June 14, 2010 at 11:05 am ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Enablers of the month:
Orange County, California sheriff’s deputies, who allowed fellow Deputy Allan James Waters, 36, to keep driving his Mercedes-Benz after one accident—only to be called to another incident 30 minutes later in which he injured another driver. This time, they arrested him for DUI. Message to cops: you don’t do anyone favors by offering “professional courtesies”. As is true throughout the field of alcoholism, helping only hurts and, sometimes, kills.
Singer Whitney Houston’s sister-in-law Pat Houston, who told reporters, “Whitney is doing fine. Some people have said cruel things, but she’s happy just to have rested in [London’s Dorchester] hotel” after a hospital stay with an “upper respiratory infection” and “allergies.” A month earlier she was seen “partying” with ...
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June 14, 2010 at 11:02 am ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Sometimes, it takes an addict:
Actor Dennis Hopper, dead from complications of advanced prostate cancer at age 74. According to Rolling Stone Magazine, Hopper was one of “Hollywood’s most notorious drug addicts for 20 years.” For a period in the 1970s he was ostracized by Hollywood for being a “difficult” actor. No wonder: for the last five years before he stopped drinking and drugging in the mid-‘80s, his addiction had grown to “doing half a gallon of rum with a fifth of rum on the side, 28 beers and 3 grams of cocaine a day—and that wasn’t getting high, that was just to keep going.” He was married five times, including to Michelle Phillips for two weeks and, more recently, Victoria ...
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June 14, 2010 at 11:01 am ·
Filed under 6 - Public Policy Recommendations
Those convicted of hit-and-run should be treated as if they were under the influence for purposes of sentencing.
Since motorists committing hit and runs are almost always under the influence, I’ve long thought they should be treated as DUIs in the criminal justice system. Now someone is working toward that goal, albeit with different wording: defendants convicted of hit-and-run would face the same prison terms as drunk drivers who cause accidents.
USC student Adriana Bachan, 18, was killed by a DUI in the early hours of March 29, 2009. Claudia Cabrera, 31, had been drinking at a party earlier in the evening. Her driver’s license was already suspended and a lawsuit was pending in connection with a previous collision. Bachan was in ...
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June 14, 2010 at 11:00 am ·
Filed under 3 - Dear Doug...
Dear Doug
There are so many possibilities this month: the verbally (and sometimes physically) abusive foul-mouthed mother whose third husband appears to have no idea about her past….the woman who divorced her husband over two years ago and who, despite the fact that he belittles and trashes her and is “manic-depressive,” she lets stay in her home because he claims to be broke after gambling it all away and she would feel guilty about forcing him out….the sister who complains that her parents enable her recently graduated unemployed 27-year-old brother who told her “the magic bill-paying fairies” take care of his expenses while he plays video games and “gets high”….the woman who worries that her sister, who “may have a mental ...
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June 14, 2010 at 10:58 am ·
Filed under 4 - Alcoholic Myth of the Month
“Middle-schoolers who are forbidden to watch R-rated movies are less likely to start drinking than peers whose parents are more lenient about such films.”
So found researchers at Dartmouth Medical School, reporting that among those whose parents let them watch R-rated movies “all the time,” almost a quarter had drank without their parents’ knowledge. Only 3% had tried a drink among those “never allowed” to watch R-rated movies. While the researchers controlled for parenting style, there was nothing said about the parents’ level of alcohol use and alcoholism.
Aligning cause and effect between movies and drinking ignores the fact that the less disciplined a child, the greater the likelihood that a parent is an alcohol or other-drug addict (“out of control children” ...
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June 14, 2010 at 10:57 am ·
Filed under 5 - Amazing Alcoholic Antics
It was quite a challenge to select this month’s antic. It could have been Elsa Benson, 53, who likes to call 911 on non-emergencies (“my husband won’t eat his supper”) when she gets drunk (30 calls in one recent six-month period); Gregory J. Oras, 37, who called 911 three times saying he was being attacked and who, when officers arrived finding no signs of a fight, asked that the nice officers give him a ride to a local bar (he was instead driven to a place with other kinds of bars); or Lorraine Bulloch who, during an argument with her brother over the fact that he brought home the wrong brand of beer, threw a knife that missed him and ...
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June 7, 2010 at 8:22 am ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
March-May 2010 / Issue No. 54
You may have been wondering about TAR.
We released at least one during every tax season since beginning publication in August 2005. Your faithful correspondent just didn't get inspired enough by any particular event to come up with a Top Story during this year's busy Season, and without a Top Story it's tough to get motivated on the rest (even though there were plenty of less important stories to write about).
In addition, since the end of Season I've caught up on real life (including business in both Las Vegas and Colorado) and written a speech I'll be giving in June before the California Society of Enrolled Agents, which requires a 20-30 page workbook ...
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January 22, 2010 at 12:45 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
More Evidence that Terrorism is Fueled by Addiction to Psychotropic Substances: The Possible Role of Khat
In an article written in 2001 I suggested that Osama bin Laden might be addicted to opiates and hashish, and that many of the 9-11 attackers were likely alcoholics. In cases too numerous to mention, from "Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse" to this Report, a far greater percentage of despots, mass murderers and cultists have been identified as alcohol or other-drug addicts than would be expected by mere chance or if we ignore the role that addiction plays in fueling megalomania. Evidence supports the idea that while not every terrorist is an addict, those who are not are ...
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January 22, 2010 at 12:42 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Runners-up for top story of the month:
Eldrick Tont “Tiger” Woods, involved in a 2 a.m. accident that seemed inexplicable, until the world learned of: (1) his serial adultery with more than a dozen women (sexually compulsive; borrowing the methodology from "Drunks, Drugs & Debits," 50% odds of alcoholism), (2) the fact that he seems to have met most of these women in nightclubs and that most if not all of the women appear to be “party” girls (addicts often hang out with addicts; by itself probably 20%, but add 20% of the remaining 50%, or 10%; see “enablers of the month” below for the luscious details), (3) that with at least two of the women he not only didn’t use ...
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January 22, 2010 at 12:40 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
In an early 2009 piece on white collar crime, The Economist magazine mentioned 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 haven’t figured this out might benefit from greater introspection. In the spirit of The Economist’s discovery, a litany of recent stories follow for which the evidence of alcoholism is in the behavior itself.
Ivana Trump, 60, ex-wife of The Donald, forcibly removed from a Delta jet after throwing a tantrum. Dr. Keith Williams, his wife Melissa and their children, 2-year-old Hailey and 10-month-old Ethan, were in the row behind her four first-row first-class seats—all purchased for ...
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January 22, 2010 at 12:39 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Alcoholic victims of the month:
Jonathan and Susan Maloney, ages 45 and 42, along with their two children, victims of alcoholism while alive and dead. After they were killed when broadsided by Steven Culbertson, 19, their home was burglarized. Culbertson, who later died, already had at least one DUI on his record and was seen drinking at a Petaluma, California bar shortly before he ran a red light at 70 to 90 mph. A few days later, shortly after their home was ransacked, sheriff’s deputies arrested Amber Marie True, 29, after pulling her over for a routine traffic stop and finding a credit card belonging to Susan Maloney in her possession. After finding other items owned by the Maloney’s in her ...
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January 22, 2010 at 12:38 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Enablers of the month:
Golf reporters, who obviously didn’t want to risk losing what little access they had to Tiger Woods; Woods’ handlers, who didn’t want to risk losing their jobs; and Woods’ fellow players, who no doubt kept secrets because of Woods’ beneficial effect on their earnings from the increased public interest in golf, not to mention TV ratings.
Tiger Woods’ mistresses, including Rachel Uchitel, NYC club hostess; Jamie Grubbs, cocktail waitress;Kalika Moquin, club manager/promoter from Las Vegas (and least likely to be a co-addict based on her pictures; very cute and earthy); Jamie Jungers, “cute, but totally trashy lingerie model” from Vegas; Mindy Lawton, trailer park waitress; Cori Rist, aspiring model who met Woods at a Manhattan club last year ...
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January 22, 2010 at 12:37 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Headlines of the month:
“Brittany Murphy Likely Died From Natural Causes.” So said the PopEater headline reporting LA County Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter’s take on the 32-year-old’s untimely death from cardiac arrest. However, Murphy, whose claim to fame began with 1995’s “Clueless” and continued in films including “Girl, Interrupted,” reportedly suffered from diabetes and used a lot of cocaine over the years, which can cause sudden death. Her husband, Simon Monjack, 39, reportedly disrupted the set of “Shrinking Charlotte” by showing up inebriated. In a case of possible co-addict enabling, Murphy reportedly shelled out a lot of money over civil judgments against Monjack. Likely death from complications of diabetes and, despite having diabetes, psychotropic drug use should never be referred ...
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January 22, 2010 at 12:35 pm ·
Filed under 2 - Movie & Book Reviews
Review: The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson and The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
One of the greatest financial books (Ferguson’s) and one of the best books on philosophy and, indirectly, finance ever written (Taleb’s) would not be expected to be of interest to the addictionologist. However, I have long said that history cannot be understood without comprehending the idea of alcoholic egomania, which due to the resulting need to wield power over others has caused so many addicts to markedly affect history. This includes large chunks of financial history, as detailed in The Ascent of Money.
I’ve written elsewhere (see in particular the August 2007 issue of ...
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January 22, 2010 at 12:33 pm ·
Filed under 3 - Dear Doug...
Should I tell my 13-year-old granddaughter that her six-times divorced grandfather abused me?
Dear Doug:
I divorced my husband over 20 years ago because he mentally and physically abused me. He and his seventh wife attend family gatherings which, when too intimate, I refuse to attend. I have not and will not discuss this with my 40-year-old son, but wonder if I should tell my 13-year-old granddaughter the truth if she should ask.
Signed,
Single at 65
. . . . .
Dear Codependent,
Other columnists might rightly chastise you for refusing to discuss with your son the abuse at his father’s hands while showing a willingness to discuss it with a 13-year-old. However, they’d tell you the reason for not discussing it is that it’s not ...
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