Andre Agassi Shocks World With "Open" Admission of Meth Addiction

Andre Agassi shocked the world yesterday. He didn’t announce he was coming out of retirement, or anything as mundane as he’s having a baby.

He revealed through excerpts of his upcoming autobiographical book, Open , that he at one time (between 1997 and 1999) was addicted to Crystal Methamphetamine.

As Paul Bogaards, director of media relations at Knopf, a division of the publishing giant Random House, Inc., the company which is publishing Agassi’s book put it, “Those excerpts contain revelations about Andre’s use of crystal meth when he was a tennis player.”

This shocker is certainly more surprising than other things we’ve learned about tennis greats of the past when they’ve finally written their memoirs. For instance, was anyone truly shocked by some of the admissions of homosexuality among some of the great female stars?

For Agassi fans, it might have been a huge blow, too, precisely because of who he is to them.

There’s no real need to list the many accomplishments of Andre Agassi for many of the tennis fans here on Bleacher Report, or even tennis fans in general. Suffice it to say he’s a legend of the game.

One of only five men who have won all four Grand Slams, Agassi has eight Men’s Grand Slam Singles Championships on his resume, including four Australian Opens, one French Open, one Wimbledon, and two U.S. Opens and is a former World No. 1-ranked player.

He’s also won an Olympic Gold Medal, 60 singles championships overall, and 17 ATP Masters Series tournaments.

He was named the seventh greatest male player—and 12th greatest player overall—for the period of 1965 through 2005 by Tennis Magazine , and was named the ATP Most Improved Player twice in his career, which spanned two decades from 1986 to 2006.

Born April 29, 1970 in Las Vegas, Agassi was known for his unorthodox apparel and attitude, and has been called the best service returner in the history of the game.

His charismatic appeal was responsible for a huge surge in the fan base of tennis overall during the 1990s, as young women who previously hadn’t even watched tennis began to watch it with a passion in order to follow the young superstar with the movie star good looks.

Once married to Brooke Shields, he is currently wedded to tennis legend Stefi Graf, and has two children with Stefi, Jaden Gil and Jaz Elle. A loving and devoted father, since his retirement in 2006 Agassi has had much more time to spend with his two children. He’s also someone who cares about more than just his own kids.

Andre has probably done more as a philanthropist for his native community than most from that area, raising more than $60 million to help disadvantaged children in the Las Vegas area over his lifetime.

Something he once said explains better than any words I could come up with exactly why he’s done so much for the children in his community:

“I believe the most powerful way to empower a child is through a strong education. We’ve created an atmosphere that helps children dream of possibilities that they may not otherwise have considered for themselves, and we provide the tools and resources to help them achieve their goals.”

Those words are a testament to the caring nature of the man many believe could have been considered the best men’s tennis player in the history of the game had he taken his game as seriously in the early part of his career as he did during the latter stages of it.

I personally loved Agassi’s game, and was a loyal fan of his from the start. My brother first introduced him to me, and was an even bigger fan of Andre’s.

Considering my brother, whose father was Sicilian (he’s my half-brother) identified strongly with his Italian heritage while growing up, and was also someone who was very fashionable throughout his youth (I never was), it’s not surprising he would gravitate toward cheering for a young, brash, tennis star who embodied fashion and trend-setting in the early days of his game, and who he erroneously believed was Italian because of his surname.

Agassi isn't Italian, however. His father, Emmanuel "Mike" Agassi, is an Iranian of Armenian and Assyrian descent, and is well-known in his own right as he represented Iran in boxing at the 1948 and 1952 Olympic Games before emigrating to the United States, where he met and married Andre's mother, Elizabeth "Betty" Agassi (née Dudley).

However, he was brash and bold, and that part of his personality set Agassi apart from many of his competitors back then.

It also might explain why he fell into the addiction he did.

Known as a “Wild Child,” even his marriage to Brooke Shields can be seen as an extension of that early desire to be in the spotlight and the center of attention. Such personality traits make people easily susceptible to drug use and abuse.

However, those traits also made him a star, and built up a very large and loyal fan base. Those fans, like me, had to have been shocked when it was revealed yesterday that for two years during his career, even while he was playing, he was addicted to Crystal Meth.

Crystal Methamphetamine, or Crystal Meth (or even just “Meth”) as it’s known on the streets, is the crystallized version of the drug, which is a powerful psychostimulant and sympathomimetic drug.

Wikipedia describes it and its effects as follows:

“Methamphetamine enters the brain and triggers a cascading release of dopamine and norepinephrine. It is highly active in the mesolimbic reward pathways of the brain, inducing intense euphoria, with a high potential of addiction. To a lesser extent, methamphetamine releases serotonin and acts as a dopaminergic and adrenergic reuptake inhibitor with higher concentrations serving as a monoamine oxidase inhibitor.”

Yeah, I know, I thought “WTF” when I read that too. I understand a good portion of it, but then it just got so scientifically technical you’re wondering if you’re reading the ingredients list of a Twinkie or something.

I think we can simply say Meth makes you feel really, really good and is very, very addictive. Beyond that, you better have a degree in chemistry to understand the all the effects of the stuff.

Which is saying something. There’s a reason why it’s one of the most dangerous illicit drugs on the market. It screws people up, big time . And Andre Agassi was no exception.

During the time he’s admitted to being addicted to the drug, his career was pretty much in the tank. It’s not like this was some performance-enhancing drug that allowed him to go out and win Grand Slams over his competitors.

No, what it did was take a superstar tennis player, and turn him into a pathetic drug addict, unable to really compete at the level his abilities should have demanded.

Somewhere in there is a huge lesson to be learned by young players out there today. Stay away from drugs; stay far away.

Agassi, speaking about his problem to People.com had this to say, “I can’t speak to addiction, but a lot of people would say that if you’re using anything as an escape, you have a problem.”

I couldn’t agree more, Andre.

I don’t think these revelations will affect Andre’s legacy too much. His abilities and accomplishments have secured him a place in history as one of the greatest.

Finding out now that he had a few more problems than we’d previously known about during the years he struggled to find his game won’t suddenly make him a bum in people’s eyes.

However, it had to have taken a measure of guts by Agassi to even reveal these things about his past. He admits he was initially worried about what his fans would think about his drug use and confession.

“I was worried for a moment, but not for long…I was actually excited about telling the world the whole story,” he said.

Telling that story might actually help someone, too. As with any revelation of problems by the icons of our age, it humanizes the problem in a way revelations of such stuff by your average person just can’t.

Simply put, it’s hard for all of Agassi’s loyal fans to demonize those around them who’ve fallen into drug addiction, when one of their own idols has suffered the same fate.

This in itself is a good thing.