Sometimes interventions do not work

Edward Lowe Dies at 75; a Hunch Led Him to Create Kitty Litter

By ROBERT McG. THOMAS Jr.

Published: October 6, 1995

Edward Lowe, whose accidental discovery of a product he called Kitty Litter made cats more welcome household company and created a half-billion-dollar industry, died on Wednesday at a hospital in Sarasota, Fla. He was 75 and had divided his time between homes in Arcadia, Fla., and Cassopolis, Mich. 

[snip]

Material success had its personal price, however, as became evident in 1984, when Mr. Lowe dismissed his four children and his three sons-in-law from their company positions after saying they were conspiring to take over the company by having him declared incompetent as an alcoholic.

Mr. Lowe, who denied he had a serious drinking problem, said his three daughters had joined Alanon, an organization for children of alcoholics, as a ruse. The daughters said they were simply trying to understand what they regarded as his strange behavior. 

 http://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/06/us/edward-lowe-dies-at-75-a-hunch-led-him-to-create-kitty-litter.html

 

 

 

 

 

Charles Jackson

Hero Without a Sequel: Charles Jackson Revisited

April 29th, 2013  
 
“I’M ABSOLUTELY HOPELESS,” Charles Jackson told an AA meeting in 1959. “I’ve written a book that’s been called the definitive picture of the alcoholic, and it did me no good.” It had been 15 years since Jackson published The Lost Weekend, 14 years since the novel had been turned into an Oscar-winning film, and about five years since Jackson had become a regular (if perpetually relapsing) member of AA.
His “definitive picture” had been a success in almost every way imaginable. Published eight years after Jackson got sober for the first time in 1936, The Lost Weekend offered a merciless (largely autobiographical) account of one bender in the life of an alcoholic named Don Birnam. It sold more than 800,000 copies over the course of Jackson’s lifetime. The New York Times praised it as “the most compelling gift to the literature of addiction since De Quincey.” Sinclair Lewis called it “the only unflinching story of an alcoholic that I have ever read.” Doctors loved it; drinkers loved it; teetotalers loved it (though Jackson didn’t love that they loved it); even the liquor industry loved it. Their trade magazine The Beverage Times ran a lengthy interview with Jackson in which he affirmed the possibility of healthy social drinking — labeling “drunks” as people with a disease effectively sanctioned drinking for everyone who wasn’t one.

Richard Brautigan

Richard Brautigan, the Love Generation’s prickly and whimsical poet-novelist, died what the sheriff’s report termed an “unattended death” on September 16, 1984. Having committed suicide with one of his beloved Smith & Wesson revolvers, Brautigan was not discovered in his home in Bolinas, California until October 25, at which point he needed to be “scooped[ed] up with a shovel”.

 ...  Brautigan always carried the seed of alcoholism, but success enabled it to flourish. Jubilee Hitchhiker becomes a story of decline when Brautigan builds a house outside Livingston, Montana – “twenty-four bars and an equal number of churches” – to live among a macho milieu of hard drinkers, gunslingers and philanderers including Thomas McGuane, Peter Fonda, Jimmy Buffett ...

 ... He became every host’s nightmare: “One, he brought uninvited guests. Two, he was already drunk. Three, he had a .357 Magnum with him”. 

 http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1252534.ece

Oscar De La Hoya

Round 2: De La Hoya’s sex pal asks Manhattan appeals court  to reinstate $5M assault case against boxing champ

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/de-la-hoya-accuser-2-article-1.1331724#ixzz2S30N9M4W 

Previously ...

Oscar De La Hoya's drinking, cocaine abuse put boxer in rehab: Report

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20065640-10391704.html

David Potts, Private Eye 'Socialite of the Year' and councillor who laid bare his alcoholism, dies aged 30

"In an interview he said he could sometimes consume up to 70 units of alcohol a day, downing a bottle of vodka before going to work as a financial investor.

"He would sip from a hip flask during the morning, then have up to eight gin and tonics at lunchtime.

"Mr Potts blamed only himself, saying in February: "I don't feel sorry for myself, I've brought this on myself. I am paying now for my addiction to alcohol.

""I'd warn other young people to take a lesson from my book. Alcoholism is ugly and pernicious.""

Link

Units of alcohol are a measure of the volume of pure alcohol in an alcoholic beverage. They are used in some countries as a guideline for alcohol consumption.

Concerning Senator Thomas J Dodd

From the obituary of Michael O'Hare former staff member of the late Connecticut senator 

... "Mr. Dodd strongly rebutted Mr. O’Hare’s testimony, called his bookkeeping “sloppy,” and said his previous confidence in the aide was “misplaced.” Mr. Boyd suggested that the senator needed to discredit Mr. O’Hare’s testimony because “it could put Dodd in jail if it wasn’t broken.”

"As a result, the case often became the word of the senator against the word of his bookkeeper. The two gave different accounts about who had signed the senator’s personal checks at various times. Ms. O’Hare said that if her husband had not lent his authority to the investigation, “it wouldn’t have stuck — and Dodd knew that.”

"In March 1967, Pearson and Anderson wrote a column purporting to explain Mr. Dodd’s lapses. They said he was an alcoholic, an accusation Mr. Boyd said was correct. The columnists, presumably quoting Mr. O’Hare, said he ordered whiskey for the senator, called his home to say Mr. Dodd would be late on Senate business when he was inebriated, and then took him home when he had sobered up sufficiently."


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/us/18ohare.html?_r=0

RIP Robert Hughes

RIP Robert Hughes

Art critic Robert Hughes dies in New York at 74

Relevant excerpt:

"... Comedian Barry Humphries [a/k/a Dame Edna] remembered Hughes as an old friend and towering critic.

“Bob was an old friend and a great and fearless critic who wrote at least one enduring masterpiece, The Fatal Shore,” Humphries said.

“He gave a wonderful and witty speech at my last birthday party in New York and I'm deeply saddened that alcoholism, or whatever name it sometimes goes by, should have claimed yet another distinguished victim.”

In addition to being Time Magazine's influential art critic for many years Hughes was the author of The Fatal Shore a history of Australia's founding.

For more on the incidence of alcoholism in writers see Chapter Seven "Alcoholism Writes" in Vessels of Rage.