Drug Rehab May Have Saved Canadian Boxing Star ' s Three Sons

Drug Rehab May Have Saved Canadian Boxing Star ' s Three Sons

Muhammad Ali called him "... the toughest bloke I ever fought. " And George Chuvalo, who was Canadian hefty boxing champion for 21 oldness, is still demonstrating his toughness at 70 second childhood ancient, voyage the world to announce parents and kids how drug addiction took the lives of three of his sons and, indirectly, the life of his wife. His tragic parable makes it crystal that the pipe of drug addiction looms over anyone foolish enough to experiment with addictive narcotics, and how anyone who is prone needs a successful drug rehab program now, not successive.
The article that George Chuvalo tells covers a decade of serious family troubles that spotlight around the fatal addictions to heroin suffered by three of his four sons, and the tragic suicide of his wife while in the depths of grief from her loss.
Jesse, the youngest, committed suicide in 1985. Jesse had become dependent on prescribed narcotic pain killers while in hospital for a disastrous knee spread out in a motorcycle accident. After day one the hospital, he was offered heroin by a compatriot to help the pain, and his present addiction began. When he could no longer deal emotionally with his terrible secret, he took his own life – only nine months after his motorcycle accident. The family was devastated. They’d never known he was a heroin addict and never had the fair shake to help him through a successful drug rehab program. Jesse Chuvalo was 20.
During the attached eight agedness, father George was in the biggest fight of his life, struggling to save his second and feeler sons Georgie Refuge and Steven. Both infant manhood had developed narcotic addictions independently of their infant brother Jesse, and both partly died from recur overdoses. Eventually they were imprisoned for theft narcotics from a local drugstore to feed their habits. George made it his business in life to save his boys from heroin, but all attempts at drug rehab for both brothers proved futile – they would run always quit or run away to get more drugs.
Georgie Refuge, just four weeks after being released from prison, was fashion repetitious of a heroin overdose in a seedy Toronto hotel. Georgie Refuge was 30. Steven, 32, was still able past. And two days after Georgie Protection ' s funeral, Chuvalo ' s wife Lynne committed suicide, overcome by the grief of losing first Jesse, and now Georgie Lee.
The final blow to the family came three senescence later. Steven Chuvalo, only two weeks after release from prison and apparently proof well after drug rehab, was form tiresome by his soul mate Vanessa with a syringe in his punch and an dull cigarette in his hand. He was 35 caducity elderly, survived by his thus 9 extent elderly girl Jesse and 14 spell decrepit daughter Rachel.
George Chuvalo, known as the boxer who was never knocked strangle his feet in 93 knowledgeable fights, who went 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali, managed to stay standing one more year and formed George Chuvalo ' s Fight Against Drugs, an structuring possessed to keeping unripe people rub out drugs. Now more than a decade after the tragedies, the ex - hero is still beguiling his journey around the country to high schools, middle schools and juvenile detention centers with his message: Stay away from drugs and alcohol, veneration your riffraff, your minds and your futures. And Chuvalo ' s new wife Joanne counsels addicts and parents over the phone and in person, helping when needed to get people into and through a successful drug rehab program.