Sad, But Not Unexpected Or Surprising

by Dick Mac

Through the years I have known quite a few drug addicts and alcoholics.

Intimately.

It seems that I gravitate towards people who like to drink and party. Far more than half of my friends throughout the years have been junkies or drunks or coke fiends (as I once heard them referred to in a movie). They are my favorite kind of people.

I've watched people recover from years of alcohol and drug abuse and go on to lead relatively healthy, normal lives.

I have seen people get sick, go crazy, lose everything, and become unemployable from years of drug and alcohol abuse.

I have seen people go to prison because of drug and alcohol abuse.

I have seen people die, die young, from diseases related to drug and alcohol abuse (AIDS, cirrhosis, renal failure, etc.); or the crimes and violence related to drug and alcohol abuse (drunk driving, shootings, robberies, etc.).

I was a volunteer in the Massachusetts Department of Corrections for five years in the mid-1990s. I had regular contact with inmates in many different prisons. Although I never kept count, nor did I meet every prisoner in the system, I would say that more than 75% of the men and women I met were imprisoned for a crime they committed directly related to their consumption or, or relationship to, drugs and alcohol.

As I've aged (and probably because I've become more cynical), it appears to me that most shootings that take place follow a pattern: 'I got drunk, had an argument with my husband and shot him' or 'I got drunk and when I came home my girlfriend was in bed with her ex, so I shot her' or 'I needed money to cop, so I robbed a convenience store and shot the clerk,' etc.

Are these representative of all the shootings in America? No, of course not. But I believe they are representative of a huge percentage of shootings in America and the story almost always includes some relationship to alcohol or drugs.

I am no prohibitionist. I do not think drugs and alcohol are inherently bad. I do not believe they should be outlawed. In fact, I believe that the decriminalization of all recreational drugs would greatly reduce the number of crimes committed by drug users, and would not increase the number of automobile fatalities or family shootings we currently witness.

The older (and more cynical) I get, the more I believe drugs are illegal to help prop-up the prison population. Incarceration is, after all, a growth industry in the United States. It may be the only growth industry in the United States! But, a discussion of privately-owned prisons for profit is a different discussion.

This is actually a discussion about Whitney Houston.

Watching her travel life's road from massive success and perhaps the greatest voice of her generation to an incoherent and decrepit drug addict has been sad. Nobody actually knows what leads one person to addiction and not another person from the same station in life, but theories prevail. And these theories, as fascinating as they may be, are not excuses for the excesses and destructive behavior of a drunk or junkie.

I wasn't a bug fan of her music. I believe she wasted that amazing voice singing saccharine-sweet pablum, instead of good, hard rock and soul. She was more like Dionne Warwick than Tina Turner. I always hoped that Houston would release an album of covers from Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and other hard-rocking singers; but it never happened.

Her rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl in 1991 was so amazing that it was released as a single. It reached the Top 20 on the Billboard charts. The only other recording of the song to break into the Hot 100 was Jose Feliciano's, which reached #50.

I understand that more details of her death will be released later today, but they are just details. Did she die of an overdoes, or did she take an overdose and drown? Did she have an accidental overdose, or was it suicide? Did her body just finally give out after years of hard living and massive drug use? Those are just details, like the color of the bathroom tiles and whether or not she was found dead in the nude. Irrelevant.

The story is the death of a woman at the relatively young age of 48. It is a sad story. And, sadly, a story we hear far too often.



Now THAT'S how to sing the National Anthem.

There will probably never be another voice that will sing that song so amazingly.

Godspeed.

Humor: The Alcoholic's Dream

An alcoholic sees a lamp at the end of the bar. He walks down and rubs it. Out pops a genie who says, "I will give you three wishes."

The man thinks awhile. Finally he says, "I want a beer that never is empty."

The genie makes a poof sound and on the bar is a bottle of beer. The man starts drinking it and right before it is gone, it starts to refill.

The genie asks, "Wat are your next two wishes?"

The alcoholic says, "I want two more of these."

Pocket Shot

I have been in the business world, working in one ivory tower or another, for about twenty-five years. During that time many things have changed:

I am no longer allowed to smoke at my desk or in a smoking room or anywhere in the building, I cannot tell jokes lest I offend by crossing neo-conservative lines of political correctness that have taken the place of actual social change and justice, I cannot wear a suit and tie lest my slovenly colleagues shudder in fear that "casual" attire will be eliminated as a dress code if too many people dress-up, although alcohol is served in very controlled company situations there is no longer the three-martini lunch and it is unacceptable to have the smell of alcohol on your breath in the afternoon.

The list goes on and includes alleged sensitivities to groups of allegedly disenfranchised people. The lists of the disenfranchised includes conflicting, diametrically opposed concepts. Single, childless adults are disenfranchised as are married parents. Women and people of color are disenfranchised even when they are millionaires; but white men living at the poverty line are not. The young are protected and the old are protected, but the middle-aged population is pretty much fucked. White men who are homosexual enjoy more protection than their heterosexual counterparts, and the richer the white homosexual man the more protection he can afford.

Sure, I believe there are groups that need protection. People of color, women, homosexuals, the handicapped, children, and the elderly all need to be protected. A decent society protects these people.

We, however, are not a decent society and instead of providing actual protection to these groups, we have proscribed language and cultural phenomena and instead of changing we have learned to pay-off members of the protected groups who are offended by anyone at anytime.

There is no actual change, there is just proscription and pay-off. It's sort of embarrassing.

The group I think that is treated most unfairly is the active alcoholic. Alcohol, though controlled and addictive, is a legal substance that is easily obtained almost everywhere in America. Until the advent of political correctness, which (not coincidentally) coincided with the advent of neo-conservatism, an alcoholic could have a drink (or two or three) at lunch and not really suffer any consequences in the workplace as long as her work was completed. Drinking at lunch, however, is no longer acceptable in the business world and it is rare that you see martini glasses on a restaurant table during lunch.

I noticed this over the past few years as I watched the price of a business lunch remain the same even though no booze was being ordered. What has happened is that restaurants, in an effort to maintain receipts, has had to raise the price of the food to cover the loss of liquor revenue.

Unfair I say! When alcoholics were allowed free reign during lunch, the price of food in pubs and finer restaurants remained low. Now that drinking at lunch is frowned-upon, the food prices have sky-rocketed!

How can we increase drinking at lunch to reign-in rising food costs?

One company, Pocket Shot, is facilitating the consumption of alcohol by offering " . . . a brand new way to enjoy your favorite hard liquor."

Each Pocket Shot is sealed in a near unbreakable, flexible, squishable, pocket stuffable pouch making them perfect for active activities, outdoor adventures, and glass restricting venues.

Bring a nip to the office, the morning commute, the toilet, the ballpark, behind the wheel, any place where it has become difficult to bring an old-fashioned flask or half-pint bottle.

If more people start using the Pocket Shot it is possible that drinking-at-lunch might come back into vogue! If drinking-at-lunch returns, then the food prices at restaurants can stabilize and those of us who do not drink can eat far more cheaply!

C'mon folks! Drink up! Visit Pocket Shot and spend spend spend!

Dick Mac does not condone underage drinking. So don't get caught!


Dick Mac Recommends:

Essential Sly & Family Stone
Sly & Family Stone

Craig Ferguson Talks About Sobriety

Or see it at youtube.com

Lindsay Lohan Joins A.A.

"I'm a drunk," my father explained to me in the late seventies or early 1980s. "Alcoholics go to meetings. I don't go to meetings."

His response was to my inappropriate confrontation that he had a problem with alcohol. Of course, my drug use and partying ways were not part of the conversation. He was being confronted to discuss the impact his drinking had on his family and his health. I was not there to discuss my opinions about my cocaine use of the same era.

I know that he attended at least one AA meeting, and he had a copy of an AA book in his living room when I visited one Sunday. I have no idea if he read it, or if he attended another meeting, but he certainly did not stop drinking.

I later learned that his drinking was really none of my business and it was quite obvious that he didn't care what I thought about it. He drank himself to death and in 1985, his body finally expired. He was fifty-one, but looked much older. Well, he looked dead actually.

During planning for his memorial, the funeral director asked if we wanted to designate a charity to receive donations in his honor, in lieu of flowers. "Of course," I said nobly. "Let's have people donate to Alcoholics Anonymous." This seemed the perfect charity, because they might have saved my father's life.

"AA doesn't accept contributions," the funeral director said.

I was flabbergasted! A thousand questions flew through my mind: why would they refuse contributions for the work they do? where do they get money to do their work? do they need money to do their work? what do they do? how do they do it without money? why would any charity refuse donations? But I asked none of them.

I must have looked befuddled because the funeral director offered: "It is against their tradition to take money from people outside of AA."

This confused me even more; but, I smiled and nodded my head as if this made sense, which it didn't, and he continued: "Thee are charities that do help alcoholics."

"Well," I decided. "He died of liver failure, let's donate to the liver foundation."

"Very well," he said. "And how about the church restoration fund?"

I agreed. My father and I had both grown-up in Mission Hill and the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, with its twin spires rising to the sky, is a Boston landmark we were both lucky enough to have in our neighborhood. Mission Church (the nickname for OLPH), was undergoing a much-needed renovation that required a million dollars (and this was back in the days when a million dollar was a lot of money).

I rarely think about that conversation with the local funeral director about AA. It was brought to mind last night when I saw this:

"Lindsay Lohan attending AA meetings: publicist."

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actress Lindsay Lohan, who has been a frequent target of the tabloids for her partying ways, has begun attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, her publicist said on Friday. . . . (more)

Everyone knows that the second "A" in "AA" is anonymous, and this press release hardly seemed anonymous. So I googled "aa tradition" and the first link brought me to a page that includes this piece of information:

11.- Our relations with the general public should be characterized by personal anonymity. We think A.A. ought to avoid sensational advertising. Our names and pictures as A.A. members ought not be broadcast, filmed, or publicly printed. Our public relations should be guided by the principle of attraction rather than promotion. There is never need to praise ourselves. We feel it better to let our friends recommend us.

Sound pretty anonymous. It also appears that maybe AA doesn't want to be exploited by famous people trying to make a buck. But, after all, Lindsay Lohan has never been anything but a famous person trying to make a buck. I guess her publicist issuing a press release with Lindsay Lohan's picture and her public pronouncement of joining AA is not really what people in AA are supposed to do. Maybe her publicist didn't know this. Maybe Lindsay Lohan doesn't care what impact she has on AA. Maybe Lindsay Lohan figures she can now make her bucks off the reputation and work of AA.

Nice.