"Every time you put an alcoholic in the White House..."

“.....Every time you put an alcoholic in the white house, the same thing happens. Our foreign policy turns to shit and we start spying on one another. Same thing happened with Nixon. Spent the entire Arab-Isreali war bombed out of his head on Chateau Margaux. Your man — Heath was it? — rang him up to try and avert nuclear catastrophe, Kissinger had to get on the line and tell him the president was in no state to speak but would call him in the morning.”

“But Bush isn’t drinking now is he?” I asked.

“In a way it would better for everyone if he was. At least then the beast inside of him would be fed and watered. It would be happy. It wouldn’t have to go looking for fresh fights.”

“You mean the war in Iraq? You think that’s got something to do with all of this?"

He nodded. “Oh yes. Iraq is a classic addict’s endgame: damned if you stayed, damned if you go, so all that left is simply to hang on, and wish it would all simply go away. Did you see him on TV the other day pleading with the American people: ‘this time it’ll be different, this time I’ll quit, just let me have a few more troops, and then we can leave, I promise.’ He’ll never quit. He can’t. He’s an alcoholic.....”

— Douglas Kelsey & Patrick Miller, In The Rooms (2009)

Alcoholics not so anonymous

There's a new series of Intervention, the A&E series which follows an addict/alcoholic around for a few weeks before their family surprises then with an intervention to cart them off to rehab. I'm consistently amazed by how amazed they are when the "surprise" gets sprung; the addicts never question for an instant why this camera crew from LA want to follow them around for a few weeks; they never doubt that the world is just waiting for a documentary of their lives as drug addicts; they throw open the doors to their trailer homes right open and invite everyone in. Don't mind me while I shoot up in the corner. Aren't they supposed to be in, you know, denial? Denial is obviously getting to be a thing of the past, a relic of the time before Oprah/Behind the Music/Intervention/Celebrity Rehab. We're now so versed in the language of recovery that it's lost some of its occult power. When Lindsay Lohan's dad appears on CNN to talk about how she must abandon her will (to him), and Bush jokes on TV about his higher power, you know the game is close to being up.