Self-destruction

In a New York Times interview, Lady Gaga discussed the pain and brokenness she’s experienced in her life as a star:

On being treated as “a commodity” she said: “I also can say with a lot of honesty that, being in the music industry since I was a teenager, some of it is how much you are willing to give away. Things like eating at the dinner table with your family, it never happens. Being in a room by yourself never happens.”

On losing touch with reality, she said: “At a certain point, I just completely lost touch with reality. I was falling so deeply into the fantasy of my artwork and my stage persona that I lost touch… I had psychosis. I was not deeply in touch with reality for a while. It took me out of life in a big way, and after a lot of years of hard work I got myself back.”

The singer-actress says she’s doing better, largely through a relationship with her current fiancé, but she still claims that she’s “kind of at war with myself sometimes as I get ready to, hopefully, become a mom soon. Like, today is wonderful, but the whole day has revolved around me. There’s an incredible amount of narcissism in this. How do I live a life where I’m passionate about my art while also making more space for other things?”

Firefighters from three departments responded to a report of a house on fire in the Cherry Grove area of Vancouver, Washington. When an engine from Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue (CCFR) arrived, fire personnel announced there would be “access issues” to the single-story residence because of clutter.

Fire and smoke were visible from the windows in the kitchen and living room area of the home, but the yard around the house was cluttered with appliances, vehicles, and storage bins. That made it difficult for firefighters to quickly stretch hose lines to the structure.

A news release stated: “Once firefighters were able to clear out some of the clutter and make access to the house, the fire had grown too large to safely make an offensive interior attack. In addition, the interior spaces of the house were also very cluttered with high piles of clothing, storage bins, appliances, furniture, and other items.”

Fire Chief John Nohr said, “Normally in these types of fires, we bring in a track hoe to tear apart the piles. Due to the clutter in the yard, we weren’t able to get heavy equipment in there to help with extinguishment.”

Extreme clutter is dangerous for firefighters, especially when mixed with a smoky environment, because responders can get lost in the clutter. The piles of items can also tip over, crush, or entrap firefighters.

Nohr said, “In 37 years in the fire service, this is one of the most extremely cluttered homes I’ve ever seen. I feel for the family that has lost all of their possessions, but I also feel for the firefighters who put themselves at significant risk trying to fight a fire in a house this full.”

Possible Preaching Angle:
Like houses, a clean life is more than just convenient. It could also be the difference between a close call and destruction. Honest confession of sin provides the opportunity to clean out your stuff now. You don't want to try to desperately clean up in an emergency. New Years is an excellent time to reevaluate your life.

Hope springs eternal for sports bettors, as they typically expect to break even on future wagers even when they have consistently lost money in the past.

Now we know roughly how overconfident many gamblers are. A study by Stanford University researchers finds that the average online sportsbook customer expects a gain of 0.3 cent for every dollar wagered. In reality, sports bettors lose an average of 7.5 cents per dollar wagered, reflecting “widespread overoptimism about financial returns,” according to Matthew Brown lead author of the study.

The study also found that 20% of participants reported betting too much. To promote responsible gambling, online sportsbooks have rolled out features making it easy for users to track their results over time. But since most sports bettors are overly optimistic about their future betting, those measures likely won’t do much to curb problematic gambling,

Brown says. “Even when bettors know their past losses, they remained optimistic about the future, so that particular approach to consumer protection might not be enough,” he says.

Possible Preaching Angle:

As online gambling infiltrates society (and the church), there are more opportunities for temptation, people can hide their gambling addiction by not leaving their home. How many secret addicted gamblers are there in our churches?

In her testimony for Christianity Today, Caresse Spencer recounts how she demolished her faith in pursuit of her "best life" during the pandemic.

In 2020, I typed two lethal words: F- God. With that, I resigned from Christianity. As the world fell apart due to the pandemic, my faith crumbled too. I stripped my vocabulary of the term God, soaked in the oppression of my past. Anger consumed me.

Caresse began questioning Christian teachings, especially around sexuality and biblical contradictions. Years of suppressing her desires left her feeling robbed and burdened by faith. Torn between the God she once served and her true self, she finally chose herself, embarking on what she called a “world tour”-exploring queer love, polyamory, sex, drugs, and even other religions. “I said yes to everything I had once denied myself and believed I had found freedom.”

Initially, the rebellion felt exhilarating: “There’s a rush that comes with rebellion and a thrill in doing things once feared.” But anxiety and emptiness crept in. She found herself “floating in a vast emptiness-lost and scared. Life had lost its meaning.” When rebellion no longer satisfied, she was left with “no God, no faith, no love, no peace.”

Suicidal thoughts became a constant presence. At her lowest, she cried out, “Help me!” and then a Christian friend called, asking if she was okay. For the first time, she admitted she was not. Her friend’s support pulled her back from the brink. Later, her sister gently asked, “Do you want to surrender?” Caresse accepted: “It was the invitation I’d been waiting for without even knowing it. I said yes-to surrendering my pride, confusion, rebellion, and emptiness. My life changed in an instant.”

Now, she talks to God about everything and has found peace. “God refused to let me die in disbelief. Because of this grace, I now understand that the only way to find true life is to lose it first.”

The cacophony of slot machines, dice rolls, and card shuffles is what usually comes to mind when people think of gambling. The more pervasive way to gamble that has become more popular over the years is with your cellphone.

The computers in our pockets provide us with 24/7 access to sites and apps that facilitate our bets for us. People can’t even watch a sports game on their phone without being inundated with ads for fantasy sports platforms. Why not combine phone addiction with gambling? What’s the worst that could happen?

Writing in The Atlantic, Christine Emba anticipates the dreadful impact:

In a sense, Americans have been training themselves for years to become eager users of gambling tech. Smartphone-app design relies on the “variable reward” method of habit formation to get people hooked—the same mechanism that casinos use to keep people playing games and pulling levers. When Instagram sends notifications about likes or worthwhile posts, people are impelled to open the app and start scrolling; when sports-betting apps send push alerts about fantastic parlays, people are coaxed into placing one more bet.

Smartphones have thus habituated people to an expectation of stimulation—and potential reward—at every moment. Timothy Fong, a UCLA psychiatry professor and a co-director of the university’s gambling-studies program, said, “You’re constantly surrounded by the ability to change your neurochemistry by a simple click. There’s this idea that we have to have excessive dopamine with every experience in our life.”

The frictionless ease of mobile sports betting takes advantage of this. It has become easy, even ordinary, to experience the excitement of gambling everywhere. It isn’t enough anymore to be anxious about the final score of the Saturday night football game—let’s up the ante and bet on the winning team!

But at what cost? Indeed, what happens when we begin to think of every scenario in our lives in terms of risk/reward and the dispassionate calculations of probability? This can turn life itself into some cosmic game, twisting relationships into scenarios we scheme and manipulate as we chase the dopamine rush of a winning bet. The easy accessibility to gambling won’t just affect us personally, for it can also change the culture around us.

Possible Preaching Angle:

As online gambling infiltrates society (and the church), there are more opportunities for temptation, people can hide their gambling addiction by not leaving their home. How many secret addicted gamblers are there in our churches?

A young woman named Trieste Belmont was struggling with depression. Her grandmother had just passed, and she was going through a dramatic break-up. She was teaching a dance class at this time, but without a driver’s license, she relied on a friend to drive her to and from work every week. One day however the friend didn’t show, and Belmont waited for hours before being forced to walk home.

The route she used went over a high bridge. And when she got there, she stopped for a moment. She said:

I was just having one of the worst days of my life. And I was looking down at all the cars, just feeling so useless and like such a burden to everyone in my life that I decided that this was the time and I needed to end my life. I was sobbing and crying and working up the courage to just go through with it, because I knew at that moment that it was going to make everyone’s lives better.

At that moment, a driver, whose face Belmont didn’t see, and whose hand she would never shake, passed over the bridge and hollered out of the window. “Don’t jump,” they said.

It immediately clicked a lightbulb went on in her head; that if a stranger could care enough to speak up, then suicide was not the answer. She enrolled in therapy, and with the help of her friends, family, and therapist, she is far down the road indeed from that dark and fateful day.

Belmont uses the incident as an example to teach others to be kind to people, as it’s never obvious what they’re going through. The smallest kindness is multiplied by the distance, socially, between two strangers.

The Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018, quickly resulting in 38 states plus Wahsington D.C. jumping at the chance to increase tax revenue. Sports betting has since rocketed into an annual $7.5 billion industry. Men's Health surveyed 1,500 American men of whom placed bets in the last 12 months:

• 61% bet either daily or weekly
• 58% say sports betting has affected their mental health
• 44% say it's difficult to watch a game without feeling the urge to bet
• 20% say it’s destroying their life
• 20% spend 25% of their paycheck on sports betting
• Millennials bet more frequently than any other age group

According to the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG), the US is experiencing the largest and fastest expansion of gambling in our nation’s history. According to the NCPG, "As sports betting becomes more and more accessible, the number of people who are likely to develop a gambling addiction will continue to increase.”

Addicted problem-gamblers inevitably face job and home loss, damaged relationships, suicidal thoughts, and legal issues. The average debt accrued is between $55,000 and $90,000. According to Timothy Fong, M.D., codirector of the UCLA gambling-studies program:

There’s a state of gambling withdrawal just like opiate withdrawal or alcohol withdrawal. When you’re not able to gamble or participate in gambling, your body and your brain react to it. It goes through sleeplessness, changes in appetite, sadness, depression, and anxiety.

Delusion and pride cause many gamblers to fall into the snare. Sports bettors specifically often have higher education and income levels. Many perceive the results of their gambling as being determined by their skills and knowledge rather than chance and luck, overestimating their ability to win. This is known as the delusion of expertise and can accelerate … the development of a gambling addiction.

Keith Whyte, executive director of the NCPG, notes that: “We call [gambling addiction] the hidden addiction. There are few, if any, outward physical signs, and it makes it a lot harder to track and detect.”

Is a trip to Las Vegas becoming a thing of the past? A recent survey finds 4 in 10 gamblers have never actually set foot in a casino. A spokesperson for Online Betting Guide said, “Habits are changing all the time. Online gaming sites are becoming more and more popular, and in-person equivalents are evolving to meet the new needs.”

The results also show that 43% of gamblers feel an in-person casino has too many barriers to entry. Meanwhile, 32% just feel more confident behind their screen, with just 16% having more courage in the flesh. Another 22% fear they’ll look out of place in an actual betting parlor.

London (49%), Las Vegas (31%), and Paris (12%) are among the locations where respondents would most like to gamble in person. It also emerged that 83 percent feel the Internet has fundamentally changed the way people play.

Playing the lottery (53%), betting on sports (52%), and buying scratchers (41%) are the most common ways people indulge in a bit of gambling. However, 4 in 10 prefer games that require an element of skill, such as predicting sports scores or playing poker. Another 16% like to leave it to pure chance, playing games such as roulette.

Possible Preaching Angle:

As online gambling infiltrates society (and the church), there are more opportunities for temptation, people can hide their gambling addiction by not leaving their home. How many secret addicted gamblers are there in our churches?

His pronouncements could hardly sound more drastic. In interviews and public appearances, Yusuke Narita, an assistant professor of economics at Yale, has taken on the question of how to deal with the burdens of Japan’s rapidly aging society.

During an interview in late 2012 he said, “I feel like the only solution is pretty clear. In the end, isn’t it mass suicide and mass ‘seppuku’ of the elderly?” Seppuku is an act of ritual disembowelment that was a code among dishonored samurai in the 19th century.

When asked by a school-age boy to elaborate on his mass seppuku theories, Dr. Narita graphically described to a group of assembled students a scene from “Midsommar.” This is a 2019 horror film in which a Swedish cult sends one of its oldest members to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff. Dr. Narita said, “Whether that’s a good thing or not, that’s a more difficult question to answer. So, if you think that’s good, then maybe you can work hard toward creating a society like that.”

At other times, he has broached the topic of euthanasia. He said in one interview, “The possibility of making it mandatory in the future … will come up in discussion.” Dr. Narita, 37, said that his statements had been “taken out of context,” and that he was mainly addressing a growing effort to push the most senior people out of leadership positions in business and politics—to make room for younger generations. Nevertheless, with his comments on euthanasia and social security, which appear clear enough, he has pushed the hottest button in Japan.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is not a pleasant or positive illustration, but it does highlight the dangers of losing the biblical doctrine of the Imago Dei and the sanctity of every human life.

Conservatives are not alone in opposing the slippery slope that is the growing trend toward advocating for euthanasia. The liberal periodical The Nation, as well as liberal disability advocates, are raising the alarm as well. The reality is that the lives of Americans with disabilities are being devalued:

Disability is something people are taught to hate and fear. And people with disabilities are frequently not given the resources they need to live or the assistance they need to participate fully in society. The poverty rate for disabled people is more than double that of nondisabled people. Further, the unemployment rate for disabled people is more than double that of nondisabled people. The responsibility for care that is shirked by the state frequently falls on families, who are overwhelmed. Instead of being given the resources they need to thrive, many, if not most, people with disabilities are treated like expensive burdens.

Diane Coleman, the president of Not Dead Yet, has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair and a respirator. She says, “It is not the disabilities that ruin lives. It is the system and society that fails to support disabled people. It’s not religious, nor is it pro-life. It’s about going up against a ‘better dead than disabled mindset.’”

Coleman says medical professionals have devalued her life and others with disabilities. One member of her staff was told by his father that it would have been better if he’d died in the accident that made him a quadriplegic. Coleman said, “Those experiences are so well-known in the community.”

23-year-old Jules Good, assistant director of Not Dead Yet, said of her experience, shared by many others: “When I was 18, I got a pretty rough diagnosis. I was super depressed and attempted suicide. And when I went to my first counseling appointment with a new therapist, I explained my whole deal. And she looked me in the eye and said, ‘Yeah, I’d probably kill myself if I were you.’”

A new study found that hospitalizations for pediatric suicidal behavior increased by 163 percent over an 11-year period. According to an article in The New York Times, “The portion of American hospital beds occupied by children with suicidal or self-harming behavior has soared over the course of a decade … The study did not include psychiatric hospitals, or reflect the years of the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting that it is a considerable undercount.”

A doctor quoted in the article lamented, “The hospital ends up being the place you go when all else fails. Could you have nipped it in the bud earlier? That is a systems-of-care problem.” She added, “This is playing itself out in an attention-grabbing way.”

One the study’s co-authors, pointed to “a growing use of social media among children and adolescents and in particular, growing use among younger adolescents,” which she said had been shown to increase symptoms of depression.

Whatever the reason, she added, “we don’t have the magic formula to figure out how to dial this back and make things better.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Note the crying need for the gospel and for the church, especially considering the quote at the end—“we don’t have the magic formula to figure out how to dial this back and make things better.”

The most recent CDC biannual Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey found that children who identify as part of the LGB community are significantly more likely to undergo serious mental health struggles.

More than half of female high schoolers who identify as bisexual have seriously considered attempting suicide. This is compared to 20 percent of heterosexual female students. A staggering 26 percent of bisexual female students attempted suicide. This is compared to 15 percent of lesbians and eight percent of straight girls.

Among males, bisexuals were 40 percent likely to consider suicide, with the rate being 35 percent among gay teens. This is compared to 10 percent of heterosexual teens who considered suicide. Five percent actually attempted suicide, compared to 20 percent of gay teens and 17 percent of bisexual males.

One researcher said these rates are so high because bisexual students have trouble fitting in with peers, as they can be rejected by both the straight and lesbian communities.

In his book Of Boys and Men, researcher Richard Reeves writes, “Men are much more likely to commit suicide than women. This is a worldwide long-standing pattern.” Reeves quotes an article from 2019 in Harper’s Magazine that talked about the sense of purposelessness among modern men. The author of the article states, “Several of my male friends struggled with addiction and depression, or other conditions that could be named, but the more common complaint was something vaguer …. A quiet desperation that, if I were forced to generalize, seemed to stem from a gnawing sense of purposelessness.”

Another study on male suicides tracked the words or phrases that men who have attempted suicide most often used to describe themselves. At the top of the list were two words: useless and worthless.

In an issue of CT magazine, Dr. Ewan Goligher shares what he has learned as a Christian doctor receiving requests for physician-assisted dying. He notes that in the past five years, the number of patients dying with physician assistance in Canada has grown tenfold, from around 1,000 in 2016 to more than 10,000 in 2021. He writes:

When the hospital staff called me to my patient’s bedside, I could see her distress was severe. She was agitated and breathless, her face etched with discomfort and frustration. “I can’t take this anymore,” she cried. She had suffered for years with chronic illness and had been admitted to my intensive care unit with acute complications. She was debilitated and exhausted, and her grief and frustration had come to a head. “I just want to die,” she wept.

Her friend was standing next to me at the bedside, and he was clearly upset by her distress. He said, “Just ask for MAID,” (medical assistance in dying, often referred to as physician-assisted death). Then you can end it all now.” I was startled by his statement. Yet I saw that he was feeling desperate and helpless at the sight of her distress.

After some gentle exploration, we quickly realized that the patient didn’t really want to die. Rather, she needed relief from her pain and anxiety and to understand what her acute illness meant for her future. She still wanted time with her loved ones. We worked to address her symptoms and concerns, and she soon felt calmer and more comfortable. Watching her rest and converse with family made it hard to believe she was the same person who only hours earlier had cried out to have her life ended.

What is more unbelievable is that the ability to have one’s life ended on short notice is an increasingly acceptable option for Canadian patients—with implications that will reverberate around the globe.

Some patients with disabilities or mental illness reported that assisted death was proposed to them without their instigation. Patients have sought and obtained euthanasia because they were unable to access affordable housing. There are even reports that patients have received physician-assisted death based on misdiagnosis, discovered at autopsy. ... Some are even pushing to allow it in certain cases for children and youth.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Suffering cannot rob us of our true meaning—to know and commune with the One who gave himself for us. Indeed, by God’s grace it serves to deepen that communion. To depart and be with Christ is far better, but with patience and faith, we will wait for the Master’s call.

The number of suicide attempts via poisoning are rising dramatically in children between the ages of six to nineteen according to a new report. Between 2015 and 2020, attempts rose 26.7%, highlighting a growing mental health crisis among youths.

Cases reported to the National Poison Data System included both attempted and deaths by suicide. In 2015, the number of suspected suicides through poisoning was 75,248. In 2020, that number rose to 93,532.

Data shows girls make up 77% of the cases. Children of all age groups showed increases in suspected suicide cases via self-poisoning, but alarmingly, there was a 109.3% increase in kids between 10 and 12.

The two most common self-poisoning methods in children were overdosing on acetaminophen and ibuprofen. Both pain reliever medications are available without prescription in stores and children are more likely to have easy access to these drugs. Among these, there were 276 deaths and 14,916 cases of self-poisoning that left children with life-threatening symptoms or long-term disability.

The study authors wrote:

This data demonstrates concerning rises in cases of self-poisoning between 6 and 19 years of age, suggesting that the pediatric mental health crisis is worsening and extending into younger populations. We need to be vigilant for the warning signs associated with suicide risk in our children. Our study is one of a number that demonstrates that we are experiencing an unprecedented mental health crisis in younger age groups.

The New York Times ran a lengthy and sobering report on the mental health crisis among US teens. The article’s subtitle declared, “Depression, self-harm, and suicide are rising among American adolescents.” The article noted:

American adolescence is undergoing a drastic change. Three decades ago, the gravest public health threats to teenagers in the United States came from binge drinking, drunken driving, teenage pregnancy and smoking. These have since fallen sharply, replaced by a new public health concern: soaring rates of mental health disorders.

The decline in mental health among teenagers was intensified by the COVID pandemic but predated it, spanning racial and ethnic groups, urban and rural areas and the socioeconomic divide. In a rare public advisory, the US surgeon general warned of a “devastating” mental health crisis among adolescents. Numerous hospital and doctor groups have called it a national emergency.

An expert cited in the article concluded: “By many markers, kids are doing fantastic and thriving. But there are these really important trends in anxiety, depression, and suicide that stop us in our tracks. We need to figure it out. Because it’s life or death for these kids.”

Last spring, a 15-year-old girl was rushed by her parents to the emergency department at Boston Children’s Hospital. She had marks on both wrists from a recent suicide attempt. Earlier that day she confided to her pediatrician that she planned to try again.

In the ER, a doctor examined her and explained to her parents that she was not safe to go home. The doctor added, “But I need to be honest with you about what’s likely to unfold. The best place for adolescents in distress is not a hospital but an inpatient treatment center. But there are no openings in any of the treatment centers in the region.”

Indeed, 15 other adolescents—all in precarious mental condition—were already housed in the hospital’s emergency department. They were sleeping in exam rooms night after night, waiting for an opening. The average wait for a spot in a treatment program was 10 days.

Mental health disorders are surging among adolescents: In 2019, 13 percent of adolescents reported having a major depressive episode, a 60 percent increase from 2007. Suicide rates, stable from 2000 to 2007, leaped nearly 60 percent by 2018, according to the CDC.

Without the inpatient option, emergency rooms have taken up the slack. A recent study of 88 pediatric hospitals around the US found that 87 of them regularly board children and adolescents overnight in the ER. On average, any given hospital saw four boarders per day, with an average stay of 48 hours.

Dr. JoAnna Leyenaar said, “There is a pediatric pandemic of mental health boarding.” She extrapolated from data to estimate that at least 1,000 young people, and perhaps as many as 5,000, board each night in the nation’s 4,000 emergency departments. “We have a national crisis.”

Writer Leah Muncy recalls one of her earliest memories is of her mother buying a lottery ticket at the supermarket. “When I was young, my mother was always talking about the ‘lotto.’ Around the kitchen table, she’d tell us what she’d do with the millions: buy a large farm with chickens, fly us to Mexico, solar-panel the roof.”

The odds of winning the multi-state Powerball jackpot are one-in-292-million. You have a greater chance of dying from a falling coconut, which is one in 250 million. Despite this, Americans spent $71.8 billion on lottery tickets in 2017. The bulk of this revenue was generated by the poorest Americans.

According to a study conducted by Cornell University, the lottery is most aggressively advertised in impoverished communities, particularly minority and rural white neighborhoods. This exploitation leads to the “desperation hypothesis”: those in the direst of financial circumstances turn to the lottery as “a hail-Mary strategy.” It is a source of hope for those in despair. A 2019 survey found that 75% of lottery players believe that they will win.

The study also found that people who made less than $30,000 a year were more likely to play the lottery for financial stability. One in three Americans with incomes below $25,000 believe that winning the lottery “represents the most practical way for them to accumulate several hundred thousand dollars.” This, in turn, only makes America’s poorest even poorer.

Muncy continues, “My mother estimates she’s spent $3,000 on lottery tickets in her lifetime. ‘You can’t win if you don’t play,’ she says. But I tell her, that you can’t win if you do play.” The lottery did not ever and will not ever provide her with a ranch, or solar panels, or vacations. This beacon of false hope can be seen at the top of every California lottery ticket, a sun shining above the chosen numbers. It is golden, radiant, looming. And it is blinding.

NBA Hall of Fame coach Pat Riley popularized the term the “Disease of More.” Riley has noted that many championship pro teams in the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL don’t repeat. The main factor is that the team is defeated from within, not from without.

The players want more. At first, that “more” was winning the championship. But once players have that championship, it’s no longer enough. The “more” becomes other things--more money, more TV commercials, more endorsements and accolades, more playing time, more plays called for them, more media attention, etc.

As a result, what was once a cohesive group of hardworking men begins to fray. Egos get involved. Gatorade bottles are thrown. And the mental attitude of the team changes and their perfect chemistry becomes a toxic mess. Players feel entitled to ignore the small, routine tasks that actually win championships, believing that they’ve earned the right to not do it anymore. Then what was the most talented team ends up failing.

What they didn’t realize is what they were trading off. They were no longer able to focus on the nitty-gritty of basketball. And as a team, they suffered. Ultimately they were dethroned, not by other, better teams, but by forces from within themselves.

The Powerball Lotto is a legalized multi-state form of gambling in the United States that pays enormous jackpots to the very few who purchase winning tickets. Jack Whittaker won almost $315 million in 2002. Hardly a rags to riches story, Whittaker had plenty of money before his big win, having built a $100 million equipment company from scratch.

At first, things went well. Whittaker tithed on his winnings and was generous to a variety of charities. He reportedly gave a home, automobile and $40,000 in cash to the woman who sold him the ticket.

All of his philanthropy, however, was not enough to curb Whittaker's destructive behavior. Within a few years, he had been robbed, involved in sex scandals, bounced checks at casinos, and named in several lawsuits. The worst was still to come. He is reported to have given his teenage granddaughter a $4,000 a week allowance. Whittaker received his worst blow when the girl, perhaps the person he loved most in the world, was found dead from an apparent drug overdose. The cause of all his troubles, claims Whittaker, was the "Powerball curse."