Rxcalibur

Down 40 and have Stafford and Pettigrew. You can do it!

Addiction and bouts of depression do not necessarily make someone a bad person. As you can see in this case, Payton was, by all accounts, at his core, a hard-woking, genuinely good man on and off the field. Sadly, he apparently battled some personal demons but despite his issues, he still did good things and still treated people with courtesy and respect. As for addiction itself, when a person becomes addicted to something like painkillers, going without the medicine can cause that person to begin to experience symptoms of withdrawal (such as cravings, chills, pain, tremors, anxiety, depression) thus leading the person to continue to take the medicine just to feel normal. In addition, a person can build up a tolerance to painkillers over time leading that person to require more and more of the medication to experience pain relief and therefore greatly increasing the chance of becoming addicted. It's the proverbial "vicious cycle." Unfortunately, many people who are addicted to painkillers can function normally for the most part and most casual observers and even close friends and family may not be aware of the addiction. I hate hearing all this about Walter Payton so long after his passing, but hopefully it will at least spread awareness and maybe spare someone the fate that befell Oklahoma Sooner LB Austin Box over the summer. R.I.P. Sweetness. We all remember the good - as it should be.

One of my greatest transactions of all time: Fred Taylor missed the first 3 games of 2000 and didn't do much in his first couple of games back. At that time I acquired him via trade and reaped the rewards the rest of the season, especially the aforementioned all-time performance. Even sweeter, my opponent the week of Fred's epic showing had Eddie George go off for 130+ yards and 3 TDs against me and was holding a substantial lead. If I remember correctly, JAC vs. PIT was the Sunday night game that week and I got to thoroughly enjoy seeing Freddie trump Eddie to give me a come-from-behind fantasy victory! Another great memory of an honorable mention all-time performance involves Drew Bennett. I was almost hopelessly behind going into that fateful MNF game. My opponent had no one left and all I had was Drew Bennett. I told myself and friends that all I needed was Bennett to go off for about 200+ yards and 3 or 4 TDs! Yeah, right! But, big Drew was magical that night. Bennett's (and Volek's) historic performance, gave me my most memorable come-from-behind fantasy victory ever. Apparently and unfortunately, Bennett also used up all my Monday night mojo because since that night I can't remember ever coming back from a deficit on Monday night. No matter how small my opponent's lead, my Monday night players tend to underperform spectacularly. But maybe this is the year things change! At least that's what the Cubs fans keep telling me.