No one drinks addictively as a release. That’s an excuse for biochemistry. To be treated properly we must get the blame right.
Excuse of the month:
An unnamed source claimed that “Reese Witherspoon started drinking to cope with the stress of her parents’ bitter battle in divorce court last year….‘Reese feels she has the weight of the world on her shoulders, and she started drinking alcohol as a release,’ added the source.” So wrote an anonymous columnist for The National Enquirer. Such explanations for one’s ability to consume large quantities of alcohol and resulting misbehaviors are incredibly misleading. If Ms. Witherspoon acts badly as a result of drinking, she has the disease of alcoholism—which allows her to drink large quantities and compels her to act badly, at least some of the time, as she did recently when her second husband, talent agent Jim Toth, was pulled over and arrested for DUI. When asked to stay in the car, she got out and began berating the arresting officer. She then told him she didn’t believe he was a real cop and, as many a famous alcoholic has done while being arrested, asked him if he knew who she was and exclaimed, “You’re about to find out!” prompting her arrest. To her credit (and offering a bit of evidence that she may not have alcoholism) she admitted later that same night she “clearly had one drink too many” and apologized to the officer, who was simply “doing his job.” As a very famous “good girl” actress and mother of three, she may simply be in the early-stage “control” phase of her alcoholism. We’ll know for sure in the fullness of time.