Strawberry being Strawberry, he'll get treatment in jail. Unlike so many others. But debating what he deserves, as he languishes in St. Joseph's Hospital after a four-day binge that somehow led him from Tampa to Daytona Beach, misses the point for the rest of us. Charisse Strawberry, the ballplayer's wife and a woman who has endured a torture that no amount of celebrity and money can deaden, said last week she intends to begin speaking about her husband's disease on behalf of a new, Tampa chapter of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. Note the title, please.
Alcoholism is in it.
It comes first. Alcohol is our most abused drug, and our most respectable. Alcoholics fill our offices, shopping centers, subdivisions and country clubs. They teach school and perform surgery. Cocaine addicts fill our jails.