Archive for July, 2015
Addiction-Fueled Muslim Extremism Takes Form in Violent Crimes:
The Culture of Rape in Rotherham, England
Over the years, I’ve provided evidence that atrocities committed by anyone, including radical jihadi Muslims, are likely fueled by alcohol and other-drug addiction or serious co-dependency. In these virtual pages and my books I’ve shown that despots and cult leaders alike are nearly always substance addicts. Additionally, addicts are great salesmen who can frequently convince others into acting unethically and criminally; non-addicted children and young adults, under their hypnotic-like control, are also capable of monstrous misbehaviors. This is especially true of those abused as children. It’s also true of those who previously used drugs addictively but didn’t combine abstinence with the ego deflation required for true sobriety.
Without ...
More evidence that ISIS is fueled by addicts: al-Zarqawi.
Runners-up for top story of the month:
While addiction is usually the root cause of the horrific behaviors of despots and cult leaders, proof is often elusive. Historians, biographers and journalists don’t have a clue; hence, they usually say nothing or, if they do, a comment proving addictive use is buried on page 160 of a book or the 28th paragraph of one article out of a dozen. However, James Traub, in his review in The Wall Street Journal of ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, tells us what we need to know early on. ISIS “traces its origin” to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a “semi-literate but very charismatic Jordanian thug.” Traub quotes the authors: “his ...
Dylann Storm Roof diagnosis: it’s not a flag or Fox News. It’s addiction. It nearly always is; this time isn’t different.
In what many are calling an act of terrorism, Dylann Storm Roof murdered nine parishioners in an Emanuel AME Church during a bible study. His actions are blamed on everything from “this is the face of evil” to “he watches things like Fox News,” from “mental illness” to “racism,” from “someone who wanted to inflict harm [having] no trouble getting their hands on a gun” to “he was motivated by hate,” from “Confederate flags” to “right wing media,” from “there’s a sickness in our country” to “public discourse…is sometimes hotter and more negative than it should be, which can…trigger people who are less than stable.” Yet, none of these “explanations” get to the root of what happened: “Roof is a ...
Party (orgy) of the decade at an Airbnb rental: underwear and body fluids all over.
Alcoholic victims of the month:
Airbnb and Mark and Star King, who thought they were renting their Calgary home for the weekend to four adults attending a family wedding. Instead, a party bus brought at least 100 partiers, the aftermath of which was described by police as a “drug-induced orgy.” Neighbors contacted the Kings on Monday morning, asking if everything “was all right,” explaining police had responded to noise complaints at their home multiple times over the weekend. The Kings arrived home late Monday and, when they were finally allowed to enter (the Airbnb agreement confirmed the renters were legal tenants and the Canadian “Residential Tenancies Act” prevented entry until the rental period was up), they were “almost knocked over by ...
An addict sends hallucinogens to friends in jail; a methhead mounts a moving vehicle.
Misdiagnosis of the month:
William Hahne, 57, a former chemical engineer, pleaded guilty on charges of sending mail laced with synthetic hallucinogen NBOMe, which has an effect similar to LSD, to pals in the Joseph V. Conte Jail in Pompano Beach, Florida. Hahne’s lawyer, Glenn Kritzer, in asking for a lenient sentence, explained his client has “a long history of mental illness, including psychosis, [which] contributed to his track record of drug-related arrests.” Kritzer has cause and effect reversed: his drug addiction likely caused or triggered any psychosis.
Nearly-correct diagnosis of the month:
The same William Hahne told U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas, “I hope you’ll believe me when I tell you I will never do this again.” The judge, to his ...
Chutzpah, defined (by police chief Craig Shelton).
Chutzpah of the month:
Whitehouse, Texas Police Chief Craig Shelton, who intended to text only Officer Shawn Johnson with a threat against Johnson’s job—but instead group texted the message to most of the police force. Johnson allegedly beat “the [expletive] out of” Shelton for making sexual advances towards his soon-to-be ex-wife Jessica, from whom he is amicably separated.
It all began with City Manager Kevin Huckabee, Chief Shelton and a third unnamed person “consuming alcohol” early one evening and getting “lit up.” The group decided to see Jessica Johnson’s new apartment, where she had moved the week before; she assumed a friendly visit was intended, with her ex included. An intoxicated Shelton drove the threesome to Jessica’s, in uniform, in his city ...
Enablers: from “high-ranking” deputies and attorneys, to judges. And crime goes on.
Enablers of the year:
“Guardian angels,” comprising several “high ranking” deputies and a lawyer or two, who have bailed Clayton County, Georgia sheriff Victor Hill out of trouble on multiple occasions. Since February, Hill has twice veered from his lane and struck other vehicles, once driving so erratically that a witness thought he was having a seizure. One of the side-swiped victims, who twice described him as so “wobbly” he might be “intoxicated,” was asked by a trooper, “Do you know who that is?” The woman had no idea but was told, “We got to keep this down. That is Victor Hill.” The troopers in both instances determined Hill was “not drunk.”
Most recently Hill was trying to teach his lady friend, ...
Disenablers: officials (firing officials), a wife (of Paul Weller) and a child (who got mom arrested!).
Disenablers of the month:
Officials in Broward County, Florida, who fired veteran prosecutor David Weigel after learning he deliberately failed to file over 293 cases involving county ordinance and traffic violations, including 177 DUIs. We might suspect Weigel was only trying to hide his own cases or those of his fellow alkies.
English singer-songwriter Paul Weller’s wife Hannah Andrews, who gave Paul a credible ultimatum. Weller explained why he got sober: “I got bored with [alcohol and other drugs]. You know the cliché of feeling sick and tired of feeling sick and tired?....It got to the point where I just wanted to stop doing that, so I did….And the drinking—which I loved—became too much for me as well. It helped that ...
Alkie parents doing their thing: not with kids, please.
Bad mom of the month:
Kana Querta, 25, who caused an accident and fled the scene. Querta was observed speeding, making unsafe lane changes and running red lights—all with an unrestrained child in the front seat, while police pursued. Once caught, she exhibited slurred speech, bloodshot eyes and a “strong odor of alcohol.” Querta was arrested on multiple charges of child endangerment, failure to stop at a collision—and aggravated DUI.
Bad parents of the month:
Chad Mudd and Joey Mudd, arrested for providing unique rewards for their 13- and 14-year-old daughters attending school and doing their chores: the kids could smoke pot and snort cocaine with the parents. Joey, 34, smoked pot with the daughters at least five times and Chad, 36, ...
Some TV shows portray addiction well: “Tyrant,” “Mom,” and “Aquarius.” And a real life one, too: “Bachelorette.”
A Variety of Popular TV Shows Portray Alcoholism Accurately
Several popular TV shows fail to show addictive use of drugs in the portrayal of criminal perpetrators, including “Criminal Minds” and most episodes of the “Law and Order” spin-offs. While nearly all felons are alcohol or other-drug addicts, many shows lead the uninitiated to believe that any old Dick or Jane could have committed the awful crime(s) depicted. This is so wrong it can ruin an otherwise excellent show for the addiction aware.
Conversely, it’s a pleasure watching television in which the root cause of misbehaviors is identified as addiction; even a brief moment depicting the addiction may be all that’s needed to make sense of the characters and events. Several shows are ...
“Advice” columnist thinks an alkie can learn to control his fuse. Think again.
Other columnist thinks explosive boyfriend can learn to control his fuse. Think again.
Dear Doug:
My boyfriend of ten years, with whom I’ve been living for two, has always struggled with depression, anxiety and anger. He occasionally explodes and throws things and punches or kicks inanimate objects.
I know this is serious, especially after he recently threw a potted plant across the room when I “disturbed his process” while he was making dinner. After this outburst, he set an appointment with a therapist and promises he will stop drinking. Still, while family and friends agree that underneath he’s a good guy, they tell me to leave him.
I don’t want to give up on him, especially now that he’s seeking treatment. Am I an ...
“Tyrant”: a great (and misunderstood) portrayal of addiction.
TV Show "Tyrant" and Addiction
Wikipedia reports numerous misunderstandings and myths of the FX show reviewed above, “Tyrant,” accounting for the “mixed reviews” the show has received. According to Wiki, Rotten Tomatoes (giving season one a score of only 6.2 out of 10) says the show “thrives as a biting family drama…” but never mentions the reason how or why it’s a “biting drama” or a political one as well.
Wiki posits the main problem with the series is Adam Rayner’s (younger brother Bassam “Barry” Al-Fayeed, the iNtuitive Feeler, or “Idealist”) “lackluster” performance and lack of charisma. But of course: he’s not a “larger than life” alcoholic, without which charisma often is non-existent. Blindsided both by events and his brother’s misbehaviors, he’s ...
What does it take for a woman to be kicked out of a bar?
Story from “This is True” by Randy Cassingham, with his “tagline:”
“Dance Fever: A woman called for sheriff’s deputies in Naples, Fla. When they arrived, she told them she had been in a bar, ‘dancing with Jim Carey in the Batman costume,’ and wanted them to ask the bartender why he threw her out. Deputies told Rachael Austin, 40, that she was too drunk to drive; the bartender at Jack’s Bait Shack reportedly said Austin had been ‘harassing the men at the bar,’ so deputies told her that they were going to enforce the ouster. Austin allegedly flicked a lit cigarette at a deputy, hitting him, and started fighting them, screaming that she was ‘mafia and married to [a] man in ...
ISIS, cults and alcoholism: why I’m an interventionist libertarian.
Cults are Usually Led by Addicts and are Capable of Great Atrocities. This Includes ISIS.
The more precise the generally recognized meaning of a word, the more useful it is. The physical sciences have done well in providing such meaning to words, while most social sciences have lagged far behind. When everyone ascribes different meanings to words, rational discourse is impossible and social progress is difficult.
“Cult” is one of those ill-defined words. The most useful part of the common definition is “excessive devotion directed at a particular figure or object.” I suggest that since the devotion to those figures is quasi-religious, such excess includes that directed at ideas. I would add that cult leaders are so venerated their minions are willing ...
Great athletes: Michael Phelps, alcoholic.
Runner-up for top story of the month:
From swimming in the Olympics to swimming in booze, the most decorated Olympian of all time, Michael Phelps, 29, arrested on charges of driving under the influence at excessive speed (84 mph in a 45 mph zone). This comes a decade after he was first arrested for DUI. “I recognize the seriousness of this mistake,” Phelps said at the time. “I’ve learned from this mistake….” This recent incident proves that, unfortunately, he hasn’t and he can’t. A second DUI increases the odds of alcoholism to near-certain; he will need to deflate his ego to get sober, which is not something that can be learned. In the meantime, the Michael Phelps Foundation focuses on growing ...
Alcoholism could explain Michael Brown’s mother, Kaci Hickox and World War 1.
Michael Brown’s mother Lesley McSpadden, allegedly involved in a violent brawl with her dead son’s grandmother, Pearlie Gordon and cousin Tony Petty, over the sale of Michael Brown merchandise near where Brown was shot and killed on August 9, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. McSpadden is reported to have yelled at Gordon and Petty, “You can’t sell this s%$&!” to which one of the relatives responded (paraphrasing), “Prove that you own the patent!” Someone with McSpadden then hit Petty in the face with a metal pipe or pole. Violence is nearly always associated with alcohol or other-drug addiction. However, as I’ve learned in the case of married couples with serious marital problems, I can only say that someone is an addict—I ...
Codependents can be crazy. If she runs over her drunk husband, she might instead by alcoholic.
Codependent of the month:
Angela Reynolds, 40, arrested on charges of first degree domestic violence after hitting her husband, John Reynolds, 44, and then running him over with her car “several times.” According to a police department investigator, “She was upset with him for being intoxicated.” A neighbor added, “They were always having domestic disputes.” Where there’s domestic violence, there’s usually an addict; which one is hard to know. I have identified a spouse as an alcoholic seven times only to discover I pegged the wrong one (I finally gave up trying). We can be pretty certain of the husband, but can’t really be sure about the wife. If she’s not an addict, his behaviors may have made her act like ...
Sylvia Plath: another writer, another addict.
Alcoholic retrospective of the month:
“I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn’t taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers’ sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.” So wrote poet Sylvia Plath in her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar. I suggest she understood an alcoholic’s brain because she was afflicted with the disease herself. I stumbled on to Plath on a list of “other artists” who, according to Maria Puente writing for USA Today, followed the same tragic path as did Robin Williams. Her list “includes painters, poets, writers, musicians and designers: Vincent van Gogh, Ernest Hemmingway, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Kurt Cobain, Alexander McQueen to name just ...
From happy meals to budding young (13-year-old) addicts.
Alcoholic side dish of the month:
Allen Trammell, 29, arrested for selling crack cocaine in a McDonald’s parking lot in Radnor Township, Philadelphia, PA; he was between food preparation shifts. Radnor police Lt. Andy Block quipped it gives “a new definition of what may be considered a Happy Meal.” Except for the victims of the addicts who purchased those drugs.
Alcoholic scam of the month:
Eric McLean Slighton, 53, arrested on suspicion of public drunkenness after allegedly posing as an airport security screener for the Transportation Security Administration at San Francisco International Airport. Slighton, an apparent partner with a private equity firm in Singapore and, before that, managing director of Barclays Capital in Hong Kong and Deutsche Bank in Hong Kong, steered ...
Amanda Bynes: train wreck in action, and journalists misdiagnose.
Grown-up child alkie of the month:
Former child star Amanda Bynes, 28, getting her second DUI and, again, put under the conservatorship of her mother. In the space of two years, she’s made a mess of her life. Two years ago, she sideswiped a police car and was charged with DUI; separately, she was charged with two hit and run incidents. In another incident, a DUI charge was dropped only because she pled out to reckless driving; after that, she was cited for driving with a suspended license. Off the road, she was arrested for criminal possession of marijuana, tampering with evidence and reckless endangerment for throwing a bong out the window of her 36th floor Manhattan apartment (she claimed it ...
Lies, DUIs; airline passengers and a good-cop/bad-cop in one.
Alcoholic passengers of the month:
Two women, Lilia Ratmanski, 25, and Milana Muzikante, 26, who went to the lavatory and consumed a “significant quantity of their duty-free alcohol purchase,” lit a cigarette, got into a physical altercation with each other and made a “threat against the aircraft” on a Sunwing flight from Toronto to Cuba. NORAD scrambled two CF-18 fighter jets to escort the flight back to Toronto. Assuming the women won’t be able to shoulder the cost of fuel, salaries and inconvenience to Sunwing, NORAD and the passengers, the costs alcoholics impose on the rest of us are incredible.
Alcoholic hero-villain of the month:
NYPD Officer Eugene Donnelly, 27, pleading innocent to having allegedly battered a 30-year-old woman after going out ...
Criminals and law enforcers, including a judge and some amazing chutzpah.
Alcoholic blackout of the month:
Daniel Suba, 36, waking up to find a neighbor’s televisions, electronics and jewelry in his apartment but no recollection of how it got there. He remembers drinking and pill-popping the night before. He’ll also remember—hopefully for the rest of his life—charges of grand theft and burglary, and perhaps connect the dots between the “night before” and the jail in which he will hopefully spend a few months.
Alcoholic law enforcement malfeasance of the month:
Aaron S. Jansen, 29, clocking in at 90 mph on Interstate 70, igniting a police pursuit. After evading spikes, Jansen drove into a soybean field, where he drove in circles for 40 minutes as law enforcers set up a perimeter, blocking all exits. ...
A doctor gets sober despite the medical board’s misdiagnosis.
Alcoholic medical analysis of the month:
The Medical Board of California explaining that Jason Lane, M.D. showed up at work with a .39 percent blood alcohol level, because he was “self-medicating” to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder. The board overlooked the fact that Lane’s obviously alcoholic bio-chemistry allows him to drink to a point where non-addicts would be comatose and possibly dead. Alcoholics “self-medicate” because they can; PTSD coincides with heavy drinking because the afflicted can drink heavily. Therefore, Lane showed up at work with a .39 percent BAL because he’s an alcoholic.
Wouldn’t it be so much better if he was given a chance to clean up his act and be regularly and randomly tested prior to his likely ruining countless ...
Relatives can be addicts, to the detriment of everyone around them. Moms and dads, uncles and granddads.
What follows is a slew of alcoholic “relatives of the month,” showing that family has nothing to do with the prevention of alcoholism and alcoholic misbehaviors.
Alcoholic dads of the month:
Mark Allen Hughes, 35, catching his 15-year-old son drinking alcohol and deciding to teach him a lesson: he gave his son multiple shots of vodka. The learning experience landed the son in the hospital, on a ventilator. Hughes has been charged with aggravated child abuse. Regular readers wouldn’t be shocked to learn that Hughes has a record of arrests on charges such as DUI, public intoxication and evading arrest. However, even you might be shocked that he has had 18 such arrests; he’s simply teaching what he knows best.
Charles James, 36, ...
Most turncoats are alcoholics. John Anthony Walker, like Robert Hanssen (see the movie “Breach”), was likely no exception.
John Anthony Walker, Soviet spy, dead in federal prison at age 77 of causes related to diabetes and throat cancer. Walker specialized in communications during his time as a United States Navy Chief Warrant Officer; this expertise allowed him to create a spy ring that deciphered more than one million encrypted American messages, likely resulting in more damage to the U.S. military than any spy ring in history. Even more shocking was that close family and a friend made up the spy ring: his son Michael, his older brother Arthur and best friend, Jerry Whitworth. This spying allowed the Soviets to track every U.S. submarine 24/7, which then U. S. Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman, admitted would have resulted ...
Narrow the scope of the war on drugs: decriminalize and focus on addicts.
The Case for Drug Decriminalization
I’ve long been a proponent of decriminalization of all drugs. To an addict, a psychotropic drug is a psychotropic drug; addicts can nearly always fall back on any available substitute. Make one drug illegal and either the addict will find a way to get his hands on it, or find another drug. When the U.S. tried prohibition of the drug alcohol in the early 20th century, the results included monstrous black markets, corrupt cops and no reduction in use by addicts. Current prohibitions do the same, and as before it allows really bad people—nearly always alcohol and other-drug addicts—to become obscenely wealthy; illegality results in immense mark-ups. Worse, due to civil forfeiture laws that didn’t exist ...
Don’t let your drunk mother see her grandchild.
Sloshed mom
Dear Doug:
My husband and I are both well-educated, own a home and are ready to start a family. My mom is less than enthused, however. We were out enjoying some drinks with my folks when mom, who seems to have been a bit sloshed, told me she wished my older brother and his wife would have a child first, “No offense intended.” They’ve been trying for years and, due to the cost of fertility clinics, have decided to stop trying until my sister-in-law earns her degree.
I’m obsessing over my mom’s comment and fear discussing it, because she may not remember she said it. I think we’ll make great parents; I only wish my mom was on board with us.
Signed,
Ready ...
Without understanding alcoholism, one cannot understand Beethoven. This includes nearly all of his biographers.
“Beethoven is one of those historical figures so famous that everything worth knowing about him has been known for a long time.”
So writes Edmund Morris in a review of Jan Swafford’s Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph in The Wall Street Journal (“The Mystery of Creativity: The madder Beethoven got, the more lucid his musical intelligence became,” August 2-3, 2014).The trouble with Morris’s observation is, knowing is not understanding.
He says Beethoven was “so unable to relate to other people’s feelings as to suggest a modern-day diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome.” (For Myers-Briggs enthusiasts, this suggests he was either INFP or INTP.) “Nor did he ever really understand love….Hence the long list of occasions when Beethoven unfeelingly hurt those who loved him and whom ...
Elvis impersonator: a journalist gets cause and effect backwards.
And a bonus myth-of-the-month:
“Being Elvis comes with risks…. As a teenager, Sean began drinking and smoking pot.”
So wrote Bo Emerson, in “Requiem for a blues player” in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in explaining why Sean Costello, a “child genius who grew into a mature artist” and whose “legacy lives on,” overdosed in 2008. No, Mr. Emerson, having the ability and notoriety of an Elvis Presley doesn’t carry risks; having alcoholic genes does. On tour, Costello could be a stay-up-all-night party animal. He’d been in rehab at least once. He was described as manic, staying up for three or four days. But mania rarely occurs without benefit of external injections of chemicals; he always did drugs. The toxicology report found his brain ...
Another exhibitionist, another addict.
Stories from “This is True” by Randy Cassingham, with his “tagline:”
“Vroom: It wasn’t such a big deal that Karen Marie Dilworth, 50, was having sex with the motorcycle in her Ormond Beach, Fla., garage. The problem was, the garage door was open, and the young boy outside, and various other neighbors, couldn’t help but to notice. Dilworth, who admitted to police she had been drinking, was arrested and charged with ‘lewd/lascivious exhibition by a person over 18 on a person under 16.’ She denied having sex with the motorcycle. Then what was she doing in the garage? Smoking, she said. (RC/Daytona Beach News-Journal) ...Smoking, ‘smoking afterward’ — big difference.”
It’s not that drinking “loosens inhibitions” so much as “impels one to ...
Drunk math teacher. At least she’ll understand .205 BAL.
And, because we’ve missed so many issues this year and, well, because this one’s too good to pass up, a BONUS alcoholic Antic-of-the-Month:
“Calculate the Odds of this Catching up with Her: A student at Poston Butte High School in San Tan Valley, Ariz., complained a math teacher was drunk in her classroom. The principal and school police officer investigated, and Kathleen Jardine, 57, allegedly admitted she had been drinking the night before, that morning, and during lunch at school; her blood alcohol measured .205 percent, the Pinal County sheriff’s office reported. A half-empty, 750 ml bottle of vodka was found in her purse, along with an empty wine bottle. The night before, Jardine was arrested for drunk driving on her ...