High school rowing, booze and drugs

I warned you all that this was coming, so here it is. Given recent events, I can't think of a better time. This will be a long post, so pull up a chair and a snack.

I know that you guys have been through every kind of anti-drug class, seminar, lecture and scare tactic a middle-aged overzealous teacher can dream up. Add in the usual DARE/Just say no/ONDCP stuff on TV, one would think that the drug problem in this country would be gone by now. I remember the "Just say no" rallies in the 80s, listening to a cop from the local station try to "scare us straight." Then he would lead us through a chant of "just say no" that we would turn into "just say yes."

Frankly, I don't care about the long term risks of various drugs might have on you. I'm sure you've all seen the pictures of the various body parts shriveled up by lots of pot use. The liver destroyed by alcohol is also of no interest to me. That is all years down the road. Who cares? Anyone who knows anything about how teenagers think should understand such demonstrations of long-term future health problems have no impact at all. Just watch the X-Games, the ski trips or you guys drive to know teenagers' mission in their development is to test limits. In this way, they are very much like my 2-year old.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the harder drugs. If you're doing heroin, cocaine or something of the sort, you're not rowing. It's just not possible to do this sport and that sort of habit, at least not that well. These are not my concern.

Ecstasy is the new one. Only emerging into the drug scene when I was in college, X use has spiked from the clubs into colleges and high schools in general. Portrayals as a harmless drug in the movies doesn't help efforts to control what started as a psychotherapy drug in the mid-1980s. This is something I just don't get. How come people aren't abusing Prozac then?

I don't care about the long term brain effects. X releases most of your stored neurotransmitters which take several days to replace. This causes simple actions or thinking to take longer to complete.

The issue I have with ecstasy is the physical effect of raising the heartrate and blood pressure. Doing a hit of X is like doing another workout, without the benefit of increased endurance or muscle mass. All you're doing is tiring yourself out.

Guys, if you want to tire yourselves out more, just ask. I've got ways to tire you out legally, and your parents have already paid for it. Get caught with ecstasy and you're gone from the team.

Pot has been a teenage drug for as long as I can remember. Here's the trouble I have as a coach with pot: you smoke it. If you're smoking anything, you're doing damage to your lungs which are somewhat important to rowing. How are you supposed to improve your performance if you're damaging your lungs on a regular basis? I don't care about the long-term effects, you're putting smoke in your lungs, decreasing capacity and thus decreasing performance.

If you're caught with pot, you're off the team.

Booze is a little different. If teenagers in this country were allowed to drink by law, I would be happy to have this conversation with you over a beer. That is not the case, and the law on this matter colors your actions regarding alcohol. Because you know that you're doing something you shouldn't when you get your hands on some alcohol, you drink a lot of it. Commonly known as binge drinking, teenagers don't stop at one or two. Usually, teen alcohol use always ends up with everyone very drunk.

The physical effects of a drinking binge can sometimes be felt the next morning. Hangovers, if you haven't had one, are not pleasant. Nausea, headache and dizziness usually stick around for most of the next day. Because of the way alcohol is processed through the body, dehydration comes with the hangover.

The dehydration usually takes two to three days to recover from. Add in the general weakness over the next day and the effect on training should be self-evident. Even if your "hangover" day is a training-free day, you're affecting your progress. Instead of recovering from a week of training, your body is recovering from a binge. Therefore, you're not getting the recovery time the training cycle is designed with.

We're fighting for every inch of forward progress we can get. Spending time recovering from alcohol binges is time not spent getting faster on the water. While you may not think rest days are important, imagine the difference in your erg score on Tuesday if you're hungover on Sunday.

Finally, you're breaking the law. Get caught, and you're putting me and the team in an awkward position. We have to punish you in a substantial way, usually a suspension from the team. In basketball, not that big of a problem. In a team sport like crew, that's f***ing over your entire boat.

For all of these reasons, I'm asking you to halt any drinking by March 16 until the end of the season. I don't know the extent of drinking on the team, if at all. However, I'm young enough to know what high school is like. This post in no way condones any underage drinking, but I'm also a realist.

If you are committed to what the team is doing, this shouldn't be too much to ask. If you feel not drinking from now to June is too big of a sacrifice, examine yourself. You're telling me you're not strong enough to give it up for that short period of time? That should take your thinking in all sort of unpleasant directions.

I know what the level of commitment is on the team. The work you put in over the winter has been fantastic. Now that we're looking toward the water and our first race is less than an month away, I believe the time has come to further that commitment a little more.