Prostitute Crackheads, One-Eyed Lumberjacks and a Series of Unhinged Characters

Today I am before you confessing to my sins.

In the wake of my separation and divorce, I became somewhat feral, like the tomcat Thomas O’Malley from Disney’s 1970 animated classic The Aristocats. Well, more often like Uncle Waldo, the drunken goose. Which is an interesting, if not unhinged, choice of character for a children’s movie.

I, too, had become a little too unhinged and sloppy for polite society and was upgraded from General Audiences to Parental Guidance Suggested. Multiple judges, in both my criminal DUI case and my simultaneous divorce and custody proceedings, felt I could benefit from more supervision and education before I was safe again for the general public, including my own child.

Part of my rehabilitation included a four-hour online video course that was supposed to convince me that getting pulled over for speeding and slapped with a DUI was ruining everyone else’s life.

Maybe I’m dead inside, or maybe I’ve engaged in enough therapy that I’ve stopped allowing the people who victimized me to continue having power over my thoughts and actions. That realization helped pull me out of my inebriated bar-crawling bonding rituals in search of love, acceptance, and emotional connection.

So watching four hours of victims acting like victims, while still feeling empathy for their experiences, was difficult for me.

These people are purposely chosen because they are emotionally volatile. Some of the participants seemed unwilling to move past what happened to them, while many of the former drunk drivers interviewed appeared to have rebuilt their lives and were now thriving.

It’s a confusing message.

I am not excusing my behavior, but I would like to point out that I have never driven under the influence with a child in my vehicle, nor have I caused an accident or damage to life or property.

I am also not condoning the use of alcohol as a substitute for better mental health, healthier relationships, or personal growth. Nor am I attempting to victim-shame the people whose stories I will share.

My goal is twofold:

1. To bring awareness to a method used in the State of Florida to educate people accused of driving under the influence by appealing to shame and emotion rather than addressing the reality that many people who develop unhealthy relationships with alcohol are themselves victims of abuse, neglect, or trauma.

2. To use humor to evaluate whether identifying as a victim, for whatever reason, helps us become healthier or keeps us trapped in a perpetual state of victimhood, disconnected from opportunities for growth and healing.

These are the examples presented. I am not embellishing them. They were intentionally selected because of their emotional volatility.

Example 1: The Woman Who Will Never Forgive Her Father Even Though He Is Long Dead

An attractive woman in her early forties was the first victim presented.

She bluntly stated, “My father has been dead for years, but I will never forgive him.”

The only legitimate complaint she had that didn’t end with, “If things had gone south, it could have been bad,” was that her father would leave her in a truck at night while he went into a bar to drink.

For that, she will never forgive him, despite the fact that he has been dead for years.

Personally, I subscribe to the proverb recorded at Romans 6:23: “The wages sin pays is death.”

My grandfather did far worse to my family, and he rarely drank more than a beer with dinner.

When he died, I forgave him.

An argument could be made that nothing truly irreversible happened to her.

Also, it was the late 80’s maybe early ’90s.

At 10 p.m., he knew exactly where his kid was.

If you’re reading this from a barstool, however, you should probably check on your children.

Example 2: The Entrepreneurial Prostitute Crackhead Turned Rehabilitation-Facility Proprietor

This woman is heading in the right direction.

She was herself a victim of drugs and alcohol. She spent her youth chasing a fix at all costs. In pursuit of drugs and drink, she prostituted herself.

She claimed she weighed 87 pounds at the height of her addiction. This was difficult to visualize because she now appears as a robust and weathered-looking mature woman.

She explained how she made this dramatic transformation.

By taking advantage of other addicts.

She proudly described how she began “volunteering” to help others. I put volunteering in quotation marks because she helps others by owning and operating a profitable recovery facility, which she made sure to mention was court-approved.

What I heard was:

“The courts force people to go somewhere like mine or go to jail.”

I’ve been to jail a couple of times. It’s miserable, and I don’t recommend it.

I chose rehabilitation and recovery at a facility similar to hers. It genuinely changed the course of my life, and I would recommend it to anyone given the choice.

However, this video presents this woman as an example of who I should aspire to become.

I would like to point out that she is not operating a nonprofit organization. This is a pay-to-stay facility.

In my experience, health insurance covers most of the bill.

My own stay at a similar facility cost approximately $1,500 per day. They counted both the evening I arrived and the morning I left as full days. A standard treatment program is twenty-eight days.

That’s over $40,000 per patient before additional therapy sessions and treatments.

My ten-day stay cost my insurance company more than $15,000, and I still received a $2,000 bill months later.

I’m struggling to see how this woman is supposed to be my role model when, from a business perspective, she appears to be profiting from two systems designed to extract enormous amounts of money from society.

It feels like a different form of whoring.

Can you tell I’ve grown to disdain health and legal institutions?

Still, I have to respect her entrepreneurial spirit.

For her efforts, she eventually received a full pardon from Florida’s governor.

Example 3: The Cool Black Teenager Arrested for Sleeping in a Parked Car

I struggle with this aspect of DUI law.

Throughout this process, I encountered many people who received DUIs simply for appearing intoxicated while possessing keys or having the “ability and intent” to operate a motor vehicle.

Who decided that a random police officer has the psychic ability to determine intentions?

It feels very Minority Report.

Did you know there is technically no legal blood alcohol level at which driving suddenly becomes illegal?

A .08 BAC simply creates a legal presumption that you are impaired.

Much like the Fred Armisen character in Parks and Recreation, if you blow a .08, it’s basically “right to jail.”

However, you don’t have to blow a .08, or even blow at all.

If an officer believes you are impaired, they can arrest you and charge you with DUI. Then it becomes your responsibility to spend money proving your innocence.

It doesn’t always feel like “innocent until proven guilty.”

It often feels more like:

“Take the plea deal, accept the punishment, surrender your license, and move on.”

Or spend an enormous amount of money hoping a jury sides with you over a police officer.

This young man being arrested for sleeping off a buzz in a parked car triggered me.

It felt wrong.

I suspect the producers understood how sympathetic he appeared because this was the only example where they interviewed his mother as well. She spent much of her time discussing how embarrassed she was.

The message seemed clear:

He brought shame upon the family, and we should judge him accordingly.

My heart went out to him.

He looked like someone completing a court-ordered assignment under duress while sitting beside a parent who was more interested in expressing disappointment than advocacy.

Example 4: The Man Who Could Be Paralyzed by a Bad Sneeze whilst Pooping

This was the closest thing I saw to an actual victim.

His wreck was gruesome.

The drunk driver was severed in half upon impact. This victim barely survived and was reconstructed through extensive surgery.

Now his body is held together so precariously that one wrong movement could leave him permanently paralyzed.

The thought of doing that to another human being genuinely made me feel terrible.

Example 5: The Fruit-Bowl Farmer and the Malpractice Doctor

The next guy’s story was so bizarre that I completely lost the intended message.

He appeared on camera wearing overalls.

I assume he knew there would be filming in advance, so the farmer costume was a deliberate choice.

He had been riding a motorcycle when he was struck by an intoxicated driver.

His major injury?

A section of the motorcycle left him with a hole between his scrotum and rectum.

According to him, his doctor told him the wound was so large he could “fit a pineapple in it.”

A pineapple?

Why not a grapefruit?

Why did the doctor choose the world’s most jagged fruit?

Then this man blamed the drunk driver for his subsequent fentanyl addiction. The drug prescribed to him for the pain.

Farmer Joe, your doctor is also part of this story.

Is this a DUI impact video or a medical malpractice documentary?

The good news is that he apparently lives only a few counties away from the prostitute’s rehabilitation facility.

More Examples and Conclusions

There were other examples.

A young man with frosted-’90s hair who was either lying about how much he drank or had been roofied.

There was a lumberjack with a glass eye.

There was also the woman from Connecticut who created this Florida DUI course for reasons known only to herself.

I forgot to mention that after every story, you had to answer five questions before proceeding.

The fifth question was always:

“What did you learn from this experience?”

That was where I had the most fun.

I answered honestly.

The same opinions I’m sharing here.

It was only after I completed the course and received my graduation certificate that I realized something:

My probation officer might read my answers. 😬