Brantt Myhres - Pain Killer: A Memoir of Big League Addiction

I hate sports books. I really do.

Most sports books are about success. For me, thats the turnoff right there. For me, reading about success in pro sport is dull, predictable, and, for most of us, also unattainable. I want to read about struggle. Struggle is what teaches us about the world around us and the world inside us. So, why did I read this book? Pure struggle. Lets face it: Brantt Myhres had eight points in 154 NHL games, so you know his book isnt about tickling the twine so much as riding the pine. But there is plenty of struggle.

One thing you will learn quickly in Pain Killer is that Brantt Myhres liked strippers. Brantt liked to party with strippers. Brantt liked to drink and do coke with strippers. In the end, his stripper friends taught him well. As you hold his book in your hands, consider it your entry into the champagne room of Brantts life. Brantts gonna show you everything, and it will engage you in a way that might shock you. It shocked me. It wasnt so much the wild life he led that shocked me. What shocked me was that there is so much about mental health and addiction that I found out I didnt know. I know more now. So will you.

I should tell you about my mental health, or rather my mental illness. Not because you need to know anything about methis is Brantts book. But it helps explain why he invited me to read his book, and why we became bonded in such an unusual and deep way.

I grew up being scared of too many things to list. Heres just a sampling: I was scared of sleepovers, I was scared of camp, I was scared of girls, I was scared of liquor and weed and anything else that would cause me to lose some control. Oh yeahadd to the list every illness imaginable. And thats it, except for elevators and middle seats at movie theaters. Basically, I was scared of most of the things other teenagers lived for. Most of all though, I was scared of throwing up. Petrified of puking, vomiting, heaving, ralphing. Under any name it was the enemy, and more than that, the fear of being around someone who even hinted they might vomit was overpowering and all-consuming. It ran my life.

I was constantly afraid that people would find out about my ridiculous fears, so I became adept at making excuses for not doing things. The overriding feeling for me was one of shame. I felt like I was somehow responsible for my fears. I was sure I was the only person on the planet who had these fears, so it was a great day for me when I read about phobias and discovered there was something called emetophobia. Emetophobia is in the medical books as the fear of throwing up or being around someone who throws up.

I was thrilled to learn that I wasnt the only one and that my affliction actually had a nameand that it wasnt loser. That, my new friends, is vindication. I wanted to race around waving it in peoples faces: See, I wasnt making it up. I am not immature or weak or lazy. I wanted to stand up in class and yell it. Then I realized I was too scared to stand up in class and yell. Not with all those girls there.

So, there was that.

And then there was depression. Like most of the world, I had no clue what it was until I felt it. I figured depression was like another Disney World Kingdom. Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, Frontierland, and Excuseland. In Excuseland the most popular attraction is a bunch of beds in the dark that people lie in and whine about how they dont have the will to get up. Of course, the ghosts dont just say boo, but boo-fucking-hoo.

It wasnt until I felt severe depression that I realized it was nothing like Id imagined. I remind myself of my own former ignorance when I hear people today expressing the same stigmatizing things that I used to think. Fact: If you havent felt depression, do not think you understand depression. Dont tell people like Brantt and me, We all go through it. We dont all go through it. You arent stronger than me or Brantt or your wife or your kid or anyone else with depression. You havent had it, not because of your strength, but because of your luck.

One of the things that hit me hardest in this book was Brantts less than ideal upbringing. When I think of what I was given, compared to what he was given, its not surprising that his struggles to find his way were a million times tougher than mine. It was like I was born with a flashlight in my hand. I would have preferred a silver spoon in my mouth, but the flashlight was the love I received from so many who loved me unconditionallyand that allowed me to find my way out of the darkness. Brantt didnt have that. You will learn that, and you will sympathize with him like I did. But you will not detect a hint of self-sympathy. He makes no excuses for his behaviour. He reports it as an observer of his own life, not as a participant. Its like hes telling the story in the third person. I love that.

Oh yeah, the lesson Brantt learnt from the strippers I was referring to was pretty simplethe more you expose, the more effective you are.

Pain Killer is that strip bar that allows anything. Hide nothing, show it, shake it, write it.

Dignity is a weird thing. Theres no dignity in getting on stage and talking about the one time you were so hammered you got in your car naked (a Brantt story). There is enormous dignity in getting on stage and talking about a