Even Skeptic Magazine can get it wrong when it comes to alcoholism.
Skeptic Magazine: They Get a Lot of Things, but Oddly Not Alcoholism
Michael Shermer is the founder of the Skeptic Society and editor-in-chief of its magazine Skeptic Magazine. Despite my disagreement with Shermer over anthropogenic “global warming” (I think the idea that puny little man could have any appreciable effect over something as grand as the climate is arrogant), the magazine is interesting, usually timely and very well-written.
Shermer provided what may be to this day the most glowing testimonial of Alcoholism Myths and Realities. Despite this, the magazine he edits and often writes for has recently published several pieces that completely miss the obvious connection between the subjects of the articles, the behaviors described and substance addiction.
One of these was an interview in Skeptic Magazine volume 18, number 2 (2013) with anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon largely regarding the subjects of his book Noble Savages, the Yanomamö (also spelled Yanomami) Indians of Brazil. Chagnon himself believes he was controversial in part because he was among the first anthropologists to challenge the myth that native peoples are pacifistic and altruistic. In the 1960s he lived among the Yanomamö and found they were incredibly violent, attributing their violence to competition over women. Chagnon describes the Yanomamö as snorting a variety of drugs, at least one of which causes strands of green snot to drip or hang from their nostrils, “strands so long that they drizzled from their chins down to their pectoral muscles and oozed lazily across their bellies….” Even though the drugs have hallucinogenic, analgesic and amphetamine-like properties, Chagnon does not implicate them in creating more violence than would occur absent the drugs, and Skeptic’s interviewer, Frank Miele, doesn’t broach the possibility. It doesn’t dawn on either one that the best explanation for the women’s non-violence is that the women generally don’t use and, according at least one source, are forbidden from using these drugs. And because not all of the males act out as badly as others (and those that don’t are probably eliminated from the gene pool early on), the best explanation for the level of violence they experience (roughly half of the men die by violence) is psychoactive drug use. Because their use arguably causes horrific behaviors, we refer to it as addiction.
In another case of being blind to addicts likely everywhere, in an article in the same issue of Skeptic (“Anthropology No More”), L. Kirk Hagen writes that Patrick Tierney, in his book Darkness in El Dorado, had falsely accused Chagnon of committing genocide in Amazonia by unleashing a deadly epidemic among the Yanomamö. Hagen explains: “That was just the most outrageous of Tierney’s innumerable fabrications” and cites medical historian Alice Dreger as persuasively arguing that the American Anthropological Association (AAA) had been complicit in the promulgation of Tierney’s falsehoods. False accusations are nearly always made by alcoholics, which suggests that Tierney and those complicit in the AAA could be addicts.
Harriet Hall, M.D., in Skeptic volume 17 number 3 (2012) writes about multiple personality delusions, focusing on the story of Sybil and the book by the same name, which caused popular awareness of what was at the time called multiple personality disorder (now referred to by the DSM, the psychologists’ bible of disorders, as dissociative identity disorder). Hall describes “Sybil” (Shirley Mason) “remembering” horrific abuse by her mother and, over time, “becoming” 16 personalities; detective work by Debbie Nathan in Sybil Exposed proved the stories were a complete fabrication. Hall describes Sybil’s psychiatrist, Dr. Cornelia “Connie” Wilbur, as essentially a publicity whore; MPD made her famous and she became the “expert” on the subject. While Hall mentions the fact that Wilbur “heavily drugged Sybil with narcotics and other psychoactive medications,” “browbeat her patient into admitting things she initially denied” and developed “an inappropriate personal relationship with her patient,” she doesn’t suggest the most likely underlying motivation for having done so: alcoholism-fueled egomania. Hall concludes that the “MPD/repressed memory story is a good example of what happens when people fail to subject their ideas to scientific testing.” Recognizing alcoholics as the world’s greatest salespeople because of their an insatiable thirst to wield power over others, this is a classic case of a likely addict pulling the wool over the eyes of otherwise rational people (as previously suggested in the “Review of the Month” of issue # 67 of TAR).
The most egregious omission of alcohol and other-drug addiction as the best explanation for horrific behaviors is found in a Skeptic article about mass murders (volume 18 number 1 2013). Alcohol or other-drug addiction isn’t mentioned once, even when there is absolute proof of addiction. In “The Mass Murder Problem,” David Hill Shafer mentions that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh met Terry Nichols, who taught McVeigh how to make improvised explosive devices. He fails to mention the crucial fact that the third bomber, Michael Fortier, introduced McVeigh to crystal meth. Shafer discusses Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killing 15 and injuring 21 in the Columbine shooting, and Sung Hui Cho’s hope to “repeat Columbine” at Virginia Tech in 2007, without mentioning the fact of Harris’s addiction to vodka, whiskey and Luvox, or Cho’s numerous behavioral indications of substance addiction, described in TAR issue # 29.
According to Shafer, these mass murderers demonstrate “how specific, violent delusions are the defining feature of people who commit mass murder” (italics added). No, they are not; substance addiction is almost always the key feature, which in turn causes violent delusions in some addicts, compelling them to commit mass murder. Shafer points out that clicking on Wikipedia pages listing “rampage attacks” leads to biographies of attackers whose motivations are sometimes criminal, drug-related, political or unknown, but that these are the exceptions; “most people who commit mass murder have at least one major mental disorder.” He omits that most are proven alcohol and other-drug addicts even though, as pointed out in the TAR story on Cho, most journalists are unaware of the importance of identifying addiction in their subjects and many addicts hide their use even from close people, often for years.
Likewise, in the same issue, Michael Shermer himself omits discussion of the likelihood of alcoholism-fueled egomania and other-drug addiction fueled delusions as the trigger for mass shootings in his discussion of Adam Lanza, in “The Sandy Hook Effect.” While no drugs were found in Lanza’s system, his mother was clearly alcoholic and, as I point out in issue # 73 of TAR, if there’s no addiction in a murderer we’ll almost always find it close by. Additionally, Lanza, whose non-lethal behaviors alone indicate addiction, may have gotten sober only long enough to be more sure-footed when committing the atrocity.
Shermer points to research showing that “three of the most common characteristics of mass murderers are” psychopathy/mental illness, a feeling of victimization or ideological cause, and a “desire for fame and glory.” As I show in all of my books, what appears to be mental illness is nearly always in reality alcohol/other-drug addiction (or triggered by it). In addition, a feeling of victimization is usually a delusion caused by alcoholism—recovering alcoholics often tell how they “blamed everyone else for everything and anything.” This is especially true when the blaming of others leads to the commission of atrocities; a need for fame and glory regardless of the cost to others is almost always rooted in alcoholism-fueled egomania.
In his attempt to predict who might be pre-disposed to commit such violent acts, Shermer points out that millions of people could have the requisite gene complex—a set of genes that might be required for such violence—yet never act out on such tendencies. I suggest that without alcohol and other-drug addiction, they won’t. However, substance addiction catastrophically increases the odds of such horrific behaviors.
While it’s possible some mass murders are committed by non-addicts who are unaffected by addicts, based on dozens of reports of mass murders, I suggest this is exceedingly rare. Shermer points out we might be able to screen for a propensity to commit violence, but this would result in numerous false-positives. Since alcoholics commit 80-90% of felonies and, as a percentage of those committed, as many serious misdemeanors and unethical behaviors, we should start any screens with substance addiction, followed by additional testing. On the other hand, as I’ve often pointed out, we cannot predict how destructive a practicing addict may become or when; Bryn Hartmann murdered her husband comedian Phil Hartmann and then killed herself, shocking everyone who knew her. However, perhaps a good follow-up screen to a propensity to commit violence, after confirming addiction, may have been able to predict heightened risk in her case, as well as others.