Bush Quit Drinking 'On His Own'
President George W. Bush, like most who decide to quit drinking, did so on his own without help, press reports following the revelation of his 1976 DUI arrest reveal. An estimated 70 percent of people who decide to quit drinking do so without any outside help, professional counseling, or support group meetings, and Bush is apparently among that majority.
"Well, I don't think I had an addiction," Bush told the Washington Post for a July 1999 profile. "You know it's hard for me to say. I've had friends who were, you know, very addicted. . .and they required hitting bottom [to start] going to AA. I don't think that was my case."
Speculation in the national press, which went into a media frenzy over the report that Bush was arrested 24 years ago for drunk driving, ranged from the suggestion that if he never went to A.A. he is not really recovered, to the opinion that if he quit on his own, it was not a big problem in the first place.
The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Alcohol abuse can be a very serious problem in itself, but if it progresses into alcohol dependence, the solution can become much more complicated.
Merely Decided to Quit
The highly publicized case brings to the public's attention the difference between alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence, or alcoholism. Most people who abused alcohol, even to a dangerous extent at some point in their lives, never fit the criteria as alcoholics, or alcohol dependent.
For those who abuse alcohol, but who are not chemically or psychologically dependent, quitting is usually a matter of merely deciding to quit -- many times prompted by a particularly painful or embarrassing incident.
Those who have become alcohol dependent usually find they that cannot simply decide to quit and require medical treatment, counseling and/or peer group help and support.
It appears from all reports, that candidate Bush did abuse alcohol for a long period of his life, but in 1986 decided to quit, because it began to "compete for his energy."
"I am a person who enjoys life, and for years, I enjoyed having a few drinks. But gradually, drinking began to compete with my energy," Bush wrote in his autobiography. "I'd be a step slower getting up. My daily runs seemed harder after a few too many drinks the night before."
There are many in the alcohol and drug treatment and rehabilitation profession, and within the Alcoholics Anonymous program, who would say that if Bush quit cold turkey "on his own" he probably was not an alcoholic or alcoholic dependent in the first place.
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