’If you take a drunken horse thief and sober him up, you have a sober horse thief’ Denial Is Not A River In Egypt, Sandi Bachom (Hazelden/Betty Ford)

I’m 73 years old, and haven’t had a drink in 30 years. This president’s brief reign, is like living in a house with 12 alcoholic fathers.

Donald Trump has a fatal disease.

He says he doesn’t drink, because of his family history. He can deny it all he wants, to those of us with the genetic predisposition, no amount of willpower will spare us from the pernicious predator. We are drunks who drink — and ‘dry drunks’ who don’t.

You don’t have to drink vats of white wine spritzers, as I did, to have the ‘isms.’ He’s addicted to the narcissist’s penchant for control, and insatiable need for adulation, compensating for the perception of worthlessness, lack of self-esteem, and bottomless pit of need, in the soul of every addict.

No needle, or bottle will rival the Endorphin rush, and morphine drip, when typing ‘...she was bleeding badly from a facelift,’ and hitting send, to 35 million Twitter followers.

Facing a nuclear showdown with North Korea is nothing compared to an addict hitting bottom. All addictions will kill you. They are habitual, progressive, and, untreated, — fatal.

If I were to start drinking again, within a matter of days, I would be drinking a magnum of wine a day, and I would die.

Every decision the addict makes, has but one function — survival. To stuff a feeling, and kill the pain of living. Booze, food, ‘grab ‘em by the pussy,’ gambling, money, drugs, people in red hats chanting ‘lock her up’ at rallies, all serve the same rapacious beast.

Not even a four star general can reason with a jonesing junkie. They will never get that android phone away from him, they’ll have to pry it from his cold dead thumbs.

As he eviscerates a free press as ‘fake,’ and denies Russia meddling in our election, with nothing but ‘nice things’ to say about Putin, the augur of Mueller’s investigation closes in, he is tormented with fear and rage.

Like a caged animal, as he becomes more and more powerless, he’s no better than the Bowery bum swilling rot gut from a brown paper bag. The disease is democratic, and an equal opportunity destroyer.

If he was CEO of any corporation I worked for, he’d be scurried off to a dual diagnosis treatment clinic — like my publisher, Hazelden/Betty Ford.

Mute, the day after a terrorist attack on a Minnesota mosque, and the possibility of a nuclear conflict looms, a horrified nation looks on, as increasingly paranoid POTUS unleashed an unhinged tweet storm, about ‘made up’ Russia ‘hoax’, ‘fake news’, ‘CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, NYTimes & WAPO’, including a personal and vitriolic tirade about Senator Richard Blumenthal, ‘A phony Vietnam con artist, who cried like a baby and begged for forgiveness like a child’.

Who does that? — Oh, right, Donald J Trump.

The Adman and the Madman

Back in 1986, long before iPhones or Twitter, I produced a couple of commercials for Trump Casino Hotels, Atlantic City.

We cast all the great New York character actors, even Newman before Seinfeld. As the story went, The Donald and his then wife, felt they didn’t accurately represent the clientele who frequented their establishments. We were never quite sure, who they thought, did.

The spots died in rough cut, and now reside on YouTube.

“...a funny story about dealing with bonkers client Donald Trump, who once sent Chiat/Day a rage-filled letter when Chiat was Trump’s agency for casinos. “Jay took his own stationery and wrote back, Dear Donald, I hate to tell you but I think an insane person has gotten a hold of your stationery and you need to get involved in this as soon as possible, sincerely, Jay Chiat.”

Looking at his petulant behavior through the prism of the 80s, and the rear view mirror of my alcoholic bottom, made for one helluva great advertising story.

‘The Donald’ had met his match in Jay Chiat, who once quipped, ‘Money hasn’t changed me. I’ve always been an asshole.’

Where are the Jay’s today?

Trump’s Brain

Growing up around an active alcoholic, as Trump did, means you eat chaos and confusion for breakfast. You will replicate that dysfunction, just to feel ‘normal.’ Constant criticism, being told by someone you love, ‘you’ll never amount to anything,’ takes its toll.

Waking up, not knowing who that person will be on any given day, fosters a mistrust of everyone. We spend the rest of our lives, in the fruitless quest, inoculating ourselves against this ever happening again. Impulsive and erratic behavior, attention span of a gnat, refusing responsibility, blaming, putting everybody down, ‘demanding loyalty’ is a setup for failure. Just as gambling is an addiction to losing.

Simply put, our brains are different.

All drugs effect the neurotransmitters in the brain. Just thinking abut the ‘drug’ releases dopamine and endorphins, giving a temporary respite and feeling of well being. However, in the addict, this sets off the ‘phenomenon of craving’ and you will do anything to get the ‘fix.’

But when the ‘medication’ subsides, the cycle of addiction repeats. Each time progressing, as your ‘tolerance’ of the drug increases.

Drug users brains resemble that of early Alzheimers patients.

I was raised by alcoholics who didn’t drink. Terrified of the possibility, if taking a single sip, they too would wind up like my tippling, Victorian great grandmother, or Gampy who, ‘couldn’t take the first drink.’ Everyone waiting for the other shoe to drop.

’Who You Gonna Believe? Me, Or Your Lying Eyes?’

When you grow up in an alcoholic home, denial is a key component in your adult life. It’s a defense mechanism, a survival and coping skill, to keep us from having to feel the pain of childhood wounds.

Trump reminds me of that old Lenny Bruce routine. ‘If your wife comes home and finds you in bed with another woman. Deny it!’

In 1983, Dr Janet G Woititz’s seminal work, ‘Adult Children of Alcoholics’ a few of the 13 characteristics jumped off the page as being, textbook, Donald Trump. By adult children they mean any of us who grew up around active alcoholism or addiction. A parent who is a rage-aholic or perfectionist, for instance. We are all victims of victims.

Adult children lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth

Adult children have difficulty following a project through from beginning to end.

Adult children overreact to changes over which they have no control.

Adult children constantly seek approval and affirmation.

Adult children usually feel that they are different from other people.

By now, you don’t have to be a Yale psychiatrist to know, Donald Trump is ‘bonkers,’ borderline personality, (he speaks of himself in the third person), thin skinned, out of control, unhealthy — and getting worse.

Anyone in recovery knows, the least self-examined man to hold office is bouncing along an accelerated and very dangerous bottom, and there is only one outcome.

A word of advice from this, garden variety drunk to the Republicans. In 30 years, I’ve seen a lot of people die on the way to somebody else’s bottom.

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