Loads of runners-up: two politicians’ progeny, four celebrities, two sports stars and one now infamous mother
Al Gore lll, arrested for possession of marijuana and illegal prescriptions, including the opioid (synthetic opiate) Vicodin, the sedative-hypnotics Valium and Xanax, and the amphetamine Adderall. His brush with the law, which resulted from being pulled over for driving at 100 mph in Orange County, California at 2:15 a.m., was not his first. In August 2000 he was ticketed by the North Carolina Highway Patrol after doing 97 mph in a 55-mph zone; he avoided a charge of reckless driving by agreeing to a suspension of driving privileges in that state. Moving over to Virginia, military police arrested him for DUI in September 2002. He slipped into Maryland, where he was arrested for marijuana possession in 2003 and later ordered into a substance “abuse” program (it’s not “abuse,” a term that evokes an image of college kids drinking too much; he’s an addict). North Carolina law enforcers did him no favors by their apparent failure to test for DUI and compromising his sentence in a way that allowed him to “pull a geographic” with impunity, until now. The rest of us have just been lucky that he hasn’t killed someone.
Actor Tom Sizemore, sentenced to 16 months in prison for yet again violating probation. He tearfully pleaded with Judge Cynthia Rayvis for leniency, begging her, “If you would please just give me one more chance for myself.” Because a tearful plea for another chance in 2005 got him a reinstatement of probation and a plea for mercy in 2006 resulted in an additional three years probation, the judge properly decided that Sizemore “needs to be in a lockdown setting” for there to be any hope of recovery from his methamphetamine and other-drug addiction. He was arrested in early May for possession and found to be under the influence of meth, opiates and marijuana.
Pop star Britney Spears, who conducted herself in classic “I don’t give a damn about anyone else” fashion at an OK! magazine shoot by wiping her greasy hands on the front and back of a designer gown after lunch, letting her puppy poop on a $6,700 gown and fleeing the shoot before it was over wearing almost $15,000 of OK!s clothing. So, who said, “I’m a celebrity! I can do anything I want!”–Britney or Lindsay? (Trick question. With the variation, “You don’t know who I am! I can do anything I want!” the correct answer is almost every alcoholic celebrity who’s ever lived.)
Actress Lindsay Lohan, arrested for DUI–again, after reportedly boasting, “I can’t get in trouble. I’m a celebrity. I can do whatever the f*** I want,” which followed a 100 mph car chase on Pacific Coast Highway and was followed by another car chase at speeds up to 80 mph on surface streets in Santa Monica, after which she said, “I’m a celebrity. I’m not going to get in trouble.” Yup!
Florida Marlins pitcher Dontrelle Willis, who was moving erratically on the plate in a televised game against the Los Angeles Dodgers on July 6. I’ve never been great at detecting likely addiction by merely watching someone’s movements, but when the great sportscaster Vin Scully uttered my thoughts, I ran a Google search. Willis was busted for DUI in December 2006 after officers observed him double-parking his Bentley at 4:30 a.m. in a nightclub district of Miami’s South Beach, then stepping out and answering a call to nature. He stepped back in, drove off and ran a red light. Officers, who had been busy responding to another call, pulled him over and noticed “a strong smell of alcohol.” Willis was the 2003 National League Rookie-of-the-Year, had just been married and will earn about $6 million in 2007. Based on the bizarre movements on the mound after having failed to win a game since May 29 and the facts that money enables and an addiction-aware manager might have pulled him from the game after the first pitch, Mr. Willis will likely continue to qualify for these pages.
Actress Brigitte Nielson, 44 and looking a decade older, reported by her manager to be out after a multi-week stay in rehab for treatment of “an undisclosed condition.” Sylvester Stalone was one of the leggy (6-foot 1 inch) blonde bombshell’s five husbands and she reportedly carried on a torrid romance with Arnold Schwarzenegger while filming “Red Sonja.” More recently, she smoked and drank through her stint on the recent season three of “The Surreal Life.” Her family finally gave her the proper ultimatum: recovery or cutting off contact, so she now stands a chance at recovery from that long-standing “undisclosed condition”. She stayed at the Cri-Help facility in North Hollywood, California, which is not known for coddling those with such conditions–a huge advantage over the let’s-set-you-up-for-relapse spas.
Actor and former baseball player Joe Petcka, 36, who was charged with punching his girlfriend’s cat to death after a night of drinking. In what may be a classic case of alcohol-fueled rage and jealousy, he reportedly yelled at his girlfriend, Sports Illustrated reporter Lisa Altobelli, “You love that cat more than you love me.” He returned the next day when Altobelli wasn’t there and left the cat with broken ribs, fractured teeth, a split tongue, torn lungs and blood in its chest cavity. In one of those “truth is stranger than fiction” moments, Petcka, 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds, claims through his lawyer that the 7 1/2 pound cat was the aggressor and he was only defending himself.
China Arnold, 26, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Arnold) who admitted that she was so intoxicated, she didn’t know what caused her baby’s burns and that “if I just hadn’t gotten so drunk, I guess my baby wouldn’t have died.” The coroner testified at trial that the high-heat internal injuries in the absence of external burn marks could have been caused only by the child being cooked in a microwave oven. Arnold remembered coming home after an evening of drinking, falling asleep, being awoken at 2:30 a.m. by the baby’s crying, warming a bottle in the microwave, giving it to the baby, changing the child’s nappy, and then falling asleep with the baby on her chest. She didn’t recall being awoken at the baby’s crying, screaming at the baby in an alcoholic rage, putting it into the microwave, removing it and feeding it to the bottle. She also didn’t recall anyone telling her that she could no longer drink, ever, because she had a disease that would sometimes impel her to do horrifying things she would never do when sober.
Gottfried von Bismarck, 44, a great-great grandson of Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who unified Germany in the 19th century, found dead at his $10 million London apartment. A member of a raucous dining club, the Bullingdon Club, and the Piers Gaveston Society, a small club known for drunken excess and sexual shenanigans, von Bismarck was known for holding lavish parties throughout his college years. While attending Oxford University in England, he was charged with possession of cocaine and amphetamine after Olivia Channon, the 22-year-old daughter of a Conservative government minister, died of a drug overdose in his bed. The coroner presiding at the inquest over Bismarck’s death, Dr. Paul Knapman, said that one room of the apartment contained a “bizarre” assortment of items, including a large rubber tarpaulin on the floor, towels, lubricants, bottles of vodka, and buckets of sex toys. While police treated the death as “unexplained” and the coroner as “death by misadventure,” we might guess he succumbed to a long-standing alcohol and other-drug addiction, which usually drives such misadventures.