Not too long ago, Americans were having a good laugh at Canada’s expense as the mayor of Toronto went on a Charlie Sheen bender and broke pretty much every rule we thought there was about what a politician can do and still expect to survive. Unfortunately, the sad story is over and Rob Ford has passed away, reportedly from cancer, at the age of forty-six.
Whatever you thought of Ford’s politics, it was clear near the end that he was suffering from significant substance abuse problems and the mental health issues that frequently accompany addiction. So, on the occasion of Ford’s passing, I’ll repost what I said back in my November 2013 Rob Ford is Not a Joke piece:
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford clearly has a very serious substance abuse problem that has grown to the point that it is affecting his mental stability. If he had cancer, people wouldn’t joke about his disease. But since being an out-of-control alcoholic who occasionally partakes of cocaine and opiates is so amusing to everybody, Mr. Ford’s disease is treated as a hilarious joke. It’s not a joke. His brain has been disrupted. He needs treatment.
When addiction is treated as a joke, it makes it much harder for people who need to be in recovery to open up about their problems and seek help. The stigma associated with addiction is like a jet-fuel that makes it immeasurably more difficult for our society to make the changes in policy we ought to be making. How many people are there who are pointing their fingers at Mr. Ford and laughing but who are privately unable to stop popping pain-killers or keep away from alcohol?
The biggest societal problem facing our teenagers right now is opiate addiction, which starts with prescription pain killers and leads directly, almost every single time, to heroin addition. In September, 63 people overdosed on opioid drugs in the town of Bensalem, Pennsylvania. This is not normal, folks. Most of those people were kids, and the ones who survived will be thrown in a detox for five days and set loose to steal and rob until they are incarcerated or die. When you develop an opiate addiction, you need extended help, but it’s still a hell of a lot less expensive than imprisoning someone. We need new policies to address this but we also need a national awakening to what addiction is, which is a very serious, chronic and recurring disease (like cancer) that requires sustained medical attention.
The more we joke about the most outlandish victims of this disease, the farther we get from that national awakening.
Ironic that he died of cancer, no?
Had he overdosed on Percocets and whiskey, too many people would think it was the hilarious and fitting end to a good joke.
And, in any case, our national disgrace doesn’t even drink because his brother died of alcoholism.
My condolences to the Ford family. Rob Ford died too young.
A lesson to ignore what the pundit scribes pen?
John Feehery – The Hill:
February 29, 2016 – Freedom on the brink — reject Trump
March 21, 2016 – The case for Trump
Guess there was a change in who signs his paychecks.
Thanks. Well I’ve been saying on other blogs that all these pundits, like Feehery & David Brooks, who’ve publically wrung their hands over the horror of Trump – whom THEY are responsible for how Trump’s emerged – will ultimately kowtow to Trump and kiss his hiney.
It’s inevitable.
If a committee of GOP pundits had put together a list of all the qualities that the next GOP POTUS candidate needed to possess to win the general election, it would have looked a lot like Trump. He really does tick off more of the right boxes than anyone they’ve ever come up with. It’s just that those qualities don’t exist in a vacuum and come packaged with many nasty bits. Trump may not even be as much of a monster as what that committee would have constructed if they’d had a lab in which to build it from scratch.
The GOP-affiliated Oligrachs (Shelly Adelson, the Koch brothers, etc) are just pissed off bc Trump has horned in on their long con to fleece the rubes for as much as feasible. Their only worried about themselves. They really don’t give a stuff about any of the racist issues, the white supremacists, and/or whether Trump will actually know how to be POTUS and “lead” the country. The politicians may actually have some genuine concerns about Trump’s ability to run the nation, but who cares about them??
It’s ONLY about money, greed, money, greed, and did I say: money??? Otherwise, who cares.
Yes, Trump is the ultimate outcome of where the GOP has been headed for decades now. Trump is really no surprise. The PTB are just ticked off they are not in control of him. That’s it.
Agreed. Having had at least one really out of control alcoholic in my extended family, I know very well pretty much the worst extent of what this disease can bring both to the alcoholic/drug addict (in my very limited experience, it appears that alcohol and some sort of drug addiction are intertwined these days, most likely due to the ready availability of prescription meds, esp opiates), as well as for the extended family. Believe me, it ain’t pretty, and it brings a world of hurt for siblings, parents, children, cousins, etc. No, not funny at all.
You have raised the issue many times about opiate addiction in this nation. I’ve mentioned several times that I work with someone with a really horrific addition to opiates. Said person looks like death warmed over (not said to be mean or funny; it’s how they look), and yet the shrink just wrote out another big old prescription and said: see you in six months!!!!
Criminal!
I also note that I recently read that Charley Sheen is now HIV positive. That is another outcome of his various addictions, and it’s not funny either for him or any of his sexual partners. Very sad.
Martin Sheen is a recovering alcoholic.
I’ve seen alcoholism “up close and personal.” Some statistics from NIAAA:
“Nearly 88,000 people (approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women) die from alcohol-related causes annually, making it the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States.”
http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics
There’s money to be made. One can’t shop for groceries, gas, etc. without seeing alcoholic beverages in the middle of the store. Chain restaurants push over-sized cocktails. Furthermore, “there are wineries to the left of us, microbreweries to the right and we’re stuck in the middle with You.” Best I don’t continue my rant.
Pretty much all of us will have at least one of those, what I like to call, “Rob Portman moments” in our lifetimes. It’s really just a question as to whether we treat it as o one-off and quickly put it behind us or it becomes a trigger to make us maybe a little bit more introspective and empathetic when it comes to problems experienced by others.
In our family we have had to come face to face with the horrors of mental illness. And it has forever changed the outlook of those of us who have been directly affected by it. And my wife and I have a friend who has struggled mightily with drug addiction for many, many years. During the worst of times when she was hooked on opioids, we were regularly asked for money under the guise of needing to pay a bill. And when her husband was fighting cancer, she was often found to be stealing his pain medication to either use or sell so she could get heroin. This was a woman who worked full time and took care of her sick husband, yet would still somehow find the time to feed her habit. She was nothing more than skin and bones, yet she somehow functioned. Even though her husband was sick and dying, he talked her into voluntarily entering an in-patient treatment program. And he lived long enough to see her come out and stay clean. He died in 2012, and she is still clean and sober today. But it was a long, hard road for her. And we all know that tomorrow she could relapse. But we try to keep an eye on her and are always looking for signs that she might be having some difficulties. But she continues to soldier through. Addiction and its associated mental disorders are simply indescribable unless you have witnessed it first-hand.
Drug/alcohol addiction and mental illness are still, even today, treated by our society as chiefly problems of character. That is actively damaging to those ill people and, ultimately, each one of us.
I’ve gone through my own struggles, and have directly experienced many, many more. Successful recovery and treatment require character all around, but being a sick person is not equal to being a bad person. And, of course, always, always, the sick person is the one who suffers the most.
As you and BooMan infer here, we don’t treat people with other illnesses this way; we wouldn’t dream of it. The public ridicule placed upon Ford must have made his struggles with his demons all the more difficult to deal with. He certainly did provoke public response, though. Would that the response from friends, family, colleagues and the public have been better and kinder.
He died too young.
RIP
Boo,
The “joke” about Rob Ford, if there ever was one, was not that the guy had spectacular substance-abuse problems – it was that such a person was elected and re-elected as the mayor of Toronto. The more so because “Toronto the Good” has always had the reputation of being a particularly well-run city, with relatively little corruption.
I still don’t understand it. But the joke has more to do with the people who voted for the guy than the guy himself.
Is it something like the Trump phenomenon?
All drugs should be legal, and anyone and everyone who needs help with drug addiction should receive it, free of charge.
Until then, people will use drugs in the shadows, in shame, and die from them, in the shadows, in shame.
Drug abuse is a disease, by the way. It changes the brain physically, alters neuronal connections, changes hormonal balance, and electrolyte balance.
Some years ago, there was a methadone clinic in my neighborhood that I’d pass every day going to work. I didn’t care for the clinic because I’d see what I was sure was drug dealing going on as the patients hung around after their daily dose. One morning, as my carpool partner was driving, I commented about the “junkies”. My carpool partner then told me that his sibling was a heroin addict, that methadone is harder to kick than heroin, and that he and his wife were now raising his sibling’s son along with their own kids.
Because the bottom of “the stupid” barrel has yet to be reached: Sarah Palin To Preside As A Judge Over Reality TV Courtroom
Well she is as qualified for being any kind of judge as she was being VP (dodged the bullet on that one) or Gov of Alaska. As long as people give her paid publicity opportunities she’ll chase them.
Imagine a world where the TV choices were limited to JudgeSarah, Honey-Boo-Boo, and those people in MO competing to out-breed normal people.