Addiction Doesn’t Make It OK

January 8th, 2013 | Add a Comment

When in active addiction, alcoholics and addicts—because they are not in a healthy state of mind—make some really unwise decisions, subsequently carrying out irresponsible actions. Many people victimize themselves, explaining that “the alcohol made me do it” or “the drugs made me do it,” but taking responsibility for their actions is what they really need to be considering. Blaming their actions on and because their mind was skewed due to whatever substance they put into their body is just an excuse.

Just recently, five inmates at Idaho’s Kuna prison—Keith Allen Brown, Cory Alan Baugh, Jeremy Joseph Brown, Steven Todd Thompson, and Woodrow John Grant Brow—who are carrying out sentences for committing violent crimes while intoxicated are claiming that the beer made them do it. In addition, they are suing major beer companies, attributing their actions to alcoholism and arguing that the corporations are to blame because they don’t caution consumers that their products are addictive and could lead to alcoholism. The lawsuit, drafted by all five inmates, designates eight defendants, including Coors, Miller Brewing, Anheuser-Busch, the owner of Jim Beam whiskey, and three other American beer companies.

All five inmates’ crimes are similar to one another. They all got drunk and either shot and injured/killed someone or committed grand theft auto along with drug convictions.

Keith Allen Brown, who is serving a 15-year sentence for shooting a man to death in Priest Lake five years ago, wrote, “I have spent a great deal of that time in prison because of situations that have arose because of people being drunk, or because of situations in which alcohol played a major role. At no time in my life, prior to me becoming an alcoholic, was I ever informed that alcohol was habit forming and addictive.”

He went on to say, “I honestly do not think that anyone who is young and who is planning a future, if they knew that alcohol was addictive and habit-forming, would ever drink alcohol beverages. Not one day goes by that I do not crave alcohol. I dream about drinking alcohol, I sit around and crave alcohol.”

Like I stated above, these men—or even anybody who commits a crime or wrongs someone in any way—have to take responsibility for their actions. In the past, while actively in my disease of alcoholism, I have committed wrongdoings towards countless people, consistently blaming my actions on the alcohol and the state I was in due to my excessive drinking, but I have now have learned to take responsibility for those actions and understand that what I did to those people was all on me, not the alcohol. It might have played a part in bad judgment but it wasn’t responsible for it.

These five men have to take it upon themselves to understand that they alone were and are responsible for what they did and no one else.

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