Doug Thorburn on Early-Stage Alcohol and Drug Addiction

Joran van der Sloot wasn’t known to be violent? Look deeper. Even if you don’t find it, he’s an addict; therefore, anything is possible.

August 10, 2010 at 8:48 am · Filed under 4 - Alcoholic Myth of the Month

“[Joran] van der Sloot’s past (sic) wasn’t known to be violent.” So wrote Frank Bajak in an Associated Press piece on the 22-year-old who was arrested for the murder of Stephany Flores, whose body was found in a Peruvian hotel room with her neck broken, one eye dangling from its socket and her bloodied face so battered her brother didn’t recognize her in the morgue. The gruesome murder was committed five years to the day after Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba, where van der Sloot was the main suspect and whose father, who died in January, was a judge. In supporting his headline, Bajak cited the fact that “the only case in the past five years where he’s known to have ...

Permalink Comments

Shooting victim doesn’t feel getting shot due to alcoholism; he wouldn’t have gotten shot were it not for same.

August 10, 2010 at 8:45 am · Filed under 5 - Amazing Alcoholic Antics

Story from “This is True” by Randy Cassingham, with his “tagline:” “UNDEAD II: Tracy Durham, 48, had a party at his place in Peoria, Ill. ‘I was drunk,’ he says. He won't say who was over for the party, but he remembers telling a friend his girlfriend was ugly. As Durham took another swig from his bottle, he remembers hearing a ‘pop’, but he went back to his party, then slept off his drinks. The next day a neighbor noticed he was limping, and came over to ask why. ‘It looks like you've been shot,’ the neighbor observed. Durham was, through his thigh, and hadn't even noticed. ‘If it were a big, gaping hole, like from a .45, you'd probably take ...

Permalink Comments

Lonnie David Franklin, Jr., was a serial murderer. But he was a “nice guy.” Huh? Only alcoholism can explain such dichotomies.

August 2, 2010 at 10:36 am · Filed under General

Lonnie David Franklin, Jr., Now Linked to The Grim Sleeper Killings, Again Proves we can’t Predict how Destructive an Addict may Become—or When It was an open secret that Lonnie David Franklin, Jr., who fronted as a neighborhood mechanic, dismantled stolen cars and sold the parts from his big backyard in South Los Angeles. However, no one thought he was capable of murder, must less serial murder. Franklin was either a “beer drinking buddy” or on the wagon. He was at times a father figure to adolescent women and at others a pervert talking about nothing but sex and drugs. He was always willing to help out a neighbor, except when he was so paranoid he wouldn’t even go to his street ...

Permalink Comments

Runners-up: Mel Gibson and Rod Blagojevich are no strangers to this report, but Bret Carr is new–and classic.

August 2, 2010 at 10:35 am · Filed under General

Mel Gibson, 54, whose clue to insobriety included a tirade in which he told his Russian girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, 39, “If you get raped by a pack of n***ers, it will be your fault,” because she apparently looked too sexy. By many accounts he’s outdone his previous outburst, for which he made “Top Story” in the August 2006 edition of TAR, which not only described Gibson’s arrest, but also explained why relapses are so darned common in alcoholics. At the time Gibson said that pain is a necessary precursor to change. He admitted he was “completely out of control” when he was arrested and was “deeply ashamed” for having driven when he “should not have” and for exhibiting “belligerent behavior.” ...

Permalink Comments

Crony capitalist Villalobos may be one of many reasons California’s pension fund CalPERS is broke.

August 2, 2010 at 9:55 am · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

Crony capitalist Alfred R. Villalobos, who has been named in a state influence-peddling lawsuit, filing for bankruptcy in Nevada with almost $5 million owed to Nevada casinos in addition to other debts. Villalobos was a deputy mayor of Los Angeles for five months in 1993 and a board member of CalPERS, California’s giant pension fund, from 1993 to 1995. Over the last dozen years, Villalobos took in more than $50 million in commissions for brokering billion dollar deals between investment managers and CalPERS, as well as other government pension funds. One can only imagine how prolific a gambler, as the Attorney General’s office put it, he must be. The AG office is opposing the Nevada bankruptcy filing, arguing that Villalobos’ ...

Permalink Comments

Everyone from babies to FBI agents can suffer at the hands of addicts.

August 2, 2010 at 9:54 am · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

Alcoholic victims of the month: A 6-month-old baby, whose parents, Patrick Fousek, 38 and Samantha Tomasini, 20, tried to sell for $25 outside a Wal-Mart in Salinas, CA. What drug could possibly impel not just one parent but both to try to sell their child at a Wal-Mart? There’s really only one. When officers later arrested the couple at their home, they appeared to be high on methamphetamine and the house was in disarray (and for this to be mentioned by police we can’t imagine how great the disarray must have been). They were charged with child endangerment and being under the influence of narcotics. Fousek was also charged with—are you ready?—violating probation. I’m shocked, just shocked. Some 300 current and retired ...

Permalink Comments

Judge Revel tries to save Lindsay Lohan’ life.

August 2, 2010 at 9:52 am · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

Disenabler of the month: Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Marsha N. Revel, who after listening to actress Lindsay Lohan’s promises to do better and her defense of an “inadvertent” failure to attend weekly alcohol education classes and follow other orders, sentenced Lohan to 90 days in jail for repeatedly violating the terms of her probation. The case stems from two arrests for DUI in 2007, for which Lohan was originally given only probation. Judge Revel called Lohan on her lies, including never admitting to driving vehicles involved in two (apparently unrelated) accidents (“someone else was driving”), about the white substance (cocaine) found in her pants (“the pants belong to someone else”) and her claim that she couldn’t attend the Cannes International ...

Permalink Comments

So long to Trivial Pursuit marketing whiz Chris Haney…along with a couple of guys who did good after getting sober.

August 2, 2010 at 9:51 am · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

Sometimes, it takes an addict: Chris Haney, a former Canadian journalist who with Scott Abbott, a sports writer for the Canadian Press, co-created the best-selling board game Trivial Pursuit, dead at age 59 after a long illness, which included kidney and circulatory problems. Haney often described himself as “a beer-swilling high school dropout” whose biggest mistake was quitting school at 17 because, as he’d tell reporters, “I should have done it when I was 12.” He and Abbott were housemates in the late 1970s when he complained about paying $11 for a Scrabble set, saying, “There must be a lot of money in games. Why don’t we invent one?” Haney soon quit his day job to work full time on the ...

Permalink Comments

Welfare recipients will go wild until screened for addiction. Then lay down the rules.

August 2, 2010 at 8:56 am · Filed under 6 - Public Policy Recommendations

Yet another reason why welfare recipients should be screened for alcohol and other-drug addiction, with random and regular follow-up testing California state officials recently acknowledged that hundreds of thousands of dollars in welfare payments have been dispensed monthly by ATMs in casinos and strip clubs. Officials are doing what they can to prevent such abuse by making it so ATMs in such locations will not dispense state cash. While such abuse has so far cost the state at least $5 million, a relatively insignificant amount in a state with an admitted $19 billion budget gap, the old saying, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” may apply. While there’s no question many welfare recipients wouldn’t survive without state aid or charity (the latter of ...

Permalink Comments

Disenabling son impeded by enabling mother

August 2, 2010 at 8:55 am · Filed under 3 - Dear Doug...

Laying blame Dear Doug: My son refuses to respond to his cousins’ text messages because they both have a history of using drugs. How can I explain to my son that the drug use is not his cousins’ fault, and that it’s their mother’s fault because she has had longstanding drug issues? Signed, Trying to get the kids together . . . . Dear Codependent, Other columnists would suggest your son should be trusted to use his own judgment. They might have you encourage him to understand whatever drives the cousins but warn you that forcing him into a relationship could spell trouble. They’d also tell you that it’s possible there is more to the story than you know. Such columnists would be tip-toeing around the issue, ...

Permalink Comments

People who act terribly tend to be drinkers because the addictive drinking makes them that way

August 2, 2010 at 8:50 am · Filed under 4 - Alcoholic Myth of the Month

“Prohibition….propaganda blamed alcohol for the destruction of the family, the persistence of poverty, the high rate of crime, the problem of illiteracy, and the ubiquity of sin generally. Clearly, their arguments were widely accepted even though it is all a big and fallacious mix-up of cause and effect. It's not that liquor caused all these terrible things; it's that the people who engage in terrible behaviors tend to also be drinkers.” So claimed Jeffrey A. Tucker in an article entitled “Repeal the Drinking Age” at www.Mises.org. Even my fellow libertarians, including those writing for a think-tank whose work is devoted to educating others about the ideas of the greatest economist ever (Ludwig von Mises), can get alcoholism backwards. Yet Prohibition propaganda wasn’t ...

Permalink Comments

Don’t bother mixing alcohol with warning signs; voodoo fails to protect con man

August 2, 2010 at 8:47 am · Filed under 5 - Amazing Alcoholic Antics

Story from “This is True” by Randy Cassingham, with his “tagline:” “WHAT PART OF "DO NOT TOUCH" DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? Willie Eugene Lewis climbed a fence (posted "DANGER: Hazardous Voltage Inside -- KEEP OUT!") at a power station in Talladega, Ala. He then climbed onto the equipment, says Police Chief Alan Watson, and suffered a 40,000 volt shock. ("Alcohol should not be ruled out as a factor," according to Watson.) Lewis then climbed back over the fence and walked to a hospital for help. He was listed in critical condition with burns over 90 percent of his body. The only specific injury Watson could bring himself to report was that Lewis "burned off his genitals."(Talladega Daily Home) ...Thus making "Willie" a ...

Permalink Comments

Accidents usually require an alcoholic. “Accidents” include great and tragic ones, like oil spills.

June 14, 2010 at 11:20 am · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

Most accidents require an alcoholic. This includes great and tragic ones, including oil gushers. Accidents are unplanned, unexpected and adverse events. Absent the whims of nature, arguably well over half of these events involve alcoholism. In Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse, a study of automobile plant employees is cited that reported an 82 percent reduction in accidents a year after treating its employees for alcoholism. Other studies are cited showing that at least one of the participants in 70 to 90 percent of snowmobile, workplace and incendiary accidents is under the influence at the time of the incident, which is an almost certain indicator of alcoholism. On pages 66-67 of How to Spot Hidden ...

Permalink Comments (1)

Lots of runners-up, including a Congressman who thinks Guam could tip over and sink.

June 14, 2010 at 11:14 am · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

Runners-up for top story of the month: Tiger Woods, who has reportedly blamed cheating on his drug addiction which, he says, impaired his judgment. This is one of those classic instances where almost everyone is looking in the wrong place: his obvious sexual compulsions. Since alcohol and other-drug addiction most often provides the springboard for compulsive behaviors, especially of the destructive variety, they are eyeing only a symptom (and probably one of many that go unreported). It’s also said that a full-time outpatient therapist now monitors Tiger to keep him from taking drugs and cheating. Most people still think he is merely a “sex addict” and that once this is treated everything will be fine. Memo to Tiger: no, it won’t ...

Permalink Comments

Under watch: Melissa Huckabee and investment adviser Albert Vilar. Our codependent is the British medical journal “The Lancet”.

June 14, 2010 at 11:10 am · Filed under 1 - Top Stories

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, recent stories follow for which the evidence of alcoholism is in the behavior itself. Melissa Huckaby, 29, pleading guilty to the 2009 slaying of her daughter’s 8-year-old playmate Sandra Cantu in Tracy, California, in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table and dropping charges of rape. She had previously been charged ...

Permalink Comments

« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page »Next entries » — Next Page »