Archive for May, 2009
In a recent piece on white-collar crime, The Economist magazine observed that “many [Club Fed and other white-collar] prisoners suddenly discover, post-conviction, that they had a drinking problem….” This should come as no surprise to our audience. In Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse, I argue that 80-90% of criminals, including those who perpetrate white-collar crime, are addicts.
Students of my books know how to use this simple idea to protect themselves from the financial devastation wrought by addicts. However, try proving the existence of alcoholism when it is so often hidden by both addicts and their enablers. As I wrote in the Top Story on Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and his wife ...
Horrific abusers and killers are almost always psychotropic drug addicts. A few unknowns, and Phil Spector finally getting what he deserved.
Runners-up for top story of the month:
Lindolfo Thibes, sentenced to 109 years-to-life for sexually assaulting his daughter beginning when she was 6 years old and ultimately fathering her three children. What began as a domestic violence assault in a Las Vegas hospital parking lot in 2005, in which Thibes reportedly stabbed his “girlfriend,” ended up revealing a harrowing tale, in which the girl was found to be his daughter. He monitored her every move for over two decades using surveillance cameras and home imprisonment. He beat her fiercely during paranoid rages. The unnamed daughter, now 29, told authorities he plied her with alcohol and marijuana from the age of 8. While Thibes rambled off a litany of complaints to the ...
Nick Adenhart, Angles rookie pitcher, dead due to a known alcoholic and drank and drove–again.
Alcoholic victims of the month:
Angels rookie pitcher Nick Adenhart, 22, Courtney Frances Stewart, 20 and Henry Pearson, 25, who were killed and Jon Wilhite, 24, who survived, when Andrew Thomas Gallo, 22, blew through a red light at an estimated 65 mph in his Toyota Sienna minivan and broadsided a Mitsubishi Eclipse. Gallo, whose license had been revoked after a 2006 DUI conviction, fled on foot without checking on the victims. He was arrested 30 minutes later and charged with three counts of murder. Despite the fact that he was ordered to take alcohol education classes after his 2006 conviction, his BAL was .24 per cent, three times the legal limit and a level at which most non-addicts would have ...
Rihanna enables Brown. Let’s hope it’s not to her death.
Co-dependent of the month:
Rihanna, whose tale of having been punched, bitten, threatened and choked by her R & B singer boyfriend Chris Brown was briefly told in the Feb-April 2009 TAR, explaining why she’s back with him: “He’ll hit me and feel bad afterward, but then he turns into the sweetest man and becomes my angel. He’ll cry like a little baby when he makes up to me, and that’s the part I love.” She admits, “I’d seen what alcohol and drugs had done to my dad [who was a crack cocaine addict] and I wasn’t going to follow in his footsteps.” Maybe not, but she’s clearly followed in her own way by substituting Brown for her father and thinking ...
The authors of two new books on the Columbine tragedy seem unaware of its genesis. Ann Rule missed the fact that Ted Bundy was an alcoholic, so what’s new. And some socialists defend an addicted cop killer.
Enablers of the month:
Vincent Carroll, who reviewed Jeff Kass’s Columbine: A True Crime Story and Dave Cullen’s Columbine for The Wall Street Journal. Carroll doesn’t mention Eric Harris’s drug use, including the fact that his favorite drugs were vodka and whiskey. The implication is that neither book Carroll reviewed identified alcoholism as the root of the tragedy. I’d like to hope that someone who has read either of these books will prove me wrong. (Had TAR been in existence at the time, Harris and his apparently codependent friend Dylan Klebold would have been the Top Story of the Year. They were mentioned in the April-May 2007 issue of TAR in the Top Story on the mass murderer Seung-Hui Cho, who ...
“Wisdom of the Rooms,” a terrific compilation of AA-styled thoughts helpful for anyone.
“The Wisdom of the Rooms,” by Michael Z
“The Wisdom of the Rooms” is a terrific compilation of concepts in the form of quotes collected from the “rooms” of Alcoholics Anonymous, which give food for thought and ways of dealing with life’s challenges for anyone, including non-addicts. Michael’s comments on each idea are instructive and thought-provoking yet succinct, and are followed by a series of “reflections” in the form of related questions to ask of oneself and suitable for discussion with others. Some could be straight out of a Tony Robbins book (“Act as though, until it becomes so”), while others are more obviously original to AA or those who should have been in AA (“Many of us get to Heaven ...
Animal abusers are almost always alcohol or other-drug addicts.
Dear Doug
My friend loves a pet killer
Dear Doug:
My friend wants to marry a man despite the fact he deliberately and heinously killed her 10-year-old pet. She also admitted to me he’s abusive in other ways. She rejects professional help and says he’s wonderful and she’s happy. I fear for my friend’s life. Is there anything I can do?
Signed,
Concerned for her friend
. . . . .
Dear Friend of Codependent,
Other columnists would appropriately respond that if the boyfriend killed your friend’s pet, you and some other close people should gather with her and express alarm and concern for her safety. Everything should be done to get her to leave him immediately. A full-on intervention with a counselor might even be suggested, along ...
Journalists are missing the underlying motive of mass murderers. Hint: murder is symptomatic of egomania.
Alcoholic Myth-of-the-Month
“Many motives drive mass murders.”
So said a spate of “experts” in response to the rash of mass murders in recent months. Personal failures and revenge were cited as factors in the Binghampton, N.Y. massacre, in which Jiverly Wong (aka Jiverly Voong), 42, gunned down 13 people in an immigrant center. These same so-called experts say anger is a common thread among such mass killers, who act on that anger by showing others who’s boss. Professor of criminology at Northeastern University in Boston, James Alan Fox, says that “men will often use violence to show them who’s boss, to assert control.” According to a colleague of his, Jack Levin, mass murderers “typically” have no criminal record or history of psychiatric ...
Three-time drunk driver. Oh, in three days.
Alcoholic Antic-of-the-Month
Story from “This is True” by Randy Cassingham, with his “tagline:”
“STRIKE THREE: Jo A. Trilling, of Spokane, Wash., was visiting Wisconsin last year when a Sheboygan County sheriff's deputy stopped to help her -- the car she was driving was stuck in a ditch. The deputy noticed she was wearing only one shoe, and smelled of booze. Her blood alcohol measured 0.21 percent, and she was arrested for drunk driving. The next day, the Kohler-Andrae park superintendent noticed her stuck in the snow. She mentioned to him that ‘I am still finishing up the box of wine in my car from yesterday,’ and she was arrested for drunk driving; her blood alcohol level wasn't reported. The next day, a ...