Doug Thorburn on Early-Stage Alcohol and Drug Addiction

Chelsea Clinton’s husband, the Braves Derek Lowe and a story where not even I saw an alcoholic in someone who I never knew sober.

May 6, 2011 at 10:15 pm · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

Marc Mezvinsky, 33, Chelsea Clinton’s husband, who friends fear is headed for a mental breakdown after reportedly quitting his Wall Street banking job and becoming a ski bum in Wyoming. Some suspect that the Clinton clan’s insistence that Marc break ties with his father, Edward Mezvinsky, is the cause of the mental “crisis.” The senior Mezvinsky, a Congressman from 1973 to 1977, was convicted in 2001 on 31 charges of swindling investors out of $10 million and spent five years behind bars; he still owes $9.4 million in restitution to his victims. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder shortly after his indictment, but the judge disallowed a mental illness defense. There is no word as to whether the junior Mezvinsky ...

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Runners-up: Prince Harry, Chelsy Davy and Liz Taylor husband # 8 Larry Fortensky

May 6, 2011 at 10:14 pm · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

After the Royal Wedding, my loyal readers might expect an expose of a British drunk or two. Let’s make it a twosome: Prince Harry and his girlfriend Chelsy Davy. The wedding party likely tightly controlled these two, as both are known to engage in drunken antics. Harry often appears in British tabloids with a cigarette and beer in hand, has reportedly turned into a “drinking machine” and “never sips his drinks; he gulps them.” He had to be pulled away from another man at a night club after the man made “comments” about Chelsy and Harry screamed, “I’ll kill him.” Harry was “really smashed.” As Harry and Chelsy have had an on-and-off again relationship for at least five years, the ...

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Runners-up, names from past issues hit the news: Dykstra embezzles from his bankruptcy estate; Crystal Mangum, Duke U. false accuser commits murder and Nicholas Cage gets crazier.

May 6, 2011 at 10:11 pm · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

Former Major League Baseball star and “financial guru” Lenny Dykstra, charged with embezzling property from his bankruptcy estate. He is accused of arranging to spirit away a “dazzling array of antiques, big-screen TVs, artwork and collectible books from his residences,” including the one he purchased from hockey great Wayne Gretzky. We first noted his antics in the “under watch” section of the February 2006 issue of TAR, which came about because I viewed what I then described as a “stunning CNBC interview” in which he appeared and sounded stinking drunk; I subsequently discovered he had been accused of sexually battering a 17-year-old girl, was reportedly a target in a gambling probe and in 1991 charged with DUI. He was “promoted” ...

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Osama bin-Laden, terrorism and substance addiction

May 6, 2011 at 10:09 pm · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

Osama bin-Laden, dead from an assault by a Navy Seal team inside Pakistan. Several weeks after 9-11, I was listening to late-night talk radio and, of course, the topic was 9-11. “Mr. KABC” was taking questions, to which he always gave his best answers. I called and was able to ask, “Mr. KABC, why do you think people become terrorists?” He went into a 5-minute psychological analysis, after which I asked, “Would you like to hear another theory?” He said sure, and I responded that addiction-fueled egomania is the most likely reason, especially for those at the top (remembering that alcoholics can be so charismatic and charming they can get people to follow them and do awful things). Host Doug ...

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An amends for Kirstie Alley.

May 6, 2011 at 10:07 pm · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

Actress and “Dancing With the Stars” contestant Kirstie Alley gets a long-awaited public apology Why is alcoholism such a tough disease to overcome? First, since 95% of alcoholics are “functional” during 95% of their drinking careers, why stop, when most everything seems to be going just fine? Second, few family members, friends and co-workers are willing to impose appropriate consequences for misbehaviors. Why seek sobriety when the pleasure of use is greater than the pain of consequences? Third, as explained in Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse, the biochemistry in alcoholics is different: they feel “no pain” at blood alcohol levels where the rest of us are either flat on our faces, long gone ...

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Antics of the month: an argument, a battery–and no one can remember what the fight was about.

May 6, 2011 at 10:06 pm · Filed under 5 - Amazing Alcoholic Antics

Stories from “This is True” by Randy Cassingham, with his “taglines:” “SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS: A South Elgin, Ill., man is accused of hitting another man in the face with a glass while the two argued about whose school was better. According to police, the men, who met for the first time that night, were arguing when Kevin M. Page, 36, threw a bar stool into the bar, then grabbed a beer glass and hit the other man in the face with it. The victim suffered only minor scrapes. Page was charged with felony aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, felony aggravated battery in a public place, and criminal damage to property. Police didn't know which schools were the subject ...

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A govt. study confuses mental illness with alcoholism among prisoners in the wake of the Loughner-Gifford tragedy

May 6, 2011 at 10:04 pm · Filed under 4 - Alcoholic Myth of the Month

“A 2007 study by the U.S. Justice Department found that 56% of state prisoners, 45% of federal prisoners, and 64% of local jail inmates suffer from mental illnesses.” So reported E. Fuller Torrey in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece titled, “A Predictable Tragedy in Arizona,” in the wake of the Jared Lee Loughner murder of six innocent people while serious wounding Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 11 others. Torrey wrote, “Ultimately, it is important to hold state officials responsible for not providing sufficient resources to treat those who suffer from serious mental illnesses.” That would be fine, E. Fuller Torrey, if that were the root of the problem. Unfortunately, depending on the study 50-90% of prisoners at all levels ...

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Dear Doug: a co-worker needs help. What to do?

May 6, 2011 at 10:03 pm · Filed under 3 - Dear Doug...

Co-worker’s drinking costs customers Dear Doug: I believe a co-worker’s drinking problem has cost her at least one customer and may cost her many more, culminating in being fired as sales manager. I’m concerned over confronting her, because it could destroy our professional relationship, which I value. Is there any way I can help without a direct confrontation? Signed, Concerned co-worker Dear Codependent, Other columnists would rightly say you may not be able to help your co-worker, directly or indirectly. If you are direct, you jeopardize your relationship and she may do nothing to change. However, such columnists might suggest that you are ethically-bound to honestly express your observations by saying something like, “I believe your drinking is interfering with ...

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Review: Modigliani, a Life–the author doesn’t get it. See the movie instead.

May 6, 2011 at 10:01 pm · Filed under 2 - Movie & Book Reviews

Modigliani: A Life, by Meryle Secrest I often point out that motivations and lives of the subjects about whom biographers write can’t be understood without comprehending addiction. Modigliani provides yet more support for my assertion. Secrest, who specializes in art-related biographies, thinks the artist Amedeo Modigliani’s public intoxication was mostly feigned and that he used drugs “medicinally,” as a “necessary anesthetic…to soothe his coughing fits” from his long-kept secret illness, tuberculosis. Yet, as described in Lance Esplund’s splendid review of the book in The Wall Street Journal, he insulted waiters, broke dishes and chairs, threw his mistress through a window and, when he was drunk, stripped nude in cafes and bars. He traded drawings for drinks and was a deadbeat ...

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Sometimes, it takes an addict: Gerry Rafferty and “Tango” Maria Schneider

May 6, 2011 at 10:01 pm · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

Gerry Rafferty, the Scottish singer and songwriter who gained pop culture status after director Quentin Tarantino included Rafferty’s “Stuck in the Middle With You” in the soundtrack of his 1992 film “Reservoir Dogs,” dead from liver failure at age 63. His most famous hit was “Baker Street,” from his solo No. 1 album “City to City.” His band Stealers Wheel had a “turbulent history” marked by legal battles and numerous personnel changes. Not surprisingly, he was reportedly “battling” alcoholism for much of his life. Maria Schneider, the French actress whose character in the 1972 movie “Last Tango in Paris” engaged in an anonymous sexual relationship in an empty apartment with a grief-stricken middle-aged American (Marlon Brando) whose French wife had ...

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Quote of the month: Charlie exhibits confabulated thinking, sounding eerily similar to Ghaddafi

May 6, 2011 at 10:00 pm · Filed under General

Many of Charlie Sheen’s recent comments indicate an extraordinary degree of egomania and arrogance, which is almost always rooted in alcoholism. "I'm tired of pretending I'm not a total bitchin' rock star from Mars, and people can't figure me out; they can't process me. I don't expect them to. You can't process me with a normal brain." Explaining how he avoids relapse: "I just don't do it. I will not believe that if I do something then I have to follow a certain path because it was written for normal people. People who aren't special. People who don't have tiger blood and Adonis DNA." And a classic in the annals of egomania: “AA was written for normal people. People that ...

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Disenablers: a wife, a kid and Elton John

May 6, 2011 at 9:59 pm · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

Disenablers of the month: Afra Sandifar, who while watching the evening news blurted out to her husband of six months, Troy Sandifar, 45, “Honey, you’re on the news for robbing a bank!” He immediately grabbed the loot and ran from his Manatee, Florida home; she called police and turned him in. Officers found Troy sitting in his car trying to eat the rock cocaine he’d bought with the cash. Afra said, “I’m not going to hide something like that. He needs to be sentenced and go into a program….” The nine-year-old daughter of Latanya Evans, 49, who passed a note to a bank teller saying her mother was too drunk to drive and she didn’t want to ride in the ...

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Enabler of the month: one of the crew doesn’t get it.

May 6, 2011 at 9:58 pm · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

One of “the key crew members on the set” of “Two and a Half Men,” who was “furious” with actor Charlie Sheen for halting the show’s production while completing rehab, because “A lot of us do not get paid if we don’t work. So if he’s off getting rehab or porn-o-ing or whatever, we’re screwed.” You idiot. If Sheen dies, you’re really screwed. The best thing that could happen would be for Sheen to get clean and sober, for the show’s writers to portray Charlie Harper as getting clean and sober, a couple of years of comedy and antics while he goes through rehab and AA meetings and then end the show. The current stories are getting mean and sophomoric; ...

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Charlie sounds like Ghaddafi, plus the author of Drugstore Cowboy, runners-up for top story

May 6, 2011 at 9:54 pm · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

Actor Charlie Sheen. Again. Sigh….This time, after romping with several hookers on a cocaine-fueled orgy and, well…unless you live in North Korea, you know the rest. What else needs to be said, other than “Charlie, stop playing Charlie Harper. You’ve been sober before and you can do it again. It’s time, before you end up six feet under.” Unfortunately, he’s got too damned much money, at least until he spends it all on “goddesses” and cocaine. Mohammar Gaddafi (AKA Khadafy), whose rambling diatribes are not dissimilar to those of Charlie Sheen’s (the only real difference is the subject). One interpreter reportedly said, “I just can’t take it any more,” after having gotten lost in translation. Another said, “He’s not exactly ...

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Charlie’s enablers–several shrinks try to psychoanalyze an addict.

May 6, 2011 at 9:52 pm · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

Charlie’s Enablers Many writers and talking heads “get it” in regards to Charlie Sheen: plain and simple, he’s an addict. Some, however, could easily mislead the addiction unaware, including USA Today and its sources. A USA Today article, “Charlie Sheen in the hottest of seats,” cites Vanderbilt School of Medicine in Nashville psychiatrist, Paul Ragan, explaining Charlie’s behaviors: it “strongly resembles a classic manic episode. What do we mean by a manic episode? This constant pressure to speak, the giving of numerous interviews, the increased goal-directed activities, irritability, lack of impulse control, what we call the ‘flight of ideas’—skipping from topic to topic, clearly the lack of judgment about his own issues. There’s the aggressiveness, the hostility.” While this is ...

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