If you’ve spent much time around recovering folks, you’ve no doubt heard references to the dangers inherent in holding on to resentments.
Definition: “bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly.” It’s portrayed as a threat to sobriety, since resentments can serve as ready excuses for a return to substance use. Additionally, holding resentments, even if you stay sober, can be a ticket to unhappiness.
This case provides a good example.
Jim Irsay cites status as ‘white billionaire’ for 2014 arrest
The subject of the article is the owner of a National Football League team, arrested all the way back in 2014 for driving under the influence. He continues to insist he was innocent, the victim of prejudice, treated unfairly because he is a fabulously wealthy person of Caucasian descent.
I thought that was supposed to be an advantage in terms of not getting arrested.
A Maryland patrol officer once explained to me that his fellow officers disliked having to arrest a celebrity on a routine offense, since it attracted unwanted scrutiny, and the celeb in question simply hired a high-powered attorney who got him off anyway.
The article doesn’t specify whether the driver took a breath test, but I know many drivers simply refuse. That throws the burden of proof onto a so-called field sobriety test, intended to “assess balance, coordination, and the ability of the driver to divide his attention to more than one task during the… test.”
This driver failed. In retrospect, he blames problems walking after a recent hip surgery. I suppose that accounts for the bottles of prescription medications found in the vehicle, and the results of the tox screen that revealed “oxycodone and hydrocodone as well as alprazolam…in his system at the time of his arrest.”
It likely doesn’t explain the almost $30K in cash police found in the vehicle. I bet that attracted their interest, especially alongside the drugs.
It’s hard to imagine any of the police officers I’ve known failing to arrest a driver in the presence of all that evidence. Besides, he later pleaded guilty.
But now, he says that was simply because he wanted to get the whole thing over with.
Anyway, since that time, he’s openly acknowledged a history of substance addictions, and is presumably clean and sober. Good for him.
Still, he might want to take another look at some of those resentments.
