January 22, 2010 at 12:31 pm ·
Filed under 4 - Alcoholic Myth of the Month
“You can cut back on alcohol.”
So found a survey by the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, reported by Shari Roan in the L.A. Times, regarding the reported 30% of Americans who had experienced an alcohol “disorder.” The study reportedly found that about 70% quit drinking or cut back to “safe consumption patterns” without treatment after four years or less and that only 1% fit the “stereotypical image” of someone with severe, recurring alcoholism who has “hit the skids.”
Unfortunately, such statistical “findings” can seriously mislead and are, in fact, downright dangerous.
Only 10% of Americans are estimated to have the disease of alcoholism. Of the 30% of Americans experiencing a “disorder” in the study, 20% are, therefore, non-addicts. Many ...
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January 22, 2010 at 10:28 am ·
Filed under 5 - Amazing Alcoholic Antics
Story from “This is True” by Randy Cassingham, with his “tagline:”
“EASILY RECOGNIZABLE: Police say Mark Weinberger, a plastic surgeon from Merrillville, Ind., talked patients into expensive surgical procedures and either did a bad job or just took the money and did nothing. The 46-year-old doctor then ran, even taking survival gear so he could hide in the wild, leaving behind hundreds of patients and insurance companies claiming fraud or malpractice, more than $5 million in debts, and his wife. Now, five years later, police in Italy found him hiding in a tent at 6,000' on Mont Blanc. After his arrest, Weinberger took out a hidden box cutter and slit his own throat, but missed all critical structures and survived. He ...
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November 19, 2009 at 11:37 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Chremes: “And what vice [is] the vilest?”
Pamphilus: “Drunkennesse, for it makes a Beast of a Man.”
--Nicholas Breton, An Olde Mans Lesson and a Young Mans Love, 1605
Drug-addicted enabler to Anthony Sowell, Lori Frazier—and a slew of drug-addicted victims
The criminal justice system is filled with addicts, who often were arrested by addicts, judged by them and guarded by them. Victims are also frequently addicts. While too often an innocent was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, becoming victim to a stray bullet, a vehicular homicide or a robbery, the number of occasions where the victim is another addict is probably woefully underestimated.
It doesn’t make it any less tragic, as so often addicts of all stripes are decent human ...
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November 19, 2009 at 11:36 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Tessa Zelek, 25, found guilty on two counts of cruelty to children, four counts of contributing to the deprivation of a minor and two counts of prescription drug forgery. Zelek, who fed her twins so little that at 13 months they reportedly looked like skeletons and weighed only nine pounds each (more than 50% underweight for their age), blamed the pediatrician for failing to tell her what and when to feed them and give proper parenting advice. The twins’ father, James McCart, also 25, copped a plea and admitted he didn’t “know how many days went by that the kids weren’t fed. I thought like two, but I’m not sure.” What could possible distort the perceptions of parents to the ...
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November 19, 2009 at 11:35 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Former Japanese finance minister Shoichi Nakagawa, 56, found by his wife lying face down in bed in their Tokyo home, dead of uncertain causes but with “numerous anomalies in his cardiovascular system as well as the presence of alcohol,” according to the Tokyo metropolitan police department. Nakagawa was a “runner-up” in the February-April 2009 edition of TAR, having slurred his speech and repeatedly appeared to doze off at a meeting of finance ministers focusing on the world’s economic mess, followed by a bizarre visit to the Vatican Museums in which he touched various exhibits that mere mortals like the rest of us would never dream of getting too close to (take a look at this and you’ll understand why). Oh, ...
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November 19, 2009 at 11:33 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Timothy Willgruber, 56, who took his own life a week after he killed his twin brother Thomas Willgruber in a freak “accident” (see the discussion on Heath Ledger’s death in the March 2008 edition of TAR for my view of such “accidents”) for which he was facing charges of homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence. After both were drinking while driving to the Bethlehem, PA annual Celtic Fest, Timothy was having trouble parallel parking. When Thomas hopped out of the vehicle to help, Timothy backed into the spot and pinned Thomas between their minivan bumper and a sport utility vehicle, killing him. Such antics weren’t new: Thomas had previously pled guilty for DUI in 2000 and Timothy had ...
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November 19, 2009 at 11:31 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, pleading guilty to lying to the White House while being vetted for the top Homeland Security post and for income tax evasion. As Commissioner on 9-11, he won glowing reviews for his leadership—all the while filing false tax returns (he has promised to refile 1999 through 2003 and 2005). As discussed in Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse, most crimes, including white-collar crimes such as tax evasion, are committed by alcoholics. Other clues to likely alcoholism include abandoning an illegitimate Korean daughter, accepting undisclosed gifts from firms doing business with New York City while Commissioner, having at least two mistresses, being expelled from Saudi Arabia after ...
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November 19, 2009 at 11:30 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Major Malik Nadal Hasan, an army psychiatrist, who killed 14 and wounded 31 others in a mass murder at Fort Hood, Texas after getting “upset” over being given orders to deploy to Iraq. The tragedy is so well-known only one observation bears mentioning, which other commentators seem to have completely ignored: psychiatrists have access to all sorts of drugs that are capable of causing distortions of perception, egomania and grandiosity, which in rare instances can lead a person afflicted with addiction to commit mass murder. Seven-year-old boys were turned into little killing machines in the Sierra Leone civil war by feeding them drug cocktails containing tranquilizers and amphetamines. Hasan had plenty of access to such drugs. While we may be ...
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November 19, 2009 at 11:29 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Convicted swindler Bernie Madoff, accused of financing a cocaine-fueled work environment and a “culture of sexual deviance.” Bernard Madoff Investment Services was known in the 1970s by insiders as the “North Pole” due to the excessive amount of cocaine used in the work place. The complaint, brought by former investors, alleges that Madoff used stolen money for his extravagant spending, which included escorts, masseuses and topless entertainers at company parties.
Florida attorney Scott Rothstein, who according to The Wall Street Journal is being investigated by the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office for allegedly selling stakes in phony employment-dispute settlements that could rank as South Florida’s largest-ever Ponzi scheme. Known for lavish spending, Rothstein owns several mansions overlooking the canals of ...
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November 19, 2009 at 11:28 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Dr. Christopher Thompson, 60, convicted of mayhem, assault with a deadly weapon and other criminal charges after being arrested for slamming on his car’s brakes on a narrow Brentwood road with two bicycle riders right behind him, seriously injuring them. Thompson, a veteran emergency room doctor, was the subject of the January 2009 TAR Myth of the Month) after a blogger asked, “Do you really think that a prominent local member of the community—himself in the medical profession—deliberately tried to cause harm to these cyclists?” If he’s an addict, the answer is a resounding “yes!” but, unfortunately as is often the case of non-celebrity professionals, personal information is difficult to find (and in fact was redacted from many web sites, ...
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November 19, 2009 at 11:27 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Actor Nicholas Cage, who filed a $20 million lawsuit against his former business manager Samuel J. Levin, alleging that he was reckless with his money, including failing to pay more than $6 million in taxes. However, the actor purchased more than a dozen houses (including mansions in places like Newport Beach, Venice Beach, Malibu, San Francisco, Las Vegas, New York and a castle near Bath, England), two Bahamian islands, dinosaur skulls, shrunken heads, two yachts, a Gulfstream jet and at least 50 cars (including Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Rolls Royces and Bentleys). Two mansions in New Orleans have been foreclosed and he recently sold his main home in Bel Air for less than half of the $30 million he paid for it. ...
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November 19, 2009 at 11:25 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Richard and Mayumi Heene, admitting they perpetrated a hoax when they claimed their 6-year-old son Falcon floated away in a giant balloon, when in fact he was in their Fort Collins, Colorado home while the entire nation watched the drama unfold on national television. Flights in and out of Denver International Airport were rerouted and a farmer’s field was destroyed by would-be rescuers when the balloon landed without the boy and authorities feared the worst. Aside from the obvious (“He’s a great liar,” clue # 12 in the chapter entitled “A Supreme Being Complex,” How to Spot Hidden Alcoholics: Using Behavioral Clues to Recognize Addiction in Its Early Stages), Heene is known for his “extreme” risk-taking personality (“Engages in risky ...
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November 19, 2009 at 11:25 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Alcoholic victims of the month:
Katherine Willis, 15, and Melissa Elh-Mirra, 5, the two foster children in the care of Genevieve Bethea who died after her daughter, Sheila Bethea, 45, lost control of a van and slammed into another vehicle in Queens. Before pleading not guilty to manslaughter and other charges, Bethea admitted to smoking crack cocaine at 2 a.m., doing heroin at 9 a.m. and drinking “one” alcoholic beverage at noon before the crash at about 5 p.m., where she told a witness she lost control after “driving too fast.” Investigators believe she wrapped a crack pipe in tissue and hid it in a “body cavity” after the crash, which she claimed occurred because a replacement tire gave way at ...
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November 19, 2009 at 11:23 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Enablers of the month:
Facebook fans of Colton Harris-Moore, 18, who glowingly describe him as a teenage Jesse James, for being suspected of having stolen at least one boat, at least two airplanes, a thermal imaging camera (giving him night-vision capabilities for living in the woods he often lives in) and necessities. But he may not be the addict. Read on.
Colton Harris-Moore’s mother Pam Kohler, who doesn’t find much wrong with her son’s exploits. “I hope to hell he stole those airplanes. I would be so proud.” Kohler was usually unemployed while raising her son in a reportedly run-down, single-wide trailer in the woods on the south end of Camano Island, north of Seattle, Washington. She sometimes threw her young son ...
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November 19, 2009 at 11:22 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Disenabler of the month:
Mary Strey, 49, who called 911, saying “Somebody’s really drunk driving down Granton Road.” When the dispatcher asked, “Are you behind them?” Strey responded, “I am them.” “You am them?” “I don’t want to hurt anybody. I’m drunk.” She admitted to having been “drinking all night long.” With a blood alcohol level of .16 per cent, she was. It’s rare to get an honest drunk who disenables herself, but she is them.
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