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. Alcoholics land there only when they get busted for DUI, and unless they kill somebody, they don't stay very long. So when I talk of the rest of us, I mean those of us who nod our heads dismayingly about Strawberry while we sit on our decks or in our living rooms and have that drink we absolutely, positively deserve. And the second, and the third, and however many it takes until we can't count them or don't care.