Doug Thorburn on Early-Stage Alcohol and Drug Addiction

What would you do…if you found out your two sons, ages 12 and 13, drank some of your booze and you decided to teach the kids a lesson about the possible dangers of drinking? (TAR Lite #12)

June 19, 2012 at 12:13 pm · Filed under TAR Lite: What Would You Do?

Would you: 1. Have a long talk with the kids about the risks of alcohol and other-drug use? 2. Take the kids for a tour of skid row in a bid to show them the ultimate cost of alcoholism? 3. Make the kids spend their free time volunteering for a local alcohol and other-drug rehab to see first-hand the affects of long-term addiction? 4. Force the kids to take several shots of hard liquor and then throw them into your pool? Congratulations if you selected # 4, which is what Kristopher Harvey, 32, did after his girlfriend, Karen Edwards, 49, told him she caught the kids drinking. When officers arrived in response to a neighbor’s report of screaming and crying, they found a “highly ...

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What would you do…if you are coming down from a high on meth and you are ready to crash but you aren’t close to home? (TAR Lite #11)

June 13, 2012 at 12:57 pm · Filed under TAR Lite: What Would You Do?

Would you: 1. Somehow find your way home to sleep off the drugs? 2. Find a close buddy's house to crash in? 3. Find a homeless shelter or park bench to provide a bed for the night? 4. Steal a car, drive to another town and rip off wallets, stereos and cell phones from several other cars and, because you’ve been awake for so long and haven’t re-dosed (taken more meth), while in the process of removing another stereo you fall asleep, burglary tools in gloved hands? Congratulations if you selected #4, which is what Jason D. Hill, 33, reportedly did in Post Falls, Idaho. The vehicle's owner found Hill around 4:30 a.m., sleeping in the driver's seat of his car. Fortunately for the vehicle’s ...

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What would you do…if your tan is fading, you don’t have time to tan the old-fashioned way and you would like to drive to a tanning salon but your 6-year old girl and 10-month-old boy are in the car with you? (TAR Lite # 10)

June 5, 2012 at 10:36 am · Filed under TAR Lite: What Would You Do?

Would you: 1. Find a babysitter to watch over them? 2. Drop your kids off at a friend's house for a few minutes while you visit the salon? 3. Decide that since excessive tanning can cause cancer, you change your mind, go home and apply a self-tanner? 4. Leave them in the car with the car idling and the front window cracked a bit for air? Congratulations if you selected # 4, which is what 28-year old Krista Mann did, with the car’s gear-selector within reach of the 6-year-old. An officer checking parking meters found the car with the abandoned kids and asked where their parent was. After pointing to the tanning salon across the street, the 6-year-old told the officer she was not supposed to ...

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What would you do…if you need to leave your 7-year-old daughter with a babysitter for the day? (TAR Lite #9)

May 30, 2012 at 3:48 pm · Filed under TAR Lite: What Would You Do?

Would you: 1. Hire a responsible teenager who lives on your block, who’s watched her before and with whom there have been no problems? 2. Because you don’t have a regular babysitter, hire a professional babysitting service? 3. Because you can’t afford a babysitter, opt to cancel your plans and stay home? 4. Since you can’t afford a babysitter, decide to change your plans and go somewhere with your daughter? 5. Take her to your parents’ home so you can go off and do whatever it is you want to do without your daughter, even though both parents are unrecovered alcoholics? Congratulations if you selected # 5, which is what Paul J. and Belinda Jean Berloni’s son and daughter-in-law did, despite the fact that granddad has ...

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What would you do…if your kids left your granddaughter with you for the day and, like grandparents everywhere, you want to have fun with her? (TAR Lite #8)

May 22, 2012 at 12:02 pm · Filed under TAR Lite: What Would You Do?

Would you: 1. Take your granddaughter to the zoo? 2. Since it’s warm outside, let her go swimming in your pool or, if you don’t have one, take her to the public pool nearby? 3. Let her play outside with her Power Wheels car and other toys? 4. Since the battery in the plastic Power Wheels car died and you’re too drunk and impatient to charge it, you latch the little car to the SUV’s trailer hitch with two dog leashes and take her for a spin down your block. Congratulations if you selected # 4, which is what Paul J. Berloni, 49, and Belinda Jean Berloni, 47, did with their granddaughter. While Paul drove, reportedly at about 5-10 mph, Belinda sat in the rear ...

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What would you do…if you desperately wanted a copy of the latest Playboy magazine? (TAR Lite # 7)

May 16, 2012 at 7:28 am · Filed under TAR Lite: What Would You Do?

Would you: 1. Go to the store and buy a copy? 2. Ask to borrow a copy from your girlfriend's son? 3. Ask your girlfriend's son to return home where you all live, argue over it and, when you are refused the magazine, beat the crap out of him? Congratulations if you selected # 3, which is what 42-year-old Randall Keith Rumfelt allegedly did. Rumfelt asked his girlfriend’s son, 24-year-old John Edward Pack, Jr. who was visiting his grandmother a few doors down, to come home. Pack, who is handicapped, told officers that Rumfelt wanted to take his copy of Playboy. An argument broke out and, apparently while defending himself, he hit Rumfelt, after which Rumfelt went into attack mode with Pack’s mother / ...

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What would you do…if you were mailing a package containing hallucinogenic mushrooms and other controlled substances to your daughter in another state? (TAR Lite # 6)

May 8, 2012 at 11:42 am · Filed under TAR Lite: What Would You Do?

Would you: 1. Make darned sure you include proper U.S. postage and triple-check both your return address and the address to which you’re sending the package? 2. Send the package via UPS or FedEx, which you might think would be less likely to intercept the illicit package than the U.S. postal service? 3. Figuring you can decrease the odds of FBI involvement by avoiding the mail, you drive to your daughter’s home and hand-deliver the package? 4. Mail the package via U.S. mails short of proper postage and with the wrong return address on the package? Congratulations if you selected # 4, which is what Marilyn Howell, 63, allegedly did. The return address was that of a complete stranger, who notified police (one can only ...

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What would you do…if a 19-year-old member of your family runs a red light, fails to pull over for officers, leads police on a high-speed chase on the streets of Los Angeles, pulls over and threatens officers with what appears to be a gun, and then gets shot to death by police? (TAR Lite #5)

May 2, 2012 at 10:55 am · Filed under TAR Lite: What Would You Do?

Would you: 1. Apologize to the motorists, police and taxpayers of Los Angeles for the inexplicable behaviors of your family member? 2. Since you are too shamed to say anything to anyone, quietly plan the young man’s funeral and try to move on with your life? 3. Apologize to everyone, explaining that while the young man was generally a good kid, no one could stop him from using whatever drugs he was on and that this is the sort of horrifying behavior that drugs can cause in susceptible individuals? 4. Bring a wrongful death claim against the Los Angeles Police Department for $120 million dollars, blaming them for the death of your family member? Congratulations if you selected # 4: this is ...

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What would you do…if you’re pulled over for running a red light but, although you’ve always wanted to become a cop, you’re afriad of the police? (TAR Lite #4)

May 1, 2012 at 10:39 am · Filed under TAR Lite: What Would You Do?

Would you: 1. Pull over, roll down your window, put your hands on the wheel of the car and apologize to the policeman for having run the light? 2. Pull over, roll down your window, put your hands on the wheel and, after asking the officer why you are being pulled over, politely respond you didn't realize the yellow light was so short and you certainly didn't intend to run a red light? 3. Pull over, get out of the car, face the car and put your hands on the roof, because you think that at age 19 and having dangerously run a light the officer might be concerned you are armed? 4. Continue driving, leading the police on a ...

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What would you do…if you’re checking into a juvenile detention center and approaching the security checkpoint with pot in your pocket? (TAR Lite #3)

April 27, 2012 at 7:21 am · Filed under TAR Lite: What Would You Do?

Would you: 1. Stop, realize you are going to make a bad problem worse and turn around and go home? 2. Stop, turn around and head to the nearest trash bin to empty your pockets before returning to the security checkpoint? 3. Keep the pot in your pocket, keep walking and hope nobody checks before you can hide the pot somewhere inside the facility? 4. Take five bags of marijuana out of your jacket pocket and put them in a bin to be scanned by the metal detector? Congratulations if you selected option # 4, which is exactly what 19-year-old Devante Saxton did at the River Valley Juvenile Detention Center in Joliet, Illinois. Contrast alcoholics and other-drug addicts, who lie, cheat and ...

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What would you do…if you faced drug trafficking charges and were making your first court appearance? (TAR Lite #2)

April 25, 2012 at 2:39 pm · Filed under TAR Lite: What Would You Do?

Would you: 1. Show up in coat and tie, apologize to the court for your behaviors, promise to change and ask for mercy? 2. Show up in coat and tie and explain you are an addict and would like help, but will take whatever consequences the court metes out? 3. Show up in a sweatshirt printed with instructions for making crack cocaine? Congratulations is you selected option 3, which is what an unidentified man did in a Broward County, Florida courtroom. An attorney commented, "I couldn't believe the gumption this person had." Mr. Attorney: addicts have what appears to be gumption because, due to damage to the frontal lobes of the brain, they will take risks the sober among us would never consider. This ...

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What would you do…if you’re driving to court for a preliminary hearing on possession of methamphetamine? (TAR Lite #1)

March 21, 2012 at 4:52 pm · Filed under TAR Lite: What Would You Do?

Would you: 1. Drive at or below the posted speed, 65 mph, scrupulously obeying every traffic law en route? 2. Drive with the flow of traffic, often at 72 mph, being careful to obey the spirit of traffic laws while en route? 3. Drive at 102 mph and cited by a sheriff's deputy for speeding; a few minutes later clocked by another officer at 98 mph and again cited; no more than an hour later, pulled over yet again by a third trooper for doing 92 mph? Congratulations if you figured out option 3 is correct! Jose Romero-Valenzuela, 34, claimed "the car was going within the 65 mph speed limit." After driving on Oregon roads at such dangerously high rates of ...

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Intro to issue # 68: Karl Marx makes this the most important issue ever.

January 19, 2012 at 5:16 pm · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

January - February 2012 Viewing the news through the lens of alcohol and other-drug addiction Well over a decade ago, when I was doing research for my first book, Drunks, Drugs & Debits, I had several discussions with the gentleman I view as my greatest mentor, James Graham, about the great and horrific despots that fill the history books. I suggested, based strictly on behaviors, Adolf Hitler must have been an addict; Graham, who wrote The Secret History of Alcoholism, responded that being a child of a particularly awful alcoholic (referring to Hitler’s father, Alois) was enough to turn someone into a mass murderer. Besides, he added, Hitler was a known teetotaler. I was skeptical and thought there had to be some ...

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The Burkhart duo: just a crazy mother-son fraud and arson team, or amphetamine addicts?

January 19, 2012 at 5:13 pm · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

A Con-Artist for a Mother, An Arsonist for a Son and Amphetamines May Explain it All: The Case of Dorothee and Harry Burkhart The New Year’s headline in the Los Angeles Times read, “Arson Wave is Worst Since Riots,” referring to the 1992 riots that began when a nearly all-White jury (ten Whites, one Hispanic and one Asian) acquitted one Hispanic and three White police officers of using excessive force in the beating of a drug-addled Rodney King following a high-speed pursuit. Nearly all felonious crime is committed and instigated by alcohol or other-drug addicts. There’s no doubt about King’s polydrug addiction, and there’s little doubt that most if not all of the rioters were alcohol or other-drug addicts. The cause ...

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Runners-up: Kim Jong-un takes over the rein of terror and Rhod Blagojevich gets locked up.

January 19, 2012 at 5:12 pm · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

Runners-up for top story of the month: Kim Jong-un, the 28-year-old heir to the North Korean Kim dynasty following in his father’s (Kim Jong-il) footsteps as ruler of what will likely be considered the most totalitarian state ever by future historians. Kim-the-younger is depicted in U.S. intelligence assessments as a “volatile youth with a sadistic streak” and “may be even more mercurial and merciless” than his father, which is difficult to fathom. Imagine the alcoholic serial murderers Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer ruling 20 million extremely unlucky victims and you might get a picture of life under the Kim’s. Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, sentenced to a 14-year prison term for what U.S. prosecuting attorney Patrick Fitzgerald called “the most staggering crime ...

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