Archive for November, 2006
Likely Addicts Cause Havoc for the Right: Congressman Mark Foley, Writer-Pundit Ann Coulter and Evangelical Christian Rev. Ted Haggar
Alcoholics have an impact way out of proportion to their numbers. While only about 10% of the population consists of alcohol or other-drug addicts, they commit as much as 80% of crime, abuse and unethical behaviors. That affects all of us, often in disastrous ways.
Groups of people"and how others feel about their ideas"can also be affected. It probably didn't help my libertarian brethren or dissemination of the philosophy of free markets that the man who may be more responsible for our freedom than anyone was an alcoholic. Thomas Paine authored Common Sense, the pamphlet that inspired the American Revolution and Declaration of ...
Runners-up: politicians, businessmen, school teachers and others
Runners-up for top story of the month:
Ex-convict businessman Bo Stefan Eriksson, 44, who pleaded "no contest"to embezzling two exotic cars, a Ferrari and a Mercedes McLaren, and being a felon in possession of a handgun, facing a new trial just four days after a jury deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of conviction. A few weeks before, he pleaded "no contest"to a DUI in the now infamous Malibu, California crash of a million-dollar Enzo Ferrari into a telephone pole in February. He previously turned down a plea deal that would have put him away for just over two years despite the fact that Judge Patricia M. Schnegg made it clear she felt it was a "very generous offer."The offer ...
Under Watch: a scientist, a would-be despot and an actor
Under watch:
Actor Wesley Snipes, indicted on charges of tax fraud and failure to file income tax returns since 1999. Statistics in Drunks, Drugs & Debits suggest that 80-90% of convicts, or those who should be, are alcohol or other-drug addicts. I found early in my research that those who went beyond reason in "interpretation"of tax law were usually no different. Who else could think they are more powerful than the U.S. government? Snipes also has recently been embroiled in civil lawsuits, including one brought by United Talent Agency, Inc., for failure to pay nearly $1.5 million in commissions, along with another suit brought by Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp. for failure to make payments on his Florida mansion. The combination ...
Co-Dependent actress and psychiatrist
Co-Dependents of the Month:
Actress Nicole Kidman, who according to a friend, didn't know that her husband, Grammy-winner Keith Urban, "was drinking and using coke when she went to sleep at night"from the time they married. When she figured it out four months later, to her credit she staged an intervention and Urban checked into rehab. In 2002, long after first getting clean and sober, Urban reportedly told a reporter that he didn't consider alcohol a problem. "I still drink. I get drunk. But it's never sent me back to other things."According to reports, Nicole's prenuptial agreement states that if they divorce, Keith receives nothing if he uses illegal drugs or drinks "excessively,"but otherwise gets $600,000 for each year they are ...
Hasselhoff enabled by publicist
Enabler of the Month:
Publicist Judy Katz, insisting that former "Baywatch"actor David Hasselhoff, who was turned away from a British Airways flight in July because he appeared bombed, had simply been taking prescribed meds following a "shaving accident"that resulted in a deep cut in his arm. He also looked and acted intoxicated on a popular morning British television show. Reps for the show, "GMTV,"blamed his behavior on "fatigue."In October, Hasselhoff checked into rehab but checked out after three days. His recent stints in rehab include one in 2002 and another in 2004. One "insider"pointed out his handlers do him no favors by covering up. Here, here!
The story of Idi Amin, horrific addict and his codependent doctor, (relatively) benign alcoholic
"The Last King of Scotland"
An extraordinary contrast of relatively benign and extremely non-benign addiction
Somewhere in my first book, Drunks, Drugs & Debits, I remarked that it's impossible to understand history and current events without comprehending alcoholism. The history of the Dark Continent is perhaps the shining example where this couldn't be more true, yet for which we have little hard evidence. Where evidence of actual use does exist, it consists of a ten-second scene in a partially fictionalized two-hour account of a despot and his enablers.
Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, magnificently played by Forest Whitaker, is accurately portrayed as a monster with numerous behavioral indications of substance addiction. He was mercurial, charming, narcissistic and charismatic, a combination of attributes common among ...
An obvious drunk, unidentified as such by the columnist
Dear Doug: Demanding Dan
Dear Doug:
My husband, Dan, is unemployed, sits up late drinking and watching TV and gets angry when I wake him in the morning to care for our infant son when I go to work. He wants to hire a child care provider, but I've explained to him we can't afford it"with my four children from a previous relationship, along with his three kids for whom we have to provide"until he gets a job. He doesn't even look.
On top of this, Dan accuses me of cheating and not caring about our family, right in front of our 2-year-old son. I'd like to stay in the marriage, but Dan refuses counseling.
Signed,
Exasperated
. . . .
Dear Exasperated,
Other columnists might say that ...
Myth: Alcoholism can’t be blamed for pedophilia (etc etc etc)
Don't Blame Alcoholism
"Don't blame alcohol,"read the caption to a letter to the editor in USA Today. Letter writer Cheryl James of Englewood, FL wrote that Congressman Mark Foley attempted to blame his behavior on alcoholism. "Alcoholism alone does not cause pedophilia or turn someone into a sexual predator.â€
No, Ms. James, alcoholism does not by itself turn people into predators. However, without damage to the neo-cortex and, therefore, a loss of restraint on the impulses of the lower brain centers, such misbehavior is unlikely to occur. Impulses vary by addict, which with environment, circumstances, Psychological Type of the addict and virulence, determines the style of addiction and the misbehaviors in which the addict will engage. If the style is one of ...
Crack cocaine addicts to the most amazing things
Amazing Antics: Stories of Alcoholism-Driven Behaviors?
A Combustible Mix
What happens when you mix a pooper-scooper, scissors and crack cocaine? What do you get when you mix anything with crack cocaine? Something right out of a Stephen King novel.
Waukesha County, Wisconsin Circuit Judge Lee S. Dreyfus, Jr., sentenced Leisa K. Reed, 47, to two years in prison and five years extended supervision for her attack of a Waukesha couple she didn't know.
John and Linda Dormer were awoken at 4:40 a.m. by the family's Shih Tzu barking. Linda walked into the kitchen and saw a stranger wildly swinging a pooper scooper and babbling, "They are going to kill me. I'm going to kill you."Linda screamed and John ran into the kitchen. Reed, all ...