-Caveat Lector-
------------------------------------
Free your mind and your ass will follow.
St George
NEURONAUTIC INSTITUTE on-line: http://home.earthlink.net/~thew
------ Forwarded Message
>
> Dry Drunk
> Is Bush making a cry for help?
> by Alan Bisbort
>
> Sept. 24, 2002 -- HARTFORD (APJP) -- Alcoholics Anonymous has a name for
> someone who is a drunk in every way except for the actual imbibing of spirits.
> They call that person a "dry drunk." This is not a judgmental term, nor should
> this be a judgmental topic in America, where there are, by even the most
> conservative estimates, 10 million adult alcoholics, and very few families
> that have not been touched, in one way or another, by this national scourge.
> This same scourge has, by his own admission, also touched the life of our
> Commander in Chief.
>
> Whether George W. Bush is or was an alcoholic is not the point here. I am
> taking him at his word that he stopped what he termed "heavy drinking" in
> 1986, at age 40. The point here is that, based on Bush's recent behavior, he
> could very well be a "dry drunk." Of course, he may just be an immature bully
> who will gladly sacrifice thousands of lives to get his way even against the
> advice of the most respected and mature members of his own party.
>
> Still, Bush's past battles with the bottle are worth pondering at a time like
> this, one of the most dangerous in the nation's history. When a recovering
> alcoholic begins to engage in what AA calls "stinking thinking," he or she
> begins to exhibit the old attitudes and pathologies of their drinking years.
> These include an increase in anxiety, mild tremors, mild depression, disturbed
> sleep patterns, inability to think clearly, craving for junk food,
> irritability, sudden bursts of anger and unpredictable mood swings. According
> to AA literature, "Boredom and listlessness may alternate with intense
> feelings of resentment against family and friends, and explosive outbursts of
> violence."
>
> Bush said he was a "heavy drinker." But let's not be coy here. Anyone who has
> ever imbibed heavily over a long period of time knows that "heavy drinker" is
> the rich man's (or the politician's) code for alcoholic.
>
> For the record, Bush claims to have stopped drinking for reasons that change
> each time he's asked about his substance-abusing past (which isn't often,
> thanks to a cowed press). Let's say he started experimenting with alcohol, as
> per the national norm, at 16 at prep school, and he began getting regularly
> wasted at Yale at 18. This would mean that Bush drank steadily "heavily" for
> at least 22 years. We are, then, asked to believe that he went cold turkey
> after more than two decades of heavy drinking, a nearly impossible feat even
> for someone, as he claims, who was rescued by God.
>
> Far be it from me to cast stones when it comes to alcohol. I've seen the
> devastating toll alcoholism can take. My brother was an honors student in
> college, when he began drinking heavily (party drinking, as was the tradition
> at southern colleges back then). By the time he was in his mid-30s, real and
> dramatic changes had occurred in his metabolism and brain chemistry. Medical
> experts told me at the time that just 15 years of sustained drinking can do
> irreversible physical harm of this sort. In other words, even if my brother
> stopped drinking, the damage would remain done. But by most measuring sticks,
> my brother was a functioning member of society. He held jobs, paid his rent
> and bills, and he made heroic efforts to beat his cursed addiction. He climbed
> the 12 steps more times than Stallone climbed those steps in "Rocky."
>
> Though I deeply loved my brother and miss him terribly now, I could not deny
> the damage, even in his long periods of sobriety, that alcohol did to him.
> Rather, I could not deny the damage, but I could not bear to watch it happen.
> I could feel it in my bones that he was up against something stronger than his
> will and his prodigious intellect. Stinking thinking, like kudzu, simply
> overtook his mind, and alcohol killed his body.
>
> It is worth reflecting on George W. Bush's academic history. He graduated from
> two of the finest institutions of higher learning in this country: Yale and
> Harvard. He didn't make great grades, but he graduated, an accomplishment
> warranting some respect. Many rich, well-connected boys have flunked out.
> [NOTE from the editors: ...or tossed out, as was one Richard Scaife, from
> Yale, allegedly for his own love of the bottle.]
>
> The question is then begged, and seems to at least deserve some pause for
> pondering: how did he, at age 58, get so fumble-tongued, incapable of
> stringing more than two coherent sentences together, snippily irritable with
> anyone who dares disagree with him or even ask a question, poutily turning his
> back on the democratically elected president of one of our most important
> allies because of something one of his underlings said about him (Germany's
> Schroder, of course), listlessly in need of constant vacations and rest,
> dangerously obsessed with only one thing (Iraq), to the exclusion of all other
> things (including an economy that is slowly sucking the life from the nation
> as ! well as the retirement savings of anyone reading these words)?
>
> Furthermore, why is Bush so eager to engage in violence and so incapable of
> explaining why?
>
> For drunks to function for any length of time in the world, they need
> enablers. Congress is filling that bill splendidly right now for Bush. As
> BuzzFlash put it about the recent corporate scandals, "For most of his adult
> life, those people around him enabled Bush's alcoholism. Now the Democratic
> Senate is enabling the corporate corruption problem of his administration by
> not using their Constitutional powers to demand the truth."
>
> Not only the Congress but the nation seems to be watching this happen. No.
> They are encouraging it to happen. Who knows, maybe we are all in shock, just
> as we are when a member of our family does something appalling or outrageous
> under alcohol's bidding. God knows, the crazy behavior by the administration
> is so wild and unprecedented, covering such frightening unknown territory up
> ahead that it may be easier to look away.
>
> But we can't look away. George W. Bush needs an intervention. Let's be his
> interveners. Let's raise our sober voices. Let's ask questions, demand more
> than temper tantrums and pouting from the Commander in Chief. Let's do this
> before it's too late and a dry drunk's dream of glory becomes our national
> nightmare.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Alan Bisbort is a columnist for the Hartford Advocate. His more recent book is
> "Famous Last Words" (Pomegranate).
>
>
>
>
------ End of Forwarded Message
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