January 19, 2012 at 5:16 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
January - February 2012
Viewing the news through the lens of alcohol and other-drug addiction
Well over a decade ago, when I was doing research for my first book, Drunks, Drugs & Debits, I had several discussions with the gentleman I view as my greatest mentor, James Graham, about the great and horrific despots that fill the history books. I suggested, based strictly on behaviors, Adolf Hitler must have been an addict; Graham, who wrote The Secret History of Alcoholism, responded that being a child of a particularly awful alcoholic (referring to Hitler’s father, Alois) was enough to turn someone into a mass murderer. Besides, he added, Hitler was a known teetotaler. I was skeptical and thought there had to be some ...
Permalink
January 19, 2012 at 5:13 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
A Con-Artist for a Mother, An Arsonist for a Son and Amphetamines May Explain it All: The Case of Dorothee and Harry Burkhart
The New Year’s headline in the Los Angeles Times read, “Arson Wave is Worst Since Riots,” referring to the 1992 riots that began when a nearly all-White jury (ten Whites, one Hispanic and one Asian) acquitted one Hispanic and three White police officers of using excessive force in the beating of a drug-addled Rodney King following a high-speed pursuit. Nearly all felonious crime is committed and instigated by alcohol or other-drug addicts. There’s no doubt about King’s polydrug addiction, and there’s little doubt that most if not all of the rioters were alcohol or other-drug addicts. The cause ...
Permalink
January 19, 2012 at 5:12 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Runners-up for top story of the month:
Kim Jong-un, the 28-year-old heir to the North Korean Kim dynasty following in his father’s (Kim Jong-il) footsteps as ruler of what will likely be considered the most totalitarian state ever by future historians. Kim-the-younger is depicted in U.S. intelligence assessments as a “volatile youth with a sadistic streak” and “may be even more mercurial and merciless” than his father, which is difficult to fathom. Imagine the alcoholic serial murderers Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer ruling 20 million extremely unlucky victims and you might get a picture of life under the Kim’s.
Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, sentenced to a 14-year prison term for what U.S. prosecuting attorney Patrick Fitzgerald called “the most staggering crime ...
Permalink
January 19, 2012 at 5:10 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Under watch:
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 don’t figure this out might benefit from greater introspection. In the spirit of The Economist’s discovery, two recent stories follow for which the evidence of alcoholism is in the crime itself.
Kinde Durkee, 58, previously charged with using funds from clients’ accounts to pay her own bills, now charged with practicing accounting without a license. The scope of the embezzlement is likely on par with some recent Ponzi schemes: she controlled more than 360 bank ...
Permalink
January 19, 2012 at 5:07 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Addict v. addict v. addict
Sports agent Leigh Steinberg, who represented Ben Roethlisberger among many other highly successful NFL’s pros, filing for bankruptcy protection. Steinberg, who was the inspiration for the movie “Jerry Maquire” (“Show me the money!”), admits his alcoholism caused impaired judgment resulting in his financial collapse. What he won’t say—but we will—is that he was likely taken down by other alcoholics. Taking responsibility for the debts, he avoided filing bankruptcy for years after a 2003 incident in which one of his employees, without his knowledge, took a $300,000 loan from one of his NFL clients. Aside from the fact that such loans are specifically forbidden by the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) regulations, apparently the loan went unpaid and ...
Permalink
January 19, 2012 at 5:06 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Question of the month:
“Just how drunk were you, Francesco Schettino, Captain of the Costa Concordia? And were you a relapsing (and hidden from those that matter) alcoholic?” Several reports on the listing of the ship include clues suggesting the answers to the questions are “very” and “yes.” Clue # 1: Pier Luigi Foschi, the chairman and chief executive of Costa Cruises, reportedly said he believed that Captain Schettino “never drank alcohol.” Yet, a Dutch survivor claimed she “saw him drinking with a woman on his arm at the ship's bar.” Clue # 2: Prosecutors allege he was showing off by sailing past the Tuscan island of Giglio, where his head waiter lived, with some claiming he was piloting the cruise ...
Permalink
January 19, 2012 at 5:04 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Sometimes, it takes an addict:
Kim Jong-il, North Korean ruler since 1994, dead at age 69 or 70. I was a Ron Paul-style non-interventionist libertarian until I began studying alcoholism and realized there’s only one way to deal with an alcoholic sitting on nukes: take him out. (I’m with Paul on practically all domestic matters, as I believe it’s the height of arrogance to suggest I know better how to run your life and spend your money than you do—but not in this case, where his hands-off foreign policy is, I believe, naïve.) Kim is such a classic study of alcoholism and the abuse of power it’s hard to know which example of abuse to mention. However, three prime examples may ...
Permalink
January 19, 2012 at 5:01 pm ·
Filed under 2 - Movie & Book Reviews
Karl Marx, Alcoholic
A historian fails to diagnose the obvious
Alcoholics have had an enormous effect on human history, with both positive and negative results. As I’ve argued throughout my work (beginning with Drunks, Drugs & Debits), the effect is so immense it’s impossible to make sense of our past without understanding alcoholism. The great includes the likes of Thomas Paine, Ignaz Semmelweis and Ayn Rand. The horrific includes Jeffrey Dahmer, Ivan the Terrible, Josef Stalin and Kim Jong-il. I’ve long suspected that, if able to dig deep enough, we would find alcoholism explaining the life and thinking of Karl Marx, but until I stumbled upon historian Paul Johnson’s book, Intellectuals, I had been stymied.
The book, described by Johnson as “an examination ...
Permalink
January 19, 2012 at 5:00 pm ·
Filed under 3 - Dear Doug...
Homeowner association board from hell
Dear Doug:
A couple of board directors who are alcoholics have entered into contracts, negotiated with vendors and made decisions regarding maintenance projects while inebriated. They have not recalled signing contracts or conversations and promises made to owners, vendors and management. Other board members have learned about contracts too late to rescind them, but are loathe to confront them because the last time they did so things turned ugly. The irony is the alcoholic members keep getting re-elected because they are generally well-liked, even though everyone knows we’ve been bound by contracts we never should have entered into. How do we tactfully handle this and not get sued for discrimination?
Signed,
The “other” board members
Dear Codependents,
Other columnists would point ...
Permalink
January 19, 2012 at 4:59 pm ·
Filed under 4 - Alcoholic Myth of the Month
“False reports of sexual assault are extremely rare… [According to the U.S. Department of Justice] only 2.5 percent of reports turn out to be false.”
So claimed Beth Hassett, executive director of Women Escaping a Violent Environment, in commenting on Laurie Ann Martinez’s arrest for staging a rape, reported in the “under watch” section above. With due respect to women who have been sexually assaulted, of which possibly 75% go unreported (some sources claim 95%), false accusations are one of the most effective means by which addicts wield power. This is especially true of those who cannot easily physically overpower others, including women.
I have written at least twice about such accusations. The Top Story in the first issue of TAR involved ...
Permalink
January 19, 2012 at 4:58 pm ·
Filed under 5 - Amazing Alcoholic Antics
Story from “This is True” by Randy Cassingham, with his “tagline:”
“GIVE ME AN A! After a student informed the principal at Charlotte High School in Punta Gorda, Fla., math teacher Jeff Spires was confronted and admitted it: yes, he sold better grades to the kids for cash payments of $40-70. The students would staple or paper-clip the cash to quizzes, and Spires, 36, would increase their grades. Why? ‘Maybe I see the kids as desperate as I am,’ Spires allegedly told a school district investigator, who said Spires ‘went on to say that he was in financial straits due to bankruptcy, arrests, and jail time.’ Charlotte County Jail records show Spires has been jailed three times in the past two ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 3:17 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Is alcoholism the best explanation for owning exotic animals, their release into civilization and the suicide of owner Terry Thompson?
Terry Thompson, 62, released 56 wild, exotic animals, including lions, Bengal tigers, leopards, monkeys, bears, mountain lions and at least one wolf from his 73-acre Zanesville, Ohio property before committing suicide. Thompson had previous run-ins with neighbors, who had repeatedly complained about animals escaping, and the local sheriff’s office, which had charged him with animal cruelty and neglect. He had been released from federal prison only a month earlier after serving a year for possessing unregistered firearms (133 of them, including a machine gun and several guns with missing serial numbers). He had recently split up with his wife. He owed ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 3:15 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Runners-up for top story of the month:
Former Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Milton Bradley, 33, arrested after a verbal argument escalated with Bradley swinging a baseball bat at his wife, who then ran out of their home. Bradley previously made TAR twice: once in the “under watch” category of issue # 6 (January 2005), when he pleaded guilty for having yelled at police using profane language for a traffic stop that went “awry,” and in the “runners-up” section of issue # 14 (September 2005), where police responded to reports of domestic violence three times in 33 days. His wife, who was four months pregnant at the time, refused to press charges. In 2002 he was taken to a hospital after refusing ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 3:13 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Under watch:
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 don’t figure this out might benefit from greater introspection. In the spirit of The Economist’s discovery, a recent story follows for which the evidence of alcoholism is in the crime itself.
Jerry Sandusky, accused of sexually assaulting several minor male children, both while he was a football coach for Penn State and after he retired from coaching. The accusations are so compelling and the allegations were covered up so fully, Penn State has fired a ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 3:10 pm ·
Filed under 2 - Movie & Book Reviews
Viewing the subjects of biographies through the lens of alcoholism
I’ve long maintained that fundamental changes to personality resulting from alcoholism are so all-encompassing we cannot understand an alcoholic’s life without an appreciation for “euphoric recall,” whereby the addict views everything he says or does through self-favoring lenses, and its inevitable result, an inordinately large sense of self-importance. This egomania is fueled by wielding power, taking three main forms: abuse of others, a willingness to take extraordinary risks and overachievement. These behaviors of alcoholics are completely different from those that occur if addiction is never triggered. Further, behaviors committed by any particular early stage alcoholic are dramatically different from those committed later in life, as the addict spirals into the latter ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 3:07 pm ·
Filed under 3 - Dear Doug...
Thanksgiving boor
Dear Doug:
For the last few years, my husband has invited a friend of 35 years to our annual Thanksgiving party. From the start, this divorcee bellies up to our bar and, while mixing drinks for the men, entertains them with stories of his conquests, business deals and travels. He monopolizes conversation throughout the meal while ignoring or rudely dismissing any female guests who try to speak. Right after dessert he yawns and, thankfully, leaves.
Although he’s ruined the last two Thanksgiving dinners, my husband feels sorry for him and can’t stand the idea his friend might spend Thanksgiving alone if we don’t invite him. What can I do to change my husband’s thinking?
Signed,
Boored to death
Dear Codependent,
Other columnists might suggest you ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 3:05 pm ·
Filed under 3 - Dear Doug...
Soccer mom’s coach’s mom problem
Dear Doug,
For three years, my daughter has been on a soccer team with a wonderful coach. The coach’s mother, however, is a loud, mean witch. She taunts referees, yells insults to coaches and parents on the other side and screams at girls on our team to play the way she wants, even though we otherwise enforce a no-coaching-from-the-sidelines rule. Would an anonymous note to the coach or her mother be appropriate?
Signed,
Soccer Mom
Dear Codependent,
Other columnists would tell you that everyone already knows the coach’s mom is a trouble-maker. It must be adversely affecting the kids and, therefore, something must be done. Such columnists would suggest having a private word with the coach, all the while acknowledging the ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 3:04 pm ·
Filed under 4 - Alcoholic Myth of the Month
“Our findings indicate that the experience of having power without status, whether as a member of the military or a college student participating in an experiment, may be a catalyst for producing demeaning behaviors that can destroy relationships and impede goodwill.”
So found a study, reported by Peter Pappas on his blog, by three universities showing that people holding positions of power with low status tend to demean others. This is a half-truth, since the study appears to completely omit alcoholism as an explanation for their findings.
Peter Pappas, a CPA, income tax professional and blogger whose work I have found immensely useful, observes, “I have dealt with all levels of IRS employees in my 20 plus years of tax practice and ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 1:29 pm ·
Filed under 5 - Amazing Alcoholic Antics
Story from “This is True” by Randy Cassingham, with his “tagline:”
“NOT A COMPELLING ARGUMENT: ‘You are going to make me lose my job,’ whined Donald Leet, 37, to Hillsborough County, Fla., sheriff's deputies. He had drunk ‘a glass of wine’ with dinner, so naturally he had let his girlfriend's 11-year-old daughter drive. The girl lost control and crashed into the First Baptist Church of Brandon, severing a water pipe, which sent water spurting 50 feet into the air. Deputies arrived to find the girl climbing out the driver's side window, with a 7-year- old girl right behind her. ‘Why don't you arrest a rapist or murderer instead of me?’ Leet demanded. ‘You're an illiterate Southerner. You don't know anything. You ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 12:54 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
The London Riots: Feral Humans,*
Resentment of Enablers and Alcoholism
Alcoholics experience distortions of perception and memory. One of these distortions, “euphoric recall,” causes practicing alcoholics to view everything they do or say through self-favoring lenses, which leads to a God-like sense of self. As explained in Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Spot Hidden Alcoholics, this is the root cause of alcoholic egomania, which manifests in a compulsion to wield power over others.
This key distortion also reveals itself in the act of blaming others for one’s problems. After all, if everything you do is good and right and nothing bad or wrong, how can you be to blame for anything that you perceive to be inequitable in your life? It’s certainly ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 12:53 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Runner-up for top story of the month:
San Diego motorcycle officer David Hall, a 14-year veteran, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at age 41. Hall was off duty in February when he (allegedly) struck another car and fled the scene. The married father of three was later arrested and, while on paid administrative leave awaiting trial, ordered by a judge to attend AA meetings. There can be little doubt that officer Hall’s suicide was preceded by dozens if not hundreds of incidents for which close people or the law—or his employer—could have intervened, but either didn’t or didn’t do so adequately. “Adequately,” once someone has proven to society he can’t safely drink or use, requires court-monitored ankle bracelets for the ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 12:51 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Alcoholic victims of the month:
A number of airline passengers who have recently been on the receiving end of a too-desperate need to pee, which may include those on an Air France flight when actor Gerard Depardieu took a pee in the aisle (see “Enablers of the month,” below). They also include an 11-year-old girl who was with her father, a Stage 4 cancer patient, and her sister on their way to visit her grandmother for the first time since her father’s diagnosis, who was on the receiving end of 18-year-old would-be Olympian skier Robert Vietze’s need to go potty. In a possibly life-saving act of disenabling, Vietze reportedly has been kicked off the U.S. Ski Team.
Co-dependents of the month:
Non-addicted ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 12:50 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Enablers of the month:
British taxpayers, who provide an education costing $80,000, a guaranteed income, “free” medical care, “free” housing, “free” food and everything from cell phones to flat-screen TVs to those who, because they are “fed up with being broke,” riot—as if the needs of some bestow a right to the property that others took time, ingenuity and expertise to buy or produce.
Left-wing former mayor of London Ken Livingstone who, within hours of the start of the London riots, said the unrest was “the fault of the government,” citing a 9% cut in central government grants to Tottenham, where the rioting began. It’s odd, then, that the rioters didn’t mention this as they looted high-end luxury goods shops.
...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 12:48 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Disenablers of the month:
Conroe, Texas resident Tracy Allen, who spotted Gliddon William Davis, 73, driving erratically two years ago, somehow stopped him and tried to take his keys and, after he fled reported him, resulting in a 55-year sentence for Mr. Davis. A jury took less than three hours to find Davis guilty of using his vehicle as a deadly weapon and render the effective life sentence. The surprising result may have had something to do with the fact that Mr. Davis had previously been convicted of two counts of attempted rape, one assault with intent to commit rape, several other unspecified felonies and seven previous DUIs. Now, wouldn’t it have been so much cheaper and better for society, not ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 12:47 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Quotes of the month:
“At its core, addiction isn’t just a social problem or a moral problem or a criminal problem. It’s a brain problem whose behaviors manifest in all these other areas.”
So said Dr. Michael Miller, past president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), who oversaw the development of a new definition of addiction requiring a four-year process involving more than 80 experts. This, about a decade after one singular amateur refined his redefinition of alcoholism as “A genetic predisposition to biochemically process the drug alcohol in such as a way as to cause that person to act badly some of the time.” Oh, that amateur must have forgotten to explicate where “acting badly” might be relevant: in ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 12:46 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
“This young man is a quality young man.”
So said the former Rhode Island House Speaker John Harwood, now acting as the attorney for Clayton Hardon, 22, following Hardon’s release on a DUI charge. Hardon is a volunteer firefighter who was off-duty when he (allegedly) stole a “special hazards” truck while under the influence, took it on a joyride and crashed into a tree, which is the only object that prevented the truck from smashing through a home and possibly killing its occupants. Mr. Harwood, we’ll see how high a quality of a young man Mr. Hardon is when he decides to plead guilty to the crime (assuming he committed these acts).
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 12:45 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
“At first it seemed as if the [London] riots were almost random with no basis in class or race. As the perpetrators have come to court, a different picture has emerged. Of those charged, 60% had a previous criminal record, and 25% belonged to gangs….The truth is, it’s not their fault. They are the victims of the tsunami of wishful thinking that washed across the West saying that you can have…children without the responsibility of parenthood, social order without the responsibility of citizenship, liberty without the responsibility of morality and self-esteem without the responsibility of work and earned achievement….Freud was right. The precondition of civilization is the ability to defer the gratification of the instinct.”
So wrote the chief rabbi ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 12:43 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
There are some things you just can't make up (if it were fiction nobody would believe you):
New Jersey physician Dr. Sylvia S. Lee, who faces felony charges for having stabbed her 13-year-old adopted daughter with a screwdriver at least 100 times for failing to wash her dog’s clothes and towels in the correct order. For those of you doggie-clothes owners who want to avoid being repeatedly stabbed for doing it wrong, doggie clothes are washed first.
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 12:43 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
What would you do...:
If you’re sitting in your nephew’s front yard drinking beer together and you give him $6 to go buy more beer, and he pedals off on his bicycle in the summer heat while you wait and it takes too long, you would:
1. Call your nephew to make sure he hasn’t been involved in an accident,
2. Call the police to see if there are any reports of an accident involving a bicyclist between your place and the beer place, or
3. Smash a brand new soon-to-be installed toilet against his front door and, after shattering it hurl porcelain chunks at the door and then rip electrical wires out of the meter box and smash the plastic piping ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 12:42 pm ·
Filed under 1 - Top Stories
Sometimes, it takes an addict:
The Rev. Zachery Tims, Jr., who founded a ministry of 8,000 Floridians and became well-known due to frequent television appearances, found dead in a Manhattan hotel room at age 42 with what appeared to have been illegal drugs (“a white powdery substance”) in his pocket. He chronicled his teenage drug addiction in a 2006 memoir after, according to Rev. Randolph Bracy, catapulting “a church that started in a hotel room [10 years earlier] into a megachurch.” In 2009 after admitting to an extramarital affair he and his wife of 15 years divorced. It was “unclear” what brought Mr. Tims to Manhattan a week earlier. Inexplicable goings-on when associated with recovering addicts almost always suggests relapse, as ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 12:40 pm ·
Filed under 2 - Movie & Book Reviews
Ten Years After 9-11: Sadly, Hardly Anyone has Connected the Dots Linking Terrorism to Substance Addiction
Ten years ago, my wife and I were about to fly from Cusco to Lima, Peru on an early morning flight after an extraordinary stay at the fabulous El Monasterio Hotel before and after visiting the amazing ruins of Machu Picchu. It was the final leg of our three-week visit to South America, where we skied Portillo, Chile and Bariloche, Argentina, stayed at the International Hotel in Santiago, Chile (and fell in love with the country) and did the fabulous Andean “Lake Crossing” from Bariloche to Puerto Montt, Chile. We were due in Lima late morning, where we were to catch a 1a.m. flight ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 12:37 pm ·
Filed under 3 - Dear Doug...
Needy Sister
Dear Doug:
My 48-year-old sister is divorced and broke. She blew through an inheritance years ago. She’s been fired from several jobs, lost her home to foreclosure and is now continuously facing eviction. She’s a defendant in a lawsuit which, if she loses, could result in significant time behind bars.
She is always begging for money for food and dog food (she’s a breeder and says her dogs are her “life’s work”). She makes me feel guilty and has threatened suicide if I don’t help her. Our other sister cut her off after giving her more than $10,000 on top of the $12,000 or so I have given her over the years. I always seem to cave and have promised my ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 12:35 pm ·
Filed under 4 - Alcoholic Myth of the Month
“Deputies don’t make stuff up, the hope is, and we contend they did not fabricate anything."
So said Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore in defending Deputies Samuel Orozco and Scott Giles, who claimed a couple, Erick Hosey and his girlfriend Shatwan Smith, resisted arrest and had rock cocaine in their car. Orozco’s past on-duty behaviors were scrutinized during a subsequent trial in which L.A. County was ordered to pay $650,000 in restitution to the couple for “ruining their lives.” Witnesses told of run-ins with Orozco, including one in which he used the N-word against a local resident and another who said she’d been roughed up and subsequently acquitted after being booked for an unnamed offense. Sorry, Mr. Whitmore, but alcoholics not only ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 12:35 pm ·
Filed under 5 - Amazing Alcoholic Antics
Story from “This is True” by Randy Cassingham, with his “tagline:”
“OBLIVIOT OF THE WEEK #896: ‘I guess he thought it was a big joke,’ said attorney Daniel L. Castillo about his client, Rick Ehlert, 45. Ehlert is ‘not denying he did it,’ Castillo says, but what he did shouldn't be considered a crime. He says Ehlert was drunk on a cruise ship headed for Tampa, Fla., when he broke into the control room and dropped the moving ship's anchor, and then tossed a life buoy overboard -- at 5:25 a.m. The captain stopped the ship and assembled all passengers and crew on deck for a head count. No one was missing. ‘Everybody was mad at him,’ Castillo said, but ‘where's ...
Permalink
January 18, 2012 at 12:32 pm ·
Filed under General
I screwed up, that's what. I'm getting the two Fall issues up now and will get the Jan-Feb '12 issue up as soon as completed. So sorry to those of you who follow the blog! (But the stories are still great and always timely.)
Permalink
