The effect of alcohol on alcoholics is to help them feel "connected", as if they belong, or fit. It ends that sense of alienation which is so common. That is also the definition of a spiritual sickness.

4,000 years ago the Greeks called alcohol a "spirit" because it could solve that spiritual problem and we still use the term, as in "distilled spirits".

The other feature of Bush is his narcissism, his inability to view other people as anything but an objects, an inability to understand how others think, serious problems relating with people among other traits.

Bush is classically narcissistic, lonely, and an unrecovering alcoholic. Amongst those of us who have quit drinking to just stop is a fate worse than death, literally. The goal of 12 Step programs isn't about quitting drinking, it's to help learn to live if one has made up his mind to not drink.

And Bush is in the hands of people who are experts at playing upon his narcissism. Cheney is a genius at it.

Arf