My Sad Personal Experience With Death Due To Substance Abuse

        The late Soviet dictator Josef Stalin is not one of my favorite historical characters by any means. He did leave one pearl of wisdom that sticks with me as follows:

        "One death is a tragedy. Thousands or millions of deaths are just numbers on a piece of paper."

        Yesterday morning I was out doing errands. I was listening to the news in my car. I heard the sad and shocking report that some 100,000 people had died of drug overdoses in this country last year. It was up from 78,000 the year before.

     I have some touching and sad personal experience with deaths due to substance abuse. From 1979 to 1980, I had a second job while living in Los Angeles. I was employed by a non-profit-The Mary Lind Foundation. Its goal was to treat those addicted to alcohol and drugs. I had great luck to be assigned to the Beverly Hills chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. I found myself in the midst of television actors, movie actors, the president of Beverly Hills Bank, and children of truly big-name movie stars.

      Three people stand out in my memory as follows:

Bill aged 54: He was a highly accomplished stage manager doing big-time plays all over L.A. He got me into plays, the production of television series, and even movie sets. He was a recovering alcoholic.

Tatiana aged 54: She was a very talented lady estranged from her husband of many years who was a professor at my alma mater-Tulane University. She was also a recovering alcoholic.

Loraine aged 26: She was a beautiful young woman with aspirations to be an actress. Cocaine addiction overtook her life.

        My three clients were making remarkable progress. I had great hopes for all these people. I resigned from the Mary Lind Foundation to move from Los Angeles to Johannesburg in March of 1990. I got the shocking news that Bill, and Tatiana had died from complications due to their alcohol addiction. (This usually has something to do with the liver.) Loraine had died of a drug overdose.

        Please use alcohol responsibly. Stay away from highly addictive drugs. Marijuana is not included here.