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Fw: [casi] Fw: Personality Disordered or a Drunk?




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----- Original Message -----
From: Stuart Hemsley
Sent: 08 March 2003 20:16
To: CASI Discussion List
Subject: [casi] Fw: Personality Disordered or a Drunk?


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I forward this on behalf of Vicky Russell for you to determine whether or not you put it on your 
list.
stuart Hemsley

----- Original Message -----
From: vicky russell
Sent: 08 March 2003 14:54
To: stewhem@hotmail.com
Subject: Personality Disordered or a Drunk?


Can you get this onto CamPeace? I've never had one thing accepted so won't try.
Thanks- V
PATTERN RECOGNITION

"Is The 'President' Nuts?" asks Carol Wolman, M.D. "Many people, inside and especially outside this 
country, believe that the American president is nuts, and is taking the world on a suicidal path." 
[Counterpunch Oct. 2, 2002]

A board-certified psychiatrist in practice for 30 years, Dr. Wolman feels compelled to understand 
the "psychopathology" of a man "under tremendous pressure from both his family/junta, and from the 
world at large." Dr. Wolman wonders if GW is suffering from Antisocial Personality Disorder, as 
described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Fourth Edition: "There is a pervasive pattern of 
disregard for and violation of the rights of others: 1) failure to conform to social norms with 
respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest; 
2) deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal 
profit or pleasure; 5) reckless disregard for safety of self or others; 7) lack of remorse by being 
indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated or stolen from others."

DRY DRUNK

GW Bush is highly regarded for "kicking" the twin demons of cocaine and alcohol addiction. If he is 
still off both wagons -- ... -- such a triumph, encouraged and aided by his wife, is commendable.

When probing the mysteries of GW's brain chemistry, a key point to ponder is that damage done to 
brain cells from drug abuse is permanent and irreversible.

Quaker and university professor Katherine van Wormer co-authored the definitive, 2002, Addiction 
Treatment. This expert writes that "George W. Bush manifests all the classic patterns of what 
alcoholics in recovery call 'the dry drunk'. His behavior is consistent with being brought on by 
years of heavy drinking and possible cocaine use." [Counterpunch Oct. 11, 2002]

"Dry drunk," explains the professor, "is a slang term used by members and supporters of Alcoholics 
Anonymous and substance abuse counselors to describe the recovering alcoholic who is no longer 
drinking - one who is dry, but whose thinking is clouded." Such an individual is 'dry' but not 
truly sober. Such individuals tend to go overboard. A good example of Bush' "polarized thinking" is 
his call for "crusades" based on "infinite justice" for "evil-doers" comprising an "axis of evil".

Bush's "obsessive repetition" also remind this professor, "of many of the recovering 
alcoholics/addicts I had treated." Van Wormer worriers, "His power, in fact, is such that if he 
collapses into paranoia, a large part of the world will collapse with him."

Paranoia? Impatience? Rigid judgmental outlook? Grandiose behavior? Childish behavior? 
Irresponsible behavior? Irrational rationalization? Projection? Overreaction? - these are all "dry 
drunk" traits.

Van Wormer observers that Bush's pompous pledge: "We must be prepared to stop rogue states and 
their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction" is a 
projection from the world's leading rogue state preparing to attack with nuclear weapons.

"Bush's tendency to dichotomize reality" should be emphasized. Prof. van Wormer describes this is 
as either/or reasoning - "either you are with us or against us". A White House spokesperson puts it 
this way: "The President considers this nation to be at war, and, as such, considers any opposition 
to his policies to be no less than an act of treason.'' [Capitol Hill Blue Jan, 22, 2003]

BUSH'S BINGES -- HISTORY IMPACTS THE PRESENT

Bush's binges were legendary. Van Wormer describes "years of binge drinking starting in college, at 
least one conviction for DUI in 1976 in Maine, and one arrest before that for a drunken episode 
involving theft of a Christmas wreath." She adds:

"The Bush biography reveals the story of a boy named for his father, sent to the exclusive private 
school in the East where his father's reputation as star athlete and later war hero were still 
remembered. The younger George's achievements were dwarfed in the school's memory of his father. 
Athletically he could not achieve his father's laurels, being smaller and perhaps less strong. His 
drinking bouts and lack of intellectual gifts held him back as well. His military record was 
mediocre as compared to his father's as well. [He went AWOL] "

In Fortunate Son, Bush himself explained: "Alcohol began to compete with my energies ... I'd lose 
focus". Though he once said he couldn't remember a day he hadn't had a drink, he quickly added the 
giveaway phrase that he didn't believe he was "clinically alcoholic".

Van Wormer notes that "Bush drank heavily for over 20 years until he made the decision to abstain 
at age 40. About this time he became a 'born again Christian' -- going as usual from one extreme to 
the other." When asked in an interview about his reported cocaine use, he answered reasonably, "I'm 
not going to talk about what I did 20 to 30 years ago". One motive driving Dubya could be his need 
"to prove himself to his father - to achieve what his father failed to do - to finish the job of 
the Gulf War, to get the 'evildoer' Saddam." Adds van Wormer, "His drive to finish his father's 
battles is of no small significance, psychologically."

BRAIN DAMAGE According to Van Wormer, "scientists can now observe changes that occur in the brain 
as a result of heavy alcohol and other drug abuse. Some of these changes may be permanent."

Van Wormer characterizes this damage as "barely noticeable but meaningful." Researchers have found 
that brain chemistry irregularities caused by long bouts of drinking or drug abuse cause "messages 
in one part of the brain to become stuck there. This leads to maddening repetition of thoughts."

One of these powerful "stuck" thoughts, says van Wormer, is that "President Bush seems unduly 
focused upon getting revenge on Saddam Hussein ('He tried to kill my Dad'), leading the country and 
the world into war, accordingly."

Grandiosity is another major trait of former addicts brain-damaged by their addiction. Bush has 
reversed the successful, five-decade old U.S. policy of containment and no first strikes. Now he 
says, Americans can attack anyone, anywhere at any time with any weapons of their choosing -- 
including banned cluster bomb munitions, radioactive explosives and nuclear bombs.

AN AGENT OF ARMAGEDDON?

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, a person suffering from Narcissistic 
Personality Disorder, "Has a grandiose sense of self-importance-exaggerates achievements and 
talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements."

Sound familiar?

This personality is preoccupied with fantasies of power and being loved. Such a person requires 
"automatic compliance". He or she is "exploitative" of others, "lacks empathy, is unwilling to 
recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others." And also "shows arrogant, haughty 
behavior or attitudes."

"This set of characteristics," says Dr. Wolman, not too reassuringly, "may describe Rumsfeld and 
Cheney better than Dubya."

For those who, like Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stieglitz, warn that Bush "has been captured by a 
small group of ideologues," Dependent Personality Disorder describes someone who "has difficulty 
making everyday decisions without an excessive amount of advice and reassurance from others." [CBC 
Feb. 10, 2003]

>From a Jungian perspective, writes Dr. Wolman, "Dubya may be identifying with an archetype -- 
>something out of Revelations, perhaps, whereby he sees himself as an instrument of God's will to 
>bring about Armageddon." Concurs Katherine van Wormer, "To fight evil, Bush is ready to take on 
>the world, in almost a Biblical sense."

A PRESIDENTIAL PATHOLOGY

Is Bush's belligerence bent on securing another oil fix? Katherine van Wormer believes that a 
Portland peace protestor's sign, "Drunk on Power" nailed it. Says this quiet Quaker, "The drive for 
power can be an unquenchable thirst, addictive in itself."

Senator William Fulbright agrees. His bestseller, The Arrogance of Power defined power politics as 
the pursuit of power. "The causes and consequences of war may have more to do with pathology than 
with politics," Fulbright wrote.

A key "dry drunk" trait is impatience. Bush, who often describes himself as "a patient man", is 
not. Just four weeks after inspectors went into Iraq, he called for obliterating Baghdad. "If we 
wait for threats to fully materialize", Bush pointed out to West Pointers, "we will have waited too 
long". Translations: It's okay to attack projections of our own fearful imaginings -- in case those 
phantom threats someday become real.

Alan Bisbort's "Dry Drunk - Is Bush Making a Cry for Help?" appeared in American Politics Journal. 
Bisbort believes that Bush's "incoherence" when speaking away from prepared scripts is a classic 
sign of addicted brain damage.

For Bisbort, another "dry drunk" tip-off is Dubya's irritability with anyone who dares disagree 
with him -- including Germany's new leader, who insists he is opposing Bush's folly in Iraq as a 
concerned long-time friend of America. (Schroeder's wife is American.) Another "Dry drunk" sign 
says van Wormer, is Dubya's "dangerous obsessing about only one thing (Iraq) to the exclusion of 
all other things."

Van Wormer's bottom line prognosis: "George W. Bush seems to possess the traits characteristic of 
addictive persons who still have the thought patterns that accompany substance abuse. The fact that 
some residual effects from his earlier substance abuse - however slight - might cloud the U.S. 
President's thinking and judgment is frightening, however, in the context of the current global 
crisis."

DON'T LAUGH The Toronto Star recounts how NYU author and media critic Mark Crispin Miller attempted 
to catalogue GW's verbal gaffes. Some favorites: "The vast majority of our imports come from 
outside the country." "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."

"The future will be better tomorrow." "He meant it for a laugh," wrote the Star. "Not now."

The author of Boxed In: The Culture of TV believes "Bush is not an imbecile. He's not a puppet. I 
think that Bush is a sociopathic personality. I think he's incapable of empathy. He has an 
inordinate sense of his own entitlement, and he's a very skilled manipulator. And in all the 
snickering about his alleged idiocy, this is what a lot of people miss."

Miller's judgment - that an unelected president might suffer from a clinical personality disorder - 
is much heavier than being called the global village idiot. "He has no trouble speaking off the 
cuff when he's speaking punitively, when he's talking about violence, when he's talking about 
revenge. When he struts and thumps his chest, his syntax and grammar are fine," Miller mentions. 
"It's only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he 
makes these hilarious mistakes."

Bush even has trouble repeating comforting clichis. "Fool me once, shame ... shame on ... you," 
Long, uncomfortable pause. "Fool me - can't get fooled again!"

While the world was laughing, Miller saw something darker. "What's revealing about this is that 
Bush could not say, `Shame on me' to save his life. That's a completely alien idea to him. This is 
a guy who is absolutely proud of his own inflexibility and rectitude," wrote Miller.

Miller says that Bush saying, "I know how hard it is to put food on your family" is not 'cause he's 
stupid, but "because he doesn't care about people who can't put food on the table."

When Bush is envisioning "a foreign-handed foreign policy," Miller contends it's because he can't 
keep his focus on things that mean nothing to him. "When he tries to talk about what this country 
stands for, or about democracy, he can't do it," Miller observes.

According to Miller, this is why GW is so closely watched by his handlers. "Not because he'll say 
something stupid," the Star paraphrased, "but because he'll overindulge in the language of violence 
and punishment at which he excels."

"He's a very angry guy, a hostile guy," Miller says. "He's much like Nixon. So they're very, very 
careful to choreograph every move he makes. They don't want him anywhere near protestors, because 
he would lose his temper." Adds this media expert, "It would be a grave mistake to just play him 
for laughs."

DEPRESSION CAN BE DANGEROUSLY DEPRESSING

Confronted by a man who will not listen to anyone but a few "chickenhawks" urging worldwide war, 
why shouldn't we feel depressed? Not surprisingly, we do.

Seventy percent of U.S. pastors constantly fight depression. Right now, almost three million 
Canadians are seriously depressed. (Multiply by four or five for approximate U.S. figures.) We 
can't blame GW for this. Or the fact that suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death in 15 to 24 
year olds. But as the man responsible for perpetrating a worldwide bummer, George isn't helping! 
[www.tonycooke.org; National Institute of Mental Health]

If it's politically incorrect to ask these questions, how "correct" is it to launch 800 cruise 
missiles and thousands of one-ton bombs on a captive urban population already suffering the ravages 
of deliberately imposed hunger and disease?

CHOKA COLA?

Another big clue to Dubya's displays of dementia comes in "photo-ops" showing him slugging back 
diet Coke with other Aspartame addicts, like Chicago's mayor Richard Daley. Their beet red faces 
spell either embarrassment over Bush's hijacking of America, or aspartame poisoning. [Chicago Sun 
Times, Sept. 27, 2002]

According to Carol Guilford, an Aspartame expert and support worker, the President-Select's 
"pretzel" pratfall was most likely an Aspartame seizure. Bush, like Carter, Al Gore and millions of 
Americans, is addicted to this constant caffeine hit. Among the FDA's listed 92 symptoms for 
Aspartame poisoning are: "Difficulty Swallowing", "Fainting" and "Unconsciousness".

Bush's facial lesions, removed as a result of "Too much sun" is another sign of Aspartame 
poisoning. So was his recent knee surgery: Aspartame depletes synovial fluid lubricating the joints.

Would you drink 6 to 12 cans of formaldehyde a day? It turns out that methanol in Aspartame 
converts to formaldehyde in the tissues. As Guildford wrote to USN Captain Eleanor Marino, 
Physician to the President (Feb. 21, 2002): 10% of a 200mg can of diet soda is straight methanol 
wood alcohol! Methanol is such a gross cumulative poison, the EPA's limit for drinking water is 7.8 
mg daily. For serious addicts like Bush, the methanol intake can exceed 32 times the EPA's 
recommended limit.

Now the punch line: Clinical case studies shows that, among other symptoms, Aspartame ingestion 
results in "mind fog", feeling "unreal", poor memory, confusion, anxiety, irritability, depression, 
mania, and slurred speech. [Neurology 1994]

Alcohol-related brain damage is not helped by chugging formaldehyde. James Turner, consumer 
protection lawyer and author of The Chemical Feast learned that an Oct. 1980 FDA inquiry found that 
the formaldehyde formed by Aspartame actually eats microscopic holes and triggers tumors in the 
brain.

That finding banned Aspartame from the food supply. But three months later, Searle CEO Donald 
Rumsfeld told that pharma giant's sales staff he would get Aspartame approved pronto. The next 
month, the FDA commissioner was replaced by Dr. Arthur Hayes. In Nov. 1983 the FDA approved 
aspartame for soft drinks. Under fire for accepting corporate bribes, Hayes went to work for 
Searle's public-relations firm. Searle lawyer Robert Shapiro coined the name NutraSweet. Monsanto 
bought Searle. Rumsfeld received $12 million for his help. Shapiro now heads Monsanto.

The same "revolving door" swings wide for arms makers and the oil mafia. The Big Question is: Why 
hasn't Dick warned George that the diet drinks he's swilling are eating his brain and making him 
crazy?

Crazy? Am I calling the President-Select of the Excited States crazy? Not me. As a journalist, I 
can only point out that published medical evidence goes frighteningly far in explaining GW's 
behavior. For certain, this good ol' boy should go in for a brain scan before being allowed to 
command more firepower than the next 11 nations combined. If George W. Bush is not crazy - he's 
sure acting like it.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo




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