A Different Look at the Chris Benoit Tragedy

While listening to the radio where another news story was being run about steroids in baseball my husband asked me if the toxicology report was ever released on wrestler Chris Benoit.

I had followed closely the Chris Benoit story for many reasons. I took almost an obsessive interest sometime in high school about steroids in sports. Rather ironic considering I am not what most people would call a sports fan. The extent of my sports watching and following is figure skating, professional bodybuilding and pro-wrestling. Thinking back it was probably my interest in pro bodybuilding that sparked my interest in steroid abuse in athletics. When word came out that Chris Benoit had murdered his family I obsessively combed the internet looking for news stories about it. Eventually it came out that Chris Benoit's son, Daniel, had Fragile X and that he and his wife had argued about his care days before. Now the story had my undivided attention and I became increasingly irritated with how the media was sensationalizing the story. Steroids in wrestling were news while a family troubled and being pulled apart by a handicapped child was not.

So much good could have come out of this story. It could have been used to raise awareness about Fragile X and Autism, found approximately 33% of the time in conjunction with Fragile X. Instead it focused on the negative, sports and steroids.

An internet search on steroids and sports turns up many pages like steroids.com promoting the use of steroids as well as providing a source to purchase them. One interesting thing on this site is the history of performance enhancing measures in sports dating back to the original Olympic Games in Greece where the athletes were known to eat sheep testicles for the testosterone found in them.

Today the news is focusing on steroids in baseball. It's taken the spotlight off of steroids in wrestling. Where sports officials and the government seem more concerned about the use of illegal drugs, cheating, and to a lesser degree the health risks, the general public and those in the sport seem almost non-concerned.

The media tends to use the terms "steroid" and "anabolic steroid" interchangeably when they shouldn't Anabolic steroids are a specific synthetic version of testosterone used specifically to grow muscles. Medically it's used in AIDS and cancer patients to combat the wasting side effects of the diseases.

On the other hand there are hundreds of types of steroids, each needed for an organism to carry out its normal functions. The most popular steroid is testosterone, because it gets the most publicity. It is what makes men men, it controls the sex drive, it makes people overly aggressive, and it is abused by athletes in an attempt to become bigger and better putting them at the top of their game.

Testosterone cypionate, the steroid reported in Benoit's system in toxicology reports, has been falsely reported by various news sources as an anabolic steroid, when in fact it's an androgenic steroid used to treat hormone deficiency. It was designed to be administered intramuscularly every two to four weeks. There has been some report of abuse of androgens in sports because they are easier to get a hold of, but they do not have the same body enhancing affects of anabolics. To the media though, steroids are steroids, it doesn't differentiate between the two. Why should it when sensationalism sales and the truth is often sometimes boring?

As I said, this news story could have raised awareness for Fragile X and autism. I can not count the number of stories I have heard of "mercy killings" of autistic children or the number of stories where mothers have killed their autistic child and themselves because they could no longer cope. The list is longer than I thought. There is a blog called This Way of Live where the author has taken to following and researching every murder involving an autistic person to use them to raise awareness.

The second the news reported that Daniel Benoit had Fragile X and that his parents had been arguing over his care, it should have raised an eyebrow or two. If someone with the means and the celebrity as Chris Benoit could not get the services and respite care parents of these children need, what makes the government and the general population think that those with average means can? Why did someone with what seemed to be an almost perfect life feel the need to kill his family and himself? It was blamed on steroids and 'roid rage long before the toxicology results came out. The media had played judge and jury and nothing was going to sway them. Instead of a call for the government to inquire into why the support systems were not in place for families with handicapped children in place and what they could do to help, it opened the doors for a repeat of the steroid trials of the late 1980s and early 1990's.

I have a handful of questions that I would like answered. The toxicology reports state that the anti-anxiety drug Xanax was found in both Chris and Nancy's body. Who did the prescription belong to? Was it Nancy's or was it Chris's? Were they both prescribed it? Several years back on one of the online support groups for autism we took an informal survey of how many parents had to be put on anti-anxiety drugs and anti-depressants after their children were diagnosed with autism. We discovered that in a group of about 400 people, more were being treated than were not. Dealing with a handicapped child is difficult and stressful and the divorce rate in families with an autistic child is about 80%, according to Autismvox. It does not surprise me that either Nancy or Chris or both would be prescribed Xanax or the possibility that one of them was self-medicating in light of Daniels Fragile X that was downplayed in news stories. Some news sources even claimed that Daniels grandparents were not aware of their grandson being disabled. I recall an interview that I watched with Chris Jericho on CNN where he described Daniel and how he acted, and Jericho could have been describing my autistic son. Why did none of these news sources inquire into Daniels medical history to verify fragile X and autism?

I also want to know why the brain scans of Chris Benoit have not been used to make people aware of the dangers of pro-wrestling. For as long as I can recall there has always been a camp that claims that wrestling is fake. As an avid wrestling fan I will be the first to say that some of it is. The rivalries and outcomes are scripted. The guys know who is going to win a match before they enter the ring. They know how they are going to win it, if it will be by pin fall or submission, and what submission move will be used. However, everything in between is real. Mick Foley once said publicly that a chair shot is still a chair shot and it hurts. Apparently Chris Benoit had extensive brain damage from numerous concussions making his brain resemble that of an 85 year old Alzheimer's patient. USA Today reported on this but it didn't make the slightest ripple in the media, especially considering that the original story of the murder-suicide created a tidal wave.

The medical examiner who examined Benoit's brain post-mortem stated that the extent of the brain damage could have made him kill his family and himself. That is serious trauma and yet it doesn't appear that anything is being done in the sport to lessen these risks. Yes, there are risks in sports of injury, its part of the job, but do the risks have to be that high? That is just another question that has been easily over shadowed by the sensationalism that the word steroid creates.

Almost as disturbing as the way this story was covered by the media is the fact that certain members of the media are going to continue to capitalize on it. Hustler is reporting that the March 2008 will be running nude photos of Chris's wife, Nancy (better known by her wrestling valet persona Woman). It's an obvious ploy to increase sales. I don't care if they want to argue that waiting a year is an acceptable amount of time after her death to run the photos, they are still using the events surrounding her death to exploit the photos that they have from early in her career.