August 6, 2007 at 9:33 am ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
An unnamed flight attendant on a Continental Airlines flight operated by Express-Jet, who forced Kate Penland and her 19-month-old son off the plane because the toddler kept saying, "Bye-bye plane." The attendant told Penland "you need to shut your baby up!" and, when Penland protested, said "It's called baby Benadryl." When Penland said she wasn't going to drug her baby, other passengers stood up for her, including one who told the flight attendant, "You're overstepping your boundary." The attendant replied, "This is my plane," and reportedly told the pilot that Penland had made a threat. Penland filed a complaint with Express-Jet and went public only after receiving no reply for a month. Symptoms of alcoholism include power trips and making ...
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August 6, 2007 at 9:32 am ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Nancy Miller, creator of the new TNT show "Saving Grace" and its lead character Grace, an obviously alcoholic detective played by Holly Hunter. According to columnist John Jergensen of iThe Wall Street Journal, Miller says the character "isn't an alcoholic, though she concedes ‘there are times when she drinks too much.'" The pilot episode portrays Grace as an erratic, misbehaving, promiscuous tramp who pours whiskey in her morning soda. If Ms. Miller reverses cause and effect and fails to identify the driving force of her own character's egomania, writers might deal only with symptoms rather than the underlying cause and help perpetuate the myth that "the pressures of the job made her turn to alcohol" and similar nonsense. At least ...
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August 6, 2007 at 9:31 am ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
NASA, the space agency. An independent panel, created after Astronut Lisa Nowak ("Myth-of-the-Month" and "Antic-of-the-Month" in the February 2007 edition of the www.addictionreport.com) drove 900 miles to attack her romantic rival, found "heavy use of alcohol" by an unspecified number of astronauts within 12 hours of take-off. On two occasions, flight surgeons and other astronauts warned NASA that astronauts were so drunk they posed a safety risk yet were allowed to fly, again showing what functional alcoholics are capable of and what they can get away with. NASA will likely "protect" the offenders as they may have done decades ago with Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr., who was plastered (hence, "Buzz")until two days before lift-off for his lunar mission. This ...
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August 6, 2007 at 9:31 am ·
Filed under 2 - Movie & Book Reviews
Time magazine's cover story on addiction,
"How We Get Addicted"
The cover story in the July 16, 2007 edition of Time ("The Science of Addiction," by Michael D. Lemonick, a recovering addict, with Alice Park) provides evidence that something goes haywire in the brain of addicts as a result of use, which supports the idea of addiction as a brain disease. While the story combined a number of non-substance addictions with the drugs, because of the role of dopamine in driving the reward circuits in non-substance compulsions I won't quibble. It explained the reason why "90 meetings in 90 days" works as well as it does to put the addict on the road to long-term sobriety (this appears to be "how ...
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August 6, 2007 at 9:30 am ·
Filed under 3 - Dear Doug...
Dear Doug: Elder Helper Abused by Siblings
Dear Doug:
For 10 years I was the main caregiver for my elderly parents and had no life of my own. While I spent many sleepless nights by their bedsides, my siblings pursued their careers, built retirement nest eggs and purchased mansion-sized homes. Because our parents did not need to go into a retirement home, we all received a substantial inheritance.
When our folks died, my brother and sister demanded that I move so the house could be sold. My sister screamed abusive invectives at me when she couldn't get her hands on Mother's dining room set and lied that I had stolen our Mother's collectibles, which were later found in my sister's home. While ...
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August 6, 2007 at 9:29 am ·
Filed under 4 - Alcoholic Myth of the Month
"Al Gore lll may not have a drug problem...If Gore lll does not have a drug problem, he should not be forced into treatment."
So said Tony Newman, communications director at the Drug Policy Alliance, in a piece entitled "Lessons learned from Al Gore lll" in which he thanked California's Proposition 36 for allowing treatment rather than imposing jail time for the first two nonviolent drug offenses.
Sorry Mr. Newman, but the odds that Gore lll does not have the disease of addiction are remote. He was caught driving at about 100 mph at 2:15 a.m. without a prescription for drugs found in his possession. Marijuana possession, for which he was arrested in 2003, and Adderall, which is used for attention deficit ...
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August 6, 2007 at 9:26 am ·
Filed under 5 - Amazing Alcoholic Antics
Story from "This is Trus" by Randy Cassingham, with his "tagline:"
"CAN'T CATCH ME EITHER: A patrol officer in Orange Beach, Ala., saw a speeding car, but it sped up when he tried to pull it over. The ensuing chase exceeded 100 mph until the fleeing driver sideswiped another car and flipped. The cop's patrol car camera captured what happened next: he cautiously approached with his gun drawn, unsure of what sort of desperate felon he was dealing with. Then, "you can see his reaction on the video," Police Chief Greg Duck said. "He was expecting someone else." What he found was a drunk 11-year-old girl at the wheel. Duck refused to specify how drunk, but the girl was beyond even ...
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July 26, 2007 at 4:42 pm ·
Filed under General
A reporter asks, "Despite the efforts of law enforcement, the number [of DUIs] has not significantly dropped....Have we hit a point where we can't further reduce the number of people killed in drunken-driving accidents?"
In researching my book on identifying DUIs before they become tragically obvious ("Get Out of the Way! How to Identify and Avoid a Driver Under the Influence"), I learned of a study proving that for every traffic violator who was under the influence and arrested for DUI, almost four were let back on the road. I realized that cops are no more capable of identifying the highly-functional early-stage alcoholic at a .15 per cent BAL than bartenders are, or anyone else. Such alcoholics just don't appear inebriated.
I ...
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July 25, 2007 at 12:20 pm ·
Filed under General
A journalist asks, perhaps with Lindsay Lohan in mind: "Did you have a friend from childhood who took a wrong turn in high school? How did you cope with it? Also, I seek experts on the subject: What should friends and parents do?"
As is true of most people who took a "wrong" turn, it usually means they've done really stupid or bad things. "Stupid" and "bad" are hallmarks of alcohol or other-drug addiction. "Bad" usually results from a need to wield power stemming from egomania often rooted in alcohol or other-drug addiction.
Don't get me wrong--there are some fundamentally stupid and bad people. Only, without benefit of chemistry this is rare. We need to look where the odds take us.
Alcoholism-driven egomania ...
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July 17, 2007 at 10:36 am ·
Filed under General
A journalist asks whether it violates trust to test teens for drugs.
In a word, no.
Non-addicts don't lie and addicts lie. Therefore, the only way a parent can be sure they get the truth is to test. A non-addict will understand and will not perceive it as a "violation" of trust; an addict will perceive it as a violation, but that isn't a parent's concern.
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July 12, 2007 at 3:03 pm ·
Filed under General
I wrote a letter to the editor of Time:
Dear Editor,
Overall excellent piece on addiction. At the risk of seeming overly critical, however, it perpetuates several destructive myths. The first is Fracella's definition of addiction, which requires "the desire to continue using something you know is bad for you." Due to euphoric recall, the distortion every addict experiences that causes early-stage addicts to view practically everything they do or say through self-favoring lenses, they have great difficulty in seeing that it is "bad" for them. Most early-stage alcoholics are, in fact, utterly incapable of self-diagnosis.
The second includes two myths in one: Volkow's assertion that "everyone will become an addict if sufficiently exposed to drugs or alcohol." First, the correct ...
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July 12, 2007 at 1:46 pm ·
Filed under General
A journalist asks what to do if a doctor, who works in a small practice, learns that his partner or boss is engaging in unethical activities related to the practice. What are the signs that the doctor is engaging in unethical activities? What can a partner doctor do to protect himself, the practice and, if they chose to do so, the other doctor? What are the ramifications of saying nothing? About taking action?
We can either enable or we can whistle blow. I always suggest the latter in order to help both the person who is committing unethical behaviors and to protect ourselves against future misbehaviors.
These behaviors are usually rooted in alcohol or other-drug addiction. Addiction causes egomania; this ...
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July 12, 2007 at 1:42 pm ·
Filed under General
A journalist asks: What is the biggest challenge facing law enforcement management?
I don't mean to seem flippant, but how about alcoholism within their own ranks as the biggest challenge? July's top story starring L.A. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and his wife Michelle, the Review of the Month on the movie "Breach" (FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who sold secrets to the Soviets for 20 years) and the Antic-of-the-Month, another FBI agent doing idiotic things while at a .30 BAL, are just a few examples of why alcoholism is an enormous problem among law enforcers.
In researching my first book (Drunks, Drugs & Debits), every Drug Recognition Officer I spoke with admitted that the rate of active alcoholism on police forces ranges ...
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July 11, 2007 at 10:20 am ·
Filed under General
Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana has been stung with revelations he's been frequenting brothels and paying prostitutes for years.
Politicians patronizing brothels should be no exception to the general rule that misbehaviors indicate alcohol or other-drug addiction ("alcoholism").
Alcoholism damages the frontal lobes of the brain, the seat of reason and logic. When properly functioning, this area reigns in the impulses and survival instincts of the lower brain centers. When not, the lower brain centers impel the afflicted person to engage in pre-civilized and, sometimes, just plain ol' "stupid" behaviors.
Senator Vitter should be no exception to the general rule, following in the footsteps of Florida Representative Mark Foley and Ohio Representative Bob Ney, who have both admitted to alcoholism. ...
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July 10, 2007 at 3:25 pm ·
Filed under General
A journalist asks for statistical information regarding financial infidelity. Why would a spouse hide money and financial information from a loved one? Can money issues make or break a relationship--or is there an underlying cause preceding the money? Is there a connection between this and debt problems?
I wrote a book about this sort of thing: "Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse." The book arose out of my experience as an Enrolled Agent tax professional and Certified Financial Planner in observing that financial abuse was almost always perpetrated by an alcohol or other-drug addict. The kind of abuse varies all over the map; the fact of abuse is a behavioral indication of addiction, often ...
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