Decisions while drunk v. deciding to get drunk

Longtime West Virginia basketball coach Bob Huggins resigned yesterday, just a few hours after this incident:

Huggins was arrested Friday in Pittsburgh after police observed a black SUV blocking traffic around 8:30 p.m. with a “flat and shredded tire” and the driver’s side door open, according to a police report.

Officers told Huggins to move the vehicle off the road then pulled him over when they observed Huggins having trouble maneuvering the SUV. The officers questioned Huggins, saying he had trouble answering such questions as where he was. Believing he was intoxicated, police asked Huggins to perform field sobriety tests, which he failed.

According to the report, a breath test determined that Huggins’ blood alcohol content was 0.21%, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08% in Pennsylvania. A blood sample also was taken from Huggins at a hospital prior to his release.

Huggins was suspended for a couple of months back in 2004, when he was the coach at Cincinnati, after he was convicted of DUI. I actually remember the police report in that case, as it involved the following illuminating exchange:

Arresting Officer: How many drinks have you had?

Huggins: Yes officer.

Huggins also had his salary cut by a million dollars a year (it had been $4.2 million) last month, after he used an anti-gay slur during a radio interview. The contract was also reduced to a year to year deal, instead of being guaranteed for several years. So it’s safe to say that Huggins has bought some extraordinarily expensive drinks over the past few weeks. BTW an amusing side note here is that Huggins’s “retirement” was announced by WVU president Gordon Gee, who has been president of approximately 37 universities since the 1980s (He’s been president of both WVU and THE Ohio State University two separate times each! He was president of CU when I got hired 33 years ago! Apparently university regents just can’t quit this guy).

Anyway, my friend JJ, who has quite interesting views on things like the uses and abuses of opioids — he’s struggled with severe chronic pain for 15 years — had some thoughts on this:

I just don’t fathom these guys. You make millions of dollars a year. You KNOW you’re going to get shitfaced, so pay someone to cart your shitfaced ass around.

If you just want to sit in a parking lot with a 30 pack of Rolling Rock and wallow in your crapulence, then by all means, do it. Just pay a couple hundred bucks for a limo for the night, you’ll still get all the loneliness and self loathing you’re looking for and you won’t put any “normies'” lives at stake.

It’s not a fine line when you’re at 0.2 bac. You *know* you’re a huge danger to yourself and others. And more damning, you *knew* before the first beer that you were going to get that drunk! So if you don’t make plans at the beginning of the session, when you’re sober, that’s morally really shitty.

He should be locked up. These are the real criminals, not the person who blew a .085 after two margaritas at a work happy hour. This wasn’t just bad judgment in a moment of weakness, it was basically a preplanned crime.

I’ve done plenty of self destructive shit, I’m hardly a saint. I understand you don’t value your life at all. I’ve been there at times, honestly. But what if you killed a fucking innocent person because of your self pitying spiral? I mean at this point you honestly should just put a gun in your mouth, at least you won’t hurt anyone else.

I’ve made plenty of bad decisions while drunk, I get that.

But when you know before the first drink that you’re gonna get fugggged up, then jesus fucking christ, use some of your millions of dollars to keep yourself (and others, far more importantly) safe!

I mean, this is a premeditated crime. He knew what he was going to do before he sipped that first beer. This isn’t bad judgement while impaired – it’s fucking dangerous, reprehensible judgement when you’re stone sober.

BTW the NFL has a program where any player or coach can call for a car at any time of day or night, and they’ll be picked up (and their own car driven away for them), no questions asked. This obviously makes a lot of sense from both a liability and a PR standpoint.

I find the moral and potentially legal distinction that JJ is making — between bad decisions made under the influence, and the decision to be under the influence in the first place — interesting to think about. Obviously there’s a spectrum here in regard to how premeditated the decision to get wasted is, especially given that people like Huggins are obviously drug addicts, so none of their decisions in regard to their drug of choice are ever made in a state of optimal sobriety, metaphorical or literal. But I still think the distinction is important in both practical and moral terms.