Runners-Up for Feb: Sutherland, Houston, Agca, Hatch and many others
Runners-up for top story of the month:
Actor Kiefer Sutherland, star of the hit series “24”and son of actor Donald Sutherland, reportedly seen downing a lot of booze at the Strand Palace Hotel in London, then refusing more alcohol because he could no longer stand up. Keifer, 39, was convicted of a DUI in 1992, has been involved in several barroom brawls, has been seen drinking at 9 in the morning and has reportedly shown up on the set of “24”hung over. As a strident fan of “24”and one who thinks it’s the most suspenseful show ever on the small screen, I’d hate to see Kiefer go head first into the maelstrom of late-stage alcoholism. Unfortunately, he appears perilously close to the edge. If anyone reading this is in a position to impose consequences and coerce abstinence, please do so. [As an aside, Kiefer was actor Gary Oldman’s passenger when Oldman was arrested for DUI in 1991. Oldman, aside from other great roles, played the addict and (therefore) corrupt DEA agent in one of my favorite movies of all time, “The Professional,”starring Jean Reno as the good-guy hit-man and a young Natalie Portman as Mathilda, the little girl he befriended.]
Singer Whitney Houston, reportedly out of control on cocaine. Apparently, while her mother’s recent threat to remove daughter Bobbi Christina got her into rehab, sobriety didn’t last. Sometimes, when addiction has been unimpeded for so long, lockdown is the only way out. Houston is a poster child for the idea of early-stage intervention. The best hope at this point is that she runs out of funds to feed her addiction. The bad news is she signed a $100 million record deal in 2001; the good news is she gets paid only as successful albums are recorded and drugs have reportedly (hopefully temporarily) ruined her voice.
Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, freed at age 48 from prison in Istanbul, Turkey. Over the course of some 120 interviews, he reportedly frustrated investigators with contradictory statements about his motivation for the shooting. How about this: he is an addict, the evidence for which is the fact that amphetamines, which cause addicts to act badly, were found in his blood after the shooting. Addicts, who view themselves as superior to others, have a need to wield power over others; murder, especially of a very public person, is one way by which to do so. He was also convicted of the 1979 murder of a prominent liberal journalist and of escaping prison soon after. Whatever compelled Turkish officials to release him is beyond me. (Unless…hmmm….)
Eminem, aka Marshall Mathers III, and ex-wife Kim Mathers, planning on taking another stroll down the aisle despite a report by the Philadelphia Inquirer that “theirs is a tender love story of romance, marriage, divorce, song lyrics saying he was going to kill her, a defamation suit, nasty custody battles and drug rehab.”
Survivor winner Richard Hatch, who despite claiming that the show’s producers agreed to pay the taxes on his million dollar prize because he had allegedly caught other contestants on the show cheating, found guilty of tax evasion. (Hatch made Top Story in the April 2005 edition of the http://www.addictionreport.com.)
Morteza Bakhtiari, who allegedly ran down and critically injured John Royston in the Aliso Viejo, California Town Center parking lot. Royston and two friends had asked Bakhtiari, whom they saw speeding and running a stop sign in the lot, to slow down. Instead, Bakhtiari continued speeding, struck a parked Mercedes, turned around and headed for the three men. He drove erratically and spun around several times before hitting Royston. Orange County sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino said, “We don’t know what set [the driver] off…We don’t know whether he was under the influence.”Three days later Bakhtiari pleaded “not guilty”to attempted murder with Haidl gang-rape trial attorney Joseph Cavallo by his side (see the March 2005 edition of this letter for the full report on the Haidl case). The follow-up piece mentioned”in the 13th paragraph”that Bakhtiari has been convicted twice of DUI. Amormino doesn’t grasp the idea that with alcoholism we observe the irrational, which doesn’t require anything in particular to “set a person off”other than a challenge to his or her authority. And please note, the fact that Bakhtiari already had two DUI convictions suggests yet another failure in the criminal justice system: a failure to coerce abstinence in those who have proven to society they cannot use alcohol without behaving badly.
Michael A. Morales, scheduled for execution February 21, 2006, for the 1981 murder of Terri Winchell, a Lodi, California high school student. For the first time since California reinstated capital punishment, a judge, Ventura County’s Charles R. McGrath, has asked a governor for clemency in one of his own death penalty cases. McGrath believes the sentence he imposed was based on false testimony from an informant, Bruce Samuelson, who claimed that Morales had boasted, in a jailhouse Morales knew was filled with informants, that the rape and murder had been planned and that he felt no remorse (the “special circumstance”required for a sentence of death). Samuelson, whose time was reduced to one year because prosecutors dropped four of six unrelated felony charges against him in exchange for the testimony, explained away Morales’ open admission by saying they spoke in Spanish. A later investigation, however, showed that Morales, a fourth-generation Californian, doesn’t speak the language. Morales is described in a petition for clemency prepared by attorneys David A. Senior and Kenneth W. Starr, former special independent counsel investigating President Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky perjury case, as “a deeply repentant sorrowful Christian who has accepted full responsibility for a terrible crime that will haunt him forever. Unlike some who express no remorse for their offenses against humanity, Michael has not fled from his responsibility for the deed committed…in his reckless and drug-saturated youth.”This appears to be a classic case of Jekyll and Hyde: Morales was under the influence of alcohol and PCP when he committed the murder and is now, reportedly, a decent human being, just like most addicts in recovery.
———–
Under watch:
Former New York Mets outfielder Lenny Dykstra, appearing and sounding inebriated in a stunning CNBC interview at 8:30am on Tuesday, January 24, 2006. Research tentatively supports the observations. Recently charged with accusations of sexual battery involving a 17-year-old girl and reportedly a target in a gambling probe, he was also charged with DUI after a serious accident in 1991 that almost derailed his career.
The mother and grandfather of 13-year-old twin sisters Lamb and Lynx Gaede. The twins lead a band called Prussian Blue, named after the residue of Zyklon B, the poison used to gas Jews in Nazi concentration camps. They idolize Adolf Hitler in their music and wear T-shirts with a Hitler smiley face. Their parents are divorced; the mother, whose father brands his cattle with a swastika, is reportedly the driving force behind their success. Note that the twins may or may not be alcoholic; the effect of severe codependency can make some, especially young people, appear to be as destructive in their thinking and actions as the alcoholics nearby. We might predict that if they did not inherit alcoholism, they will recant their imbecile beliefs by their early 20s.
Louisiana congressperson William J. Jefferson who, according to former aide Brett M. Pfeffer’s plea agreement admitting guilt to charges of aiding and abetting bribery of a public official and conspiracy, “sought bribes, jobs for his children and other favors for providing political support to a company setting up Internet service in Nigeria.”A search of Jefferson’s home in August 2005 turned up, among other items of interest, a large amount of cash in his freezer. Too bad: Jefferson, 58, was the first African American elected to Congress from Louisiana since Reconstruction.
Alexander Koptsev, 20, who made his way past metal detectors in the well-known Bolshaya Bronnaya synagogue and Jewish cultural center in downtown Moscow, stabbing several people with a butcher knife while shouting “Heil Hitler!”Borukh Gorin, spokesman for the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, when asked whether there was any evidence Koptsev is insane, responded: “If you take a young man and from day to day poison his brain with just one publication out of a hundred which come out in Russia today, with wild anti-Semitic philosophical propaganda, in principle, he can turn insane.”Gorin failed to suggest that a dose of amphetamine or other drug is usually required for mad thinking, and almost always an essential prerequisite for turning that thinking into heinous misbehaviors.
Note to family, friends and fans of the above: the benefit of the doubt is given by assuming alcoholism (they are either idiots and fundamentally rotten, or they are alcoholic/other drug addicts”which would explain the misbehaviors). If alcoholic, there is zero chance that behaviors, in the long run, will improve without sobriety. An essential prerequisite to sobriety is the cessation of enabling, allowing pain and crises to build. Thus far, many have done everything they can to protect the addict from the requisite pain, making these news events possible. The cure for alcoholism, consequential bad behaviors and, ultimately, tragedy, is simple: stop protecting the addict from the logical consequences of misbehaviors and proactively intervene.