Tyler Hamilton: Bold Accusations

Tyler Hamilton has created another seismic shockwave by accusing seven time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong of using and facilitating the use of recombinant erythropoietin (rEPO) during the 1999 Tour de France when Hamilton and Armstrong were teammates at the United States Postal Service Professional Cycling Team. Tyler Hamilton has a long history of doping and mental illness, commented upon by this author two years ago when Hamilton was banned for eight years while United States road champion for taking a holistic substance to battle ongoing bouts of manic/depression.

"Rise and Fall of Tyler Hamilton" created some adverse comments from people who mistakenly thought that the article was an attack on people suffering from the debilitating medical and behavioral effects of manic/depression. Not true. Mania and retarded depressive disorders cause long term adverse effects that can cause disastrous long term results, not only to the people suffering from the disorder but to families, friends, acquaintances. Manic episodes have long been argued to be independent of voluntary cognitive control in some cases; "word salads" incoherent sentences of incoherent rambling thoughts totally unrelated in context to one another. Before the discovery of psychoactive drugs (lithium salts) that lowers the resting potential of the neuron from an hyper-excited level to a normal range (~-70mv) some manic patients were warehoused in the back wards of mental hospitals for years, lost causes, never to be restored to a level of behavior that would be considered normal in society.

Drug interventions stopped superstitious reasoning of mental illness that predominated during the "dark ages." Early superstitious "causes" of mania and schizophrenia were attributed to demonic possessions and required exorcisms, among other idiotic cures. However, with the accidental discovery that lithium salts caused rats to behave more tranquilly, and that this discovery might have application with human beings, did it become obvious to psychiatrists that manic episodes were a medical condition. Lithium salts do allow chronic manics to function quite well in society, absent the word salad cognition, and uncontrolled impulsive destructive behaviors. As long as they take their medication as prescribed.

As everyone knows psychoactive drugs cause side-effects and have different medical efficacy depending upon the patient, the medical condition, duration, severity. There has never been or ever will be a snake oil that will cure everything. If one drug does not help, talk to your doctor, he or she will try something else, there is no need for self experimentation with holistic drugs or herbs. In fact self-experimentation with herbs may lead to toxic results because in some drugs the therapeutic dose and toxic dose are almost identical. Blood levels of lithium salts must be monitored at all times to prevent toxicity because lithium is stored in blood platelets and can reach a toxic level even though a doctor prescribes a therapeutic dose. Thus the problem.

Therefore, Tyler Hamilton has no excuse for experimenting with a drug that had no proven medical efficacy and that also contained an ingredient that is on the WADA prohibited substance list, DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone.) Tyler Hamilton admitted that he knew that the herbal remedy contained DHEA and that this substance was banned. Tyler Hamilton, was not so incapacitated at the time that he needed immediate relief from a manic state that would have resulted in behavior considered "harmful to himself or others." Suicidal ideation or behavior reported as harmful to others usually requires hospitalization of the patient, even if only for a brief period. But maybe Tyler Hamilton wanted to self destruct, his marriage was falling apart, maybe he wanted people to feel sorry for him, maybe he was feeling sorry for himself, maybe he wanted to be banned?

So what is with the new Sixty Minutes Tyler Hamilton accusations of Lance Armstrong? More self-laceration? Does Tyler Hamilton crave attention, is he envious of Lance Armstrong's seven year reign, is he another idiot like Floyd Landis? Is Tyler Hamilton seeking a large, lucrative advance on a potential book? What is his motive? And does Tyler Hamilton have any proof?

So, no, we cannot simply leave Tyler Hamilton alone. So sorry.