Exotic animals at home can be a clue to underlying alcoholism
Story from “This is True” by Randy Cassingham, with his “tagline:”
“NICE DOGGIE: Pat Yoes, a spokesman for the St. Charles Parish, La., Sheriff’s Office, says he doesn’t know where Terron D. Ingram, 38, got the alligator, or what he was planning to do with it. But deputies saw Ingram riding a bicycle down the street with the 3-foot-long animal resting on his shoulders. When deputies stopped him, he ran — leaving both his bicycle and his leathery friend behind. The gator was caught and released into a nearby marsh; Ingram was caught and housed in the jail, charged with resisting arrest, cruelty to animals, and possession of drug paraphernalia. (New Orleans Times-Picayune) …Yeah, it’s no surprise to me that the drugs were all gone by that point.”
Randy, again, gets it. Those who live on the edge and engage in ultra-risky behaviors are more often addicts than not.
Consider motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel. After he died, I asked the question, “Was Evel an alcoholic?” Alcoholism often explains the inexplicable. In its obituary, The Economist asked why any sane man would continue his attempts at sailing over cars and canyons despite crashing numerous times and breaking dozens of bones. The answer, buried in the story, was that he kept the liquor flowing—which makes sense only to those who know that one of the manifestations of alcoholism-induced egomania is a desire to take extraordinary risks in a bid to further inflate the ego.
Defying convention is one form of risk-taking behavior. While not everyone who crosses such boundaries is an addict, doing so increases the odds that the alert observer will find one. Whenever a story of human interaction with an exotic animal makes the news, we should begin digging. The more exotic the creature, the greater are the odds of finding addiction. In stories of alligators, tigers and the like, an addict is likely involved at least 80% of the time.
This is even truer if the animal is being abused. Reports of dog fighting suggest that nearly everyone involved is an addict. My veterinarian, who understands addiction better than most, thinks my estimate that nearly 100% of animal abuse is perpetrated by addicts is dead-on.
(Story and tagline from “This is True,” copyright 2009 by Randy Cassingham, used with permission.)