My name is George, and I'm an alcoholic

Nearing the 15th anniversary of the president's sobriety, a fellow ex-drinker tells what he sees when he looks at George W. Bush.

By Cary Tennis

Jul 26, 2001 | Among those of us who have drunk too much and quit, there is a bond like that among soldiers or mothers or anyone who has been forced by the passion for survival to face elemental truths. We recognize each other by the habits we acquired in the trenches and on the road home: the way a soldier lights a cigarette, the way a mother ties a child's shoe, the way a reformed drunk pauses before speaking, to let the bad thoughts pass in silence.

And so it is that I see in President Bush not just a tongue-tied conservative scion of empire, bereft of eloquence, stumbling in the suit jacket of his father, but a drinker much like myself who one day awoke and saw that he was drowning and started swimming for his life, and got lucky and made it to shore.

And if our president were like the many drunks who have quit through the good offices of one program of recovery or another, he might on Saturday be stepping onto the shallow plywood stage of a large, well-lit basement off the serving kitchen of a downtown church in some honest if unexceptional American city and looking out at the motley American faces linked not by class or race or gender but only by their peculiar boozy habit and saying to them, "My name is George, I'm an alcoholic, and today I have 15 years." Because it was on July 28, 1986, that Bush woke up with his last soul-devouring hangover and decided he'd had enough. And if we are to believe him, and I for one see no reason not to, he hasn't had a drop since.

Of course, a politician might as well announce he's having a sex-change operation as stand before the nation and say "My name is George, and I'm an alcoholic." Don't blame Bush for equivocating. Yes, it's true he might look like a hero to some if he came out as a sufferer who had been cured, but whom would it help? Alcoholics don't need another celebrity spokesman. Besides, not being a deeply introspective man, Bush may actually believe that he was never an alcoholic. "I don't think I was clinically an alcoholic," he told the Washington Post.

But the pattern seems clear: A man of great affability and charm, not intellectually gifted, finds himself adrift and frequently drinking too much, blacking out, saying things he regrets, unable to drink moderately and unwilling to give it up altogether. He has a conversation with a spiritual leader -- the Rev. Billy Graham -- and undertakes a course of spiritual study. At a celebration of his 40th birthday, he drinks too much one final time, wakes up with a final hangover and has a moment of clarity in which his life changes. He no longer needs to drink. As the Post pointed out, "Bush takes pride in saying that he never went into a substance abuse program such as Alcoholics Anonymous, but indicated that he was guided by the broader AA philosophy of placing one's faith in God."

That is George Bush's story in outline form, and it's a classic story of alcoholic recovery. It doesn't matter that he never went to AA; it doesn't matter what he calls himself. To be sure, some observers think that Bush's unwillingness or inability to explicitly acknowledge his alcoholism indicates that he's a "dry drunk" -- an alcoholic who has stopped drinking but hasn't addressed his underlying problems, because he's too dumb and privileged. Some see his daughter Jenna's apparent drinking problems as evidence that he hasn't dealt with the issue squarely in his family. They think he's an intellectually vapid, callous child of entitlement.

Next Page: It's painful to admit: Bush hit the jackpot of spiritual grace

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