Loving grandmother so proud of her 3-year-old grandson!
Dear Doug:
I’ve been privileged to care for my 3-year-old grandson weekly since his birth. Because our family lives across the U.S. and appreciates updates on his growing up, I frequently post his pictures on Facebook. The trouble is, one family member responds by posting only negative remarks: his baby blanket is the wrong color, why can’t he be potty trained, his hair is funny looking. She is void of anything positive.
She finally annoyed me so much I deleted her comments from my page. This was a spur-of-the-moment reaction and probably rude. Has any etiquette evolved in regards to Facebook posts? Is there a positive way I could respond to her?
Signed,
Proud Granny
Dear Codependent,
Other ...
Guns can’t be blamed for mass murders, but neither can broken homes or sexual deviancy. Cause and effect is backwards.
Mass and serial murders are blamed on many things: guns (despite the fact that many such murders are committed without guns), Prozac (even though many occurred prior to its invention) and heavy metal music (which doesn’t explain Hitler’s henchmen gassing Jews to the music of Beethoven) among them. Trevor Grant Thomas, at the often interesting American Thinker blog, debunks the myth that guns are to blame, pointing out that of the ten worst mass murderers in American history only three used guns as their primary means of killing (Seung-Hui Cho, Adam Lanza and George Hennard) and the four worst (Gary Ridgway, Andrew Philip Kehoe, Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy) never used guns to kill. While Thomas doesn’t blame Prozac ...
Only an addict would perform surgery on himself.
Story from “This is True” by Randy Cassingham, with his “tagline:”
“That Throbbing Pain: John Martin Novak, 48, of Buhl, Idaho, said he needed sinus surgery to fix a snoring problem. He decided to do the surgery himself. ‘He described that he stuck two straws up his nose,’ the resulting police report says, ‘and was attempting to break his own nose using a door that he would open rapidly and impact his face.’ Novak reportedly told officers that he had been drinking for a week to get ready for the procedures. Police were brought in after he allegedly threatened his sister with a rifle. Officers called in paramedics, and Novak was hospitalized to bring his blood alcohol level down to safe ...
Kim Jong Un could be a methamphetamine addict. He’s certainly an alcoholic. He needs to go; N. Korea needs to be freed.
North Korea has managed to out-Stalin good ol’ Uncle Joe, as Joseph Stalin was called by those who were blind to his atrocities. In running the most totalitarian state ever—rife with mass starvation, under-nourishment and devotion of an estimated 30-50% of GDP to weaponry—they have developed (or otherwise obtained) nuclear weapons. Worse yet, the man in charge of the country—and the nukes—is an alcoholic and, therefore, capable of anything. It’s no wonder the doomsday clock continues to run at 5 ‘til midnight.
So how does a totalitarian state pay for a nuclear program when its citizens are starving? In part, by drug trafficking. To sell drugs for export, government chemists became adept at producing high-quality drugs, especially methamphetamine. According to the ...
Dennis Rodman, Mayor Rob Ford and Justin Beiber–those in the news for stupid things are usually drunks.
Former NBA star and recent Kim Jong Un enabler Dennis Rodman, 52, reporting for rehab—again. Rather than recounting his story, which is fairly typical extreme for celebrity alkies, I’ll simply refer to his wikipedia page.
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, 44, nighttime comedian fodder, apologizing for his latest escapades while “hammered” in public. The nature of the escapades hardly matters—he’s been known to dance at city council meetings, puff on crack cocaine pipes, swear at aides, get “out of control” at parties and claim his car was stolen when in fact it was at home. While he acknowledged the need to “curb” his drinking, he has not acknowledged his poly-drug addiction. Hopefully he will. If he doesn’t—given his weight—sooner rather than later, ...
“Political operatives” are likely frequently alcoholics. That could explain the state of the country.
Peggy Noonan wrote in her “Declarations” column, “How Christie Ended Up in This Jam,” in the January 11-12, 2014 edition of The Wall Street Journal:
“Policy people are policy people—sometimes creative, almost always sober, grounded, mature. But political operatives get high on winning. They start to think nothing can touch them when they’re with a winner. They get full of themselves. And they think only winning counts, because winning is their job.”
Based on Ms. Noonan’s description, “political operative” is an occupation perfectly suited for alcoholics. Political operatives get high on winning—alcoholics use winning to inflate their egos. They think nothing can touch them—alcoholics think they are invincible. They are full of themselves—alcoholics develop an inordinately large sense of self-importance, ending up ...
If something is not clear as to why someone did something really stupid, it’s usually alcoholism.
“It still isn’t clear exactly why she ended up Saturday at the house next door to her own.” So wrote a journalist reporting on Duluth college student Alyssa Jo Lommel surviving outside overnight in 17-degree-below zero temperatures in boots, jeans, a sweater and a medium-weight jacket. The 19-year-old sophomore had been out with friends playing a drinking game with cards and, near midnight, was driven to the front of her house by friends, who told police “she was buzzed but not intoxicated…talking and walking.” They drove away without watching her go inside. She was later found outside the unoccupied house next door. It’s quite clear why she ended up there: that she appeared only buzzed when she was so drunk ...
Alcohol sure as hell can turn usually peaceful workers into a mob! If there’s a riot, there are alcoholics.
An unnamed journalist in The Economist, writing “Trouble in Little India: Nearly unbelievable: a full-scale riot in the obedient city-state” of Singapore, said: “Booze seems to have fuelled the affray, and as a stopgap a ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol in Little India will apply this weekend. But alcohol alone would not have turned hundreds of usually peaceful workers into a belligerent mob.”
Oh? Show me a riot NOT fuelled by booze. Why would this riot be any different than the 1964 Watts riots (TAR # 74 “Codependent of the month”), the 2011 London riots (TAR # 66 Top Story) or the 1992 Rodney King-triggered riots (TAR # 70 Top Story)? Of course the riot would not have ...
Drinking “moderately” can mean “addictively.” Look to the use.
Margaret Wente, in a The Globe and Mail review of Ann Dowsett Johnston’s Drink, repeats Johnston’s claim that she drank “moderately” for decades, without questioning her use of the term. Yet, she writes: “Both her parents had serious problems with alcohol. She did all the things people do before they quit for good. She made solemn vows to cut back. She kept drinking diaries. She went on the wagon for weeks at a time. She tried the geographical cure by moving to another city. Meanwhile, life threw her a bunch of wrenching challenges, both professional and personal.”
Where to begin? She was a “moderate” drinker for decades? Try again. “She made solemn vows to cut back,” which suggests immoderate drinking. “She ...
Another judge, another enabler. 16-year-old Ethan Couch kills for, needlessly. And they still enable.
Tarrant County, Texas District Judge Jean Boyd, who sentenced 16-year-old Ethan Couch to 10 years of probation, with a mandatory stint at a long-term “treatment” center, for striking and killing youth pastor Brian Jennings and three others, who were helping to change a flat tire in Burleson, TX. Couch had been driving his dad’s F-350 with seven passengers and had just stolen some beer at a Wal-Mart. Nine others were injured, including two of his passengers, one of whom suffered a severe brain injury and is no longer able to move or talk.
The victims’ families were understandably irate at the sentence, noting that the judge seems to have bought the defense’s case that Couch, whose blood alcohol content was .24 ...
Prescription drug addiction leads to heroin addiction, not the other way around.
An estimated 80% of addicts trying heroin for the first time previously used prescription pain pills. This is due to a crackdown on prescription narcotics (synthetic opiates, or opioids), which has pushed addicts to seek alternatives (opiates, especially heroin); the demand for opiates has been happily met by suppliers who make the same high available for about one-sixth the price (one oxycodone pill good for one high sells on New York streets for about $30; for about the same price, addicts can get six glassine bags of heroin, which supplies six highs). When supply is constricted for one drug, the demand and supply increases for another. When the war on cocaine was at its height, methamphetamine supply and use exploded. ...
The Everly Brothers’ addiction drove both their success and mutual hatred for each other.
Don Everly, 74, dead from COPD brought on by a lifetime of smoking. He and his brother, Phil Everly, performed as The Everly Brothers while addicted to speed, alcohol and other drugs. When a very drunk Don flubbed the lyrics to “Cathy’s Clown” at a concert in 1973, they split up and refused to talk to each other. A decade later they again began to perform together, despite a mutual hatred that was so vitriolic their contracts required separate dressing rooms and stage entrances.
While drunk and drugged, their extraordinary harmonies strongly influenced the Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, The Bee Gees and the Hollies. The Beatles once referred to themselves as “the English Everly Brothers;” at the Rock and ...
Tennis star Steffi Graf’s dad, Peter Graf, pushed his daughter and pushed the envelope.
Tennis star Steffi Graf’s father Peter Graf, 75, dead from pancreatic cancer after doing time in the mid-‘90s for tax fraud. Graf, a used-car salesman, placed a sawed-off tennis racket in his three-year-old daughter’s hands and rewarded her with ice cream when able to sustain long rallies on a family living room make-shift mini-tennis court. It quickly became obvious Steffi had natural talent and Peter, as many put it, over-guided her early career.
Peter was hard-driving, which helped Steffi win the German junior 18-and-under championship when she was only 13. She turned pro at 14 and nothing stopped her. The fact that observers noted she was “robotic” and nearly emotionless on the court was blamed by many on her father, who ...
Another great, but dead actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman. If HIPAA dies, more addicts will live.
And so long too to Philip Seymour Hoffman, dead of a drug overdose at age 46 with at least 50 bags of heroin found in his apartment. It’s rumored his relapse was triggered by a prescribed drug (Oxycontin, Vicodin or other psychotropic drug). If the rumor proves true, and if there were no plans for rehab after any essential short-term treatment, the prescribing doctor should be charged with manslaughter. If Hoffman failed to inform the doctor that he had been sober nearly 24 years, the Congressmen who drafted HIPAA, which prevents medical personnel from actively obtaining medical information from those who know the patient, should be charged (ok, that’s overboard but you get the idea). Recovering addicts should never be ...
Even Skeptic Magazine can get it wrong when it comes to alcoholism.
Skeptic Magazine: They Get a Lot of Things, but Oddly Not Alcoholism
Michael Shermer is the founder of the Skeptic Society and editor-in-chief of its magazine Skeptic Magazine. Despite my disagreement with Shermer over anthropogenic “global warming” (I think the idea that puny little man could have any appreciable effect over something as grand as the climate is arrogant), the magazine is interesting, usually timely and very well-written.
Shermer provided what may be to this day the most glowing testimonial of Alcoholism Myths and Realities. Despite this, the magazine he edits and often writes for has recently published several pieces that completely miss the obvious connection between the subjects of the articles, the behaviors described and substance addiction.
One of these was an ...