One of the obstacles to recovering from addictions is a belief that life will be no fun without alcohol and other drugs. As for the fun part, for me drinking started out as a blast—champagne at a classy wedding on Long Island when I was sixteen and had never had a drink. I thought I had found a solution to my living problems. It almost killed me. I hung out with two guys in my fraternity (Chi Psi--Hamilton College) who drank too much. We invariably got hammered at house … [Read more...]

                Republican President Donald Trump doesn’t drink alcohol, and that’s decidedly in his favor. “How so?” you may ask, citing the fact that our two greatest presidents, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, drank, as did most of our Presidents. Yes. They drank responsibly and could take it or leave it but Presidents Richard Nixon (a Republican) and Lyndon B. Johnson (a Democrat) were probably … [Read more...]

                The last thing Lynn Townsend remembers of the night of November 22, 2004 is approaching the Shreveport Cross Lake Bridge in her 2004 silver Honda convertible with the top down and her 14-year old daughter, Caitlin Ann, at her side. Just a couple of carefree girls out for a spin with hard rock star Lenny Kravitz providing the music. Then it was fade to black. Police reports provide the details of what happened … [Read more...]

When you think about it, we really don't have much choice in life than to deal with things. There is no time out in life. Everything counts. Every day. Every minute. We cannot afford to waste it. On the advice of a friend I recently read Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize winning play, Our Town, which opened on Broadway in 1936. A major theme of Our Town is that we too often waste much of our brief lives on things that don't matter. It is a perspective provided by the characters, citizens … [Read more...]

“God is back. He's busting out all over. It's a beautiful thing to see.” Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal columnist, wrote these words more than 16 years ago just after the attack on New York’s World Trade Center in 2001. “In the past 17 days,” Noonan continued, “since the big terrible thing, our country has, unconsciously but quite clearly, chosen a new national anthem. It is 'God Bless America,' the song everyone sang in the days after the blasts to show they loved their … [Read more...]