On Friday of last week, the family of Jimmy Hayes learned that the 31-year-old former NHL player died with fentanyl and cocaine in his system.
They chose to release this news shortly thereafter, hoping that doing so would help erase the stigma around addiction.
On Monday of this week, Philadelphia Eagles right tackle Lane Johnson returned to football after a three-game absence to deal with what had been dubbed “personal” issues.
He chose to say more, too, revealing that he has suffered from depression and anxiety. It is clear that he also opted to go public as a way of showing solidarity with others struggling with mental health issues.
— Lane Johnson (@LaneJohnson65) October 18, 2021
Both stories feel like they are just beginning. Perhaps Johnson will say more later this week when he meets with the media. Or maybe he’ll talk later, after the season or even his career, when he doesn’t have to prepare to play a mentally and physically taxing sport.
But already he has shared three important things:
- Take the time away
- Lean on your friends and family
- You are not alone
What we’ve heard from the Hayes family so far is almost too much to bear — but also illustrative. His widow, Kristen, said she was “shocked” to get the results of the toxicology report. Jimmy was found dead Aug. 23, hours after celebrating his son’s second birthday. “He never showed any signs of a struggle at home,” she told The Boston Globe.
But Jimmy’s farther, Kevin, knew. He had struggled with addiction and noticed signs of it in his son. Apologies to the Globe for aggregating so much of this, but it needs to be shared:
“About maybe 16 or 17 months ago, I saw a little change in Jimmy’s behavior and I went to him and I said, ‘I think there might be a problem here with pills.’ He had had an injury for a while and I think he started taking the painkillers and they get you.
“I said, ‘Jim, I think I see a problem here.’ And he’s 31 years old so I can’t tell him to go get help. So I said, ‘When you want help, I’ll be here for you, pal. Let me know.’
“He called me three weeks later and said, ‘Dad, I’m hooked on these pills. I got injured and I started taking them and I never got off.’ And I said, ‘Well, let’s get you some help.’ He went to a place up in Haverhill. So he gets help and everything was on the path to recovery, I thought. But this [expletive] is so powerful.’’
Jimmy Hayes was a gregarious personality, well on his way to becoming a media star. He appeared to be making a seamless transition to his post-hockey life, but athletes in most sports, but particularly football and hockey, are conditioned to hide pain — both mental and physical.
It probably doesn’t help that, for competitive reasons, we generalize discussions of injuries in a way that mitigates what’s actually happening. Hayes left a game on April 1, 2017 with a “lower body injury.” He had returned to Boston to play for the Bruins — surely a dream come true — and that was how his stint ended. He played 33 games for the Devils the next year and spent all of 2018-19 in the AHL.
How long did that lower body injury linger? How much did it impact him? What was it like to have the game taken away like that? Is this when the pills took hold? Who gave him the pills? What safeguards were in place to prevent what happened from happening?
Those are the lingering questions, ones the Hayes family won’t be able to escape. One of Jimmy’s younger siblings, Kevin, is a center for the Philadelphia Flyers. He’s undergone two abdominal surgeries since the end of the last NHL season. Imagine what went through his mind when the doctor offered him painkillers.
It took courage for Johnson to speak out, and for the Hayes family to be so honest. These stories easily could have gone untold. And though they may not even get the attention they deserve, they will surely reach somebody. There’s solace in in that; all their pain won’t be for nothing if it helps someone else.
But these are also the acts of people who understand the power of their platform and the enormity of the problems they chose to address.
Listen to Jimmy’s father try to summarize how powerful addiction can be, how meager our means are to fight it and how constrained the discussion around it too often becomes:
“I don’t want him to be stigmatized like as a [expletive] junkie,’’ said Kevin Hayes. “You know what I mean? Because he wasn’t. Jimmy helped everyone. Some of the stories I’ve been hearing. He never said no. [Former Bruin] Torey Krug told me they used to go to Children’s Hospital. Jimmy’d fall in love with a kid, then go back a week later. And a week later. He was just a wonderful kid, but this addiction [expletive] is just so powerful. If I had a formula that could tell people.
“I hope getting Jimmy’s story out there can save someone’s life. If this can save someone from the pain, great. It’s just so sad. I pride myself on being pretty mentally strong. I’m a street guy. But there’s just no formula for this.
“You have a beautiful, All-American boy who made a terrible mistake and it cost him his life.’’
If you’ve tried to help an addict in your life, or dealt with mental health struggles of your own, you know this. There’s just no formula for this.
There is, though, one way to ensure that nobody gets better: Silence. Because when someone is caught in whatever they’re caught in they feel weak, defeated, alone. Like they have failed, even if they happen to be a great right tackle or the guy with the beautiful family who everyone always wanted to talk to and be around. Truth like that doesn’t break through.
I’m not sure that anything does, save for the outstretched hand of somebody who has been there before. Sometimes that works. It can be a start, at least, and sometimes we need more of those just to keep going.
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