HEALTH-ARGENTINA: The Maradona Case and Drug Abuse

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jan 17 2000 (IPS) - The cocaine overdose that landed Argentina’s football star Diego Maradona in the hospital in serious condition has allowed doctors to show the public the most harmful and least known effects of drug abuse.

Government anti-drug campaigns that encourage parents to talk to their adolescent children or that show business executives losing their money and family as a result of drug abuse do not seem to be as effective as the daily medical reports on Maradona’s health in the days following the Jan 4 overdose.

Norberto Mantovano, of the Mantovano Foundation for assistance and prevention for AIDS and drug addiction, told IPS that its emergency help-line had received 60 percent more telephone calls since the former football player was hospitalised.

“Generally, the policy of the media is to bury these issues because the drug business is very important, but ‘thanks,’ in quotation marks, to what happened to Diego, they are talking more about an issue that is usually kept quiet,” Mantovano stated.

Young people who lack the financial resources and physical stamina of a former athlete die as a result of their addiction or are left with serious heart, respiratory or brain damage.

Maradona is just 39 years old, and the fact that he is one of the world’s most famous athletes has not helped him beat his drug addiction, which he has suffered since age 21. The limits imposed by the price of the drugs themselves is not a problem in the case of the football star.

Maradona has been through two unsuccessful treatments for drug addiction, and will begin a third as a result of the crisis that pushed him to the edge of death Jan 4 during a visit to the Uruguayan resort city of Punta del Este.

According to medical and police reports, Maradona was brought to the hospital in serious condition, with hypertension and ventricular arrhythmia, confused, trembling and sweating, with breathing difficulties. Doctors later acknowledged that he was on the verge of heart failure.

Ten days later, the outlook is still uncertain. Maradona now has a severely dilated heart, which in his case is a product of the excessive ingestion of intoxicants, explained cardiologist Carlos Alvarez.

In addition to cocaine, he also ingested several kinds of pills and alcohol.

Doctors do not yet know if Maradona’s heart damage is permanent. His kidneys are also being treated and his brain chemistry has been damaged by the drugs he could quit using.

When it was discoverd that Maradona used cocaine, many condemned him for it, especially those who upheld his image as “a model for children,” a role he always rejected – until he agreed to be the spokesman for an anti-drug campaign.

In Argentina, there are an estimated 300,000 addicts to various illegal drugs – nearly one percent of the population – and the number grows every year. The most troublesome fact is that half of the addicts begin consuming drugs before age 15.

Cardiologist Alvarez commented that Maradona’s level of physical fitness probably saved his life. The week prior to his overdose, a woman, age 19, who was hospitalised for drug overdose in the same hospital as the football star, did not survive.

The woman’s case caught the attention of those following news on Maradona’s health. The doctors are aware of the impact on the public and are taking advantage of the situation to launch an anti- drug campaign, and according to doctor Alfredo Cahe, demand prevention programmes.

“The circumstances give us the opportunity to call the government’s attention to the need for prevention and for having places available to treat patients who lack resources,” said Cahe, who explained that drug treatment is inaccessible for the poor or for those impoverished by drug addiction.

Cardiologist Alberto Fuxsman, of Durán Hospital, told IPS that across the street from the institution is a large public park where people use cocaine and other drugs. “They often arrive at the hospital with cardiac arrest,” he commented.

The anti-drug campaign is not an attempt to frighten all families with teen-aged children, but to target the sectors at highest risk, encouraging them to seek help, according to psychiatrists involved in treating drug-addiction.

People addicted to drugs tend to be insecure, unstable, with family or emotional problems. In the case of individuals suffering depression, using cocaine may make them feel better, though only temporarily.

“Cocaine stimulates the central nervous system, acting directly on the brain,” affirmed expert Enrique Solís. “Its immediate effects include sweating, increased cardiac activity, raised blood pressure, convulsions, higher respiratory rates.”

Those who consume cocaine feel a short period of euphoria, illusions of power or domination over their surroundings and, along with these sensations, a deterioration of the nervous system, a paranoid psychosis in the case of daily users, and convulsive coma in the case of overdose, expliend Solís.

People addicted to cocaine lose interest in everything that does not involve obtaining and consuming more of the drug. Now many can understand why Maradona is unhappy, despite his wealth and fame. His physical and psychological dependence hold him prisoner, but his recovery is awaited with hope by his fans around the world.