In 2001, Major League baseball player, Josh Hamilton, began to use drugs at the age of 20 to cope with a car accident he and his parents had. Hamilton felt the use of drugs was his only way out.
Hamilton’s parents were there for him at every game, and the night of the incident brought changes to him and his whole family. The accident left his mother, Linda Hamilton, suffering major injuries and Josh with back injuries. His parents returned to Raleigh to get medical treatment. Hamilton, alone, began to hang out with a group of people at a tattoo shop. They weren’t bad people, according to him, but they would drink and smoke. Eventually he became addicted to cocaine and excessively drank alcohol.
“I had my first drink of alcohol and did my first line of cocaine in the same night,” he said. “I can’t say why I did it, other than just curious about both of them. When I first got into drinking and using drugs, it was because of where I was hanging out, it was whom I was hanging out with. You might not do it at first, but eventually, if you keep hanging around long enough, you're going to start doing what they're doing,” Hamilton said on CBN.com.
Hamilton could not control his drug use. He failed the MLB drug test multiple times and got suspended for 25 days and eventually didn’t play baseball from 2004 to 2006, suffering a fine of about $25,000. “I sat out three years and played only 15 games last season in A-ball,” said Hamilton in an ESPN.com article.
Eventually, Hamilton decided he needed to get his life together. He decided to visit his grandmother where he had dreams about his addiction. “Within my first week of sobriety in October 2005 -- after I showed up at my grandmother's house in Raleigh in the middle of the night, coming off a crack binge -- I had the most haunting dream. I was fighting the devil,” said Hamilton. “I GET cravings, and I see it as the devil trying to catch me in a weak moment. The best thing I can do is get the thought out of my mind as soon as I can, so it doesn't turn into an obsession. When it happens, I talk to him. I talk to the devil and say, ‘These are just thoughts, and I'm not going to act on them.’”
Hamilton continuously fought against his temptations and after a couple of months, he learned to be completely resistant.
After five years, Hamilton has been doing well in his career and has been drug-free. He won the BBWAA Most Valuable Player award in 2010. "I would say a 99 percent chance that this would never happen. It's an absolutely great honor. I think about where I was at my lowest time and how God has brought me through that and sustained me,” he said.
Hamilton is glad that he was able to go through everything, yet manage to earn his position in the MLB. “This may sound crazy, but I wouldn't change a thing about my path to the big leagues. I wouldn't even change the 26 tattoos that cover so much of my body, even though they're the most obvious signs of my life temporarily leaving the tracks. You're probably thinking, Bad decisions and addiction almost cost him his life, and he wouldn't change anything? But if I hadn't gone through all the hard times, this whole story would be just about baseball. If I'd made the big leagues at 21 and made my first All-Star team at 23 and done all the things expected of me, I would be a big-time baseball player, and that's it.”
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