The recession may increase the incidence of obvious alcoholism–causing an increase in related violence and road rage
Recession, Unemployment and Alcoholism
The last time we discussed the merely hypothetical, the real estate bubble was unraveling. The August 2007 Top Story, “The Mortgage Mess, the Real Estate Bubble and Alcoholism,” suggested that alcoholism helps to fuel manias, including this latest and greatest one. The ability to lead herds is enhanced by alcoholism because alcoholics are, by their own testimony when in recovery, the world’s greatest salesmen. They have a far greater knack than others for being able to disconnect price and economic reality, particularly when they want you to buy what they sell. Impaired judgment and a sense of invincibility increase risk-taking, upping the odds of criminal behaviors, which include the perpetration of fraudulent get-quick-rich schemes. It amplifies stupid ones such as overspending and falling for those same get-quick-rich schemes. Perversely, it can reinforce creative genius—which can be used to devise and sell unstable financial instruments—and, with the increased leverage encouraged by such concoctions, set the stage for massive instability, which is what a boom and bust are all about.
In his Secret History of Alcoholism, James Graham observed that retired alcoholics can no longer inflate their egos by wielding power over others through their employment. Retirement is often the point at which the addict begins to stave off late-stage alcoholism, before eventually succumbing to it. While not all law enforcers are alcoholics, those that are don’t become so after retirement (as is commonly believed). As early-stage addicts, they inflate their egos by wielding power legally—which doesn’t appear to be alcoholism. The loss of that status, especially as heroes, eventually leads to the decline in control over the use of the drug resulting in consequential behaviors characteristic of late-stage alcoholism, which almost everyone readily identifies as “alcoholism.”
The key question that needs to be addressed while alcoholics attempt to fend off the late-stages of the disease is what does addiction look like while crossing the threshold between the highly functional early stage and non-functional late stage?
The newly retired—or involuntarily unemployed—alcoholic redirects his exertion of power. No longer able to control employees, employers, co-workers, constituents, clients, citizens and customers, he attempts to substitute control in other areas of his life. One such non-work manifestation can be seen in aggressive driving, especially among the newly unemployed.
In Get Out of the Way! How to Identify and Avoid a Driver Under the Influence, I observed that the most aggressive, reckless and inconsiderate driving behaviors seem to occur on Saturday afternoons. I hypothesized that weekend warriors likely begin drinking Friday with the most public misbehaviors occurring the next day (by the time evening rolls around, they tend to stay at whatever bar or party they drive to). By Sunday, they are largely spent and must ready themselves for work the next day. Hangovers are not conducive to driving, so they largely stay home, which could account for the more sedate driving behaviors on Sundays.
What do alcoholics do when they no longer have a job? There’s no reason to sober up, so they are more likely to stay drunk for extended periods. This hypothesis suggests we may find an increasing number of reckless and inconsiderate drivers on Sundays as the economic situation worsens. I’ve begun to see this and am curious if others are witnessing the same phenomenon.
We might also expect greater volatility at home. Yelling and screaming may increase due to “money problems” or “boredom” or he “has nothing else to do,” when in fact such verbal violence against spouse, children and friends are simply power symptoms of alcoholism. While there will likely be countervailing forces at work in regards to divorce (cheaper to live together, particularly if one is unemployed), greater marital strife, including violence, is a predictable result of an increase in unemployment-induced re-channeling of alcoholic power-seeking misbehaviors. Naturally, “financial problems” will be blamed, but we will know the truth.
Attempts to wield power may take form in greater violence outside of the home as well. My friend and publisher of The Elliott Wave Theorist Robert Prechter, Jr. and a subscriber of his, John Whitney, discovered a link between bear markets and an increase in serial and mass murder. Charles Manson and his followers committed their heinous crimes in 1969, which encompassed a bear market in stocks. There were an especially large number of such murders during the 1970s, a decade during which stocks essentially went nowhere. Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and David Berkowitz went on killing sprees over the course of several years in the middle of that decade. As Whitney wrote on the www.elliottwave.com message board, “Jeffrey Dahmer killed his first victim in 1978 and then lay dormant until 1987 when he began again, only being caught at the tail end of the recession in 1991 as the [1990s] bull market was beginning.” Jim Jones convinced 900 men, women and children to commit Kool-Aid suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, near the end of the stagflation of the 1970s. Every one of these murderers was an alcoholic.
There are no studies to test the idea that violence, absent other factors, increases during difficult financial periods. However, this hypothesis suggests we should be more careful of our security and safety during such times—and an understanding of alcoholism and its signs and symptoms may help to protect us.