Ballet is a difficult and physically demanding sport. An article done in the Yorkshire Evening Post compared the ballerinas of the Northern Ballet Theatre to the professional rugby team, the Leeds Rhinos, just to emphasize how strong ballerinas truly are (Baldwin). Their phenomenal core strength and endurance comes from 7.5 hours of intensive training 6 days a week. This schedule is relentless and exceptionally hard to keep up with. Often times ballerinas do not get enough sleep to replenish their bodies from their days work or they lose energy during rehearsal or a performance; needless to say, these dancers are tired. Losing sleep can be detrimental to one’s physical health; A lack of sleep can lead to increased risk for stroke, diabetes, heart disease, and kidney disease as well as harming your immune system’s abilities (“Why Is Sleep Important”). Being tired during class, is not an option either, for a loss of focus can cause injury like falling or not catching somebody else. In order to combat exhaustion, ballerinas often turn to cocaine use so that they can have sustained energy. The drug is popular for its tendency to curb a users appetite, which helps ballerinas eat less and be thinner. While the effects are ideal for ballerinas, they are at a high level of danger since cocaine can produce cardiovascular problems or even stop one’s heart all together (NIDA). The problem of cocaine use, however, is not unknown, dancers have famously overdosed or come out about their problem (Schwab), and many directors are aware of their dancers’ use of it and will turn a blind eye until it directly impacts performance. Drug abuse in theaters is especially a problem for the young girls that are training there since they are more susceptible to pressure and addiction. These girls will see the older ballerinas do it and see it as an old trick of the trade and decide that they can and should do it too (Whittenburg). Passing down or encouraging dangerous habits is not sharing wisdom, though, it is putting people in direct harm.