The world looks wretched from the bottom of a glass

December 16, 2002 11:18 AM

Columnist too hung over to cover case of alcoholic Rosie Di Manno, Toronto Star: “I drank to grotesque excess the other night, waking up the morning after with a double-whammy red-wine-and-nicotine hangover.... The upshot is that I missed a full day of the trial I've been covering the past couple of weeks – a $750,000 civil suit brought by [Thomas] Kerr against nine police officers.... That night... was one of the few, very few, evenings over the past quarter-century when Kerr wasn't sloshed.” Journalist, heal thyself.
posted by joeclark (8 comments total)

I guess the Thomas Kerrs of this world, irretrievable in the fierce embrace of booze, don't have a choice any more.

This kind of victimist rhetoric is one of the reasons I don't read the Star anymore.
posted by orange swan at 11:51 AM on December 16, 2002

Yes I agree with orange swan it's nice to feel sorry for people and not expect them to do anything about it.
posted by tljenson at 12:24 PM on December 16, 2002

There is always a choice: a choice to sober up and stay that way or else continue on the path to slow suicide. It's a particularly difficult choice for an alcoholic to make, especially for one with seemingly no familial or community support network, but it is choice nonetheless. I would type more, but it's almost time to leave for happy hour.
posted by psmealey at 12:55 PM on December 16, 2002

I don't think it's just "victimist" rhetoric. Certainly I used to see street drunks that were far far more gone than the average homeless addict, and I had a gut feeling that some of them were hopeless. Of course, I was probably wrong, but I wasn't endowing them with any sympathetic victimhood.

(Wow, I used the word certainly three times in the first draft of those three sentences. I hate to think what the last couple hours of writing on my dissertation looks like.)
posted by Wood at 1:42 PM on December 16, 2002

Yes, many addicts will never recover, and probably Thomas Kerr is in that group. But he's not "irretrievable" and he does have a choice, a terribly difficult one, but a choice nonetheless. The fact that we can predict what that choice will be, and the fact that we are not able to significantly influence that choice does not negate the fact that he has one.
posted by orange swan at 2:11 PM on December 16, 2002

I have no opinion about Thomas Kerr, but I enjoyed this article. Thanks Joe.
posted by todd at 6:17 PM on December 16, 2002

he doesnt have a choice actually - please look up the word
'addiction' in that dictionary you keep behind your little pulpit.
and if you want to know all about hard fuckin work, try drinking a bottle of whiskey every day for the rest of your life , not that you'll have one.
posted by sgt.serenity at 7:43 PM on December 16, 2002

You'd better go start breaking up some AA meetings right now, sgt. serenity, and tell everyone there that they are wasting their time, since they don't have choices and must keep drinking.
posted by orange swan at 6:45 AM on December 17, 2002