Yes, both of his parents are alcoholics, his sister died from drug abuse and alcoholism. His dad abandoned the family when Ted was a toddler.
Ted has a long and documented history with alcohol abuse starting when he was caught by the police with a case of booze. He had further problems in college... again well documented. Most recently he told Anderson Cooper he was a “Scotch Man”.
Ted's behavior is classic for an Adult Child of Alcoholic Parents. You can look it up. Here are a few, see if you recognize any of them in Ted:
1.To cover our fear of people and our dread of isolation we tragically become the very authority figures who frighten others and cause them to withdraw.
2.To avoid becoming enmeshed and entangled with other people and losing ourselves in the process, we become rigidly self-sufficient. We disdain the approval of others.
3.We frighten people with our anger and threat of belittling criticism.
4.We dominate others and abandon them before they can abandon us or we avoid relationships with dependent people altogether. To avoid being hurt, we isolate and dissociate and thereby abandon ourselves.
5.We live life from the standpoint of a victimizer, and are attracted to people we can manipulate and control in our important relationships.
6.We are irresponsible and self-centered. Our inflated sense of self-worth and self-importance prevents us from seeing our deficiencies and shortcomings.
7.We make others feel guilty when they attempt to assert themselves.
8.We inhibit our fear by staying deadened and numb.
9.We hate people who “play” the victim and beg to be rescued.
10.We deny that we’ve been hurt and are suppressing our emotions by the dramatic expression of “pseudo” feelings.
11.To protect ourselves from self punishment for failing to “save” the family we project our self-hate onto others and punish them instead.
12.We “manage” the massive amount of deprivation we feel, coming from abandonment within the home, by quickly letting go of relationships that threaten our “independence” (not too close).
13.We refuse to admit we’ve been affected by family dysfunction or that there was dysfunction in the home or that we have internalized any of the family’s destructive attitudes and behaviors.
14.We act as if we are nothing like the dependent people who raised us.
I don’t think Cruz is a big drinker but he is an incipient Pillsbury Doughboy. Dude looks like he never exercises.
You forgot, “We act like we’ve won something when we have less than half the delegates and 4 million fewer votes.”