Ben Cousins getting himself well enough to play AFL football again is a great individual success story, and his struggle over illicit drug taking will provide significant commercial success for those involved in his up-coming documentary Such Is Life. The Troubled Times of Ben Cousins, to be screened on the Seven Network next week.

But while Cousins himself deserves praise for his return from the brink, this columnist needs to once again paraphrase ABC-TV's Hungry Beast by saying that a fair bit of the hype and promotion surrounding him and his documentary is "A little bit Bullshit."

Here's three examples:

1) "If it helps save one person's life or helps broaden the community's understanding of addiction, then it all will have been worthwhile," - Such is Life Executive Producer Michael Gudinski.

Yes, but if it results in hundreds, if not thousands of them thinking that you can dabble in blow, because "Ben took heaps and he came back from it" is it still worth showing? We'll never know because it will rate its arse off and it's going to air regardless.

2) "...an elite athlete whose determination to overcome his challenges will inspire and provide hope to others," - Seven Melbourne General Manager Lewis Martin in the Herald Sun August 13.

Just who will this inspire? Just who will be provided hope from watching this?

Is their target audience the hundreds of thousands of everyday Joe's and Jill's who don't take drugs, are reasonably happy with their lives and aren't tuning in for either hope or inspiration, but just to watch a documentary on Ben Cousins?

Or is there target audience one of (at a guess) about 20 professional athletes in the country who are struggling with illicit drugs?

3) "Yet football and sport cheapens the meaning of words. "Great" and "champion" are used to overblow the good and the competent. So is "hero" wrongly used to describe the norm. That is why Cousins is a hero where (Nathan) Buckley and (James) Hird are not. Buckley and Hird are correctly defined as champions but it is an embellishment peculiar to sport to call them heroes.

Cousins is a hero. A true hero. And it is not what he did on the field that qualifies him, it is not linked to hard-ball gets, backing into packs, keeping eyes on the ball as opponents charge in numbers, best and fairest titles, medals and trophies.

Cousins is a hero because he overcame an illness, the debilitating disease of drug addiction. He will fight it to the day he dies. That is the nature of addiction, which is why he will always be a recovering drug addict. Hird and Buckley deserve our praise, Cousins our admiration. That is not to demean the feats of the Collingwood and Essendon champions but to be in awe of those of Cousins," - Patrick Smith, The Australian August 18.

Now the morning ritual of yours truly includes logging in to read what the multi-award winning Smith has penned, but fair dinkum, has he produced a sillier thing or been more swept up by the moment of an event?

Nathan Buckley and James Hird, like other Brownlow-Medal-winning-number-on-the-back icons like Michael Voss, Robert Harvey, Shane Crawford, Adam Goodes, Paul Kelly and Mark Ricciuto are heroes because they never ever let down the literally tens of thousands of supporters whose weekly lives were enriched by the way "their" man conducted himself both on and off the field.

So they don't qualify as heroes because their respective personal lives didn't spin out of control to the point that the AFL commission deregistered them and parents didn't have to explain to the children who idolized them why they were no longer going to play for their team?

Thankfully some common sense minus the marketing and retirement hype exists.

Legendary Western Suburbs youth worker Les Twentyman told the Herald Sun on the 12th August that, "...all the hype surrounding Ben Cousins's addiction could be sadly seductive. We do not want to see an increase in young people experimenting with drugs as a result of this documentary."

Nick Holland, a one-time star with the Hawthorn Football Club wrote on the ABC's on-line The Drum on Wednesday "...his story, after all, is not a cautionary tale but rather glamorisation of drug use. On the surface it seems that Cousins has not faced any ill effects as a result of his drug addiction and irresponsible lifestyle."

And former manager Ricky Nixon who said during a series of radio interviews earlier this week that when St Kilda changed tack and decided not to draft the former Eagle, it was probably his most shattering day in football.

Why? Because he knew that the battle to get Ben Cousins back to being a healthy human would be much, much harder as an ex-AFL player, just as it is for far too many.

As Nixon alluded to, the adrenaline rush of playing in front of a packed MCG is a pretty powerful legal drug and replacing it is no easy task.

Unfortunately more than a few try via the nasal passage.

By airing the Ben Cousins documentary, Channel 7 will receive a financial windfall and rightly so.

They've come to a commercial arrangement with the makers of Such Is Life, and it's game on in relation to maximizing ratings and exposure.

But can the blinkered minority who live in the cocoon that breathlessly reports on the few "A" grade stars we have in this country please spare everyone the selling of the "worthiness" of the documentary?

If it was Billy Bloggs the ex-half back flanker whose missus has left him, the "uplifting" story "reflective of our wider community" that "no parent can afford to miss" would be missed because it wouldn't go to air, because it wouldn't have been filmed, because no one bar his nearest and dearest would give a stuff as he battled with an illicit drug problem amongst the anonymity of regular citizenship.

It is going to air because it is Ben Cousins. An all-time great of the AFL, who also has movie star good looks and who's story is reflective of a tiny fraction of our population.

Such is Life.

"Racetrack" Ralphy Horowitz is a full-time racing analyst for private clients and media commentator for Sport 927. He is a former producer at 3AW, SEN, The Footy Show, & Sunday Footy Show.