Bush beat booze with a little faith US President says spirituality helped him overcome addiction.
We are no admirers of President Bush. He along with his cronies has caused immense damage to humanity, in the last three years.
But even this man has a quality that certainly draws admiration. He was addicted to alchohol, ie, he was an alchoholic. It is a terribly debilitating state that can lead to irreparable losses, of health, wealth, and most of all, the love of family.
That he managed to get himself under control and become the President of United States, is nothing short of a miracle. His is a case for all those who have problems of addiction to alchohol, a case that bolsters courage confirms that one should Never Give up the fight
President George W. Bush is talking more openly about his old drinking habit, and offered perhaps his most pointed assessment yet by saying that the term “addiction” had applied to him.
“Addiction is hard to overcome. As you might remember, I drank too much at one time in my life,” Bush said during a visit to the Jericho Program, a project of Episcopal Community Services of Maryland that helps former prisoners deal with problems such as drug addiction, finding jobs and reintegrating productively into society.
“I understand addiction, and I understand how a changed heart can help you deal with addiction,” he said. “There’s some kind of commonality.”
He explained how he had quit drinking. “First is to recognise that there is a higher power,” Bush said. “It helped me in my life. It helped me quit drinking.”
Bush grew unusually sombre as he related the similarities between himself and the men in the sketchy East Baltimore neighbourhood who are struggling to put their lives back together.
“These are men who were, in some ways, lost, and lonely, and found love and redemption at Jericho,” Bush said. “Proud to be with you.” He hailed them for now being “reunited with their daughters.” “Girls love their dad, especially a redeemed dad,” said Bush, father of 26-year-old twins Jenna and Barbara.
The 61-year-old president decided to quit drinking the day after a particularly boozy 40th-birthday celebration — July 6, 1986.
He has often credited both his Christian faith and vigorous exercise with giving him the discipline he needed to execute that decision and to keep to it since, with nonalcoholic beers the only indulgence he says he allows.
But when he was first running for president in 2000 and during his earlier years in office, Bush stuck to almost quaint code words when on the topic. He has never said publicly whether he was an alcoholic.
As was typical, Bush said during a November 2000 news conference in which he admitted pleading guilty in 1976 to drunken driving that he “occasionally drank too much” as a younger man. He told an interviewer that same year that alcohol “was beginning to compete for my affections” before he quit.
In September 2003, Bush was talking at a Houston community centre on the same topic he was on Tuesday — the value of federal support for religious charities that address societal ills.
“I know firsthand what it takes to quit drinking, and it takes something other than a textbook or a manual,” he said.
His checkered relationship with booze does come up frequently in his conversations, often as a joke or an aside. Bush is known to have said that the subject is never too far from his mind.
Last year while travelling the country promoting ethanol created from biowaste as an alternative energy source, he’d often find himself in laboratories with beakers full of the alcohol-based substance. At a North Carolina plant, Bush held a container up to his nose for a mock sniff and then shook his head at the bemused reaction from his press corps. “I quit drinking in 1986,” he said, laughing.
Bush’s words are likely to be welcome for those facing similar problems, coming from the most powerful man in the world.
In December, Bush cited his experience with alcohol as he encouraged young recovering addicts visiting the White House to stick with their fight.
“Your president made the same kind of choice and I had to quit drinking, and addiction competes for your affection.You fall in love with alcohol,” Bush said.
John Schwarzlose, head of the Rancho Mirage, California-based Betty Ford Center, a substance abuse treatment hospital, said Bush’s new openness might well be inspirational to some.