Posted on 01/15/2006 11:07:16 PM PST by SmithL
Late one night in 1996, suspicious that Marion Barry was using drugs again, boxing promoter Rock Newman sat him down and told him that he should resign as D.C. mayor and focus on beating his addiction. Newman said Barry cried in his arms.
He remembers Barry telling him: "I love you, man. I know I betrayed your friendship." Barry agreed to leave town for a while and take a second stab at treatment. But he wouldn't give up politics. "He felt if he wasn't the mayor, he wasn't nothing," Newman said.
Newman is out of Barry's life now; he dropped away after questioning the sincerity of Barry's efforts to stay sober and clean during his fourth and final term as mayor. A few years later, Barry's wife, Cora, left him, too, after he derailed a comeback council campaign by getting caught with a $5 rock of crack cocaine in his car. By 2004, when Barry won the Ward 8 council seat, many of his old friends had abandoned him.
For 25 years, Barry has, by his own admission, battled addictions to drugs, alcohol and women even as he repeatedly sought and won election to public office. He found relief in New Age healing and spiritual guidance as well as medical treatment. But whatever strength he drew from those sources apparently didn't last. In November, a court-ordered urine test came up positive for cocaine, the drug that pulled his life apart and sent him to prison.
Now, Barry faces the possibility of another jail term and the potential loss of the political prominence he fought hard to regain. Some longtime friends doubt that he was ever fully committed to his own sobriety. However he came to use cocaine at age 69, Barry is not unique.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Sad Sack
a black male (notorious for high blood pressure) age 69 still doing coke, i would like to look at his arteries.....on second thought.
Oh I get it: Marion Barry is not a dishonest scumbag. He's got a DISEASE man. Kum-bye-ya!
Oh Boo hoo.
Well it's a cinch his constituents will continue to support him. He and O.J. have it made in the shade. Amazing.
Rock Newman?
Barry may have a high tolerance for drugs, but he and his fellow members of DC's black kleptocracy still hate the 2nd amendment
Because he's a Democrat and he's black.
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