Unconquerable demons

 Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay has been gone for three months now, and what you can say about that is what you can now forever say. Which is, he had a heart and a soul and a closetful of demons, all the makings for tragedy in the classic sense.

 Had he not possessed the first two, after all, the unconquerable third would not have seemed so insufferably cruel. And so damnedly inevitable.

Irsay's primary demon was an addiction to painkillers, which he fought bare-knuckled for years and never quite beat. To the very end, apparently.

According to a Washington Post story that broke this week, Irsay, who died in a Beverly Hills hotel room back in May, was back on the painkillers when he died, and managed to successfully hide it. In the last five years of his life, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge, he overdosed three times. And when he died at 65 in that hotel room, he was also on a ketamine scrip written by one of his doctors.

None of this is scandalous, understand, except perhaps for the latter. And the reason it's not scandalous is Irsay himself, and that aforementioned heart and soul.

Those are the things that compelled him to be intermittently open about his struggles with addiction and mental health, in the hope (one assumes) that his own example could somehow help others engaged in the same struggle. At the very least, it let them know  there was no shame in that struggle, and so they shouldn't be afraid to reach out for help.

To that end, Irsay put his money where his mouth was. In 2020, he, his family and his football team launched a mental health initiative called Kick The Stigma, designed to aid Hoosiers battling mental health issues get the treatment they needed. Coincidentally or not, it was about this same time that Irsay's addiction demons came for him yet again.

The great irony in that -- and go ahead, call it hypocrisy if you have to -- is that this time, for whatever reason, the Colts and Irsay's family went to great lengths to hide Irsay's final relapse. At the same time they were urging others to Kick The Stigma, they allowed the stigma to very much kick them.

In any case, once again, and for the last time, Irsay couldn't quite beat the demons. You can decide for yourselves if that goes on the board as a loss.

Me?

Despite everything, I'll reserve the "L" for those who far more deserve it. Despite everything.