June 3, 2008 at 6:50 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Runners-up for top story of the month:
Hawaii State Senator Ron Menor, 52, arrested for DUI while "weaving in a snake-like motion"20 miles under the speed limit. The arresting officer saw that Menor's eyes "were red and watery, and he emitted a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage…[and his face was] flushed and he appeared extremely tired."While failing to mention drinking, he told the officer he was "on pain medication"and later said the medication "might"have been Vicodin. Menor, in a feigned mea culpa to the public, admitted he had "one to two glasses of wine"with dinner after a Chicago concert ended. He may have forgotten about his consumption at the concert preceding the late-night dinner, but his sons, ages 17 and ...
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June 3, 2008 at 6:47 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Under watch:
Chicago Bears running back Cedric Benson, 25, charged with operating a 30-foot boat on Lake Travis, near Austin, Texas with 15 passengers aboard while allegedly intoxicated and for resisting arrest after being stopped for a "random"safety check. He was pepper sprayed when according to police reports he refused to come ashore for additional sobriety tests, after allegedly failing tests applied on the police cruiser. Once in custody, he refused a breath test. Benson invited scrutiny by choosing to park his boat inside the lake's most popular cove for drinking and partying and putting himself in the middle of an ongoing police crackdown on drunken boaters in the area. Misdemeanor "drug and alcohol"charges against Benson were dropped in 2002 and ...
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June 3, 2008 at 6:45 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Disenablers of the Month:
Detroit's City Council, which has begun the process of removing Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick from office for (allegedly) lying under oath to cover up an extramarital affair with his Chief of Staff, Christine Beatty. The mayor, a Democrat, whose story was chronicled in the Top Story in last month's TAR says the City Council is persecuting him for political reasons. However, the entire council consists of Democrats. Maybe lying under oath really does matter, even if the subject is "only"about sex. On the other hand, the council members may be simply sickened by Kilpatrick's multiple shenanigans.
Porter, Indiana Superior Court Judge David Chidester was fed up with Stephanie Pochron's repeated arrests for DUI, the latest one of which resulted ...
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June 3, 2008 at 6:43 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Sometimes, it takes an addict:
Writer Elaine Dundy, born Elaine Brimberg and married (1951-1964) to theater critic and New Yorker writer Kenneth Tynan, dead from a heart attack at age 86. Dundy was best known for her novel, The Dud Avocado (1958), and her memoir, Life Itself! (2001). The former chronicled a young woman coming of age through a series of alcoholic-fueled sexual misadventures in the decadent Paris of the 1950s, while the latter revealed, among other frothy anecdotes, her sexual exploits with Tynan, including having sex while being caned. She explained she stayed in the relationship partly because of a fear he would commit suicide if she left him and partly because of her own "sickness,"which she described as "the ...
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June 3, 2008 at 6:42 pm ·
Filed under 2 - Movie & Book Reviews
Review: "Prison Break"Seasons 1 and 2: Great Television
Many say we must be willing to suspend belief to appreciate "Prison Break."I'm not sure that the numerous plot twists, coincidences, contrived sub-plots and absurd cliffhangers are any more incredible than the imprisonment of his daughter and their children by the Austrian, Josef Fritzl, for over two decades. It's only when so much is combined into one riveting and mind-numbingly suspenseful series that we need to be willing to say, "To hell with reality."Unless you prefer biographies, this is what great cinema is all about.
And "Prison"is great. The cinematography, writing, character development, plot progression and acting are superb. The suspense is on par with that of "24,"which is to say it's something few ...
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June 3, 2008 at 6:39 pm ·
Filed under 3 - Dear Doug...
Brags about sex
Dear Doug:
I've been seeing a man who occasionally tells me about his past loves and the number of women he's been with. Once in a while he tells me how great sex is when you're high, even though he knows I don't do drugs. When we're not in bed every night, he tells me he is "used to having sex and lots of it."I've told him I don't want to hear this sort of talk, but he foams at the mouth anyway. We're both in our 50s and have grown children from previous marriages. What's your take?
Signed,
Unimpressed
. . . .
Dear Codependent,
Some observers may suggest the fact that your boyfriend is desperate to impress you with his sexual history ...
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June 3, 2008 at 6:37 pm ·
Filed under 4 - Alcoholic Myth of the Month
Asked by U.S. District Court Judge Gary A. Feess why he became involved in a robbery ring of rogue LAPD cops, Gabriel Loaiza responded, "I have no excuse. Just plain stupidity.â€
Loaiza's cousin Ruben Palomares, the ringleader, told Feess that he failed to face up to "problems"as a young police officer. Palomares, now 38, told the judge, "Instead of facing my problems, I ran from them.â€
So wrote Scott Glover in an L.A. Times piece, "Rogue LAPD cop gets 13 years,"on the sentencing of both Loaiza and Palomares. As usual in the media, the focus is on symptoms ("stupidity"and "problemsâ€) rather than root causes. Even recovering addicts years into sobriety make this mistake.
The trouble is journalists are limited in terms of offering ...
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June 3, 2008 at 6:36 pm ·
Filed under 5 - Amazing Alcoholic Antics
Story from "This is True"by Randy Cassingham, with his "tagline:â€
"SOMEHOW, THEY REMINDED HIM OF MOM: Dancers at a strip club in Tampa, Fla., called the sheriff about a customer. ‘It was the way he was acting,' one said -- not just that he was intoxicated, but it was the baby. ‘I asked, 'Where's the mom?',' the dancer said, but the man was ‘evasive' about why he had the 6-month-old, and what he was doing with it. Finally, the man blurted out his plan: ‘I need someone to watch the baby for a week or two,' he told the dancer, Minouche Eliasin. ‘I'll come back,' he promised. ‘You guys are so nice. Thanks, I appreciate it.' By then deputies had arrived ...
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May 3, 2008 at 6:34 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Evidence offered in "Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse" suggests that roughly 80% of serially erratic misbehaviors can be explained by alcohol or other-drug addiction. Unfortunately, since addictive use is often hidden from pubic view by enablers, in ratcheting up or down the likelihood that addiction explains poor conduct, we are often stuck at 80%. This is particularly true among CEOs, doctors, lawyers, other professionals--and politicians.
Most celebrities and professional athletes who misbehave are almost always "outed" by journalists. The fact that such behaviors in celebrities who are known alcoholics are similar to those of politicians, etc., in whom heavy drinking is never reported--and for whom enablers abound--is damning evidence that alcoholism is the driving ...
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May 3, 2008 at 6:31 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Runners-up for top story of the month:
Actor Wesley Snipes, convicted of three counts of willfully failing to file tax returns and sentenced to three years in prison in the IRS's highest-profile criminal tax case in decades. Insight into Snipes' convoluted thinking, likely rooted in long-term psychotropic drug addiction, can be found in the January 2007 edition of the Thorburn Addiction Report (http://preventragedy.com/pages/TAR/027.jan07.html). There's more, below, under "enabler of the month."
Actor Gary Busey, evicted from his rented Malibu home on which he allegedly owes more than $50,000 in back rent. Busey was last seen in court in 2004 when refusing to pay $52,000 in past-due rents, according to his attorney because of mold in the house. Friends admit that while Busey ...
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May 3, 2008 at 6:29 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Under watch:
Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is one of the many top law enforcers in whom we have no definitive proof of alcoholism but whose behaviors indicate this disease. The key hallmark of hidden early-stage alcoholism, egomania, has been evident in Spitzer for years. Proving alcoholism in an influential politician in whom no one suspected it could break the budding field of addiction identification based on behavior patterns wide open. It is in the hope that Mr. Spitzer might be that "someone" that previous observations are recounted.
From the May 2005 issue of the Thorburn Addiction Report:
"New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, publicly airing charges of fraud by former AIG CEO Maurice 'Hank' Greenberg, not only before charges have ...
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May 3, 2008 at 6:27 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Helen Golay, 77 and Olga Rutterschmidt, 75, convicted of murdering two homeless men for $2.8 million in life insurance. In a carefully plotted scheme, the women picked the men off the streets, purchased numerous small insurance policies on them (keeping off insurers' radar), paid for apartments for the two years--the period after which insurers generally cannot contest a policy--and either ran them over or had them run over in dark alleys. The women were allegedly partners in a number of bogus lawsuits before trading up to murder in the late '90s. Let us assume alcohol or pharmaceutical drug addiction explains their horrific behaviors. Instead of being given the opportunity to get clean and sober a few decades ago and living ...
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May 3, 2008 at 6:25 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Under watch:
Orange County, California Deputy Sheriffs, who allegedly lied, fabricated stories and even compared notes after being ordered not to discuss the case by a grand jury investigating a deadly beating at Theo Lacy Jail. During 45 days of questioning, members of the Sheriff's Department hindered the probe to a degree the likes of which have rarely become so publicly obvious, with then-Sheriff Michael S. Carona leading the fray. Carona, who qualified for Top Story in TAR's November 2007 issue, refused to answer a single question, including whether he was the county's sheriff on the day John Derek Chamberlain, a computer technician held on suspicion of possessing child pornography, was beaten by fellow inmates over a 50 minute period. According ...
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May 3, 2008 at 6:23 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Co-Dependent of the Month:
Jamie Spears, pop star Britney Spears' dad, giving in to her tirades by letting her drink wine with dinner "as a way to relax" and because the young, tragic alcoholic convinced Jamie that "a steak dinner isn't complete" without a glass of red wine. Reportedly, when her mother Lynne asked Britney if she was drinking, she responded, "Daddy said I could. It's just wine." Message to Jamie: while a glass of wine can be a "way to relax" to a non-addict, it is an open invitation to begin a full-blown relapse to an addict.
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May 3, 2008 at 6:19 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Enablers of the Month:
Family members, friends and fellow actors Woody Harrelson and Denzel Washington, who attested to actor Wesley Snipes' "compassion, intelligence and value as a mentor" in letters to the court asking for leniency at Snipes' sentencing, where he was given three years in prison on three counts of misdemeanor failure to file tax returns (incredibly, he was acquitted on felony charges of tax evasion). Such comments stand in stark contrast to those made by journalist Chris Parry, who recounts a day on the set of "Blade: Trinity" in a piece entitled, "Drugs, Stand-Ins, Mood Swings and Legal Action: The Real Wesley Snipes," describing Snipes as a "drug-affected, moody, uncooperative piece of garbage, masquerading as an actor while all ...
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