November 10, 2006 at 1:49 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Likely Addicts Cause Havoc for the Right: Congressman Mark Foley, Writer-Pundit Ann Coulter and Evangelical Christian Rev. Ted Haggar
Alcoholics have an impact way out of proportion to their numbers. While only about 10% of the population consists of alcohol or other-drug addicts, they commit as much as 80% of crime, abuse and unethical behaviors. That affects all of us, often in disastrous ways.
Groups of people"and how others feel about their ideas"can also be affected. It probably didn't help my libertarian brethren or dissemination of the philosophy of free markets that the man who may be more responsible for our freedom than anyone was an alcoholic. Thomas Paine authored Common Sense, the pamphlet that inspired the American Revolution and Declaration of ...
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November 10, 2006 at 1:48 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Runners-up for top story of the month:
Ex-convict businessman Bo Stefan Eriksson, 44, who pleaded "no contest"to embezzling two exotic cars, a Ferrari and a Mercedes McLaren, and being a felon in possession of a handgun, facing a new trial just four days after a jury deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of conviction. A few weeks before, he pleaded "no contest"to a DUI in the now infamous Malibu, California crash of a million-dollar Enzo Ferrari into a telephone pole in February. He previously turned down a plea deal that would have put him away for just over two years despite the fact that Judge Patricia M. Schnegg made it clear she felt it was a "very generous offer."The offer ...
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November 10, 2006 at 1:47 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Under watch:
Actor Wesley Snipes, indicted on charges of tax fraud and failure to file income tax returns since 1999. Statistics in Drunks, Drugs & Debits suggest that 80-90% of convicts, or those who should be, are alcohol or other-drug addicts. I found early in my research that those who went beyond reason in "interpretation"of tax law were usually no different. Who else could think they are more powerful than the U.S. government? Snipes also has recently been embroiled in civil lawsuits, including one brought by United Talent Agency, Inc., for failure to pay nearly $1.5 million in commissions, along with another suit brought by Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp. for failure to make payments on his Florida mansion. The combination ...
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November 10, 2006 at 1:46 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Co-Dependents of the Month:
Actress Nicole Kidman, who according to a friend, didn't know that her husband, Grammy-winner Keith Urban, "was drinking and using coke when she went to sleep at night"from the time they married. When she figured it out four months later, to her credit she staged an intervention and Urban checked into rehab. In 2002, long after first getting clean and sober, Urban reportedly told a reporter that he didn't consider alcohol a problem. "I still drink. I get drunk. But it's never sent me back to other things."According to reports, Nicole's prenuptial agreement states that if they divorce, Keith receives nothing if he uses illegal drugs or drinks "excessively,"but otherwise gets $600,000 for each year they are ...
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November 10, 2006 at 1:45 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Enabler of the Month:
Publicist Judy Katz, insisting that former "Baywatch"actor David Hasselhoff, who was turned away from a British Airways flight in July because he appeared bombed, had simply been taking prescribed meds following a "shaving accident"that resulted in a deep cut in his arm. He also looked and acted intoxicated on a popular morning British television show. Reps for the show, "GMTV,"blamed his behavior on "fatigue."In October, Hasselhoff checked into rehab but checked out after three days. His recent stints in rehab include one in 2002 and another in 2004. One "insider"pointed out his handlers do him no favors by covering up. Here, here!
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November 10, 2006 at 1:44 pm ·
Filed under 2 - Movie & Book Reviews
"The Last King of Scotland"
An extraordinary contrast of relatively benign and extremely non-benign addiction
Somewhere in my first book, Drunks, Drugs & Debits, I remarked that it's impossible to understand history and current events without comprehending alcoholism. The history of the Dark Continent is perhaps the shining example where this couldn't be more true, yet for which we have little hard evidence. Where evidence of actual use does exist, it consists of a ten-second scene in a partially fictionalized two-hour account of a despot and his enablers.
Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, magnificently played by Forest Whitaker, is accurately portrayed as a monster with numerous behavioral indications of substance addiction. He was mercurial, charming, narcissistic and charismatic, a combination of attributes common among ...
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November 10, 2006 at 1:42 pm ·
Filed under 3 - Dear Doug...
Dear Doug: Demanding Dan
Dear Doug:
My husband, Dan, is unemployed, sits up late drinking and watching TV and gets angry when I wake him in the morning to care for our infant son when I go to work. He wants to hire a child care provider, but I've explained to him we can't afford it"with my four children from a previous relationship, along with his three kids for whom we have to provide"until he gets a job. He doesn't even look.
On top of this, Dan accuses me of cheating and not caring about our family, right in front of our 2-year-old son. I'd like to stay in the marriage, but Dan refuses counseling.
Signed,
Exasperated
. . . .
Dear Exasperated,
Other columnists might say that ...
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November 10, 2006 at 1:41 pm ·
Filed under 4 - Alcoholic Myth of the Month
Don't Blame Alcoholism
"Don't blame alcohol,"read the caption to a letter to the editor in USA Today. Letter writer Cheryl James of Englewood, FL wrote that Congressman Mark Foley attempted to blame his behavior on alcoholism. "Alcoholism alone does not cause pedophilia or turn someone into a sexual predator.â€
No, Ms. James, alcoholism does not by itself turn people into predators. However, without damage to the neo-cortex and, therefore, a loss of restraint on the impulses of the lower brain centers, such misbehavior is unlikely to occur. Impulses vary by addict, which with environment, circumstances, Psychological Type of the addict and virulence, determines the style of addiction and the misbehaviors in which the addict will engage. If the style is one of ...
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November 10, 2006 at 1:40 pm ·
Filed under 5 - Amazing Alcoholic Antics
Amazing Antics: Stories of Alcoholism-Driven Behaviors?
A Combustible Mix
What happens when you mix a pooper-scooper, scissors and crack cocaine? What do you get when you mix anything with crack cocaine? Something right out of a Stephen King novel.
Waukesha County, Wisconsin Circuit Judge Lee S. Dreyfus, Jr., sentenced Leisa K. Reed, 47, to two years in prison and five years extended supervision for her attack of a Waukesha couple she didn't know.
John and Linda Dormer were awoken at 4:40 a.m. by the family's Shih Tzu barking. Linda walked into the kitchen and saw a stranger wildly swinging a pooper scooper and babbling, "They are going to kill me. I'm going to kill you."Linda screamed and John ran into the kitchen. Reed, all ...
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September 11, 2006 at 2:30 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Terrorism and Addiction
The absence of actual evidence of addictive use of drugs by the current regime of terrorists is not surprising. The probable motive force behind the horrific behaviors is, none the less, psychotropic drug addiction.
The fifth anniversary of 9-11 reminds us what terrorists are capable of. The question that begs to be answered, yet is rarely asked, is what is the root of hatred that results in the wanton murder of helpless innocents? The first Czar of Russia, Ivan lV Vasilievich, was one of history's grand terrorists. A sampling of his countless atrocities shows that terrorists vary only in their methods"and provides clues to what drives them.
James Graham, in his masterpiece The Secret History of Alcoholism, describes the vengeance ...
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September 11, 2006 at 2:29 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Runners-up for top story of the month:
Five American soldiers in Iraq who reportedly took turns raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, after which they killed her, the girl's parents and her 5-year-old sister. The attack "followed a session of whiskey drinking and card-playing during which five soldiers plotted the…assault"250 yards from their post. U.S. soldiers are banned from drinking alcohol while in Iraq, but such geographic-centered Prohibition has been proven a failure time and again. Who among us doubts that alcohol and other-drug addicts are responsible for war's worst atrocities?
Brandon Menard, 21, a Boy Scout whose friends and remaining family were "dumbfounded"over his arrest for allegedly killing his parents and sister in Northridge, California. Headlines read, "Motive in killings remains ...
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September 11, 2006 at 2:27 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Under watch:
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, 80, recuperating from stomach surgery. His megalomania has always baffled me, since it's believed he drinks little. However, as suggested in the "runners-up"section, he may be, like Yasir Arafat, an amphetamine or cocaine addict. Behavioral evidence that his emotional state is stuck in his teens (the emotional state of the addict gets "stuck"the day he or she triggers addiction) can be found in the fact that, as Pope John Paul II's biographer George Weigel puts in a piece entitled, "Don't cry for him, Cubanos,"in The Los Angeles Times, "I remember walking the streets of Havana [in January 1998]…thinking that this is what a country would look like if it were run for decades by ...
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September 11, 2006 at 2:26 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Enablers of the Month:
Sheriff Deputy James Mee, who after arresting Mel Gibson excused himself for the arrest by commenting, "As in all DUIs…I don't relish hurting people [by arresting them]…I'm out there doing my job,"and "I don't take pride in hurting Mr. Gibson."Excuse me Deputy Mee, but by doing your job you are helping him, not hurting him. It's unfortunate that so many officers before you failed to do their job.
Deputy Mee also decided not to handcuff Mel Gibson at the outset because of "who he is."Mee was quoted as having told Gibson "that if he remained cooperative, I would transport him without handcuffing."Listen up, Deputy Mee. Gibson's blood alcohol level was at .12 per cent when stopped for driving ...
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September 11, 2006 at 2:25 pm ·
Filed under 6 - Public Policy Recommendations
Public Policy Proposal:
Should Hand-Held Cell Phone Use be Banned While Driving?
The idea that cell phone use by drivers is dangerous was recently buttressed by studies purporting to show that such use is more dangerous than driving under the influence. Even California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is promising to sign such a ban into law. However, the study flies in the face of reason. When research findings don't make sense, I always consider the classic book, How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff and ask, what's wrong with the study?
One problem is that it tracked 40 people following a pace car using a driving simulator. Meth addicts have been studied, too"and were "proven"to be better drivers than non-users. Subsequent studies ...
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September 11, 2006 at 2:24 pm ·
Filed under 3 - Dear Doug...
Dear Doug: Elder Abuse
Dear Doug:
In order to support our son, his wife and two children, my wife and I, both 76, still work. Our son just got laid off and his wife, who was supposed to go back to work when their first child entered Kindergarten, got pregnant again and, with the new baby, is unable to go back to work.
When our son was working, we had to help with $200-per-week day care for their older child and even more for the baby. When our son lost his job, we had to take over rent and car payments for which we had co-signed. They are behind on their utilities and have been threatened with being cut off, so we often ...
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