Chess champion Bobby Fischer, alcoholic.
Sometimes, it takes an addict:
Chess genius Bobby Fischer, who became a Cold War hero when he defeated Soviet champ Boris Spassky in 1972 in Reykjavik, but who later became known for his hate-filled rants after becoming a fugitive, dead at 64. Fischer’s encounter with Spassky transformed the game, causing sales of chess sets and memberships in chess clubs to skyrocket while making front-page news. Harold C. Schonberg, in his 1973 book Grandmasters of Chess, wrote that Fischer single-handedly helped the world recognize that chess is as “competitive as football, as thrilling as a duel to the death, as aesthetically satisfying as a fine work of art, as intellectually demanding as any form of human activity.” However, his “dark side” had long before made itself apparent in unpredictable, demanding, childlike and surly behaviors. By the time he got to Reykjavik, he was demanding a Mercedes-Benz, a swimming pool reserved for his exclusive use and the right to prescribe the distance of the audience from the players. He often arrived late and kept threatening to pull out of the game. At one point, he claimed the noise from the cameras was distracting and walked out. This was, unfortunately, Fischer’s high-water mark. Soon after, he became the first world champion to give up his title without losing after refusing a challenge from another Soviet grandmaster (Anatoly Karpov).
There were many other points in his life at which most people must have shaken their heads and wondered, “Just what is he thinking?” Shortly after winning, Fischer joined Herbert W. Armstrong’s Pasadena, California based Worldwide Church of God and left it not because the church was, as one ex-member described it, an “alcoholic cult,” but instead because Christ didn’t re-appear in 1975 as Armstrong had promised. During the 1980s, Fischer wrote a 14-page diatribe against Pasadena police after being mistaken for a robber and jailed for two days, cut himself off from most of his friends and lived in a series of cheap apartments and rundown motels. He played against Spassky again in 1992 despite a warning from the U.S. government that he would face a 10-year prison sentence for playing in Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, against whom the U.S. had sanctions. Since he couldn’t return to the U.S., he flew to Japan where, after being jailed for not having a passport, he blamed a lack of booze for his poor health. He repeatedly made offensive remarks about Jews even though his mother was Jewish, pronounced the destruction of 9/11 “wonderful” and said he wanted “to see the U.S. wiped out.” Over the years, many people have offered many hypotheses, such as “madness,” to explain Fischer’s bizarre behaviors. None, however, have publicly suggested the obvious: alcoholism (except for his inclusion as “runner-up” for top story in the April 2005 Thorburn Addiction Report). Yet, aside from irrational demands, capriciousness and nastiness, one of the key failures of character that recovering addicts admit to when using is unreasonable resentments. Because he failed to get what he considered to be “enough” support from the America he once loved and its chess establishment, he became a recluse, paranoid and filled with hate. His biographer Frank Brady called Fischer “the Beethoven of chess.” Brady probably had no idea that the two were birds of a feather not only in the creation of symphonies and their chess-like equivalents, but also in their alcoholic biochemistry.
Also, Jason William Levin, publisher of the Los Angeles-based Steps for Recovery newspaper, who died on February 15 at the age of 40 after suffering a heart attack and lapsing in and out of a coma for over two months. I knew Jason only through Malibu networking luncheons for addiction experts, but we shared an appreciation for each others’ work. He spread the message of recovery widely and, as a truly gentle soul with six years clean and sober, appears to have touched everyone who met him. We will miss you, Jason.