Sober Living by the Sea Blog

Thomas 'Bud' McDonald was a child star who became a pillar in the recovery community. 'Bud' helped found drug and alcohol treatment programs after recovering himself from alcoholism many years ago. Hedied Monday of congestive heart failure. He was 85 years old.

Bud appeared in some of the "Our Gang" movies as a boy before leaving California to relocate to Oregon thus leaving his movie career behind him.

After his return to California, Bud joined the Marines at the start of World War II. A training accident disqualified him from active duty so he became an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department, where he worked for about four years.

By his late 20s McDonald had developed a serious drinking problem. He left the LAPD, in part because of his alcoholism. "He was running with a bad crowd," his son said.
He robbed a store at gunpoint, was convicted of a felony and sent to prison. There, he started attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. "At that point my father was confronted with the fact that his life was going down the drain," Scott McDonald said.

After serving six months of a longer sentence, McDonald was released on good behavior. He then became active in Alcoholics Anonymous. He often sponsored newer members and went to court with them to settle drunk-driving charges. He got to know several judges.

Starting in the late 1960s, McDonald helped launch educational and treatment programs in public schools with Downey Municipal Court Judge Leon Emerson. They developed a "court card" system that allows offenders to attend alcoholism recovery meetings as part of their probation sentence. The program name refers to the card that parolees have stamped by organizers at meetings and present in court periodically. The system has been adopted nationally, Emerson said this week.

In the early 1970s McDonald and Emerson co-founded what is now called the Southern California Alcohol and Drug Programs. The Downey agency sponsors alcohol rehab centers for men and women and serves about 3,000 people each year. McDonald helped develop projects, helped raise money for them and continued mentoring recovering alcoholics.

Bud is responsible for contributing to the creation of many alcohol treatment centers. Bud never forgot he'd been down and out and once needed a hand," Lynne Appel, executive director of the program, said this week. "His greatest satisfaction was having someone stop him and say they had a family, a car, and were paying their mortgage," years after they had been through rehabilitation. Bud was a beloved member of the Southern California recovery community and he will be missed dearly.

Labels: actor, addiction treatment philosophy, alcohol, alcohol rehab, budweiser, california, LAPD, mcdonald, our gang, southern california, thomas

Labels: alcohol, alcoholic energy drink, alcoholism and drug addiction treatment, eating disorder, school, shot pak, shotpak, youth

Here at Sober Living by the Sea, we are always noticing that the men and women who are in the process of recovery seem to enjoy energy drinks like "Red Bull," "Monster," and "Rock Star."

We address the consumption of these beverages repeatedly in our various addiction treatment programs, particularly during Dr. Kevin McCauley's lectures regarding the disease model of addiction. The substitution of energy drinks and other substances like tobacco (and even activities like gambling, sex, and shopping) is very common when the user is in early recovery from chemical dependency. The abuse of these types of substances allows the user to more easily cope with craving by getting a spike of dopamine pleasure in their brain that the substance they used to abuse once provided.

A Disturbing Trend - Alcohol Energy Drinks

Public health and safety officials have become alarmed by the newest entry into the world of alcoholic beverages. Alcoholic energy drinks are prepackaged beverages that contain not only alcohol but also caffeine and other stimulants like taurine, ginseng and guarana.

What should make you really uncomfortable about the newest development in the world of Big Alcohol targeting youthful imbibers is the design of the packaging which blends right into the world of non-alcoholic energy drinks. The photo entry with this blog is disturbing- can you guess at a glance which of the cans are alcohol energy drinks (*answer at bottom of article)?


Health Concerns:

Although there is debate regarding the overall risks and benefits of energy drink and moderate caffeine consumption, health researchers agree that caffeine consumption can have adverse health consequences, particularly at high doses. Among the most common negative effects are increased anxiety, panic attacks, increased blood pressure, increased gastric acid, bowel irritability, and insomnia.

The more studies that are completed regarding the health risks of combining alcohol and caffeine predictably show that there is a positive correlation between combining these products and danger.

For more information about the Wake Forest study showing that students who mix alcohol with caffeinated energy drinks are at a higher risk for alcohol-related injuries, see the Wake Forest Press Release Here: http://www1.wfubmc.edu/news/NewsArticle.htm?Articleid=2193.

For a disturbing story about a female teen in Florida who died after mixing alcohol and energy drinks visit the jointogether.com release here: http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2008/florida-teen-dies-after.html.

Taking Action Against Alcohol Energy Drinks

The objections of law enforcement officials as well as parents and leading public health organizations caused Anheuser-Busch to already pull their product "Spykes." There is also an ongoing campaign to convince MillerCoors to do the same with their product "Sparks."


If you really want to tell Miller and Coors to stop making "Sparks" then you can submit a letter online to the president of MillerCoors Tom Long HERE: http://members.jointogether.org/campaign/miller/


*Answer to question in article about which cans are alcohol products: The 2nd can ("Rock Star 21") an d the 4th can ("Sparks" a Miller product).

Labels: alcohol, alcohol energy drink, anheuser busch, caffeine, energy, ginseng, guarana, miller coors, sparks, spykes, taurine