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canuckistan
Mod Team
Joined: 17 Jun 2003
Location: Training future GS competitors.....
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 Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 7:43 pm Post subject: Dry drunk revisited |
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I always wondered about the term "dry drunk" from this bit written about George W from 2002.
Well this past weekend I met a "dry drunk" and what it means finally became much clearer: they may be sober but they're still a mess.
http://www.americanpolitics.com/20020924Bisbort.html
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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.
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SweetBear
Joined: 18 May 2003
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| Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 10:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| 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. |
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Not a Bush supporter here, but neither do I care for so called journalists who will twist anything around to get their point across. The bit about the brother would have been touching had it not been placed in this article. Sad really. |
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billybrobby
Joined: 09 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 7:32 am Post subject: |
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| i'm no fan of bush, but I think it's kind of disgusting the way this author takes the symptoms of a disease that killed his brother and crudely applies them george bush. I mean, can you really liken the angry outbursts of an alcoholic to the decision to wage war in Iraq by terming both of them "violence"? the analogies (congress=enabler, etc.) are so thin and hokey that I feel like the author doesn't even expect us to buy them, except that he's invoked the memory of his dead brother. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 1:24 pm Post subject: |
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| That article was low. Just low. |
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Satori
Joined: 09 Dec 2005
Location: Above it all
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| Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 1:40 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm very anti Bush, but still principled enough to know sickeningly low class underhand journalism when I see it. Im almost as anti these types of people as I am anti Rebublican, because thier hysterical and dishonest approach does severe damage to the image of the Democrats. And sinse Clinton left, that image has been in a bad enough way without these low lifes adding fuel to the flame. Journalism like that makes it so easy for Republicans to practice thier major smear tactic, that is painting Democrats as flaky air-heads. |
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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| Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 2:01 pm Post subject: |
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| I've never cared much for Bush, but that article is so, so... very small of print, that I can't be bothered to squint. I'm a poet, I know it, I don't need to show it, and I also don't need to read about "dry drunks" to get the general idea of the thang. Particularly this early in the morning. As I sit here hooked up to my starbucks i.v. |
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The Man known as The Man
Joined: 29 Mar 2003
Location: 3 cheers for Ted Haggard oh yeah!
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| Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 2:09 pm Post subject: |
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| That article is more applicable to Michael Ignatieff and his articulate statements as of late. |
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Dan The Chainsawman
Joined: 05 May 2005
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| Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 6:48 pm Post subject: |
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I love the entire cultish 12 step culture. Alcoholism is a disease you know!
What a farce. |
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