'Broadway Joe' puts life back on track

By Jon Saraceno, USA TODAY

 

TEQUESTA, Fla. — Last year, before America's disbelieving eyes, the man known as "Broadway Joe" morphed into "Blown-away Joe" — a melancholy caricature of the aging, boozed-up playboy quarterback without enough restraint to stop throwing wobbly passes in public.

 

Instantly, the phrase "I want to kiss you" joined his "I guarantee it" as two of football's memorable lines. Last December, after a day of non-stop drinking, the cultural icon and cocky superhero humiliated himself live on TV during an inebriated sideline interview with a female ESPN reporter.

 

That interview pushed Joe Namath to acknowledge that he had a problem — one he couldn't solve with reputation, swagger or a wink of those seductive green eyes.

 

Link to the original article.

My Name is Roger, and I'm an alcoholic

by Roger Ebert

In August 1979, I took my last drink. It was about four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, the hot sun streaming through the windows of my little carriage house on Dickens. I put a glass of scotch and soda down on the living room table, went to bed, and pulled the blankets over my head. I couldn't take it any more.

On Monday I went to visit wise old Dr. Jakob Schlichter. I had been seeing him for a year, telling him I thought I might be drinking too much. He agreed, and advised me to go to "A.A.A," which is what he called it. Sounded like a place where they taught you to drink and drive. I said I didn't need to go to any meetings. I would stop drinking on my own. He told me to go ahead and try, and check back with him every month.

The problem with using will power, for me, was that it lasted only until my will persuaded me I could take another drink. At about this time I was reading The Art of Eating, by M. F. K. Fisher, who wrote: "One martini is just right. Two martinis are too many. Three martinis are never enough." The problem with making resolutions is that you're sober when you make the first one, have had a drink when you make the second one, and so on. I've also heard, You take the first drink. The second drink takes itself. That was my problem. I found it difficult, once I started, to stop after one or two. If I could, I would continue until I decided I was finished, which was usually some hours later. The next day I paid the price in hangovers.

Link to original article.

Ebook now available.

For a reasonable fee interested readers can now view Vessels of Rage on Google Play.

Murder spree left Joanna Dennehy 'stinking of blood.'

"A lawyer called it Jacobean; Dennehy likened herself to Bonnie and Clyde. But police have found no motive for the brutal killings.

" ... Dennehy will go down in history as one of the UK's most notorious multiple murderers.

" ... Police have found no coherent, lucid motive for her attacks. She was a long-term drug user a drinker ..."

 http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/12/joanna-dennehy-murder-spree-jacobean-tragedy

My suggestion: read Chapter Eight "Alcoholism Kills"  in my book.

Edward Lee Howard

In Chapter Four "The Traitor's Disease" of my book I describe the case of  Edward Lee Howard, one of America's most destructive alcoholic traitors. I leave off the description of his treachery in the mid 1980's when, learning American authorities were on his tail, he escaped to Moscow.

Now Robert Stone has brought me up-to-date. In today's Wall Street Journal Stone expresses doubt about the official explanation for Howard's reported 2002 death in Moscow. The Russians claimed he died in a "drunken fall" in his dacha. Stone speculates instead that he may have been murdered by the Russians to eliminate a potential embarrassment in their relationship with the USA.

Perhaps. But people in the late-stages of alcoholism have been known to die in falls just as in the early to middle stages when their egomania is at its peak they tend to look for ways to express their need for power. For some in a position to do so, as was the CIA-trained Howard, that meant embarking on that ultimate power trip, betrayal of one's country.

I have no problem believing that the underlying cause of Howard's treachery and his flight to Moscow also led, years later, to his death: alcoholism.

Should an Alcoholic Be Allowed to Get a Second Liver Transplant?

Considering the question of how to allocate a scarce resource: human organs


by
Theodore Dalrymple

 ... A newspaper in England asked me to write an article, for what for me was a considerable sum of money, to opine that a certain very famous soccer player, who had turned severely to drink after his retirement, should not be given a second liver transplant, the first having failed because of his continued drinking. The player in question was not admirable, but he did say one memorable thing. Impoverished by his habits, an interviewer asked him where all his money had gone. “Wine, women and song,” he replied. “The rest I wasted.”

I told the newspaper that, as a practising doctor, I could not possibly write an article saying that a named person should be left to die without potentially life-saving treatment.

“Do you know a doctor who would write it?” the editor asked.

“I hope not,” I replied.

More

How Alcohol Has Steered American History

by Susan Cheever

From the Pilgrims' pit-stop at Plymouth Rock, to the murder of Abe Lincoln, to Wall Street's meltdown, booze has played a pivotal role in our nation's most momentous events. But we prefer to ignore its profound impact.  

Excerpt: 

Many of the darkest episodes in our history, not surprisingly, also include alcohol. John Wilkes Booth reeked of brandy as he ran from Ford’s Theater after assassinating Abraham Lincoln. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whose anti-communist witch hunts in the early 1950s destroyed many valuable careers from Washington, DC, to Hollywood, died in Bethesda Naval Hospital of cirrhosis of the liver at age 48. “McCarthy was an alcoholic, and his alcoholism explains his infamous behavior,” writes historian James Graham in Vessels of Rage, Engines of Power: The Secret History of Alcoholism.

The Fix.com