World champion Niko Hovinen is now openly talking about his drug addiction and his drug-addled years.
It wasn’t quite an ordinary carrot-flavored hangover Sunday.
It was something much worse.
It was a wall.
Niko Hovinen lay on the bed and cried.
He was ashamed.
He was scared.
A nursing facility was waiting for him.
“Feeling Scary”
Hovinen, 34, is a drug addict. He realizes it now – but he didn’t when he hit the wall six and a half years ago.
Hovinen had been fired from his KHL club Medvescak Zagreb and returned to Finland. The hum of the bars in Iso-Roba beckoned, as so often before.
After returning from the bar tour, he leaned on his wife at the time, the mother of his child, who had understood the problem for a long time.
– I said that now I need help, Hovinen said.
– I don’t know how or where it finally came from, but somehow I realized that I can’t stop this. The situation was really scary.
“The worst day of my life” awaited on Sunday.
– On Monday I left for treatment. That started a new life, says Hovinen.
– That Saturday was the fifth of November 2016. It’s the last night when I drank anything or used anything.
Used?
– Yes. Alcohol was not my main drug.
The Nokia Arena is Niko Hovinen’s current workplace. MINNA JALOVAARA
“Time in the Fog”
Hovinen excelled in the Pelicans at the beginning of the 2010s and won the World Cup gold as a three guard in the spring of 2011. The success opened the door to the NHL and opened the door to the KHL.
In the spring of 2014, after his first KHL season, Hovinen underwent a thorough hip operation in Boston. Oxycontin, the infamous opioid-based painkiller, was handed out for the recovery period.
– When you caught one, your leg didn’t hurt much and you felt good for the rest of the day, he recalls.
– It’s impossible to say at what point the addiction really broke out, but that’s where it started – and gradually accelerated.
Along with strong painkillers, there were sleeping pills.
– At worst, I could pull a record of Stella in the evening.
Stella is a drug containing zolpidem, which belongs to nonbenzodiazepines, intended for the short-term treatment of insomnia.
Hovinen does not want to tell the origins or prescribers of the medicines he uses. However, he did not do business in the street shop.
– There was always a way.
Alcohol was used on the trip both as a single substance for fun and to enhance the effects of medications.
Doesn’t joint use confuse the head quite badly?
– Time is in the fog – and I was.
Did you fool around?
– Came.
How bad?
– I don’t want to talk about them publicly, but nothing good came of it.
Without bumps
Between the hip operation and the Zagreb injury, Hovinen played for short periods in Salzburg, Luleå, Malmö, Kärpi and Pelicans.
– I was physically there, but uh, it took a season and a half before I was really even interested. It got so bad that while the game was going on I was thinking, I wish this was over and I could get to the camp quickly, Hovinen describes.
– My God, I got to play hockey as a profession in front of thousands of spectators, but my thoughts were elsewhere. Yes, yes… It’s a pretty big sign that there is now a serious problem.
When it was a year after the operation, the situation had already turned “bad”. The last year and a half before the wall was a “bad time”.
– At some point I realized that this has been going on for a year, i.e. the daily use of substances, Hovinen sighs.
– It had quite insidiously drifted to that point. It had become a habit.
In the kiekkoarje, Hovinen waded without bumps, despite his problem.
– I have always done my job and done what was necessary. I never missed training or games, he emphasizes.
– When everyday life was fine, I believed that this was fine fine.
Gradually, he began to notice that the use had gotten out of hand.
– I couldn’t stop. I probably didn’t even want to stop.
“I don’t want to think”
Hovinen is a meritorious league goaltender, even as a Golden Lion, but he didn’t make a big international breakthrough and didn’t experience the NHL.
– Now thinking back, you can say that I was in such a fog. I felt mentally powerless. I wasn’t myself, he spins.
– As they say: I was physically there, mentally somewhere else.
Did an intoxicated life eat away at a career and opportunities for success?
– Certainly.
How much?
– I do not know. I don’t really even want to think. If something has gone wrong, you can only blame yourself. I’m fine with where I am in my life right now.
Niko Hovinen moved to Tappara in Sport’s clearance sale and immediately got to raise the CHL trophy. PDO
Raitsika’s support
Hovinen marched to a nursing home after the wall weekend, but the most valuable support appeared Rane Raitsikkaa guitar hero who has had his own drug addiction struggle and got his life back on track years ago.
– Rane’s approach was a bit surprising. It was even a little pissed off that I had sought help, Hovinen laughs.
– When there were all kinds of mental states in the beginning, Rane was an invaluable help. It has experience and stories from so many places. It was always able to pick up stuff that worked for me from somewhere.
Rane Raitsikka has been a big support for Niko Hovise. RANE RAITSIKA
Hovinen had met Raitsika at the legendary Möysä club in Lahti, in the back room after Atomirota’s gig. During the treatment period, the acquaintance deepened into friendship.
– We have talked on the phone for hundreds and hundreds of hours.
“Don’t be a fuckin’ hero”, is Raitsika’s motto for Hovise. In other words: even a drug addict should not fight without the medicines prescribed by a doctor, for example after a painful operation.
– It’s really a matter of mind control, Hovinen sees.
– I no longer think that if I drink a non-alcoholic beer, what would the real one taste like – or two.
Don’t you feel like getting drunk?
– Sometimes the thought comes, just fleetingly, that what if I drank a glass of wine. It really is a what if. I really don’t care. The memory and the shock of that Sunday and the wall is still strong.
Was it easy to let go or let go?
– You can say that it was in a way. I had a strong feeling that I would never touch intoxicants again, as long as that feeling didn’t come back.
“It went like this”
Admitting and understanding your own addiction was a big step.
– Ah, that’s why I’ve been taking them (medicines). Aha, I’m a drug addict, Hovinen says.
– It was a relief that there was a reason for all this.
Hovinen admits that he is “a little ashamed and regretful”, still.
– It was idiotic, but it turned out like this – and in a way I couldn’t help it, he spins.
– I had a problem. I took care of it, and…
Hovista starts laughing mid-sentence.
– …we moved on.
Helpline vision
– It’s a shockingly big threshold to say that I have a problem.
That’s how you see it Niko Hovinena league guard who struggled with substance abuse.
– I would never have dared to tell the club’s CEO about my problem, not even a doctor.
Hovinen wants to offer his support to hockey players with substance abuse problems.
– A lot of people will ask how this case of mine went, he says.
– A few times they’ve even called jeesi. Then we talk, talk and take measures if necessary.
Hovinen envisions making support activities official. He has a conkarik guitarist as his radar partner Rane Raitsikka.
– The league knows about this idea of ours at least on some level, Hovinen mentions.
– The idea would be for the players to have a reliable character, a bit like an older brother or a friend, if there is any problem or question related to drugs. Maybe the threshold for calling us would be a little lower than for the tees of your own club.
Of course, you could call Hovinen and Raitsika’s helpline completely anonymously.
– I emphasize that this is not intended to portray a substance abuse therapist or a doctor. We just want to help before things get really bad.
Niko Hovinen made a save with the goal of the Lions in the Karelian tournament in the fall of 2013. JUSSI ESKOLA