A Hypothetical Question

[Michael Hardner]

We have a high profile centre-right candidate, who could grab the Liberal vote.

[Boges]

Wait! there's a four page thread about Ford above and beyond the 100 plus page thread that we already have? Is this the light-hearted version?

[jbg]

Wait! there's a four page thread about Ford above and beyond the 100 plus page thread that we already have? Is this the light-hearted version?

No.

I looked for one covering the recent videos and couldn't find one. And the earlier threads were sufficiently unrelated to justify a thread.

[Rue]

Having used crack doesn't make him an addict.

Hey I wanted to address the above issue. Its interesting because two noted authorities on drug addiction stated that based on yesterday's comments they believe Ford is an addict in denial and quite possibly was on crack when he made his comments as to smoking crack in one of his stupors.

The best answer to give you is when one is an addict what we are referring to is a mental illness that has two parts that fuse into one, an obsessive compulsive disorder and an addictive personality disorder.

When one has this illness they are not addicted to just one substance. That is misleading. They can and are often addicted to more than one thing and that thing can be a substance they ingest or just a type of behaviour like sex or gambling or driving dangerously or doing highly dangerous things.

As well what may not be addictive to you could very well trigger addiction in an addict. There are some drugs like heroin or cocaine that cause withdrawal to anyone who repeatedly uses them, but say with you or I we won't crave alcohol just because we drank a glass of wine. An alcoholic craves it. They have no on off switch. Its not a matter of how much they drink or how fast they drink it, it is that they can not stop after one and an alcoholic's body has a different bio-chemical reaction than yours or mine.

What we now know is addicts with bio chemical imbalances have something wrong with how they maintain seratonin in their brain, a mood control agent. If they deplete themselves of it they trigger anxiety and depression and trigger an impulse to self medicate to block the anxiety and depression.

We know stress causes the body to manufacture adrenalin and steroids that then deplete the brain of seratonin so you can see someone under constant stress would easily deplete their seratonin reserve and trigger this impulse.

We also suspect some compuslive disorders are triggered as the body cries out to self medicate to try deal with dopamine levels that for some reason we do not know are not maintaining appropriate levels.

We know with some alcoholics, if not most, they do not process an enzyme in alcohol and thus within just 2 drinks you can notice their eyes change and their voices become slurred much quicker than someone without the condition.

Alcoholics black out and can not remember-they go into a trance. They also won't stop drinking until they pass out..

It has been noted a child of an alcoholic tends to have a much higher rate of being one suggesting genetics.

But we also know there is a direct correlation to unresolved childhood emotional issues and later life self destructive behaviour which runs parallel to alcoholism and ocd and can make treating ocd and alcoholism even more difficult.

In Ford's case unresolved issues as to his weight as a child would have caused him to develop a certain personality to compensate for being fat.

He comes from a family where the father was a powerful bully who would have ridiculed his weight. To compensate he would eat even more and act tough and angry to warn people to not pick on him.

That anger would eventually turn inwords and mutate to self hatred.

The rage within and self hatred would fuel a lot of stress in the body, cause anxiety and stress and thus the depletion of seratonin and negativelt impact on his dopamine levels causing him to sense cravings that would need to be placated to drown out the stress and anxiety.

In Ford's case he would be what is called a multiple addict. Whether its food, marijhuana, alcohol, and now crack, his body does not have the ability to turn off using such things. If they appease stress and anxiety, it would trigger addiction.

A true addict in denial does what Ford does. They deny they are an addict. They claim their behaviour is under control. Thus Ford's references that do not acknowledge he goes into a drunken stupor because of alcoholism but simply as he stated because he drank too quickly or too much or from absurd words of his brother, because he chose to drink in public.

Doug Ford in many ways is even more reprehensible than his brother. He knows his brother is an alcoholic and went on the radio to enable him and reclassify his drinking problem as one that would resolve if he just stayed at home.

We know Rob Ford was arrested driving drunk, convicted and denied that and got caught lying and then said I am sorry it won't happen again.

Then he was at a hockey game, publically intoxicated, engaged in an assault and battery on spectators, denied he was at the game, then when he was fcaught lying, only then said, oh, sorry it won't happen again.

There were repeated references to him being drunk in his office, disappearing during the day and returning drunk. I suspect some of the stories but others caused his staff to resign,

Then he denied a tape existed or he engaged in smoking crack. He played with the press. They asked him directly did you smoke dope. He came up with some strange excuse they never asked him about the past only the present so that is why he said no. John Oakley asked him on the radio three times did you EVER smoke crack and he refused to answer.

So this is a man who deliberately misleads and won't answer questions. Its what addicts do. Or they deny their actions indicate a lack of control.

Now in Rob Ford's latest words, he DID smoke crack. But do you notice he used the word 'probably". He used this conditional word because he was denying it. The denial came in the next sentence when he says he was not lying and was in a drunken stupor so he can not remember if he smoked crack or not but thinks he did. So in one breath he did but he did not. He uses the excuse of being out of control using one substance, to justify using another. That is classic addictive behaviour. It shows a compulsive pathology of behaviour transmitted through words that try distance the addict from their actions.

Doug is a classic enabler. He reduced his addiction to simply being an issue of choosing to drink in public and not in private. Hs brother also destroyed his credibility by attacking the police chief.

The decision to suddenly admit crack addiction after his brother attacked the police chief shows, Rob Ford is afraid of Doug Ford. He is afraid his brother is forcing him to stay in office and keep denying.

Ford's melt down is as much a rebellion against his brother and family as it is anyone in an authority figure who remind him of the father he hates.

The attack on the Police Chief is in fact both Fords now acting out repressed anger they held back and never expressed against their own father.

In the next few weeks Doug Ford will turn on his wife, probably beat her and do something self destructive as well.

Both of these individuals are sick and need help.

[Rue]

Now that the mother and sister have been interviewed we can see the entire Ford family is in denial.

His family are enabling him to continue denying his sickness by supporting his delusion that he can deal with any problems he has and remain at work.

To even begin to understand your own addictions, one must be removed from their environment and all its stress triggers and enablers and be given a minimum 3 months to flush the alcohol and other drugs out of the body.

You then need another 3 months to a year to deal with withdrawal issues. After the first year if you make it that far without a relapse you then live the remainder of your life always an addict fighting the cravings. Your ability to resist those cravings depend on how successful you are detaching from your enablers, learning insights as to why you react to stress the way you do and how it relates to underlying unresolved conflicts and how many people you put in your support team who will not apologize for you.

Rob Ford with his lengthy illness of multiple addictions would need a minimum one year just to deal with the weight, alcohol and drug withdrawal issues after-effects, heart damage and cardio vascular complications and problems

processing thought and information.

What the latest video shows is someone on crack. He was hyped. The inability to focus, the fidgeting and pacing, the clenched jaw when he spoke, the gaps in between thoughts that prevented him from finishing sentences, the red face, the beating of his stomach with his hands, all the signs and classic signs at that of crack cocaine in the blood stream.

When someone is highly agitated as a result of a synthetic high, they can and often revert to primal gestures such as drumming their stomach, jumping up and down, hissing, showing their teeth, sticking their back side out, trying to make themselves look larger if they are thin, squatting,and grunting. All this was displayed by Ford. In fact if you turn the sound off and just watch his body and non verbal language it is no different then that of a baboon or chimpanzee in a rage.

It also showed he has advanced heart disease. The aphasia or gaps in his speaking show a circulatory problem preventing a proper flow of blood to the brain. This is a sign of an impending heart attack or stroke. He probably may have already had a heart attack or stroke and not know it as it would have been masked by the drugs.

I am sorry to say even if you could dry Ford out, he could die from the strain of drying out at this point. His heart is probably severely damaged at this point. The flushed face surely indicates that as well.

They say Rob Ford is 44 but his actual age is past life expectancy for someone with his illnesses.

Edited November 9, 2013 by Rue

[The_Squid]

I hear the line "what he does in private shouldn't matter" by many conservatives. Putting aside the hypocrisy (many were deeply "concerned" about what Layton may have don in his private life based on rumour/innuendo), is there not a worry about corruption? How can one be an upstanding citizen and mayor and run the city while smoking crack and hanging out with gangsters and drug dealers?

The man, and the entire family it seems, has no honour or integrity.... But , hey... He's a conservative. The partisan hackery is beyond stupid.

Edited November 9, 2013 by The_Squid

[Topaz]

I read article that said GW was doing drugs in the White House and it was servants saying this,. So to hide it, GW, went flying all over the US and did it on Air Force One. I have no proof he this but he did do a lot of flying.

[BubberMiley]

George Washington had an Air Force One to fly in?