Yasir Arafat, amphetamine addict
NOVEMBER 2004
Could addiction explain the life of Yasir Arafat?
Top Story: Entire texts have been written about alcohol or other drug addicts without mention of any drinking or using. A friend who grasps the concept of using behavioral clues to identify the possibility of early-stage alcoholism told me that as he read Mary Wilson’s 1986 autobiography Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme, he kept thinking the behaviors of fellow Supreme Diana Ross had to be rooted in this disease. Yet, her drinking and using was never mentioned. The fact that Ross went into rehab long after the book’s publication is just one more example of the power of this idea.
Biographers are almost uniformly unaware of the relevance of drug addiction in explaining behaviors. My three favorite philosophers, American revolutionary Thomas Paine and writer-philosophers Herbert Spencer and Ayn Rand were all addicts, which explains their bizarre personal lives even if their biographers didn’t make the connection. Not one pundit EVER suggested the idea that President Bill Clinton’s irresponsible adolescent-like misbehaviors might be best explained by alcoholism. (My two-part retort to those who find such a suggestion ridiculous or offensive is: 1. Clinton is too smart to have engaged in these behaviors UNLESS he’s an alcoholic and 2. we give the benefit of the doubt by assuming addiction, since either he was really stupid to have behaved that way, or he’s an addict.) Similarly, hardly anyone has ever identified the most infamous terrorists in history as alcohol or other drug addicts.
One of these is Yasir Arafat. He should have been convicted for criminal activities; 90% of convicts are addicts. He seemed more satisfied to utter defiance than be sworn in as head of a very small state, allowing for far greater ego-inflation than if peace broke out. He was a prodigious liar and never kept his promises, symptomatic of addiction. Enablers surrounded him, including even the United States, which rescued him more than once. That there is enabling is compelling evidence of an addict at the center, because addicts, unlike non-addicts, have an amazing ability to cajole others into protecting them from consequences. He thrived on turmoil yet had nothing to show for it except his own survival, typical of alcohol and other drug addicts.
Arafat had many opportunities to win without self-aggrandizement, but instead threatened to turn himself into a martyr. He refused offers that would have given him his country, along with $20 billion in foreign aid. Promises to never return to violence were repeatedly broken. While he pretended to oppose terrorism, he paid salaries of terrorists, bought weapons for terrorists and, by many accounts, invented modern-day terrorism.
He feigned paranoia, repeatedly suggesting in interviews that he was on the verge of being assassinated, a game also played by alcoholic Josef Stalin, which served as his excuse to assassinate others. He appealed to the world to protect him while he asked that others pray for him to become a martyr. He made repeated false accusations, inciting hatred for Israelis among his own people for massacres and war crimes that didn’t occur. As biographers Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin (Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography) wrote, he always survived, was always in serious trouble and never achieved his professed goals. These are classic clues to alcohol or other drug addiction.
While he may have been among the 20% or so of the population exhibiting awful behaviors who are not addicts, there are two reasons why I’d give even Arafat the benefit of the doubt. First, except for Fidel Castro, I have confirmed alcohol or other drug addiction in almost every other leading terrorist or despot I have studied. Second, the only three pictures I have seen of him show a pupil size dramatically larger than normal, including one on the cover of the aforementioned book and another on page 43 of the October 18, 2003 edition of “The Economist” magazine. Normal pupil size for adults in light is about one-quarter the size of the iris. His take up 80% of the iris. According to Drug Recognition Experts, the odds that something other than amphetamine or cocaine addiction explains this physical phenomenon are close to zero. And the likelihood that something other than amphetamine addiction explained Arafat’s apparent god-like sense of omnipotence and corresponding behaviors is also very small.
Runner-ups for top story of the month: Rip Torn, actor, acquitted O.J.-like on DUI charges. Tatum O’Neal, actress and daughter of actor Ryan O’Neal, published a tell-all on everyone else with barely two years of sobriety. Mitchell Page, hitting coach, St. Louis Cardinals, apparently fired due to misbehaviors rooted in alcoholism. Phil Spector, finally arraigned on charges of murder. Jose Habie, charismatic Guatemalan businessman reported by David Boies in the November 2004 “Vanity Fair” as having inflicted tremendous abuse on ex-wife Amy Weil; he also forged and backdated documents relating to their divorce. Wesley Blake Edwards, brother of vice presidential nominee John Edwards, repeatedly arrested for DUI. Ken Caminiti, 1996 National League Most Valuable Player, dead at 41 of a drug overdose.
Under watch: Teresa Heinz Kerry, reported to have had “little trouble finding the bar in every stop on the campaign trail;” reportedly erratic, chronically late, demanding of attention, causing husband John Kerry to “walk on eggshells” (see question # 6 of the Thorburn Substance Addiction Recognition Indicator – click link at bottom of article); to have not even shown up when scheduled on a number of occasions during the Presidential campaign due to “mysterious ailments” and because of such illnesses termed a “hypochondriac.” California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, who reportedly “belittled employees during vicious personal rages” according to Los Angeles Daily News columnist Jill Stewart, October 17, 2004. William Kennedy Smith, nephew of Senator Edward Kennedy and founder of the Center for International Rehabilitation, reportedly known as “The Creep” for allegedly obnoxious behavior and sexual innuendos among employees, and recently accused of raping Audra Soulias (or his accuser, if a false accusation). Victor Yanukovich, with two criminal convictions, running for President of Ukraine. Alexander Lukashenka, President of Belarus, whose corrupt regime provides cover for illicit arms trafficking. Bill O’Reilly, whose accuser described him as having a Jekyll and Hyde personality, “paternal and engaging at one instant, tyrannical and menacing the next” (or his accuser, if a false accusation).