In much the same way I know a lot about the Army from a not terribly distinguished career, I know a lot about drinking from the same grievous perspective. Let me assure you that when your drinking earns you an above-the-fold front page story in the New York Times that jumps to a full page inside the paper, as Rudy Giuliani’s drinking did today, it’s not funny.
my last drink and drug was april 24, 1994. as much as i detest the man and everything he stands for i would have to respect that he has the same right to recovery that i do and if i saw him in a meeting i would have to treat him graciously and if asked to help would be obligated to do so. his denials of his problem are very close to word for word with mine. drunks got no imagination.
i tell people that i see the real america in meetings. the autonomous structure of AA has created one of the purest and most responsive democracies i have ever seen.
but there've also been plenty of meetings I've stopped attending because the "culture" of that particular meeting no longer suited me.
sorry, but some shit is just beyond the pall.
if I saw Rudy at a meeting, I'd stop going. if it was, say, a meeting I was chairing (as I chaired arguably the world's craziest meeting--midnight at the Moravian Church--for a year and a half), I would be civilized. period.
sorry, but for me, there are certain levels of human perfection I'm perfectly okay with never even aspiring to...
No kidding. All my life I hated Republicans and accountants (because they would always bitch if I asked for an advance on my paycheck). I remember the day it dawned on mr that my sponsor was a Republican (not anymore) and an accountant. He still is my sponsor thirty years later. God def. has a sense of humor.
I'd be Rudy's sponsor! Oh yeah!
"Rudy, let's allot the next four years for your eighth step." (made a list of all people we had harmed and became willing to amends to them all, etc.)
Lucian, I am so glad you wrote about this. I read the NYT article yesterday (Thursday in India) and felt truly sad for Rooty Tooty. I remember him so well as mayor of nyc and his public announcement that he was divorcing the wife of that moment. His third wife is now divorcing him. Yes, he has a very lonely life inside that bottle. He was a terrible, vindictive “leader” and shipped hundreds, if not thousands of homeless people away from the center of tourism in Manhattan. He opened the theatre district to the commercial inundation of Disney and jelly bean companies. He placed scanners and police in the public schools, where I worked at the time. But, as a person of deep compassion, I do feel for him. In spite of all his despicable behavior vis a vis dump. Maybe if he does his eighth step as Knox has suggested, he will have a chance to turn his pathetic life around. Let’s hope he even gets to the first seven....
A 12-step program saved my sanity and probably my life. I'm still awed and inspired by the 12 Traditions as well as the 12 Steps, and my copy of the AA 12 + 12 is never far from my workspace.
My brother's claim not to be an alcoholic was that he only drank beer. You can con every excuse in the world to give yourself a pass. And he would put out a case of empty beer cans every morning. I am so grateful I didn't have a tendency to any chemical addictions. Mine are more work-related as in workaholic which also has problems.
I notice a lot of people here “feel sorry” for alcoholics/ Giuliani. That just works into their desire to manipulate people. . . They don’t get “a pass.”
Exactly! It’s a sociopathic trait you’ll find in an addictive personality: Play the victim so you can manipulate the people who feel sorry for you. It’s the “Poor, pitiful Me” Game. The MAGAts have invested themselves with this game; it’s the basis of “libertarianism,” too. The very nerve of society for forcing them to pay taxes or abide by the law!
Rudy's drinking problem goes way back, at least to his mayoral days+likely before that. After he defeated David Dinkins, in an overtly+despicably racist campaign in 1993, Rudy raced around the city with his crew hitting high end watering holes and cigar clubs, making them NYC's hot spots. His bullying, a signal trait of his sober or inebriated, always got meaner after several drinks. He deserves our sympathy for his desolate condition, but the racist former mayor+lobbyist for the Saudis, Putin, the oxycontin kings, Chevron+terrorists is an irredeemably loathsome figure.
It does not get better. If you're a young alcoholic and treatment either doesn't work for you or you don't seek it, it just gets worse and worse and worse and more and more people are hurt by it.
This is a devastatingly accurate portrayal of alcoholism. I lost my only brother to it. He denied his alcoholism until it finally took him down and I think he had that last moment of truth when he looked it in the eye the final time and knew it had him and he had no power over it. Then he killed himself. It is devastating for a family throughout its course. He went to rehab over and over, we found out later, and on his way home from rehab he would stop at a bar and it would start all over again. Every single time. At least he wasn't in cahoots with the most evil person ever to become president and out for another round of it.
No, you don't. You don't think about it every minute after decades pass but it twists your heart and you know how it hurt your parents, so it's not just your pain. It's like rusted barbed wire around your heart.
My association with Al-anon has helped me heal from the loss of my darling daughter. I have recovered from her loss to some extent. I am still sad at the really tough life she lived, hanging out with terrible people, etc. but it was what it was., I wrote on her stone: "Troubled in spirit, now at peace". That's how I feel
Anne, my sister committed suicide in 1977. It was the most unbearable thing I have had to face in my 74 years. She struggled with mental imbalance, drugs and alcohol all of her 24 years. I miss her to this day.
Emilie was bi polar and I believe border line personality disorder. I had 18 years of Al-anon working the steps of alcoholics anonymous, attending Al-anon meetings, sponsoring women and although her death was a very difficult time for me, I was able to walk through it without falling apart. My older daughter has never recovered. Its been 11 years.
As sad as it gets. He was loaded with talent and brains and could not lick this. And he was a Navy SEAL who went through the training at 30. You'd think he'd have all the abilities to quit the alcohol. But it was stronger.
So who's laughing? I've got a brother who is a drunk, a sweet, decent guy who was once a great musician. Now that's heartbreaking. Rudy is not. You can be a fascist shit and an alcoholic. Rudy was always a bastard, now he's a pathetic drunk of a bastard. It's an ancient, tragic addiction. But I feel sorry for the squeegee guys he dragged around and locked up and for all the other people he pissed on in his overblown career, not to mention the women he went after. Foul creep, and he belongs in jail.
I ALWAYS hated him. even when he was that "deadly effective, crusading young prosecutor," he made my skin crawl.
he always felt like one of those "political" guys in high school who shakes hands with you and you wonder what kinds of places he's been putting his fingers...
I was married to a raging alcoholic who drank himself to death, bringing down everyone around him. It's not at all funny, and the enablers just made it worse. Giuliani should be in treatment, but he is and always has been a fascist and a nightmare, and the damage he has done to this country is profound.
Recall that "America's Mayor" wanted to stop the NYC election right after 9/11---not a very heroic call in a democracy under attack. He profited after 9/11 by setting up an international security firm; he made millions. Tony Blair did the same thing.
I grew up and lived in NJ and in NYC. Recall the mob of white cops screaming "Giuliani time!", and Rudy announcing his divorce from Donna Hanover before he bothered to tell her, among other horrific behavior. Rudy was and is a creep and a racist pig.
I can’t even begin to list the experience I’ve had with alcoholism. I was surrounded by it in upstate NY when my mother ran (down) the Hotel Parquet; and she was a drunk, too. It’s one reason I CAN’T STAND bullies. It’s why I refuse to back down to bullies. I won’t tolerate it. (Woe to the Repugs who try to bully me with their games. Woe, for they are Dead Meat so far as I’m concerned.) The violence, the PTSD, the entitlement that addicts assume; the Games Addicts Play. The Poor Pitiful Me routine -- it’s endless. Alcoholics are a f-king nightmare and contrary to some people’s beliefs, alcoholism is just part of a much more serious disease: Personality Disorders that cannot be cured. And guess what? There’s also the variant known as “dry alcoholics.” They are the ones who lean on outside sources to direct their behaviors--sources like religious extremism. They, too, are addicts.
Just look at the current MAGAts of the Repug Party. They are all playing games usually characterized by sociopathic and narcissistic personality disorders. They Play victim as they victimize others. Their twisted, unrealistic, conspiracy-based thinking is paranoid and sometimes schizoidal. And they are ruthless--lacking conscience or the ability to put themselves in another’s place. Think of them as Dry Drunks, hooked on chaos.
So, Giuliani may be a sloppy drunk, but he surrounded himself with similarly sick, twisted people. It’s what they do.
There is only one way to manage people like that: They have to be collared and brought to heel. There is no point in trying to reason with Crazy-makers. They don’t have an internalized code of ethics, and expecting them to wake up and “do the right thing” is an exercise in futility.
This country has been putting up with ever-increasing chaos from Repug representation. We gave away elections; we placated these traitors to the point where they felt entitled to enthrone a traitor associated with the Russian mob in the White House . . . And STILL we are expected to take them seriously as they shove their crap down our collective throats. Think about what just happened in the House of Rep. this week: A man associated with pedophilia led a dog fight to oust a man who is described as, “a liar, a coward, a self-serving incompetent” . . . And the Repugs are BLAMING DEMOCRATS ??? THAT embodies the essence of the Repug Mental Illness threatening this democracy. The may be drunk, addicted, hooked on religion, bigotry or just, plain chaos--but all you need to know is there is no cure. It’s not up to anyone in this situation to diagnose the type of Crazy--just realize you can’t change it. The only way out is to SET LIMITS and not be bullied.
Set Limits.
Do not take their bullying and their crap.
Take a page from the REAL leaders: DA Fani Willis, Judge Tanya Chutkan, Gen. Milley,, Judge Engoron, Cassidy Hutchinson. You know the kind: The ones that set limits and know right from wrong.
The people who had to deal with Giuliani should have taken the car keys away and called a taxi. There was no point in trying to reason with him. He was a disgrace LOOOOOOng before this.
Thanks. Great analysis. Alcoholism is 100% revolting. Not just for the addict. It kills the person who loves them too, unless they know how to hop out of the way and mostly, to abandon the addict to their self chosen and savagely defended fate because absolutely for certain, they love alcohol more than they love you, and will trample on you if you try to get between them and their bottle.
Yet! I would urge anyone dealing with that alcoholic/drug addict to remember: Don’t take it personally. When an alcoholic/addict chooses their poison over family or loved ones, it’s due to THEIR problem with priorities. It’s NOT a reflection of the worth of the people they betray. As the song goes, What’s love got to do with it? The inability to set ethical priorities is a reflection of not having an internalized moral code.
And I am fresh out of pity for people like Giuliani. He isn’t some poor soul--he consistently made his choices. By the time he was finishing his term as mayor, he was evicted from Gracie Mansion for cheating on his wife. He was a laughing stock, besides being known as a cold, calculating, heartless bastard. . . And damned proud of it.
Only too true. All an alcohol addict wants to do is to destroy themselves and/ or make you into an addict too (though you'd have to pay for your own booze) so you can join them down the gurgler.
Between the lines of the Times story: P1135809 took advantage of Rudy's impairment because it served him well. Just as he did with his alcoholic brother! P1135809's team of incompetent attorneys will try to use Rudy-as-Lawyer as a defense in his Washington trial, and the prosecution will single out Rudy's alcoholism as a reason P1135809 should have known better than to rely on inebriated advice. The prosecution has a strong case: P1135809's older brother, Fred, Jr., suffered the same affliction and P1135809 is more than passingly familiar with the effects of alcoholism. In fact, he and sister Mary, took advantage of Fred Jr's alcoholism to screw him out of his inheritance. Hope all of that emerges at trial, it is a scummy an episode as ever unspooled in a life of scummy episodes.
There is an undeserved tone of compassion for this Asshole that speaks well of you as a sentient being. Before he was a drunk Giuliani was a mean spirited prick that prosecuted jaywalkers and John Gotti with the same zeal, tried to shut down the Brooklyn Museum because he objected to an exhibition and displayed countless examples of racism, self aggrandizing and abuse of power. Most of us have experience with addiction either first hand or with family and close friends. Underneath it all many are good people struggling with a disease. The opposite isn't the rule. I know you probably agree. Just want to point it out.
Thank you for you even description of Rudy's disease according to the New York Times. I have been a member of Al-anon for 29 years helping myself and others recover from the effects of someone else's drinking..I lost my youngest daughter to the disease....she took her own life as living with the disease was too painful to her. She was 36. It's an ugly disease and , if left untreated, can wreck havoc with the alcoholic 's life and those that love him/her.
Ex husband told therapist he didn't have a drinking problem--problem was my perception of his drinking. Finally went to rehab after doc told him his liver enzymes were so high that he would be dead if he kept it up. Went to rehab, did 90 meetings in 90 days and proclaimed himself cured. Destroyed a 35 year marriage and the childhoods of 2 kids along the way. But everyone at the bar thought he was a great guy
I knew someone who was in the same rehab she'd attended six or seven years before. she spent, like, two days cursing everyone out because the second time, they'd actually had the nerve to search her and take away the drugs she'd brought. "how the fuck do they expect me to do rehab without getting high?" was her complaint. I ran into her a few months later and she was definitely not sober.
the idea that people do rehab over and over is about the most sobering thing I can think of.
Children of Alcoholics are better off without the alcoholic in the house. It will take, possibly, a lifetime to get over the hypervigilance, the gaslighting, the shame--all of it.
I'd also recommend ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics). It did me a world of good and that's understating how beneficial it was - and is. I gained insight into how and why my father (who drank himself into an early grave) was what he was. More importantly, ACA helped me understand why I developed many of the quirks, characteristics and habits (A whole lot of "bad defense mechanisims" included!) that vexed me over the course of my life. The help is available and out there, you just have to face up to the fact you need it and you needn't go it alone. For a time, I combined my ACA work with visits to a terrific therapist. She had a cute little sign on her wall, "The Road To Self-Improvement Is Always Under Construction". And so it is.
Great column, Lucian, thank you. And thanks also to your many readers for their fearlessly honest comments. Bless you all!
Thank you Lucian. To everyone here who posted about a family member who died by suicide and alcoholism, my heart breaks for you. My father was an alcoholic who never binged or missed work. He just drank himself to an early death. Alcohol is our most dangerous drug.
The lede graf is superb, as is, really, the whole column. Writing about alcoholism from the outside is never as persuasive as from the inside. Drinkers who never clean up make myriad troubles for themselves, as well as certain others. (Don't ask me how I know this, as I often said as Dear Prudence.)
Compulsions are not easy to offload, so I have great respect for those who could do it. The 12-steppers are brave, in my opinion, because of the admission of powerlessness. That has to be painful to process. (Even to stop smoking, for me, was hell. It took a live-in program at a sanitarium, more than one bribe from my mother, and too many failures before success. And smoke didn't alter my behavior ... just my lungs. So to give up an addiction to alcohol I believe to be harder, because think it makes them funnier, or more outgoing. It is more tied to the presentational self than cigarettes.
Rudy is a very public, if not extreme example of how a person can drink away a career, and of course relationships.)
I can't, however, feel too bad for Rudy. There were other factors besides alcohol that brought him low.
I read the Times story with such mixed feelings - loathing the guy for what he’s said and done, but feeling heartbroken by the chains of alcoholism. No, it isn’t ever funny, but it is unbelievably sad.
Alcoholism isn't funny. However, I'm sorry I must be a bad person but Rudy the alcoholic is pretty hilarious in the same way it would be if Trump fell into an active volcano while losing his balance watching a solar eclipse.
"BE" seen -- corrected in last graf.
my last drink and drug was april 24, 1994. as much as i detest the man and everything he stands for i would have to respect that he has the same right to recovery that i do and if i saw him in a meeting i would have to treat him graciously and if asked to help would be obligated to do so. his denials of his problem are very close to word for word with mine. drunks got no imagination.
Ditto.
i tell people that i see the real america in meetings. the autonomous structure of AA has created one of the purest and most responsive democracies i have ever seen.
as true as anything.
but there've also been plenty of meetings I've stopped attending because the "culture" of that particular meeting no longer suited me.
sorry, but some shit is just beyond the pall.
if I saw Rudy at a meeting, I'd stop going. if it was, say, a meeting I was chairing (as I chaired arguably the world's craziest meeting--midnight at the Moravian Church--for a year and a half), I would be civilized. period.
sorry, but for me, there are certain levels of human perfection I'm perfectly okay with never even aspiring to...
You are right. Our better selves need to be reminded.
Absolutely
No kidding. All my life I hated Republicans and accountants (because they would always bitch if I asked for an advance on my paycheck). I remember the day it dawned on mr that my sponsor was a Republican (not anymore) and an accountant. He still is my sponsor thirty years later. God def. has a sense of humor.
I'd be Rudy's sponsor! Oh yeah!
"Rudy, let's allot the next four years for your eighth step." (made a list of all people we had harmed and became willing to amends to them all, etc.)
Lucian, I am so glad you wrote about this. I read the NYT article yesterday (Thursday in India) and felt truly sad for Rooty Tooty. I remember him so well as mayor of nyc and his public announcement that he was divorcing the wife of that moment. His third wife is now divorcing him. Yes, he has a very lonely life inside that bottle. He was a terrible, vindictive “leader” and shipped hundreds, if not thousands of homeless people away from the center of tourism in Manhattan. He opened the theatre district to the commercial inundation of Disney and jelly bean companies. He placed scanners and police in the public schools, where I worked at the time. But, as a person of deep compassion, I do feel for him. In spite of all his despicable behavior vis a vis dump. Maybe if he does his eighth step as Knox has suggested, he will have a chance to turn his pathetic life around. Let’s hope he even gets to the first seven....
A 12-step program saved my sanity and probably my life. I'm still awed and inspired by the 12 Traditions as well as the 12 Steps, and my copy of the AA 12 + 12 is never far from my workspace.
My brother's claim not to be an alcoholic was that he only drank beer. You can con every excuse in the world to give yourself a pass. And he would put out a case of empty beer cans every morning. I am so grateful I didn't have a tendency to any chemical addictions. Mine are more work-related as in workaholic which also has problems.
I’ve heard that one before!
I notice a lot of people here “feel sorry” for alcoholics/ Giuliani. That just works into their desire to manipulate people. . . They don’t get “a pass.”
Exactly! It’s a sociopathic trait you’ll find in an addictive personality: Play the victim so you can manipulate the people who feel sorry for you. It’s the “Poor, pitiful Me” Game. The MAGAts have invested themselves with this game; it’s the basis of “libertarianism,” too. The very nerve of society for forcing them to pay taxes or abide by the law!
You are the exception to the rule.
Rudy's drinking problem goes way back, at least to his mayoral days+likely before that. After he defeated David Dinkins, in an overtly+despicably racist campaign in 1993, Rudy raced around the city with his crew hitting high end watering holes and cigar clubs, making them NYC's hot spots. His bullying, a signal trait of his sober or inebriated, always got meaner after several drinks. He deserves our sympathy for his desolate condition, but the racist former mayor+lobbyist for the Saudis, Putin, the oxycontin kings, Chevron+terrorists is an irredeemably loathsome figure.
It does not get better. If you're a young alcoholic and treatment either doesn't work for you or you don't seek it, it just gets worse and worse and worse and more and more people are hurt by it.
This is a devastatingly accurate portrayal of alcoholism. I lost my only brother to it. He denied his alcoholism until it finally took him down and I think he had that last moment of truth when he looked it in the eye the final time and knew it had him and he had no power over it. Then he killed himself. It is devastating for a family throughout its course. He went to rehab over and over, we found out later, and on his way home from rehab he would stop at a bar and it would start all over again. Every single time. At least he wasn't in cahoots with the most evil person ever to become president and out for another round of it.
How sad for you. A family member never really recovers from their sibling, parent, spouse, or child's suicide.
No, you don't. You don't think about it every minute after decades pass but it twists your heart and you know how it hurt your parents, so it's not just your pain. It's like rusted barbed wire around your heart.
My association with Al-anon has helped me heal from the loss of my darling daughter. I have recovered from her loss to some extent. I am still sad at the really tough life she lived, hanging out with terrible people, etc. but it was what it was., I wrote on her stone: "Troubled in spirit, now at peace". That's how I feel
I'm glad you are able to heal.
Anne, my sister committed suicide in 1977. It was the most unbearable thing I have had to face in my 74 years. She struggled with mental imbalance, drugs and alcohol all of her 24 years. I miss her to this day.
Emilie was bi polar and I believe border line personality disorder. I had 18 years of Al-anon working the steps of alcoholics anonymous, attending Al-anon meetings, sponsoring women and although her death was a very difficult time for me, I was able to walk through it without falling apart. My older daughter has never recovered. Its been 11 years.
We never really recover completely.
How very sad.
So sad. Sorry to hear
Thanks
sorry from me too. very, very sad.
As sad as it gets. He was loaded with talent and brains and could not lick this. And he was a Navy SEAL who went through the training at 30. You'd think he'd have all the abilities to quit the alcohol. But it was stronger.
I’m so sorry for your great loss and your continuing pain. Thank you for telling us your brother’s story.
So who's laughing? I've got a brother who is a drunk, a sweet, decent guy who was once a great musician. Now that's heartbreaking. Rudy is not. You can be a fascist shit and an alcoholic. Rudy was always a bastard, now he's a pathetic drunk of a bastard. It's an ancient, tragic addiction. But I feel sorry for the squeegee guys he dragged around and locked up and for all the other people he pissed on in his overblown career, not to mention the women he went after. Foul creep, and he belongs in jail.
I'm with you.
I ALWAYS hated him. even when he was that "deadly effective, crusading young prosecutor," he made my skin crawl.
he always felt like one of those "political" guys in high school who shakes hands with you and you wonder what kinds of places he's been putting his fingers...
I'm with you, too!
I was married to a raging alcoholic who drank himself to death, bringing down everyone around him. It's not at all funny, and the enablers just made it worse. Giuliani should be in treatment, but he is and always has been a fascist and a nightmare, and the damage he has done to this country is profound.
Recall that "America's Mayor" wanted to stop the NYC election right after 9/11---not a very heroic call in a democracy under attack. He profited after 9/11 by setting up an international security firm; he made millions. Tony Blair did the same thing.
I grew up and lived in NJ and in NYC. Recall the mob of white cops screaming "Giuliani time!", and Rudy announcing his divorce from Donna Hanover before he bothered to tell her, among other horrific behavior. Rudy was and is a creep and a racist pig.
I can’t even begin to list the experience I’ve had with alcoholism. I was surrounded by it in upstate NY when my mother ran (down) the Hotel Parquet; and she was a drunk, too. It’s one reason I CAN’T STAND bullies. It’s why I refuse to back down to bullies. I won’t tolerate it. (Woe to the Repugs who try to bully me with their games. Woe, for they are Dead Meat so far as I’m concerned.) The violence, the PTSD, the entitlement that addicts assume; the Games Addicts Play. The Poor Pitiful Me routine -- it’s endless. Alcoholics are a f-king nightmare and contrary to some people’s beliefs, alcoholism is just part of a much more serious disease: Personality Disorders that cannot be cured. And guess what? There’s also the variant known as “dry alcoholics.” They are the ones who lean on outside sources to direct their behaviors--sources like religious extremism. They, too, are addicts.
Just look at the current MAGAts of the Repug Party. They are all playing games usually characterized by sociopathic and narcissistic personality disorders. They Play victim as they victimize others. Their twisted, unrealistic, conspiracy-based thinking is paranoid and sometimes schizoidal. And they are ruthless--lacking conscience or the ability to put themselves in another’s place. Think of them as Dry Drunks, hooked on chaos.
So, Giuliani may be a sloppy drunk, but he surrounded himself with similarly sick, twisted people. It’s what they do.
There is only one way to manage people like that: They have to be collared and brought to heel. There is no point in trying to reason with Crazy-makers. They don’t have an internalized code of ethics, and expecting them to wake up and “do the right thing” is an exercise in futility.
This country has been putting up with ever-increasing chaos from Repug representation. We gave away elections; we placated these traitors to the point where they felt entitled to enthrone a traitor associated with the Russian mob in the White House . . . And STILL we are expected to take them seriously as they shove their crap down our collective throats. Think about what just happened in the House of Rep. this week: A man associated with pedophilia led a dog fight to oust a man who is described as, “a liar, a coward, a self-serving incompetent” . . . And the Repugs are BLAMING DEMOCRATS ??? THAT embodies the essence of the Repug Mental Illness threatening this democracy. The may be drunk, addicted, hooked on religion, bigotry or just, plain chaos--but all you need to know is there is no cure. It’s not up to anyone in this situation to diagnose the type of Crazy--just realize you can’t change it. The only way out is to SET LIMITS and not be bullied.
Set Limits.
Do not take their bullying and their crap.
Take a page from the REAL leaders: DA Fani Willis, Judge Tanya Chutkan, Gen. Milley,, Judge Engoron, Cassidy Hutchinson. You know the kind: The ones that set limits and know right from wrong.
The people who had to deal with Giuliani should have taken the car keys away and called a taxi. There was no point in trying to reason with him. He was a disgrace LOOOOOOng before this.
thank you for that, Dawna. and thanks especially for bringing up the Dry Drunk thing. to whom can it more apply than to TFF?
🙃 I’m not sure I know what TFF stands for 🫣
The Fat Fuck. I can't bring myself to type the actual name.
🤣😂🤣 He’s a horror, for sure.
Thanks. Great analysis. Alcoholism is 100% revolting. Not just for the addict. It kills the person who loves them too, unless they know how to hop out of the way and mostly, to abandon the addict to their self chosen and savagely defended fate because absolutely for certain, they love alcohol more than they love you, and will trample on you if you try to get between them and their bottle.
Yet! I would urge anyone dealing with that alcoholic/drug addict to remember: Don’t take it personally. When an alcoholic/addict chooses their poison over family or loved ones, it’s due to THEIR problem with priorities. It’s NOT a reflection of the worth of the people they betray. As the song goes, What’s love got to do with it? The inability to set ethical priorities is a reflection of not having an internalized moral code.
And I am fresh out of pity for people like Giuliani. He isn’t some poor soul--he consistently made his choices. By the time he was finishing his term as mayor, he was evicted from Gracie Mansion for cheating on his wife. He was a laughing stock, besides being known as a cold, calculating, heartless bastard. . . And damned proud of it.
Only too true. All an alcohol addict wants to do is to destroy themselves and/ or make you into an addict too (though you'd have to pay for your own booze) so you can join them down the gurgler.
Days Of Wine And Roses
Well said!
Between the lines of the Times story: P1135809 took advantage of Rudy's impairment because it served him well. Just as he did with his alcoholic brother! P1135809's team of incompetent attorneys will try to use Rudy-as-Lawyer as a defense in his Washington trial, and the prosecution will single out Rudy's alcoholism as a reason P1135809 should have known better than to rely on inebriated advice. The prosecution has a strong case: P1135809's older brother, Fred, Jr., suffered the same affliction and P1135809 is more than passingly familiar with the effects of alcoholism. In fact, he and sister Mary, took advantage of Fred Jr's alcoholism to screw him out of his inheritance. Hope all of that emerges at trial, it is a scummy an episode as ever unspooled in a life of scummy episodes.
P1135809 is The Worst sort of hominid to ever evolve. The people that enabled him are despicable.
There is an undeserved tone of compassion for this Asshole that speaks well of you as a sentient being. Before he was a drunk Giuliani was a mean spirited prick that prosecuted jaywalkers and John Gotti with the same zeal, tried to shut down the Brooklyn Museum because he objected to an exhibition and displayed countless examples of racism, self aggrandizing and abuse of power. Most of us have experience with addiction either first hand or with family and close friends. Underneath it all many are good people struggling with a disease. The opposite isn't the rule. I know you probably agree. Just want to point it out.
Thank you for you even description of Rudy's disease according to the New York Times. I have been a member of Al-anon for 29 years helping myself and others recover from the effects of someone else's drinking..I lost my youngest daughter to the disease....she took her own life as living with the disease was too painful to her. She was 36. It's an ugly disease and , if left untreated, can wreck havoc with the alcoholic 's life and those that love him/her.
I’m so sorry for the loss of your beloved daughter.
Thank you
The clincher is Rudi’s comment: “I do not have an alcohol problem. I have never had an alcohol problem.” The final defense of all addicts/alcoholics.
Ex husband told therapist he didn't have a drinking problem--problem was my perception of his drinking. Finally went to rehab after doc told him his liver enzymes were so high that he would be dead if he kept it up. Went to rehab, did 90 meetings in 90 days and proclaimed himself cured. Destroyed a 35 year marriage and the childhoods of 2 kids along the way. But everyone at the bar thought he was a great guy
unfortunately, a very common story.
I knew someone who was in the same rehab she'd attended six or seven years before. she spent, like, two days cursing everyone out because the second time, they'd actually had the nerve to search her and take away the drugs she'd brought. "how the fuck do they expect me to do rehab without getting high?" was her complaint. I ran into her a few months later and she was definitely not sober.
the idea that people do rehab over and over is about the most sobering thing I can think of.
He's not actively drinking anymore, but just as miserable and nasty a f@cker as always. A dry drunk
well, there's always THAT.
Children of Alcoholics are better off without the alcoholic in the house. It will take, possibly, a lifetime to get over the hypervigilance, the gaslighting, the shame--all of it.
they should go to Al-anon to try to handle the damage caused by the parents disease.
I'd also recommend ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics). It did me a world of good and that's understating how beneficial it was - and is. I gained insight into how and why my father (who drank himself into an early grave) was what he was. More importantly, ACA helped me understand why I developed many of the quirks, characteristics and habits (A whole lot of "bad defense mechanisims" included!) that vexed me over the course of my life. The help is available and out there, you just have to face up to the fact you need it and you needn't go it alone. For a time, I combined my ACA work with visits to a terrific therapist. She had a cute little sign on her wall, "The Road To Self-Improvement Is Always Under Construction". And so it is.
Great column, Lucian, thank you. And thanks also to your many readers for their fearlessly honest comments. Bless you all!
tragic
Thank you Lucian. To everyone here who posted about a family member who died by suicide and alcoholism, my heart breaks for you. My father was an alcoholic who never binged or missed work. He just drank himself to an early death. Alcohol is our most dangerous drug.
Thank you Linda. I'm sorry about your Dad. Sucks
Thank you Ann. He died when I was 12….Sucks is exactly the right word….
The lede graf is superb, as is, really, the whole column. Writing about alcoholism from the outside is never as persuasive as from the inside. Drinkers who never clean up make myriad troubles for themselves, as well as certain others. (Don't ask me how I know this, as I often said as Dear Prudence.)
Compulsions are not easy to offload, so I have great respect for those who could do it. The 12-steppers are brave, in my opinion, because of the admission of powerlessness. That has to be painful to process. (Even to stop smoking, for me, was hell. It took a live-in program at a sanitarium, more than one bribe from my mother, and too many failures before success. And smoke didn't alter my behavior ... just my lungs. So to give up an addiction to alcohol I believe to be harder, because think it makes them funnier, or more outgoing. It is more tied to the presentational self than cigarettes.
Rudy is a very public, if not extreme example of how a person can drink away a career, and of course relationships.)
I can't, however, feel too bad for Rudy. There were other factors besides alcohol that brought him low.
I read the Times story with such mixed feelings - loathing the guy for what he’s said and done, but feeling heartbroken by the chains of alcoholism. No, it isn’t ever funny, but it is unbelievably sad.
Much sadder for the victims: The family left in his wake. He doesn’t need or deserve pity.
absolutely horrible
Yes he does. He is in horrible psychological pain. Those that love him have the option of finding recovery through Al-anon.
Excellent description of alcoholism. This is very sad. I hope that it raises awareness of the devastating effects of alcoholism.
Alcoholism isn't funny. However, I'm sorry I must be a bad person but Rudy the alcoholic is pretty hilarious in the same way it would be if Trump fell into an active volcano while losing his balance watching a solar eclipse.
Oh, I like that. I can just see Trump of the edge of the bubbling volcano. Then, no Trump.
alright that is funny