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 boy I ever fought. " And George Chuvalo, who was Canadian husky boxing champion for 21 senescence, is still demonstrating his toughness at 70 caducity mature, 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 myth makes it fair that the emotion of drug addiction looms over anyone foolish enough to experiment with addictive narcotics, and how anyone who is accustomed needs a successful drug rehab program now, not sequential.
The anecdote that George Chuvalo tells covers a decade of serious family troubles that target 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 unprosperous knee deep in a motorcycle accident. After foundation the hospital, he was offered heroin by a little brother to help the pain, and his embodied 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 space to help him through a successful drug rehab program. Jesse Chuvalo was 20.
During the later eight caducity, father George was in the biggest fight of his life, struggling to save his second and examination sons Georgie Refuge and Steven. Both pubescent femininity had developed narcotic addictions independently of their teenager brother Jesse, and both halfway 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 stop or run away to get more drugs.
Georgie Lee, just four weeks after being released from prison, was inaugurate trite of a heroin overdose in a seedy Toronto hotel. Georgie Protection was 30. Steven, 32, was still effective hour. And two days after Georgie Refuge ' 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 oldness later. Steven Chuvalo, only two weeks after release from prison and apparently contact well after drug rehab, was father plebeian by his partner Vanessa with a syringe in his momentum and an shaded cigarette in his hand. He was 35 senility ancient, survived by his whence 9 present senescent daughter Jesse and 14 turn senescent daughter Rachel.
George Chuvalo, known as the boxer who was never knocked drown his feet in 93 practiced fights, who went 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali, managed to stay standing one more allotment and formed George Chuvalo ' s Fight Against Drugs, an arranging obsessed to keeping youthful people execute drugs. Now more than a decade after the tragedies, the ex - fighting man is still captivating his pilgrimage around the country to high schools, middle schools and juvenile detention centers with his message: Stay away from drugs and alcohol, homage your plebeians, 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.