Anger or alcoholism?
SEPTEMBER 2004
Alcoholic Myth-of-the-Month: “He was a young guy with a lot of testosterone. He just seemed to be angry.”
This was the explanation ascribed by a sheriff’ deputy, Frank Sherwood, to the behaviors of a man arrested at an airport terminal while arguing with officials (St. Petersburg Times, August 6, 2004).
Joseph G. Ernst, 24, agreed to leave a plane which was still boarding after being confronted over disrupting flight attendants and making other passengers uncomfortable. Amazingly, an airline representative tried to schedule him for another flight while Sherwood, who had escorted him off the plane, tried to calm him down. Ernst began yelling and swearing at the employee and subsequently tore off his shirt in what was described as “Hulk Hogan-style,” which at 5 foot 8 inches and 150 pounds must have been rather amusing. After “flailing around and cussing” a bit longer, Ernst was finally arrested.
Volatile behaviors indicate intoxication and are, by themselves, symptoms of alcoholism, especially at an airport in a day and age of terrorism. Indeed, Deputy Sherwood reported that Ernst “had been drinking. He was intoxicated.”
The fact that even a sheriff’s deputy would ascribe such conduct, along with anger, to an excess of testosterone, shows how far we have to go in dispelling the myths surrounding alcoholism. Excessive testosterone by itself may lead to daily sex or masturbation, but not to extraordinarily bad behavior, particularly at an airport terminal. Suggestion: anyone showing such indications should be tested using the non-intrusive Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus, which any trained law enforcer can administer in about 60 seconds to determine BAL. Misbehaving at a BAL over .08 per cent should be sufficient grounds for an arrest for public intoxication.
Runner-up: Beer drinker gets suspended license for drinking 6-pack a day. “Anyone consuming six drinks a day must be an alcoholic.”
The Associated Press reported (August 18, 2004) that a judge ruled the state of Pennsylvania had the right to suspend the driving privileges of a man whose consumption of a six-pack of beer daily was reported to police by his doctor.
The odds are, if his alcohol consumption was heavy enough to warrant reporting to police in an effort either to stop his drinking or to keep him off the road, he was consuming a lot more than six beers daily. If drank in quick succession by a 200-pounder, the Blood Alcohol Level would rise to .12 per cent. In the more likely scenario of consumption occurring over four hours, the BAL would rise to only .06 per cent, hardly enough to qualify him as alcoholic. Therefore, the doctor may have failed to mention the 27-ounce Long Island iced tea taken as a warm up.
On the other hand, consuming only a six-pack a day is not enough to suspect alcoholism, much less take away his driving privileges. This is the sort of headline that gives the impression that a person taking more than a few drinks daily “must” be an alcoholic. Plenty of non-alcoholic Italians drink the equivalent of two six-packs over the course of a day in the form of two bottles of wine. Spread out over twelve hours, the BAL for a 200-pounder rises to about .06 per cent (however, .18 per cent for a 120-pound person, which would point to alcoholism). The facts that need to be confirmed before spreading myths about signs of alcoholism prior to intervention, especially with the force of law, include quantity of alcohol consumed, time period over which the drinking occurs, the weight of the drinker and, crucially, his or her behaviors while under the influence and shortly after.