Is All This Talk Pulling Tiger Woods Under?

As if adultery isn’t enough looming over golf’s undisputed king, drug use may also be a hot topic of discussion over the coming weeks.

Woods has been taking pain medication for quite some time, at least since July 2007 when he initially tore his left knee ACL.

Tiger and his staff decided against surgical treatment, opting instead to play through the pain while continuing to take medication for it.

A source close with Woods’ medical treatment in 2007 told The Daily Beast ’s Gerald Posner that Woods’ dosage of pain pills was “potentially a problem” due to the addictive nature of those medications.

Pain medications are commonly prescribed to just about every patient who undergoes surgery. Although one physician warned Woods of the potential need to wean off the pain pills, athletes have several ways of subduing major pain while they continue to play. With pain medication being one of those methods, this may or may not be a serious issue.

More to the point of recent events, he has been taking Ambien, a prescription sleeping pill. He takes the pill to help him sleep through the pain associated with knee surgeries on both knees.

Ambien has a history for impairing one's ability to drive, and it’s believed to be associated with the highly-publicized incident where Woods drove his SUV into a tree.

The reason for the speculation?

His neighbor Jarius Adams claimed to have heard Woods “snoring” after the crash.

Although a few officers at the scene suspected that Woods may be disoriented and loopy from sleeping pills, the Florida Highway Patrol failed to administer any drug or alcohol tests, citing a lack of evidence in finding probable cause to test Woods.

There are a few major concerns here.

The first of which is that he wasn’t honest about it. Had he come forward from the very beginning and been open about the entire situation, he wouldn’t be subject to as much scrutiny as he is right now.

Instead, he chose to ask for his privacy and didn’t want to talk about the situation because it was “a private matter,” and he wanted “to keep it that way.”

Now, the media is left to wonder whether this is an isolated prescription use or an abuse that has been occurring for years.

Mark Steinberg has helped Woods maintain an almost invincible media image up to this point and feels threatened by the massive amounts of speculation surrounding his star client.

The speculation isn’t without warrant.

Considering that Ambien may have been a factor in this incident, the likelihood that the pill problem runs deeper than simply prescriptions could also be taken into account.

Woods’ mistress did, in fact, state that the two had “crazy” sex in an "Ambien haze.”

As Woods’ agent, what I would have advised is that he come clean from the very beginning—a full disclosure could have helped him not only avoid severe media scrutiny, but also to keep more of his fan loyalty by proving a certain (though not full) measure of honesty.

The second concern is that he drove while under the influence of Ambien.

It’s fortunate that he crashed when he did, and that he didn’t get to the road where he could have caused someone harm.

Only time will tell if that affects him in the long term or if he comes out of this stronger than ever.

Fortunately, the only person suffering the consequences of Woods’ foolish mistakes is himself.