Substance Abuse
Caminiti struggled with substance abuse throughout his career. He admitted in 1994 to having a problem with alcohol and checked himself into a rehabilitation center in 2000. In a Sports Illustrated cover story in 2002, a year after his retirement, he admitted that he had used steroids during his 1996 MVP season, and for several seasons afterwards. His admitted steroid abuse was discussed in the 2007 Mitchell Report on steroid abuse in baseball.
Caminiti also had a long struggle with cocaine, having been arrested in March 2001 for possession and sentenced to probation.
While on probation for cocaine possession he tested positive for cocaine, a Houston judge ordered Caminiti to visit a Texas Department of Criminal Justice-operated treatment program in February 2003. In May the program was eliminated, so he was forced to leave. Caminiti completed most of the program.
On October 5, 2004 — just five days prior to his death — he admitted in a Houston court that he had violated his probation. He tested positive for cocaine in September 2004. It was his fourth such violation and he was sentenced to 180 days in prison but given credit for time already served and released.
Read more about this topic: Ken Caminiti
Famous quotes containing the words substance and/or abuse:
“All the old supports going, gone, this man reaches out a hand to steady himself on a ledge of rough brick that is warm in the sun: his hand feeds him messages of solidity, but his mind messages of destruction, for this breathing substance, made of earth, will be a dance of atoms, he knows it, his intelligence tells him so: there will soon be war, he is in the middle of war, where he stands will be a waste, mounds of rubble, and this solid earthy substance will be a film of dust on ruins.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“The love of truth, virtue, and the happiness of mankind are specious pretexts, but not the inward principles that set divines at work; else why should they affect to abuse human reason, to disparage natural religion, to traduce the philosophers as they universally do?”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)