Derek Lowe has been diagnosed with attention deficit order and received permission to treat it with medication currently on baseball's banned substance list, multiple media outlets reported Wednesday.
Details of his diagnosis, which was made while he was pitching for the Boston Red Sox, were revealed in a divorce deposition described by the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Herald and the Web site ronfineman.com.
Lowe declined to talk to the Times about his treatment, which includes the drug Adderall. Adderall is on the list of banned amphetamines but is allowed by Major League Baseball with an approved prescription.
The Dodgers told the paper that team psychiatrist Herndon Harding evaluated Lowe and team physician Michael Mellman prescribed the medication.
In the deposition, Lowe said that Dodgers trainer Stan Johnston gives him 20 milligrams of Adderall a day. According to the deposition, Red Sox team physician Bill Morgan prescribed Ritalin to treat Lowe's ADD three years ago.
Baseball is testing for amphetamines for the first time this year, part of the fourth straight season of toughened drug rules. Players who test positive for the first time will be sent for counseling. A second positive test would result in a 25-game suspension.
Lowe lost on Opening Day, allowing eight runs in five innings as the Braves beat the Dodgers 11-10 Monday.
Earlier this spring, the 32-year-old right-hander acknowledged that the breakup of his marriage after his wife made public his relationship with former Los Angeles television sports anchor Carolyn Hughes and said it affected his play in his first season with the Dodgers.
Lowe claims Hughes didn't cause the demise of his marriage. The
two are still together.
"We didn't leave our spouses for each other, which people
believe we did," he said. "She was going through a divorce. It
wasn't a fling. There's no guarantee, but it wasn't just a fling.
"The main people in my life, they knew what was going on for
months upon months upon months. They knew we were having a hard time for a long time. That was the 100 percent thing. It wasn't
anyone else that led to the breakup -- absolutely not."
With all that was going on, the 6-foot-6 Lowe said he went from
235 pounds to 216 in a span of 2½ months during the season.
"You're not eating, you're not sleeping -- the stress of the
whole thing," he said. "It was a tough situation. To add even
more toughness to it is the way it was handled, the amount of
people who knew about it.
"You learn about people -- the players on the team last year
were great, the way they were such good friends."
Lowe went 4-2 with a 1.80 ERA in his last eight starts last season to finish
12-15 with a 3.61 ERA. Much was made about his moving from one side of the rubber to the other. He begs to differ, saying it was more a matter of getting his life together.
Lowe signed a four-year, $36 million contract to play for the
Dodgers in the wake of winning the final game of Boston's three
postseason series to help the Red Sox earn their first World Series
championship in 86 years.
While Lowe was struggling personally, the Dodgers were mostly
losing. After a 12-2 start, they hit the skids, finishing 71-91 for
their second-poorest record since moving west from Brooklyn in
1958.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.