I will be posting some of the e-mail from the mailbag occasionally that I feel can be useful to others. Taking notice of the new button in the right column, I invite you to push it if you would like to share a story, seek an experienced viewpoint or just plain rant… please, go ahead and ask the alcoholic.

Dear TDA-

Name Withheld

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“Captain, that’s not logical.” Dr. Spock said it often to Captain Kirk, but Leonard Nimoy also said something similar to William Shatner before his wedding.

He said just one sentence, 'Bill, you do know that Nerine is an alcoholic.' I'm not sure what Leonard expected me to say. 'I know she is,' I told him. 'But I love her.' Leonard didn't speak for a minute and then he said, sadly, 'Well, Bill, then you are in for a rough ride'."~ The Age

Nimoy was not channeling his Vulcan character, as a recovering alcoholic he knew first hand the potential pain Shatner could face. Nine years later Shatner came home to find his floating face down in the pool, dead from an overdose of alcohol and valium.

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The Lamia was a queen in Greek mythology that was transformed into a child devouring fiend after her own children were murdered. It was believed that she was cursed with the inability to ever close her eyes so that she would forever be haunted by the images of the slain children.

I was reminded of the long suffering Lamia after a reader sent me this story with a note saying that literally there would be hell to pay when those responsible sobered up. There is a small part of me that thinks maybe they should not even try.

WARSAW — A newborn baby girl died
after being thrown from a third-story window
in the Polish capital, apparently by a drunken
relative, police said Tuesday. ~ Fox News

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I don’t think many people need an introductory course on How to Drink Alone, but this article does illustrate the “art” of drinking alone quite admirably.

It certainly takes skill and a fair amount of creativity to turn the somber act of solitary drinking into some type of poetic catharsis. Of course the most common result of this solo activity is loneliness and depression, but you wouldn’t know that from those that wax poetic on the subject.

Drink liquor — whiskey. Listen a little. Enjoy the muffled aural measures of a bar waking up. Watch the door or the window instead. Draw connections to the world outside, even as it recedes slightly from perception. Notice the angles of light, the pulse of the traffic, even the evolution of customers who drift in as the day twists down to its nub.

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I am really impressed by the Pennsylvania DUI Association and its ongoing effort “to address the DUI problem in all of its many stages -- from prevention to enforcement up to, and including, adjudication and rehabilitation.” They produce there own public service announcements, raise public awareness though special events, and offer a huge range of training and certification courses. There is a massive amount of info and links available on the Team DUI website, but one of the coolest things you will find there is the Safety Bug.

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Too eager to wait for the smaller crowds of the Saturday morning showings, my brother and I braved the Friday night throng to see the much anticipated Batman installment The Dark Knight. Unfortunately even before getting to my seat in the theater I knew that my review of this movie was going to read more like an autopsy report than the rave of a satisfied fan. It wasn’t the movie’s fault, by all means it lived up to its blockbuster hype. No, it is the cinema patrons and the public in general that have earned my denunciatory review.

Standing in the refreshment line before the movie started to get my obligatory bucket of popcorn I overheard a conversation. A couple of movie goers were breathlessly gossiping that Heath Ledger got so caught up in the role of the psychotic Joker that it caused his untimely death. I had hoped that this bass-ackward speculation and fanboy glorification of Heath Ledger’s death would fade, but after hearing comments both inside and out of the theater obviously its just gathering strength.

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Junkies and drunks frequently end up putting a megaphone to their own pratfalls in the form of memoir because they need to believe that all of the time they spent with their lips wrapped around glass, whether is was a bottle of vodka or a crack pipe, actually meant something. That impulse suggests that I don’t regret the past — it brought me here to this nice, happy place — but I’d also like to squeeze something more from it. ~ David Carr

My good friend Anna Z sent me this story from The New York Times by David Carr that is actually an adaption from his book, The Night of the Gun. I usually stay away from the drunk and druggy memoirs because like I always say, the people and the places may change but we all work off the same playbook. Mr. Carr however adds an interesting twist by not only relating his story, but by going back as a professional journalist and separating the past world as he remembered it from the reality that occurred backed by eyewitness accounts, documents, and personal interviews.

And then he ponders the questions we all ask: Why? Why we tell our tale different from the way it happened, why it matters in the present, and why we tell it all. Mr. Carr does not just sew up his past into a suit of sober clothes to proudly display, instead he takes it off one piece at a time to expose the person he really was.

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The simple insertion of the smallest of punctuation marks is just my way of saying that Andy Dick has lived up to his name.

MURRIETA, Calif. — Comedian Andy Dick was arrested Wednesday morning in Murrieta, Calif., for investigation of drug use and sexual battery after he allegedly pulled down a teenager's top, police said. ~ Fox News

Alcoholism can turn even the most likable characters into social misfits but unfortunately with Mr. Dick, he wasn’t likeable in the first place. He has been charged with everything from drug possession to urinating on people over the last ten years yet a drug diversion program has been his stiffest penalty to date. Usually I am an advocate for alternative sentencing for drug and alcohol related victimless crimes, but not in this case since he continues to force himself upon others by exposing himself and groping his victims. I hope the judge teaches him a lesson this time around, it might just be the thing that saves his life.

And what about this mug shot? He looks absolutely villainous. His wicked leer made me think of the old school Joker from DC Comics, and apparently I’m not the only one who had this thought.

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The names, places, and circumstances may vary, but you can be rest assured that most alcoholics and addicts follow a very predictable path. The same rationalizations, secrecy, prevarications and red herrings are used by gutter drunks to Boston bluebloods as if they were all using the same playbook; I call it The Alcoholic Playbook.

Looking more like the star of a tribute film to John Candy than a professional athlete, John Daly, an alcoholic with a bipolar golf game, will run the route for us today demonstrating the “Control Play". With at least three trips to the Betty Ford Clinic for alcoholism, four ruined marriages, and a gambling habit that has cost him upwards of $50 million- obviously control is not one of John's better talents. However he does not let this fact get in the way after an alleged drinking incident in the Hooters hospitality tent led to a golf analyst commenting, “The most important thing in his life is getting drunk.”

“That hurt. There were some rumours flying, probably because of my past. My lifestyle has been great. I'm eating too much, but I'm hardly drinking at all - and I never go out. I guess that's just the way my life is going to be for a long time because of my past.” ~ TimesOnline

”But I’m hardly drinking at all”… uhhh yeah, right John, you’ve got the drinking under control. You’re an alcoholic yet somehow you rationalize eating too much and the comments of a talking head as being more harmful than the fact the YOU ARE STILL DRINKING! A good sand wedge will not extract you from this relapse trap.

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beer, beer, beer…

BEAR!

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