Feb-March is a bit late
Busy tax season and I, well, forgot to post the Feb-March '11 issue. It's coming!
Jared Lee Loughner: did political rhetoric or alcoholic egomania make him kill? Our bet’s on addiction.
Arizona Shooter Jared Lee Loughner: Angry Political Rhetoric—or Alcoholism?
Various reasons have been cited for the attempted murder of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the murder of six other innocents and the serious injury of over a dozen more. The 22-year-old shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, has been described as a socialist, a right-winger and a left-winger. Bloggers and radio talk show hosts are accused of having angered Loughner. Some say such bloodshed was only a matter of “when” given these “hateful” times. The blame game is rampant. These comments disregard the fact that most “angry” people, right-wingers, left-wingers and even socialists and other statists don’t go out and kill people. Such comments ignore the evidence that 99.999% of those writing and reading blogs, ...
Actor Rip Torn, some sheriff deputies, a federal judge, an unknown kills a publicist and a student dies.
Runners-up for top story of the month:
Actor Rip Torn, pleading guilty to breaking into a bank and carrying a loaded weapon while so drunk that prosecutors stipulated he believed he was at home and had left his hat and boots by the door. Torn, who has repeatedly been bailed out of his alcoholism-fueled misadventures by fame and money, was given a two-and-a-half year suspended sentence, three years of probation and is required to undergo random alcohol and other-drug testing. Who knows, at 79 maybe, just maybe, Rip Torn will finally get clean and sober. As many older alcoholics have said near death, they were very happy to have the opportunity to die sober.
Seven Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies ...
A doctor, Andrew Wakefield commits fraud in studies blaming autism on vaccines, and a mayor commits suicide while under investigation for fraud.
Under watch:
In an early 2009 piece on white collar crime, The Economist magazine suggests there may be some truth in something those who have read my books would predict: “Many [Club Fed and other white collar] prisoners suddenly discover, post-conviction, that they had a drinking problem….” I would add that those who don’t figure this out might benefit from greater introspection. In the spirit of The Economist’s discovery, a couple of recent stories follow for which the evidence of alcoholism is in the behavior itself.
British doctor Andrew Wakefield, whose 1998 study linking the widely used measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism was found by the British medical journal The Lancet to have been an “elaborate fraud.” ...
Schwarzenegger and journalists enable Esteban Nunez and John du Pont.
Enablers of the month:
Outgoing California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who reduced the sentence for the son of his good friend Fabian Nunez (who happens to be a business partner of his chief political adviser), Esteban Nunez, in the stabbing death of San Diego State University student Luis Santos after a night of heavy drinking. Even The Los Angeles Times editorialized the partial commutation smelled, pointing out that although Nunez didn’t make the fatal wound, he stabbed two other victims who survived. As The Times reported, “Schwarzenegger issued only 10 commutations during his tenure, and it strains credibility to suppose that Esteban Nunez would have been found worthy of such consideration if his father didn’t have a personal relationship with the ...
The University of Notre Dame enables a football player and insures things will get worse.
Enabler of the year:
The University of Notre Dame. Lizzy Seeberg told authorities an unnamed Notre Dame football player fondled her against her will and that he became so aggressive in his assault she froze in terror. Ten days later, she committed suicide. Five days after that, authorities finally interviewed the player. The mother of a former classmate of the player told reporters that even in elementary school her daughter often came home complaining about something that player had done, such as picking up a girl in their fifth grade class and throwing her. “He was bigger than everybody else, and violent.” The accused player reportedly regularly bullied other students and was expelled in the 7th grade for threatening ...
Brooke Mueller, Charlie Sheen’s co-addict, opens her mouth. Lies. Opens her mouth. Lies….
Co-addict of the month:
Brooke Mueller, Charlie Sheen’s estranged wife with whom he has two children, checking into rehab a week after calling reports she had already re-entered rehab “ridiculous” and saying, “I am healthy and happy.” Which reminds me of a question: how can you tell if an addict is lying? She opens her mouth.
Kudos to Butch Patrick’s agent Jodi Ritzen, producer John Rose and Patrick’s family.
Disenablers of the month:
Jodi Ritzen, who told former child star Butch Patrick (who played Eddie Munster in the mid-‘60s TV show, “The Munsters”), “Get in the car, I’m taking you to rehab—and I’m not taking no for an answer.” The intervention worked in terms of getting him into rehab, but despite Ritzen’s hope that this would be “the start of a whole new life for him,” Patrick quickly checked himself out of rehab and again began boozing and drugging. Fortunately, his family, apparently with the help of John Rose, the producer filming a new A&E series “Life’s a Butch,” staged a formal intervention and got him to check back in.
Sometimes, it takes an addict: addiction explains the lives of Blake Edwards, Bambi Bembenek and Pete Postlethwaite.
Sometimes, it takes an addict:
Writer-Director Blake Edwards, dead from complications of pneumonia at 88. Edwards, who got sober in 1963, married actress Julie Andrews in 1969 and remained sober and married for the next 41 years. Although he had some success after he got sober (“Victor/Victoria” from 1982, “10” from 1979, “The Great Race” from 1965 and, one of the few relatively obscure movies I don’t tire of, 1968’s “The Party” starring Peter Sellers), Edwards directed many of his great movies during a flurry of activity over a few years while drinking alcoholically: “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961), “The Pink Panther” (1963), “Operation Petticoat” (1959) and, incredibly, “Days of Wine and Roses” (1962), which is often billed as one ...
“The Closer” season finale “An Ugly Game”: terrific portrayal of addiction.
“The Closer: An Ugly Game”
The 2010-2011 season finale of TNT’s “The Closer” can be added to the growing list of carefully written and beautifully produced portrayals of addiction. When a USC graduate with an MBA from UCLA is arrested on skid row with rock cocaine in his possession, but arrives at the station without the car keys originally found on him, Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick) asks, “How does a college-educated investment broker end up on skid row?” Det. Lt. Provenza (G. W. Bailey) succinctly and accurately responds, “Addiction doesn’t discriminate.”
The addict, Trey Gavin (Riley Smith) appears contrite as he comes down, asking “Why did I do it again?....I tried so hard to straighten myself out…I let ...
What do I do about acquaintances who drink and drive?
Drunk-Driving Couple
Dear Doug:
At a recent block party, a couple of acquaintances revealed that when they go out to dinner, they have two or three cocktails just before leaving their home. They explained they saved money, since they “only need to order one or two more” drinks at the restaurant. We were shocked to hear them admit to driving home after consuming these drinks over just a couple of hours. When we verbalized our concern, the husband, who does the driving, admitted he gets quite a buzz-on. What should we do?
Signed,
Acquaintances of regular DUIs
Dear Codependent,
Other columnists would rightly say the next time you see this couple get into their car while impaired that you call police and ask ...
John Wesley Ewell, like other addicts, are capable of anything. Thinking otherwise could be hazardous to your life.
“I really didn’t think anybody could pretend to anticipate that…[John Wesley Ewell] would suddenly go from stealing things from Home Depot to murdering old people.”
So said Los Angeles County Head Deputy District Attorney John Lynch in excusing the repeated exceptions under California’s three strikes law allowed by L.A. County prosecutors in failing to seek the maximum sentence for Ewell before he allegedly murdered four people in a series of home invasion robberies. Ewell was quite the con artist. He complained to journalists over the unfairness of the three-strikes law, saying he lived in fear that even a small offense, having had two prior convictions for robbery, would land him back in prison for life. When appearing on “The Montel Williams ...
Addicted public charges would be comical if they weren’t so tragic.
Stories from “This is True” by Randy Cassingham, with his “taglines:”
“SO MANY TAX DOLLARS, SO LITTLE TIME: A woman went to a grocery store in Grand Rapids, MI, and purchased 42 bottles and cans of soda. She charged them to her Bridge Card, a federally funded debit card that's managed by the state for use by public assistance recipients. She then took her purchase directly to the store's automated redemption machine, and fed all 42 containers, unopened, into the machine. Inside, they all exploded as they were crushed, spreading soda and debris inside the machine and all over the surrounding floor. She then pocketed $4.20 for the returns, and left. Store manager Steve Holland said he called the state, and ...
Book reviews give clues to alcoholism in their subjects: writer Roald Dahl, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, stock trader Jesse Livermore and Chinese Mao-supporting writer Lu Xun
Biographers and Reviewers Often Miss Possible Alcoholism: Author Roald Dahl, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Stock Trader Jesse Livermore and Chinese Writer Lu Xun
There are many descriptive words and behaviors suggesting alcoholism in the subjects discussed by journalists, historians, biographers and book reviewers. “Partier” is an obvious one; “charismatic” less so, but usually every bit as telling. Occasionally the subject is described as having been “reduced to drinking himself to death,” as reviewer Magette Wade in Barron’s described Frank O’Connor while his wife Ayn Rand carried on with her far younger lover Nathaniel Branden, but such clarity in a review usually occurs only in cases of late-stage addiction. Every so often what is to us obvious is disclosed near the end of ...
David Cassidy arrested for DUI. Calling on Danny Bonaduce (and keep Jo-Ann Geffen away)!
Former “Partridge Family” star and teen idol David Cassidy, 60, arrested on suspicion of DUI after he was observed weaving on and off the road a number of times by other motorists at about 8 pm. Cassidy told a trooper he’d had a glass of wine with lunch and a hydrocodone (opioid painkiller) about three hours before the arrest. The fact that Cassidy was “unsteady on his feet,” “swaying while standing,” registered a .14 per cent blood alcohol level on a breathalyzer and had a half-empty bottle of bourbon in his car suggests he forgot to mention the drinks he consumed between lunch and 8 pm (in fact, assuming he’d been drinking since noon and that he weighs about 160 ...
