O.J., Kwame, Dhaliwal and Shannen Doherty get their due
Runners-up for top story of the month:
O.J. Simpson, 61, who finally got his comeuppance by being convicted on all counts of armed robbery in a trial involving, as I wrote in the October 2007 edition of the Thorburn Addiction Report, a cast of characters consisting solely of other likely alcoholics. Most commentators were amazed when he broke into the hotel room to “take back”his memorabilia from sports collectors. I wrote that if one is to understand O.J., one must grasp the concept of alcoholic egomania, which compels the addict to wield power over others. This accounts for O.J.’s success on the playing field and as an actor, because success facilitates the use of power. It also sheds light on a double-murder and numerous brushes with the law, because such abuse of others is part and parcel of power-seeking misbehaviors that serve to inflate the alcoholic ego. Unchecked alcoholism compelled him to commit his final criminal act as a free man.
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, top story in the April-May 2008 issue of TAR, who pleaded guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and agreed to pay the city $1 million in restitution and give up his job and pension benefits. “I lied under oath,”Mr. Kilpatrick admitted to the court, in regards to testimony at a whistleblower trial in which he denied a romance with his chief of staff (he attempted to hide the affair by firing police officers who were investigating allegations of official misconduct; the officers sued and collected $8.4 million). Telephonitis and now text-messagitis, two unheralded clues to alcoholism, proved his undoing”14,000 messages over several months, many of which proved the lie.
Amritpal “Paul”Dhaliwal, who was one of two brothers wounded in a Christmas Day tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo, sentenced to 16 months in prison for violating probation relating to an April 2007 incident in which he led police on a high-speed chase. The court apparently didn’t bother with other probation violations, which included several counts of felony shoplifting. His brother, Kulbir Dhaliwal, faces charges of public drunkenness and resisting arrest in connection with a 2007 confrontation with police. As I wrote in the January-February 2008 issue of TAR, the act of taunting tigers”as is the act of any abusive behaviors towards animals”is an excellent clue to alcoholism.
Actress Shannen Doherty, 37, whose character Brenda Walsh was reprised after a 14-year hiatus, has been so difficult on the set of “Beverly Hills, 90210″that producers have written her out of the show. Described as walking around the set as if she were special, arguing with people, belittling the scripts and demanding that things be done her way would be enough to ascribe an 80% likelihood of alcoholism. An arrest for DUI in 2001 ups the odds to nearly 100% that this disease best explains her behaviors. The former “Charmed”star’s blood alcohol level was .13 per cent and “she unleashed an expletive-laden tirade while being processed at the police station [that] was so disruptive and abusive that a female officer was forced to body slam the ‘90210′ siren to the ground in order to subdue her.”The twice-divorced Doherty also insisted she wasn’t drunk and “physically resisted being fingerprinted until officers forced her to do so.”A simple algebraic equation can be used to confirm alcoholism: d + m = a (drunk + misbehaviors = alcoholism).