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The continuing mystery of the Taconic crash that people are ignoring
(Note August 8: the New York Times admits that all of the proferred explanations of the crash “strain crudulity,” meaning that the crash is a mystery, as I’ve been saying all along.)
(To avoid any misunderstanding, when I say that Daniel Schuler’s explanation makes more sense than the conventional view, I am not agreeing with his absurd—and perhaps suspicion-provoking—denial that this wife’s blood alcohol content was what the medical examiner said it was. I mean that I agree with his point that some other, so-far unidentified, condition in addition to the alcohol had to have intervened to set off her insane behavior.)
As promising as the “functioning alcoholic” theory brought forth by two VFR readers yesterday appeared to be, it still doesn’t explain Diane Schuler’s behavior. Whether she was a functioning alcoholic or not,—and I’m not doubting that the alcohol was in her system—drunkenness would not explain what she did. The whole world is acting as though it does, but it does not. No drunken person has ever done what Diane Schuler did. That’s why her husband Daniel Schuler’s insistence that his wife was not a drinker except for an occasional social drink, that he never saw her drunk, that she was completely responsible and reliable, and that some other, so far undiscovered, medical factor such as a stroke must broken down her normal functioning makes sense, even though everyone is dismissing his statements as delusional (see Joanna Molloy’s column in today’s New York Daily News) or dishonest. Now Mrs. Schuler may well have been a heavier drinker than her husband is letting on or knew about (see again the discussion of how functional alcoholics can conceal massive daily drinking from their spouse for years), but that wouldn’t change the fact that drunkenness by itself would not make her do the things she did.
Just as the whole world now assumes that drunkenness explains her behavior, the whole world wants to make Daniel Schuler responsible for letting her drive, including the families of the three men who were killed, Michael Bastardi, 81, his son Guy, 49, and their friend Daniel Longo, 74:
The families of three Yonkers men killed in the Taconic crash plan to sue Diane Schuler’s family, claiming they had to know the death-driver had drug and alcohol problems, their lawyer said Wednesday.
“Any person who was aware that she was drinking is an accomplice,” said Irving Anolik, lawyer for the Bastardi and Longo families.
“She didn’t just wake up one morning with a drug problem and capable of drinking that much alcohol.
The charge against Daniel Schuler makes no sense. Why would he knowingly let his wife drive the minivan on a long trip with all those children if he had any inkling she was drinking, let alone drinking heavily? Yet all the coverage treats this theory as plausible, and virtually assumes his guilt.
It is as though the world wants an easy target to blame for a horrible event that in truth remains uncanny and unexplained.
Of course, it could be the case that Mrs. Schuler was a wild drunk and that Mr. Schuler was her enabler, and that he was so pathologically irresponsible he knowingly allowed his wife to drive the minivan containing their two children and the Hance’s three children on the four hour trip to Long Island. But it is highly unlikely.
Thus the conventional wisdom now seems to consist of two very questionable assertions: that drunkenness (plus marijuana) was the cause, and that Daniel Schuler was his wife’s enabler.
Here’s a secondary point not explained so far. Previously the news accounts said that Daniel went on a fishing trip while his wife returned to Long Island with their children and nieces. But in his press conference yesterday (confirming reader Kathlene M.’s point yesterday), he said he was returning to Long Island, not going on a fishing trip:
On the morning of the crash, Schuler said, he woke up at a Sullivan County campsite at 6 a.m. and roused his wife an hour later.
“We had a cup of coffee in the morning,” he said. “We packed the cars up like we always do, and we headed out just like every other weekend.”
Before parting, Schuler said with a sob, “I kissed everyone goodbye and my wife.”
Then he got into his pickup truck with the family dog and drove off, bound for the family home in Long Island.
Why would he drive a pickup truck with the dog, while his wife drove the minivan with all the kids? Why this particular division of labor? And since they were heading to same destination, why did she call her brother instead of her husband when she became disoriented? Perhaps Daniel didn’t have a cell phone.
I saw some other item (no link), in which Daniel said that Diane was such a slow careful driver that she was assigned the job of driving the kids.
Another secondary question: in a story posted early yesterday in the New York Daily News, Daniel Schuler said he wanted his wife’s body exhumed for another autopsy. But in the News’ story about his press conference later yesterday, while he repeated that his wife could not have been drinking, there is no mention of a request for exhumation. I don’t know what to make of that.
And another question: look at the photo of Daniel Schuler and read his words at the press conference. Doesn’t he look and sound like someone capable of doing more with his life than working as a security guard? (He’s called a public safety officer, but what he does is stand guard at a county facility.)
But to return to the main issue: Daniel Schuler’s story is that up to the moment he and his wife drove off in their separate vehicles from the campground at 9:30 a.m., she was entirely normal, and that some other, so far unknown factor, perhaps a stroke, then intervened to break down her mental functioning and make her start behaving like a madwoman, drinking vast amounts of vodka while operating the vehicle, driving in an erratic manner down Route 17 while tailgating, honking, and straddling the lanes, and then proceeding to the further insane and robotic behavior that led to the deaths of eight people. In other words, that unknown factor caused the totality of her behavior—both the extreme drinking, and the insane course of conduct that drink alone could not have caused.
As unlikely as Daniel Schuler’s vague theory may seem, it makes more sense than the conventional view that drunkenness alone accounts for what happened.
* * *
However, there is another possible charge against Daniel Schuler that may be more plausible. Diane was a functional alcoholic, and (as John Dempsey explains about functional alcoholics) she routinely drove long distances under the influence without problems. He husband knew about her functional alcoholism, was confident in her ability to drive safely while under the influence, and so allowed her to drive the car with the children. But on this day something went wrong.
—end of initial entry—
Ben W. writes:
You wrote:
As promising as the “functioning alcoholic” theory brought forth by two VFR readers yesterday appeared to be, it still doesn’t explain Diane Schuler’s behavior.
That wouldn’t change the fact that drunkenness by itself would not make her do the things she did.
You’re missing the obvious, the cause of which has been staring you in the face. Gird thy loins man! The reason, the cause, is front and center, inescapable, irrefutable, and ageless. THAT’S THE WAY WE EVOLVED.
LA replies:
You are using an argument that we have often employed against Darwinism, but in this instance it doesn’t work. You’re suggesting that Darwinism would say that Diane Schuler behaved this way because evolution made her do it. That is, an ancestor of hers had a random mutation which makes people do completely insane suicidal things like drive the wrong way on a highway, and this mutation was selected and passed down, and so Schuler inherited this mutation and that’s the explanation for her behavior. And, of course, that would be absurd that such a mutation could be selected, therefore Darwinism is absurd.
But in fact what happened here is in perfect conformity with Darwinism. Diane Schuler had a mutation which caused the behavior which caused her death and that of her daughter and her nieces, resulting in the elimination of that bad mutation.
Pure Darwinism in action.
Kathlene M. writes:
Thanks for this. I’m still trying to figure it all out, but here goes my next attempt:
To support what Mr. Dempsey has said, functioning alcoholics can continue drinking, building higher and higher levels of tolerance, until their bodies inevitably crash. The body can only take so much. When the crash happens, the world falls apart around them. In Diane Schuler’s case, maybe the trigger was the marijuana/alcohol combination or just that her body finally started shutting down. When Diane Schuler stopped at McDonald’s with the kids that morning, did she quickly consume alcohol and smoke a joint in the McDonald’s bathroom? I’m guessing so.
Functioning alcoholics don’t appear drunk from high levels of alcohol because they have exceedingly high tolerance and can function relatively rationally, some even holding down jobs for years and operating while “drunk.” Functioning alcoholics drink more and more to get the high they used to get on lower levels. So “slightly drunk” to an alcoholic might equal “comatose” to non-drinkers. My ex-boyfriend’s “crash” came when he drunkenly trespassed into a woman-neighbor’s home and was arrested. The night my ex was arrested, he was able to run from the cops and hide in bushes, all this while quite “drunk” by our standards. His running away would be considered a reasonable thought-out behavior although his trespassing into a neighbors house was not rational.
This new NY Post article below sheds more light on that terrifying day:
The first call Diane made was relatively unpanicked. Emma took the phone to tell her dad that she “had a great time” camping upstate with the Schulers. But she warned her father that she was going to be late, and would not arrive home on time for drama rehearsal. This was curious, because the Schulers said they left upstate early, around 9:30 a.m. on July 26.
In subsequent calls, it was clear that something was terribly wrong.
Diane told her brother she was having “tunnel vision”—the very phrase I’ve seen associated with heavy drinking.
If what her husband says is true (that she had a 2-month old abscess and that she refused to see a doctor), it’s very possible she was self-medicating with alcohol and marijuana for pain. This could be what her husband is covering up. Or he’s just covering up her levels of drinking. To enablers, there’s nothing problematic about the alcoholics’ drinking—it’s not abnormal. Enablers can find many excuses as to why the alcoholic drinks (e.g. stress or pain). Either way, I think Daniel Schuler is not telling the whole story. His lawyer obviously told him to just say “she was fine” because Daniel wouldn’t elaborate further at the press conference. His lawyer also told reporters at the 20-minute press conference which I watched that any questions about marijuana use were verboten.
Maybe it’s not fair to target Daniel Schuler, but if I were in the shoes of the families affected, I’d probably want some explanation, So far the explanations don’t satisfy. The preliminary autopsy already ruled out stroke, aneurysm and heart attack. The fact that Daniel Schuler is getting all lawyered up doesn’t help his cause either. I suppose he must do this for self-protection, but the fact that he chose a prominent in-your-face lawyer is stirring up even more questions.
LA replies:
All good. But I still say that there still had to be some catastrophic event that affected her mind beyond what any of the identified factors could have done.
Kathlene writes:
You wrote:
Why would he drive a pickup truck with the dog, while his wife drove the minivan with all the kids? Why this particular division of labor? And since they were heading to same destination, why did she call her brother instead of her husband when she became disoriented? Perhaps Daniel didn’t have a cell phone.
Your questions are similar to mine. It doesn’t make sense that he wouldn’t have a cell phone since most people who work and commute these days carry one. So if he did have a cell phone, why didn’t she call him? And why not have him take the nieces home and she could take her kids home? Why did she take all the kids? Why did they not drive the same route home? Supposedly his truck couldn’t go on the parkway, so why not have her follow him on the alternate route he took? There are too many unanswered questions. It’s obvious that the lawyer has instructed Daniel to stick to a very brief explanation of the “she was fine” story based on the press conference I watched.
Richard S. writes:
What did Schuler do? She drove the wrong way on a highway until she had a head on collision. Which is what drunk out of their minds ever increasing numbers of illegal immigrants do after tanking up on twelve or sixteen or twenty cervezas to celebrate the end of their work week on Friday and Saturday nights all over America. It is one of the truly horrific dangers facing Americans that has grown exponentially since the invasion got into full swing. There is no mystery. Schuler did what they do. That Schuler was able to hide or mask her alcoholism from her husband has no bearing on the fact that she had an extraordinarily high level of alcohol in her system, which caused complete disorientation.
LA replies:
Have you ever heard of someone driving almost two miles the wrong way on a big highway, with other cars madly swerving out of the way to avoid crashing, and everyone honking, and the driver just continues forward with no awareness of what he is doing? That’s beyond anything I’ve heard of.
Kathlene writes:
You wrote:
“All good. But I still say that there still had to be some catastrophic event that affected her mind beyond what any of the identified factors could have done.”
Would the explanation below satisfy the catastrophic event? This, from Wikipedia, relates to brain damage caused by alcoholic psychosis:
Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (also called
wet brain, Korsakoff psychosis, alcoholic encephalopathy, Wernicke’s disease, and encephalopathy—alcoholic)
[1] is a manifestation of
thiamine deficiency, or
beri-beri. This is usually secondary to alcohol abuse. It mainly causes vision changes, ataxia and impaired memory.
Below are symptoms/signs from: http://health.allrefer.com/health/wernicke-
korsakoff-syndrome-symptoms.html
Symptoms & Signs
Vision changes
Double vision
Eye movements abnormalities
Eyelid drooping
Loss of muscle coordination
Unsteady, uncoordinated walking
Loss of memory can be profound
Inability to form new memories
Confabulation (making up stories to explain behavior that have little relation to reality)
Hallucinations
Even a well-nourished alcoholic can have thiamine deficiency since the alcohol prevents thiamine absorption leading to brain damage.
LA replies:
Perhaps. But the medical examiner said that there was nothing medically wrong with her. There was only the alcohol and the THC.
Ambika S. writes:
You write: “No drunken person has ever done what Diane Schuler did.” I agree that what she did is extreme. But there seem to have been many instances where people have been arrested for driving the wrong way on a road, and they usually seem to be high on drugs and sometimes drunk as well.
I just did a Google search and came up with the following links:
Item:
We’re told two motorists spotted her [Nicole Richie] SUV going the wrong way on the 134 Freeway in Burbank. The drivers called 911…Law enforcement officers tell TMZ Nicole Richie admitted she had taken Vicodin and smoked pot.
Item:
The alleged drunken driver who collided with a city police cruiser while driving the wrong way on Interstate 95 was so intoxicated he did not know where he was when questioned by police, court records say.
Item:
An officer saw a Buick sedan traveling westbound on the eastbound shoulder of Stone Drive near Lynn Garden Drive and initiated a stop…The officer said Casas “did not do well” on field sobriety tests, and that a joint and plastic baggie believed to contain marijuana were found in his vehicle.
Item:
Two men who were stopped by police Tuesday night for driving the wrong way down a one-way section of Worthington Street were arrested when officers found crack pipes and several rocks of crack cocaine in their vehicle, police said.
LA replies:
Look, it’s relatively easy to make a mistake and drive the wrong way on a road, for example I’ve begun driving the wrong way on a local one way road, until people honked or yelled at me and I stopped and turned around. And there are the instances you quote of drunken or stoned people going the wrong way on a big highway or even the Interstate.
But the totality of Schuler’s behavior—especially (1) that she got back in the minivan and resumed driving after telling her brother she was disoriented and was having trouble seeing, meaning that at the time she called her brother she had enough presence of mind to know that she could not drive safely, yet instead of acting on that knowledge and staying where she was as her brother told her to do, she immediately proceeded to act in an even more dangerous way than she had already been doing, and (2) her continuing to drive 1.7 miles on the Taconic against a large number of oncoming cars that were madly careening to avoid hitting her—goes beyond anything described in the incidents you quote. From the start, it has struck me that Diane Schuler’s behavior was not just out of control behavior or drunken behavior, but some kind of weirdly robotic behavior, as though something had possessed her or was making her behave like a zombie. It seems to me that from the moment she got back in that minivan, she was already in effect a zombie, a being that has no mind, consciousness, or life, but whose body keeps moving as though pulled by strings. And some kind of stroke that knocked out her conscious brain center while allowing her motor functions to continue, seems more compatible with her actions than simple extreme intoxication.
Now maybe I’m all wrong, and maybe I’m making too big a deal out of doubting a point that to most other people is an obvious point that they have no difficulty accepting, namely that alcohol was enough to explain everything she did. But this is the way it seems to me, and I’ve given my reasons for it.
[The two below comments, making very similar points, were sent within minutes of each other.]
Roland D. writes:
From everything I’ve read about this, I believe this woman killed herself deliberately, along with her own children and the children of her brother, and the adults in the other vehicle. I’ve heard of other female wrong-way driving suicides involving children, and this seems to match the pattern.
What set her off? We may never know. Perhaps a revelation of infidelity and/or other embarrassing sexual behavior, perhaps even something along the lines of questions raised about the paternity of a child, or something of similarly personally catastrophic nature.
As a side note, it’s interesting to observe how the admission of casual marijuana use both my Mrs. Schuler and her security-guard husband is neither deplored nor even much remarked-upon, beyond a bare mention of the fact. My parents and their friends would never have condoned such behavior and never would’ve allowed children around someone who was even a ‘casual’ marijuana smoker; how the times have changed, and not for the better.
The distorting effect of the horrendously litigious nature of our society is also brought into relief by this incident, as hedging against possible legal liability is hindering the search for the truth of the matter.
Again, when I was a child, I remember a horrific incident in which the teenage daughter of a friend of our family sneaked out of her parents’ house at night with the car keys, driving another teenage girl to a party where they both got drunk, and then crashed the car on the way back home, killing both the driver and her friend. This was a real tragedy, and yet the parents of the girl’s friend who was killed had no thoughts of suing the driver’s family and alleging some kind of liability; instead, the two families shared their grief together, and went about rebuilding their lives as best they could, without thought to the recourse of lawyers and courts.
Josh F. writes:
I’m not buying the “functional alcoholic” theory. A five foot two mother of two as functioning alcoholic seems too implausible. I can say this because I’ve been in the bar business for almost 15 years and never come across such a thing. I don’t mean never come across a functional alcohol. Those ARE the norm. I mean come across a five foot two mother of two who managed well her substance abuse. Such mothers really only exist as complete messes.
No, Schuler was a suicidal liberal who wanted out of this hell and she wanted to take the only things she loved with her. The fact that she pretended to be normal to the outside world only attests that as a modern liberal, she was a great pretender. Her alcohol intoxication was almost certainly nullified by her pot use and so her disorientation was NOT lack of focus, but extreme and “tunnel vision”-like focus. This can help explain the ability to drive for so long. She snapped out of this focus in a last cry for help in the call to her brother. She called her brother because still intent to do what she planned to do she knew a call to her husband would set off alarms bells. She also had reservations about taking her brother’s daughters to a better place. She hung up and refocused, downing the equivalent of four shots that at the time of the wreck had not affected her. Instead, she drove high and focused until one driver was not paying attention.
LA replies:
This is very interesting, especially the way you relate the pot use to the vodka and say that her behavior was extremely focused, not out of control. But what is your evidence and reasoning for your suicide theory? I guess you could say that her behavior itself, killing herself and others, is the evidence. But where is the evidence that she was unhappy to the point of suicide and mass murder of her children, nieces, and strangers? George Sodino left a record of his total unhappiness and hopelessness and hatred of life. Where is the evidence that Diane Schuler had such feelings? And, in particular, where is the evidence that she was a “suicidal liberal who wanted out of this hell”? What hell? The hell of liberal society? You need to explain what you mean.
At the same time, I don’t dismiss the suicide theory, not at all. Just as I say of Daniel Schuler’s theory, even if it seems far out, it makes more sense than the conventional view. The conventional view is that alcohol by itself triggered the entire complex of her actions. And I don’t believe that. I think that something more, whether of a physical or mental nature, had to be going on to explain her specific behaviors. A desire to commit suicide could be that something more.
Kathlene M. writes:
I truly appreciate your taking the time to engage your readers in a respectful debate about this. This is an interesting topic because it is so hard to understand why such a horrid tragedy occurred.
From the descriptions of Diane Schuler’s behavior, it seems to corroborate for me her extreme alcoholic state. Why would she have the seeming presence of mind to call her brother and tell him she couldn’t see and that she wasn’t feeling well, yet irrationally get back into her car, drive the wrong way for 1.7 miles on a parkway, swerving and honking at people? A person whose mind is impaired by alcohol can do those very incongruous things. Judgment is impaired, thinking is disorganized, and awareness slips in and out of reality, meaning that one can be conscious but not necessarily of reality (i.e., alcoholic psychosis).
So it makes sense (to me anyway) that in one moment she can pull over and call her brother, recognizing in some dimly-lit corner of her mind that something is wrong, but in the next minute completely disregard this concern due to short-term memory loss and impaired judgment (“I’m okay, I can handle this, I’m overreacting, why am I stopped here? I’ve got to get home”), continue on like a zombie, oblivious to danger and reality, and indeed swerve and honk at others as if they were the problem.
Diane Schuler’s story is similar to those stories we’ve read of young women who get drunk, lose all judgment and inhibitions, walk into bad areas of town, and get themselves killed. Surely some tiny remote part of their brains must be warning them that the situation is dangerous, but they ignore it and proceed with alcohol-impaired-judgment to their deaths.
But ignoring all the above, how about this argument: Completely sober normal people can go into “zombie” states, such as when people drive the same route each day on “auto-pilot” and forget that their babies are in the car seats in the back. The result is that tragic deaths happen every year when babies are forgotten in hot parked cars by their temporarily-mindless loved ones. So if such horrible innocent deaths are caused by sober rational caring people who temporarily act like robotic zombies on auto-pilot, then it’s possible for the incongruities in Diane Schuler’s tragic story to make sense.
LA replies:
Very interesting. Impressive reasoning. You’re making me almost believe the alcohol theory.
Mark P. writes:
Some of your readers have asked why Daniel Shuler took the pickup truck home with the dog, while the wife took all the children. One possible answer is that his flatbed pickup had only two seats.
LA replies:
That’s a bit odd. He’s the father/uncle of the family. The idea of all the kids riding with the mother/aunt, and the father/uncle driving all by himself, when they’re heading to the same destination, seemes strange. There was at least one passenger seat, and the dog could rid on the back of the truck, not take up a passenger seat..
August 8
Josh F. replies to LA:
The only real proof I have of a suicidal unhappiness in Schuler is the implausibility of either a 36 year old mother of two naively and atrociously BINGE drinking 16-18 ounces of vodka out of a 60 ounce bottle or a 36 year old mother of two “functionally” BINGE drinking 16-18 ounces out of a 60 ounce bottle. Only ignorant little girls binge drink into oblivion without forethought or notion of consequence. A 36 year old mother of two binge drinks because she has very serious personal issues or she is suicidal. Likewise, “functional alcoholics” don’t binge drink because such drinking leads to loss of function which is antithetical to the primary goal of the “functional alcoholic. That goal being a perpetual AND FUNCTIONING inebriated state. “Functional alcoholics” would not buy the largest available bottle of alcohol with a total disregard for the potential to get pulled and arrested for drunk driving. But a very depressed woman bent on suicide would buy such a bottle to ensure the job was done and could only wish that a cop would pull her over to give her the real help she needed.[LA replies: She did not buy the bottle that day. According to a story in today’s New York Times, Daniel Schuler says they carried the same bottle of vodka back and forth each weekend to the campground, as they drank from it so slowly it took them a year to finish a large bottle like that. That’s what the man said.]
I also don’t find the fact that all the kids went with mom and none went with dad all that mysterious. Three plausible answers exist. The kids simply wanted to stay all together and go with mommy/aunt Diane. Or, the mother, assuming her plot, requested to take all the kids. Or lastly, because front seat driving for small children is not recommended due to the potential of an airbag in the course of a crash releasing with such force that a small child can be killed, it might not even have been a question as to who was driving the kids and why.
Again though, I am in many ways merely speculating as everyone else has to the reason behind this atrocity and only hope the families can get some kind of answers to all these questions
Terry Morris writes: I’d be interested in knowing whether Mrs. Schuler was taking any kind of anti-depressant prescription drugs (she could have been doing so without her husband’s knowledge, by the way). There’s some bad stuff out there, easily accessible to most people with or without a prescription, and it doesn’t mix well with alcohol.
Kathlene M. writes:
Josh F. writes: “Functional alcoholics” would not buy the largest available bottle of alcohol with a total disregard for the potential to get pulled and arrested for drunk driving.”
Yes they would, because they’ve consumed that much for months or years and have never been in trouble with others or the law. They can handle their liquor and lots of it. And they’ve done if for a long time, so it just reinforces their feelings of disregard or omnipotence. Diane Schuler had never been in trouble with the law for drinking prior to this and thus had no reason to feel this time would be any different.
One other point that seems to strengthen the alcoholic theory is that Diane Schuler was trusted to drive the kids because family said that she was trustworthy, always driving 40 mph (or slowly in other words). Any cop will tell you that driving slowly is one sign of an intoxicated driver. The intoxicated driver will try to compensate for his inebriated state by driving more cautiously or slowly. Adding marijuana to the alcohol mix would change Diane’s personality even more (e.g., more sleepy, more aggressive, etc.). [LA replies: But she was driving erratically on Route 17 soon she left the McDonald’s in the morning, tailgating, honking, stradding lanes, hours before she stopped and called her brother. How does that behavior fit with the functional alcoholic theory?]
So here’s a summation of the alcohol theory:
Diane Schuler was a heavy drinker for months or even years, and she could handle ever-increasing amounts of alcohol without consequence. In fact she was extra cautious as a driver when drinking so family felt she was dependable and trustworthy. On the fateful day, she may have surreptitiously downed some vodka before or after her coffee for extra reinforcement to wake up and function. She knew the route well, having driven it for the last 3 years. When she took off with the kids in the van, she was as confident as she’d always been when driving after a stiff drink or two (or three or more). She always handled driving well in the past, she could do it again.
She and the kids stopped at McDonalds for some food and at that point she may have taken a few more surreptitious swigs of vodka and even a joint. She was a bit hungover from the weekend and needed an extra bit of juice to feel normal. At first when she and the kids returned to the road, all was as normal as many times before. But then she noticed that, unlike countless other times, she wasn’t feeling so well and her vision wasn’t right. The kids may have started to notice something was wrong (due to her driving behavior) and pleaded with her to pull over so she did. She then called her brother. After the call she may have disregarded her self-concern because her thinking was not right. “I need to get home; I’m feeling better; it’s just a few miles up the road; I can handle it.” And the rest is history.
The tipping point for Diane this time was that she finally drank too much and possibly too quickly and her body could no longer handle it. Yes, even long-term alcoholics’ bodies have limits, and I firmly believe that Diane may have been completely unaware of how much she was drinking and smoking, and that this was the fatal element in this whole story. As I pointed out earlier, she could still be conscious albeit in a reduced way, drive like a zombie (because she knew this route well), yet be strangely aggressive (changing lanes, tailgating and honking at people), all while under the influence. The alcohol boosted her confidence while her thinking became more self-deluded.
Kathlene M. writes:
Josh F. also wrote:
Likewise, “functional alcoholics” don’t binge drink because such drinking leads to loss of function which is antithetical to the primary goal of the “functional alcoholic. That goal being a perpetual AND FUNCTIONING inebriated state.
Functional alcoholics are addicts. They must drink to feel normal. Because their bodies are addicted to the alcohol, they must have more and more to feel normal. When they’re sober, they don’t feel well because their bodies are withdrawing from large amounts of toxins. What normal people see as binge drinking (or consuming large quantities of alcohol at one time) would be a normal amount for addicts to consume just so they could feel normal again. They don’t see heavy drinking as leading to a loss of function, they feel that drinking increases their function. Thus an addict/alcoholic would not be aware of the amounts he drinks, only that drinking leads him to feel better.
Let me give one example of a celebrity alcoholic: pro golfer John Daly. He has admitted in interviews that he is a heavy drinker and that he needs to drink to feel good. He’s even said that he plays better golf after he’s been drinking than when he hasn’t been drinking. Unfortunately for John Daly, reality seems to show otherwise. His umpteenth marriage is a mess, and his golf game is getting worse.
I know more about alcoholics than I ever cared to because of personal experience in my life. I don’t wish anyone to have personal experience with an alcoholic. It is a very destructive addiction to the addict himself and to all around him. There is a reason that Alcoholics Anonymous requires that the alcoholic acknowledge God’s intervening help in its 12 step program. It is an addiction that requires the mercy of God to overcome.
Anna writes:
An article in today’s New York Times gives an interesting perspective on why the story of the tragedy is so gripping:
Each possible version of events that has surfaced in the two weeks since strains credulity, and denies the public the comfort of a familiar cautionary tale. That is part of what has made obsessives of so many people following the story: its refusal to reveal, at a minimum, some lesson that would let us walk away feeling safer for having learned it.
So many questions. As Katherine M wrote earlier, the two-month abscess may have been a factor. If it flared-up, Mrs. Schuler may have attempted to use the alcohol as a painkiller, and perhaps the marijuana to combat nausea. Katherine M.’s later summary and comments on the” functional alcoholic” theory are compelling.
In fact, all over there are comments on “functional alcoholics”—some from professionals; some from experience—personal, familial or indirect. It has been, at least for me, a learning endeavor in trying to understand what could possibly, against all logic and reason, have happened. There is such a dichotomy between “good mother” and the evidence. If, when all the facts, as much as possible, are in and they point to “functional alcoholic,” the implication is frightening.
All the facts are not yet known. Questions remain. Could the vodka bottle that Mr. Schuler said would last them a year, be simply frequently replaced? The Times said the minivan belonged to Diane Schuler’s brother. Fishing trip. One version has Daniel Schuler heading fishing on the fateful day, another has him going up a day early for fishing and joining his family when they arrived, planning a same day return. Pickup truck and dog. To me a standard pickup has a single bench seat, not conducive to carrying children and a dog. Commercial plates vs. parkways. Even with side-roads, if Mr. Schuler was heading home he would have likely been there by the time of the accident. I have not seen mention of contact or attempted contact with Mr. Schuler. No phone or dead phone?
This is a job for the professional investigators. Their work and results will play an important part in the litigation that is sure to follow.
For me, putting myself into the position of a parent who has lost all three children, of a father who only has an injured son left, of a woman who may never enjoy a family dinner again, I can’t imagine life and family as good again. At least for now.
May each find their road to peace, and life and family and beyond as good.
LA replies:
Here again is the passage from the Times that you quoted:
Each possible version of events that has surfaced in the two weeks since strains credulity, and denies the public the comfort of a familiar cautionary tale. That is part of what has made obsessives of so many people following the story: its refusal to reveal, at a minimum, some lesson that would let us walk away feeling safer for having learned it.
My first reaction is: finally someone in the mainstream has admitted what I’ve been saying all along, that the conventional explanation of what happened is not believable, and, indeed, that there is no explanation so far that both makes sense and is backed up by evidence. As indicated in the title of this entry, Diane Schuler’s course of behavior on that day is a mystery that cannot be satisfactorily accounted for by any known natural causes.
Second, while the writer admits that the accident is a mystery, she sees this as a problem, not because it means that we don’t know the truth of what happened to Diane Schuler, but because it means that we are deprived of the comfort of feeling that what happened to Diane Schuler won’t happen to us, deprived of “the comfort of a familiar cautionary tale,” of “some lesson that would let us walk away feeling safer for having learned it.” [italics added.] This shows why the Times has been so far behind the Post and the News in getting at the facts; or, rather, why the Times has not uncovered any facts at all. The elite feminized liberals at the Times don’t want to know the facts. They think that digging into a complicated, messy reality is too low-class for them, because being a liberal is not about searching for truth, it’s about having the right attitudes. What they want is (and here comes that word again) a narrative that they can be comfortable with, that will fit with their liberal world view. And they come right out and tell us this without embarrassment.
LA continues:
I’ve just read the Times article and indeed the author is a woman, Susan Dominus. I had assumed the writer was female because of the writer’s emphasis on feeling safe.
In the paragraph immediately following the one already quoted, Dominus continues in the same vein:
Some might find solace in the statistical improbability of the psychotic break—the odds of that happening to the family friend driving your child home from the movies are a lot slimmer than that she’s been drinking.
So, getting solace is the main reason people are interested in the story, not understanding what happened. As Dominus sees it, people’s main concern is on their own fears that have been roused by the story and their desire to find an explanation that makes it less likely that such a disaster could happen to them.
After looking at various cases of alcoholics who hid their alcoholism, which forms the main body of the article, at the end of the piece she returns to her theme:
But whatever the final narrative [not truth, but narrative!], it is unlikely to leave people feeling insulated from what they cannot see, or foresee, in their own lives.
Again, the focus is on feeling “insulated” from what happened to Diane Schuler, not on knowing what happened to Diane Schuler.
Such pitiful mushiness, such a personalist approach to news and public events, is inevitable in a society in which the female consciousness has been liberated and empowered to spin off on its own, unconnected with and uninfluenced by the male consciousness.
LA writes:
Here is the opening of Dominus’s article which I like, where she emphasizes the mystery of the event and the unsatisfactory quality of all the explanations so far, before she gets into the “looking for solace” business.
Dominus writes:
Which is the hardest version of events to accept?
That Diane Schuler, described by her husband as a perfect mother and reliable person, was the victim of a fluke circumstance—some sort of sudden-onset psychosis or stroke—that caused the deaths of eight people on the Taconic State Parkway?
That Diane Schuler, who had a vodka bottle in her minivan, along with five children that desperate morning, was a raging alcoholic and her husband didn’t know?
That Diane Schuler, a mother of two and a Cablevision executive, was a raging alcoholic and people knew, but didn’t intervene?
No possible explanation suffices for the horrific July 26 crash, in which Ms. Schuler, returning from a camping trip, drove 1.7 miles in the wrong direction on a curvy highway before slamming into an S.U.V., killing its three passengers, as well as herself, her 2-year-old daughter and her three young nieces. She had a blood-alcohol level of more than twice the legal limit.
Each possible version of events that has surfaced in the two weeks since strains credulity…
August 9
Kathlene M. writes:
This article offers two alcohol theories, the one we’ve been discussing and another, that Schuler was self-medicating for pain on a one-time basis and didn’t realize her limits. This second theory would fit in with her husband’s “tooth abscess” story. I’ve highlighted sections of interest. [LA writes: I’ve just quoted the parts Kathlene highlighted to keep it shorter.]
Alcoholics often are experts at hiding it
By JOCELYN NOVECK
AP National Writer
Women in particular feel an extra responsibility to keep their drinking secret, because they need to keep the family running smoothly, says Dr. Petros Levounis, director of the Addiction Institute of New York at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center.
“My spouse at the time had no idea that I was a full-blown addict and alcoholic,” says Moyers, now executive director of the Center for Public Advocacy at Hazelden, an addiction treatment center. (He is also a former journalist and the son of broadcaster Bill Moyers.)
But family members also tend to engage in a bit of denial, Moyers adds.
“Alcoholism is often an illness of denial, not just for the person involved, but for their family,” he says. “There are dots there to be connected, and nobody connects them.”
Colleran, who has been sober for 27 years and serves as executive vice president of the Center of Older Adult Recovery at the Hanley Center in Florida, also recalls a healthy dose of denial—a refusal to believe she was an alcoholic—from those around her, partly, she thinks, because she was a mother.
“It’s possible she was trying to self-medicate something else, and doing this on a one-time basis, and because she was inexperienced, didn’t understand the consequences of drinking that much alcohol,” Swift says. He recalls a case where a patient had panic attacks, and on a very stressful day, drove with a bottle of vodka to stave them off.
Kathlene M. continues:
If we dismiss the theory that Diane Schuler was an alcoholic, she could very well have been self-medicating for pain that day on a one-time basis, and greatly underestimated the effect of alcohol and marijuana on her, as suggested by this article: “Experts: Marijuana amplifies alcohol’s effects.”
Alcohol’s effect: Having twice the legal limit of alcohol can cause people to have difficulties in perception, judgment and memory, said Elizabeth Spratt of the Westchester Laboratory.
Marijuana and alcohol: Adding marijuana—especially if smoked right before the crash—would only enhance the effect of the alcohol, impairing judgment even further, drug and alcohol experts said. “Cannabis augments the intoxication,” said Dr. Constantine Ioannou of the Nassau University Medical Center. Severely drunk and high people often have “tunnel vision,” Spratt said.
Marijuana’s effect: Dr. Jeff Selzer, an addiction psychiatrist at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, said studies have found that use of cannabis alone can also significantly impair judgment in driving—especially right after it is used.
LA replies:
I suppose the the self-medicating for pain with marijuana theory is possible, but I don’t see how it gets us any closer to an explanation of the extreme behavior preceding the crash: the recklessness and agressiveness of Route 17, then her complete difficulty in seeing, then her leaving her cell phone and driving to her death.
Josh F. writes:
Without quibbling with Kathlene’s points concerning “functional alcoholics” (FA), binge drinking, or buying large amounts of alcohol (non-alcoholics are known to do the same), I reject the FA theory because it not only fails to fit the evidence—there was after all, Diane Schuler, purported FA, with major malfunction—but it also posits the triumph of mechanical processes (chemical reactions) over God-ordained free will. In addition, the FA theory, for all practical purposes, has become the crowd favorite because as a fundamentally liberal society we don’t want to believe that a mother mass-murdering her child and nieces may be for her and her “children” an act of liberation. It seems beyond doubt that most modern women define the essence of their very freedom in terms of their ability to have abortions, i.e., having the freedom to kill their child.
What happened, in my opinion, is what we will see happen more frequently in a society that claims killing one’s child in utero is a “fundamental right.” We will see more and more mothers mass murdering their children as acts of liberation. This seems to me an entirely predictable result given the nature of our culture. The fact that the liberal media won’t touch such a potential while clinging to the FA theory is also entirely predictable. The FA theory fits nicely with liberal modes of thought while the most plausible scenario casts a very dark shadow over liberalism’s unintended consequences.
Diane Schuler could have stopped so many times before she caused all this mayhem and death. In fact, she passively tried to stop herself on at least two occasions. The first was early on with the erratic and impatient driving and the second time when she called her brother. Yet, notice the pattern. When she was “visible” at the campground and at McDonalds she made sure to put on a good face and stay focused on her liberation. When she was “invisible” in the car and in the conversation with her brother, she was passively, but consciously crying for someone to stop her.
I don’t see a mystery. Instead, I see a mother with intent on liberation and a true struggle in deciding whether to take her children and nieces with her to what she undoubtedly thought was a better place. The idea that this FA/heavy drinker accidently drank 16-18 ounces of straight vodka without some idea of the INCREDIBLY debilitating effects all while transporting her children and nieces seems too darn implausible.
LA replies:
In your previous reply to me, you said that the implausibility of the binge drinking theory left the likelihood of suicide/murder. But that was only reasoning by process of elimination. You didn’t present any positive arguments for the suicide-murder theory. And now you are acting as though the suicide-murder theory were self-evidenlty true. Thus you say that the event is “no mystery,” meaning that it’s obvious that Diane Schuler, as you put it, wanted to be “liberated” from motherhood and life in liberal society, and that it’s obvious that the prevalence of abortion made her feel it would be ok to murder her children and nieces. For you to make such a remarkable assertion about Diane Schulter’s thoughts and motives as though it were obvious, does not help advance your case. When proposing a highly unusual theory, one needs to recognize that it is unusual and that one must persuade other people of it, not simply say that it’s obvious, when to most people it is not obvious at all.
Again, maybe the unlikelihood of the drunkenness theory does lead logically to the suicide theory as the only remaining possibility. But it seems to me that something more is needed to make your theory persuasive.
This is from my earlier reply to you:
But where is the evidence that she was unhappy to the point of suicide and mass murder of her children, nieces, and strangers? George Sodino left a record of his total unhappiness and hopelessness and hatred of life. Where is the evidence that Diane Schuler had such feelings? And, in particular, where is the evidence that she was a “suicidal liberal who wanted out of this hell”? What hell? The hell of liberal society? You need to explain what you mean.
LA writes:
Here is the fullest description of Diane Schuler’s driving after she left the McDonald’s in Liberty at about 10:30 a.m.. It comes from “Police Eye Mom’s Route in NY Crash that Killed 8,” New York Post, August 3:
State police, who have been retracing her route, said Monday that witnesses reported seeing her red Ford mini-van on both state Routes 17 and 87. They said the van was straddling two lanes, tailgating, flashing its headlights and beeping the horn.
Others saw the vehicle veering from one lane to another and one witness said it appeared as if she was attempting to pass him on the shoulder of the highway. Another witness said the van drove across a grass divider at the Ramapo service area on Route 87.
This highly aggressive driving seems to be the opposite of that of a driver who complains of being “disoriented and having trouble seeing,” and also the opposite of the “tunnel-vision” or zombie-like driving that led to the crash. I say that the “having trouble seeing” condition is different from the “tunnel vision” condition in that in the former, the person knows he is having trouble seeing, while in the latter the person apparently is seeing just a narrow range directly in front of him and is not aware that he’s only seeing a narrow range. He thinks he’s seeing enough, but he’s only seeing a small amount. As Josh F. described it, “NOT lack of focus, but extreme and “tunnel vision”-like focus.” Such tunnel-vision could account for her heading north for ten miles away from her destination, entering the Taconic on an exit ramp, and driving 1.7 miles the wrong way on the Taconic. In the highly aggressive driving, the driver is seeing everything and keeps looking for ways to pass other cars.
There are thus three different types of conditions and types of driving, or rather four, that she exhibited during the course of the day:
1. Normal driving on the ten mile trip from the campground to the McDonald’s in Liberty.
2. Highly aggressive driving on Route 17 and I-87.
3, Disoriented and having trouble seeing before speaking to Warren Hance from east side of Tappan Zee bridge.
4. “Tunnel vision” or zombie-like driving leading up to the crash.
Actually, number four involves two distinct possibilities. Tunnel-like means extreme focus, zombie-like means unconsciousness. But they both would have the same effect.
Any theory purporting to explain the crash must account for all of these behaviors.
Let’s now look again at the key part of Josh’s suicide-murder theory in light of what I’ve just said. Josh wrote:
Her alcohol intoxication was almost certainly nullified by her pot use and so her disorientation was NOT lack of focus, but extreme and “tunnel vision”-like focus. This can help explain the ability to drive for so long. She snapped out of this focus in a last cry for help in the call to her brother. She called her brother because still intent to do what she planned to do she knew a call to her husband would set off alarms bells. She also had reservations about taking her brother’s daughters to a better place. She hung up and refocused, downing the equivalent of four shots that at the time of the wreck had not affected her. Instead, she drove high and focused until one driver was not paying attention.
This attempts to account for at least some of Schuler’s changing and contradictory behaviors. But does it do so successfully? In particular, Josh attempts to resolve the contradiction between the “disorientation/having trouble seeing” phase and the “tunnel-vision” phase by saying that they are really the same phase, but with two modes. One mode is when she was actually driving that way, intending murder-suicide. The other mode was when she tried to break out of it and complained of it as a difficulty in seeing. In other words, Josh is saying that the “extreme focus” and the “having trouble seeing” are the same thing, though seen from different angles. This strikes me as a stretch, but I give Josh credit for at least trying to come up with a non-contradictory explanation.
Another problem with Josh’s theory is that an intent to commit murder suicide would not account for the aggressive, acting-out behavior on Route 17. That is totally different from the robotic or zombie-like driving that led to the crash.
Kathlene M. writes:
You wrote: “There are thus three different types of conditions and types of driving, or rather four, that she exhibited during the course of the day….”
The progression of Diane Schuler’s behavior that you describe—from normal, to aggressive, to disoriented, to zombie-like—describes the fatal progression of alcohol’s affect on the body, accentuated by marijuana.
1. Normal driving —Diane Schuler wasn’t yet intoxicated.
2. Highly aggressive driving —Shows first effects of alcohol and marijuana on the body. Diane Schuler had the characteristic personality changes of intoxication.
3. Disorientation and vision problems —Shows increasing effects of alcohol and marijuana on Mrs. Schuler as the alcohol and THC were metabolized by the body.
4. Tunnel vision and zombie-like driving —Shows extreme effects of excessive intoxication possibly leading to coma. Alcohol is a sedative. Toxicology reports show that Diane Schuler still had unmetabolized alcohol in her stomach. As her blood alcohol content kept going up, the deleterious effects of alcohol kept increasing. Her body was still metabolizing ever-increased amounts of alcohol and this led to her death.
Further, you’ve pointed out in another entry: “And when she put down that cell phone and got into that van, though she still had a half-hour of life ahead of her, her existence as a human being was effectively over.”
Alcohol and drugs can indeed rob people of their humanity. They rob one’s self-control, will and later even their purpose. Ever see those famous pictures of meth addicts at drugfree.org? They show people with deadened eyes robbed of their lives. What strains all belief is the suicide theory. That would require a conscious decision on her part to kill herself and innocent children.
What known medical condition sans alcohol/drug intoxication causes the above? None that I know of. People seem to be ignoring the fact that toxicology showed alcohol in her blood, plus THC, plus undigested alcohol, but insist that these in and of themselves had a minimal contribution to her ensuing state of craziness. To me that strains all credulity. Her death, if I can borrow medical terminology, was caused by a car crash secondary to the fatal effects of excessive alcohol consumption combined with THC on her body.
Why doesn’t Diane Schuler’s death via alcohol poisoning satisfy Susan Dominus? Because it sounds way too simple? Contrary to Dominus’s thinking, a fiery death in a van caused by the simple act of drinking too much does not give me one iota of comfort. I get no solace or “feeling of safety” from knowing that something so seemingly simple can have such horrific and unbelievable consequences. That is the lesson here. The cautionary tale is simple: Drinking and driving can be fatal.
LA replies:
Very impressive. You’ve taken my four-part analysis of her condition/behavior and showed how alcohol plus THC could explain it. The advantage has definitely shifted to your side. I still have a problem, though, with the question of what could have made her consume that much, and with the question of how the intoxicated state by itself made her do what she did on the Taconic. Maybe it’s a blind spot I have that comes from not having close experience with people in extreme states of intoxication and therefore not really knowing what they’re capable of doing.
On another point, the deadened humanity of methedrine addicts is not appropos. Those are people who have been taking a debilitating drug for years. Diane Schuler to all appearances was normal until three hours before the crash.
Also, you wrote:
What known medical condition sans alcohol/drug intoxication causes the above? None that I know of. People seem to be ignoring the fact that toxicology showed alcohol in her blood, plus THC, plus undigested alcohol, but insist that these in and of themselves had a minimal contribution to her ensuing state of craziness.
You’re misrepresenting my position. I wasn’t saying that her actions had nothing to do with the drink and drug, and I have not said that the drink and drug made a minimal contribution to her state of craziness. I have been saying that something in addition to the drink and drug was needed. You yourself seem to be opening the door to the idea that something in addition to drink and drug was involved when you write, “What known medical condition sans alcohol/drug intoxication causes the above?” Meaning that some medical condition, plus alcohol/drug intoxication, made it happen.
LA writes:
Another case brought forward by Kathlene persuades me that substance abuse alone could have been made Diane Schuler behave as she did. It’s discussed here.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 07, 2009 02:25 PM | Send
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