Obit’s for a number of alcoholics: despot Kim Jong-il, soccer player-philosopher Socrates, author Christopher Hitchens, producer Bert (“Easy Rider”) Schneider and director Ken (“Altered States”) Russell.
Sometimes, it takes an addict:
Kim Jong-il, North Korean ruler since 1994, dead at age 69 or 70. I was a Ron Paul-style non-interventionist libertarian until I began studying alcoholism and realized there’s only one way to deal with an alcoholic sitting on nukes: take him out. (I’m with Paul on practically all domestic matters, as I believe it’s the height of arrogance to suggest I know better how to run your life and spend your money than you do—but not in this case, where his hands-off foreign policy is, I believe, naïve.) Kim is such a classic study of alcoholism and the abuse of power it’s hard to know which example of abuse to mention. However, three prime examples may help to give the unaware a “feel” for his regime. First, a night-time satellite photo shows the extraordinary contrast in lights and, therefore, civilization or its lack thereof between North and South Korea. Second, those who dare speak out against the dictator were not only dragged into the North Korean gulag (refugees frequently use the word “hell” to describe their country, which doesn’t leave words that might adequately describe its version of the gulag), but also their family members similarly “disappear.” In one (likely) extreme case, Kim’s response to the 1997 defection of a high-ranking official, Hwang Jong-yop, was to ship 3,000 of Hwang’s relatives—including many having no idea they were related to the defector—to the gulag; Kim then spent the next 13 years dispatching assassins to Seoul in a (luckily) futile attempt to murder him (Hwang died of natural causes in 2010). Third, a comparison between the standard of living of North and South Koreans shows that while their estimated living standards were similar for nearly two decades after the stalemate ending the Korean War, the South is now, monetarily, 17 times richer than the North (and these are the same sort of “official” statistics that told us the Soviets’ standard of living was roughly half of ours, when it was more like 10%). The hellhole that is North Korea is a direct result of Kim’s alcoholism-fueled egomania, for which I believe an incontrovertible case is made in the Top Story and “Review of the Month” of issue # 3 of TAR which is, again, an excellent and timely read.
Socrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, Brazilian football (soccer) player, political agitator and intellectual, dead at 57 from septic shock caused by food poisoning, which his dining companions survived. While playing over 300 games, he talked Van Gogh and Cuban history, practiced medicine (he’d miss training sessions for his medical studies in a country where commerce stops and elections are planned around soccer) and campaigned for democracy while generals ran the country. After retiring from soccer, he blasted the corruption rampant in the game and argued his ideals at cafès through smoke and alcohol. While insisting he “never had many problems with alcohol because I was not addicted….I interacted with alcohol as if it were a partner, but I never had withdrawal symptoms. I spent long periods without use,” his liver was weakened enough from long-standing non-alcoholism that he couldn’t survive sepsis. In fact, he was hoping his health would stabilize ahead of a liver transplant.
Author Christopher Hitchens, dead at 62 from esophageal cancer. Hitchens, who wrote provocative essays on religion, politics and war also wrote an engaging series of essays about his disease, prognosis and impending death. He also acknowledged that years of heavy smoking and drinking had put him at grave risk for the often-fatal disease. Having made a case against religion in his 2007 “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” he stuck to his atheism to the end. He wrote two dozen books, including biographies of Thomas Jefferson, George Orwell and Thomas Paine. When younger he was a socialist, but began crossing the aisle in the ‘90s when, among other surprises, he lambasted President Bill Clinton as a rapist. After 9-11 he was repulsed by his perception of leftists blaming the U.S. for the attacks and supported the Bush administration’s war on terrorism, culminating in taking the oath of citizenship in 2007, on his 58th birthday, in a private ceremony at the Jefferson Memorial conducted by George W. Bush’s homeland security chief Michael Chertoff. Hitchens was described by a friend and fellow writer, Martin Amis, as “one of nature’s rebels….He has no automatic respect for anybody or anything.” And all along, he drank. I saw him in a number of television interviews in which he looked and sounded drunk and only later discovered his secret: he had outed himself years ago. He was always engaging and everyone simply accepted him for who he was. But I’m reasonably certain it would have been hell to live with him, at least some of the time.
Producer Bert Schneider, who captured the negative social mood of the late 1960s and the 1970s in “Easy Rider” and “Five Easy Pieces,” dead at age 78 of “natural causes,” no doubt exacerbated by long-standing alcoholism mentioned only in the 23rd paragraph of the Los Angeles Times obituary. Yet, the clues abounded long before that second-to-last paragraph. First, I have long hypothesized (see issue # 31 of Wealth Creation Strategies) that alcoholics are better able to capture the social mood of the times and use it to their advantage, whether as businessmen, actors, writers, musicians or other creative artists. It’s apparent from the first few paragraphs of the obituary that Schneider managed to do this in spades. Second, the headline read, “Iconoclastic producer of ‘Easy Rider’.” An iconoclast is one who attacks and seeks to overthrow long-cherished or popular ideas and institutions. Due to their insatiable need to wield power, alcoholics more often do this—and are more often successful—than are non-addicts. Third, Dennis Hopper directed and co-starred in “Easy Rider” with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson; addicts often hang out with other addicts (though Hopper was much more obvious in his addiction). Finally, the 23rd paragraph would give away the “secret” to the addiction aware even if it hadn’t mentioned long-standing alcoholism: “Beset by personal problems, including substance abuse and a fire that destroyed his Beverly Hills home, Schneider was estranged from his children and many of his friends in later years.” All of these indications suggest that the obituary would more accurately have read, “Bert Schneider, dead at age 78 after long-standing alcoholism compelled him to take extraordinary risks that ‘worked,’ while ruining relationships with family and friends, especially towards the end.”
Director Ken Russell, known for his flamboyant visual style in films such as “The Devils,” “Altered States,” and the Who’s rock opera “Tommy,” dead at 84 after suffering a series of strokes. He was known for irreverent BBC documentaries of prominent figures in the arts and hit the big leagues with his 1969 movie “Women in Love,” which famously included a nude wrestling scene between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates. Glenda Jackson, who won an Academy Award for best actress in the movie, said he “broke barriers” for many people. He courted controversy and was referred to as the “enfant terrible” of British cinema because of films like “The Devils,” an X-rated 1971 film about a priest and sexually repressed nuns in 17th century France (starring Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed). Peter Rainer, film critic for the Christian Science Monitor said that he was different from other British directors with his “tremendous flair for flamboyance and fantasy, rich in self-indulgence and a lot of overheated imagery….[using] the lives of famous artists…as springboards for his own lurid, psychosexual fantasias.” Film critic Kevin Thomas said Russell was “a major risk taker” as a director. His heyday stretched from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, when, as Rainer pointed out, “his type of extravagance struck a chord with counterculture audiences…looking for cutting-edge experiences in the movies, both visually and sexually.” He was married four times. So what about the alcoholism, which all of the italicized words and phrases suggest (and for which I added all of the emphasis throughout)? Not a mention of it in the Los Angeles Times obituary or many others. The Guardian mentions his father, a shoe shop owner, whose “violent episodes led Russell and his mother to seek refuge in the cinema.” Only in the 14th and last paragraph was drinking even mentioned, but it’s enough: “Tributes began appearing to the director…with the comedy writer Graham Linehan recalling an anecdote from the set of “Lair of the White Worm” in which Russell’s directing style grew exponentially broader as his alcohol intake for the day increased.” The anecdote makes Russell’s alcoholism even more obvious: “The mornings would go ok, but then he would go to lunch and knock back two bottles of wine. So after lunch his acting note to everyone was simply “Bigger! BIGGER.” So the performances would get bigger and sillier and more broad, until finally everyone was acting as if they were in a Carry On film. At that point he yelled “PERFECT! NOW…DOUBLE IT!”
Note to family, friends and fans of the above: the benefit of the doubt is given by assuming alcoholism (they are either idiots and fundamentally rotten, or they are alcoholic/other drug addicts—which would explain the misbehaviors). If alcoholic, there is zero chance that behaviors, in the long run, will improve without sobriety. An essential prerequisite to sobriety is the cessation of enabling, allowing pain and crises to build. Thus far, many have done everything they can to protect the addict from the requisite pain, making these news events possible. The cure for alcoholism, consequential bad behaviors and, ultimately, tragedy, is simple: stop protecting the addict from the logical consequences of misbehaviors and, where possible, proactively intervene.