Doctors and one , Dr. Stern, is an avid golfer. I downloaded the list and sat with him yesterday afternoon and asked him what drugs improve a players chances. He said this is a joke. He said ,99% of what he saw on the list HINDERS a players chance to play well.