This is very distressing because in some ways, it seems like life imitating art. Warrick has had to manage addictions to gambling and personal problems (the murder of a recent hook-up.) Gary was accused of domestic violence earlier this season and now has been apparently busted for possession. I know all too well how your personal life can spiral out of control and affect your professional life. I really hope that Gary does get some help because he's a great actor and his portrayal of Warrick Brown has been a strong element of the show. First Sara and now Warrick. I wonder if this is how fans of ER and Law and Order went through when their favorite characters left those shows for various reasons....
I love warrick so much and I am sorry this happened to Mr.Dourdan. He was the rock of the team as Grissom called it. I know its a character on a show , but I totally loved his acting and his character. I pray he gets better. Love and prayer to Mr.Dourdan.
And I suggest glancing here, here here, and here. You realise that site comes from a wine vender, so you have to realise they've got a terrible bias. Yes, some studies have found that alcohol can help prevent stroke, heart attack, diabetes and dementia, but some studies have also found that as little as one glass of wine a day can cause a 10% increased risk of breast cancer in women, or boosts the risk of prostate cancer in men. Smart people still do take risks - some people are predisposed to addiction and saying that only stupid people are addicted to drugs is offensive and entirely ignorant. All it takes is one bad choice.
sorry, but i was expressing my opinion and i'm allowed to do that. i'm not ignorant, believe me. i care about those issues more than you think, and i've already explained about 3 times why, imo, drug addicts can blame only themselves. exactly. shouldn't they know it? the site that i linked was the first one that popped up on google and it was an example. but again, we start comparing heroin to alcohol or sunbathing and that's pointless. i've never said that all people who drink or get a tan are stupid and i have no idea where it came from. ETA: i went to the articles you linked, and neither of them said that there is an irrefutable proof that glass of wine (except for pregnant women) would make you sick and/or die quicker. my mom has actually been told by a doctor that she should drink a glass of wine every now and then for dinner.
i think this discussion became way off-topic. there are endless sources that say it's bad and just as much that say a glass of wine a day is healthy. not all scientists agree to everything and i'm not gonna link anything anymore cuz this thread will become a link-auction. i think one thing, you think another. we're not gonna persuade each other and i have a feeling we've already expressed all our arguments on the drug-addicts topic. all in all, it was a pleasurable discussion, and i liked talking to you
I disagree with you that the thread has gone completely off-topic. Yes, of course, it has strayed from the original topic as it specifically pertains to Gary's situation. But it was your comment, and I quote, that "i think being addicted to drugs, today, is in most cases plainly a result of absolute stupidity," that prompted this particular thread of discussion, and I don't think it's entirely off-topic. The point I was trying to make, in response to what you said, is that there are plenty of things that intelligent, fully informed people do which have nothing to do with stupidity. The issue of drinking alcohol is one of them. For example: Who could be more fully informed about the dangers of behaviors like smoking, alcoholism and drug abuse than those in the health field? If intelligence and the knowledge to make informed decisions were all it took to avoid addiction, then no doctor or nurse would ever smoke, drink or use drugs for anything other than therapeutic purposes. Yet there are those who do. You say scientists disagree on the harm, or the extent of harm, that drinking can pose. Of course they do. I doubt that there's universal agreement in the scientific community on any topic. As my father -- who taught university statistics -- always said, people can use statistics to prove whatever they want. And Lord knows, we do. However, an intelligent, informed individual knows that, at the very least, there is a chance of inflicting harm on oneself by drinking even small amounts of alcohol on a regular basis. The evidence is there from these recent studies that have been widely reported by the media. Yet people still drink, and one of the things we all do, at least to some extent, is rationalize those choices. So, my point, in response to yours, is that in my opinion, addiction is not solely the domain of the stupid. Does it rest on wise choices? Of course not. But, then again, many of the choices people make with regard to their own health are not wise, which is why I pointed out those other behaviors. We live in a world with no shortage of information about the consequences those choices may bring, yet we still make them anyway. Which tells me there's something else at work there besides the number of gray cells a person has.
fair enough. and i agree with you. and here, the only difference between us that i can think of is who we think of as 'stupid'. i don't agree that every person that has a degree is smart, hell no. i don't agree that everybody who doesn't have education is stupid. you can't judge the person based only on his occupation, cuz you don't know anything else about him nor his past. i believe that to a large degree the choices that you make in your life, shape your smarts. if you have a Masters, and you still do things that you are totally aware of that are going to kill you (not alcohol, cigarettes or tanning in my mind), you are dumb as hell! lmao. and if you bring statistics that overwhelmingly say that most people with degrees are smarter than average, i will agree with you. it's just ... how many MD's have you heard of that were heroin addicts? and please do not say the same thing again about drinking and smoking b/c this is not what i'm saying here. i'm talking about being a drug addict. because, no matter how much you will keep comparing those things in your every post, drugs like heroin are NOT in the same category as tanning and wine. you don't think 'i feel like injecting some heroin today, cuz i had a bad day' or 'i'll go and sniff some coke before work'. those things are illegal and a normal person doesn't do them. glass of wine once in a while cannot be compared to heroin addiction. being a binge drinker is not half as bad. it's like comparing a flu to Ebola. they are both viral diseases so they are in the same category? um, not? okay, hold on. intelligence does not equal knowledge or ability to make smart responsible choices. plenty of 'intelligent' people are stupid. doesn't mean they can't figure out math when they are forced to or interpret a poem. being smart means, at least to me, first what you know, yes, but second how much effort you put in yourself to be smart in life, and do the best you can for yourself. if you know everything or have a high IQ but still make the dumbest choice, in my measure, you're more of an idiot than the person who had no idea of the consequences. so, to me, it's the overall package.
OK, then it sounds like you and I are essentially in agreement, as you're right; there are all kinds of intelligence beyond the strictly academic type; there's emotional intelligence and common sense, as well. But your comment really read to me that, given all the knowledge we have about addiction, no one but a stupid person -- which I interpret to mean low IQ -- would take drugs and succumb to addiction. What you call "stupid" I call "unwise"; meaning that a person either lacks the wisdom and self-knowlege to make the best choice for him- or herself, or that person chooses to ignore it. I still believe that there is such a thing as a genetic predisposition to addiction. That doesn't mean, for example, that every person with a family history of addiction will become an addict. But I do believe that predisposition will make it much harder for those people to avoid the pitfalls of addiction.
yes, that was exactly my essential thought. i'm glad i was able to explain myself better, sorry i didn't do it earlier. english - not my native tongue as i said before, it's very possible and i respect your opinion on this. in the end of the day every person is different and there are many factors that influence who we are. this is why, when it comes to individuals, i always try to refrain from judgment. my general view, though, is what it is.
Adzix, I still disagree with you. Have you met any heroin addicts? Have you met any cokeheads, meth heads, or e-tards? I do. Stupidity isn't what got them into it, it was a lack of information and circumstances beyond their control that led them to feel so insanely useless and disgusting that they had to turn to something that would temporarily make them feel whole. Once that rush runs off, it's all the addiction. It's the memory of that one feeling and knowing that, hey, it gave you it once, maybe it can do it again. So what do you think that being fired will do? Getting someone off their addiction is a two part thing - psychological and physical. Before you can get them physically off the drug, they need to not need the drug anymore. If its still affecting Dourdan's personal life to the point where his employers need to step in, then he clearly still needs the drug and is not in a position to make the choice to go to rehab himself. Being fired will not help the situation.
making a bad situation worse by doing something stupid, i consider stupidity. whether they didn't know drugs were bad or made a conscious choice to take them and go down like this, doesn't make them very wise. but in my previous post i said that when it comes to individuals i don't want to judge. you're the master of your life, and if you put yourself in such crap, that's your choice. i do know a few people who take drugs, but not heroin, coke or meth addicts. i try to choose better company. in his case, i doubt it will, too. he has way too much money already, and from what i know you need to make an addict reach an absolute bottom so he can raise himself and understand that either he'll go to treatment by himself or simply die. what do you think would help him now?
An addict doesn't need to reach rock bottom. By then it's taken over their life and it's way harder to make them understand how destructive their behaviour is. Most of the time, addicts don't realise when they've hit rock bottom. Now - early, from as much as I know - is the time to get Dourdan to rehab. I know a guy named Randy. He's about 45 and he started drinking when he was about 13 because his home situation was shitty. While drunk, he did a line of coke and got hooked. From there it went to heroin. He lived on the downtown east side as a smack addict for at least a decade before a section of the Vancouver Police Department - the Odd Squad (I've got so much respect for these guys) brought him to rehab. If you can ever pick up a film called Through a Blue Lens, do it. Randy's a really smart guy, probably one of the most intelligent and insightful people I know. His decision to start drinking wasn't out of stupidity, it was out of being uniformed and in a place where he thought it was the only thing he could do. I suppose you've seen The Secret, then. I've said it before and I'll say it as many times as I have to - the majority of addicts aren't borne out of stupidity, it's out of a desperation that you won't recognise (and in all likelihood, acknowledge it even exists) until you've been there.
its not an employers responsibility to help a drug addicted employee. some work places have counselling available, others show you the door if they find out about your drug problem. and who knows what cbs or the people of csi have tried to do for gary? who knows how badly it was affecting his work? with the work schedule csi has i wouldnt be surprised if garys issues were affecting his performance on the show.
It may well not help Dourdan, but it may be the best option for his co-workers, and in the end I think an employer has to put the wellbeing of all its employees ahead of those of one individual. It's all too easy to demonize an employer, but I know that my husband had a sad experience with a co-worker -- actually someone he hired -- who was struggling with several addictions simultaneously and was not showing up for work on a regular basis, plus he was stealing company equipment, then pawning it to pay for his drugs and alcohol. The company kept him on for a period of time and offered him counseling, but he chose not to take advantage of it and continued in his downward spiral, so the company had to take the wellbeing of its other employees into consideration and had no choice but to let him go. This fellow was also in an abusive relationship with his girlfriend. I don't know what all happened there, except that he showed up for work with black eyes and other assorted injuries. One long weekend, we took a short trip, and when we got back, my husband went to work to check his messages. There he found a voice-mail message from the guy's father, saying that his son had committed suicide, and who did he need to speak with to get his affairs in order. As my husband has said time and time again, what a waste. When he was sober, this fellow was a good person, smart and a gifted employee. But he's also an example of what I mentioned earlier: someone who was an intelligent person, but didn't make wise choices in his personal life. I've only cited the most obvious problems this fellow's addiction caused for his fellow employees, without going into details about the stress this situation created and the personal toll it took on other people, including my husband. I know that this fellow must have been suffering terribly, but his actions also caused suffering for others, too. And, in the end, he simply was not doing the job he was being paid to do. Those are things a responsible employer must take into account when dealing with any employee, addict or not. I do agree with you that the complexities of addiction, and the mental/emotional/physical circumstances leading up to it, run far deeper than many people are willing to acknowledge. I agree. I think the thing a lot of people don't realize is that long-term drug abuse changes brain chemistry, alters neural pathways so that addicts aren't capable of reasoning the way people who haven't struggled with addiction are. So when we expect those people to make rational decisions about their addiction, and they don't, we shouldn't be surprised.