Betty Ford: First Lady

by Lisa McCubbin

  Betty’s apprehension had been building, and when she walked into that room, saw the stark facilities, and realized she was going to be sharing a room and one bathroom with three other women, her emotions reached a crescendo. Gritting her teeth, she turned to Dr. Pursch and said, “I am accustomed to having a private room.”

  Her reaction was not unexpected. Pursch had dealt with navy admirals who felt they deserved special treatment too.

  “Well, then,” he said, “I’ll have the other women come and get their things. I’ll tell them they have to move out.”

  He knew Betty well enough to know that she wouldn’t allow others to be removed just so she could have special treatment. And he was right.

  “Oh no, you’re not going to make anyone move for me,” she said as she set down her purse on the one free bed in the room.

  Caroline remembered how extremely difficult it was for Betty. “She had lost all her privacy. That was the biggest thing. Her privacy, and her dignity.”

  The next rude awakening was what to do with Mrs. Ford’s clothes. She’d worried endlessly about what to pack for an anticipated four-week stay, and had brought several pieces of luggage. The closet space allotted for her was fourteen inches wide.

  Knowing the press would inevitably find out, Betty had agreed to a statement that was released once she was safely admitted to the hospital: “Former First Lady Betty Ford was hospitalized Monday at the Long Beach Naval Hospital for an overmedication problem. Mrs. Ford states, ‘Over a period of time, I got to the point where I was overmedicating myself. It’s an insidious thing, and I mean to rid myself of its damaging effects. There have been too many other things I’ve overcome to be forever burdened with this detail.’ ”

  There was no mention of an alcohol problem.

  Every minute of every day for the next four weeks would be planned out for Betty. She was handed the “Policies and Routine for Patients,” and because this was a naval installation, everything was in military time. It was boot camp for alcoholics. A critical part of the treatment was for patients to work the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

  0630

  Reveille

  0630 – 0730

  Breakfast

  0745 – 0830

  Muster/Cleanup

  0845 – 1015

  Group Therapy

  1030 – 1145

  Education Sessions

  1145 – 1230

  Lunch

  1255

  Muster

  1300 – 1430

  AA Meeting/Al-Anon

  1430 – 1515

  Films

  1530 – 1600

  Jogging

  1800

  Dinner

  1915

  AA Meeting

  For group therapy, Betty was placed in Group Six—they called themselves the “Six-Pack.” There were five men, including a twenty-year-old jet mechanic who’d been drinking from the time he was eight; a young officer whose drinking had resulted in two failed marriages; and a naval clergyman “addicted to drugs and drink.” Betty was the oldest in the group, the only female—and the only member with Secret Service agents standing outside the door.

  Everyone was required to wear name tags with just first names on them, so wherever Betty went, the sailors would yell out, “Hi, Betty!”

  There were far more men than women, and while the rooms were segregated by sex, the sessions were not. At first, it was disconcerting to her. “I was not a model patient,” she admitted. “I had a bit of the celebrity hang-up. I considered myself a very special person who had been married to a president of the United States, and I didn’t think I should have to discuss my personal problems with just anybody.”

  But she was expected to do everything everyone else did. “They had to clean the toilets and wastebaskets, and were in meetings almost every minute of every day,” Caroline recalled. It was negotiated that Betty would not, in fact, have to clean toilets—that seemed to cross a line for a former first lady—but other than that, there were few exceptions allowed. “They were kept very busy. That was part of the whole protocol. She would say she was so tired, and they’d say, ‘You never die from being too tired.’ They were tough.”

  Betty listened to the others’ stories, but she simply couldn’t relate to them. “I could not say I was alcoholic,” Betty would say later. “I didn’t relate to any of the drunk stories I heard. I had never had an urge to hang out at bars, I wasn’t about to get kicked out of the navy if I didn’t shape up, nobody was suing me for running over their cat while under the influence.”

  She knew she had a problem, or her family wouldn’t have even considered the intervention. But she was still in denial. “There’s an enormous difference between other people’s thinking you’re alcoholic and your thinking you’re alcoholic. I was perfectly happy not to drink,” she said. “I was longing for pills, not pilsener.”

  There were lots of tears those first few days. Just going through the motions. Betty trying to appease everyone, without admitting her problems were as bad as everyone else’s. One of those first evenings, Dr. Pursch arranged for Betty to attend a women’s AA group in Laguna Beach.

  The Secret Service agents drove Betty and Caroline, and then waited outside. At the beginning of every AA meeting, the attendees are required to introduce themselves with first names only, and to admit their addiction to alcohol.

  As they sat down, Caroline grabbed hold of Betty’s hand. She knew this was going to be hard for her boss. When it came to Betty’s turn, she stood up and with strength pouring forth and “not a quiver in her voice,” she said, “My name is Betty, and I’m an alcoholic.”

  “The hand I held gave me strength and faith,” Caroline wrote in her diary that night. “Only one regret. The president wasn’t there to share a most memorable day.”

  “I was very proud of her,” Caroline said. “She was taking these huge steps, and I wished the president could have been there to witness it.”

  Within the first week of Betty’s treatment, President Ford, Steve, and Susan arrived to attend a five-day family session. The family members were put in different groups—not with Betty or one another, but in groups with other patients who knew Betty.

  “I wasn’t convinced that what I was saying wasn’t going to get back to my mother—my deepest, darkest secrets,” Susan recalled.

  In one of the first sessions, President Ford had been in a group, and when he left, Susan took his place. “You kind of go in and tell your story,” she recalled. When somebody made the comment that her father had taken credit for getting the intervention together, “It set me on fire,” she said.

  “No he didn’t!” Susan blurted out. “I’m the one that did all the work. I’m the one that put the pieces together. Where does he get off taking all the credit?!”

  “The whole family is so raw with emotions as you’re going through it,” she remembered. “It’s just exhausting. It’s wonderful, but exhausting. You get rid of stuff.”

  In one group session, the counselor read a short story called “Warm Fuzzies.”

  “It was like taking my heart and pulling it out,” Susan remembered. “It was like the way I felt about my mother, and how she had taken everything away from me. I never had a chance to be a kid. I was always covering for her.” Tears poured down Susan’s face as the emotions came pouring out. “When is it going to be my turn?” she wondered aloud.

  President Ford attended group sessions with five or six recovering alcoholics, went to some meetings with Betty, and sat in lectures with dozens of other patients and their families. “For the first time, I learned about alcoholism . . . being a disease,” he said. “I learned that I was making all these excuses an enabler does.”

  At first, Steve Ford felt a great deal of angst about going to the treatment center. But Pat Benedict reassured him and explained how important it was. The first day, he went to the cafeteria, where his mother was eating lunch with several of the sailors. There were admirals and se
amen, and they were telling jokes, and she was laughing and having a good time. As he walked up to the table, he heard one of the sailors telling a dirty joke.

  “I was so offended,” Steve recalled. “This is my mother! You can’t tell dirty jokes around my mother!” Later, he complained to Dr. Pursch.

  “Steve, this is exactly what your mother needs,” Pursch said. “She is no longer the first lady, she is Betty. She takes that hat off, and she gets to be equal with everybody else.” Pursch made him realize that having been first lady was part of the problem. “Her doctors would prescribe whatever she wanted,” Steve said, “because they didn’t want to make a first lady mad.”

  In one group session, they were talking about the fact that if your parents were alcoholics, then it was very likely the children would become alcoholics too.

  “I made the dumb statement ‘Oh, no, I’ll never be an alcoholic,’ ” Steve said. “They jumped all over me. ‘Do you think your mother decided to be an alcoholic?’ And I had to accept it that, yes, I have a good chance of becoming an alcoholic because of my family background.”

  On April 15 Steve was visiting his mother, when a local television crew approached him. “Steve, is your mother an alcoholic?” the photographer blurted out.

  Steve Ford had been raised to be honest. When someone asks a question, you answer it.

  “I know that the problem exists,” he said. “My mother does drink, just as many other people do in this country. To what extent, I couldn’t tell you. There always seems to be a problem mixing alcohol with drugs. The Good Lord seems to be challenging her with tasks, and she hasn’t failed yet.”

  Betty still had not admitted to a problem with alcohol, and she was less than pleased with her son’s remarks.

  “She had begun to pull back and get into her denial again,” Dr. Cruse recalled. “She thought she wasn’t as bad off as a lot of the sailors and wives and so forth. That’s what the disease does. She was scared and angry and frightened and puzzled. She was hoping to continue to reserve for herself the right not only to drink but also not to be labeled a drunk.”

  Pursch summoned President Ford, Caroline, Bob Barrett, and Pat Benedict, and another mini-intervention took place.

  Dr. Pursch looked Betty straight in the eyes and said, “We are here because something needs to be faced, and that is that you are also dependent on alcohol.”

  Betty turned to her husband, hoping for some support—some kind of affirmation that she wasn’t. When he didn’t speak up, she said, “If you’re going to call me an alcoholic, I won’t stand for it.”

  Dr. Pursch had spoken with not only President Ford but also with Susan, Dr. Cruse, and other members of the family, and he knew the truth. “So far, you have talked only about drugs, but you are going to have to make a public statement saying you are also dependent on alcohol.”

  “I can’t do that,” Betty said, her voice beginning to quiver. “I don’t want to embarrass my husband.”

  Pursch stood up, his eyes steeling through Betty. “You’re hiding behind your husband,” he said. “If you don’t believe it, ask him.”

  Betty was beginning to hyperventilate. “Well?” she asked, looking at Jerry.

  Jerry winced. He didn’t want to cause her any more pain, but after attending the sessions, he’d come to realize that he’d been enabling her for far too long. “No,” he said. “It won’t embarrass me.”

  Still, Betty couldn’t agree to making a public statement that she was an alcoholic. But Dr. Pursch was not going to let her get away with it. He kept pushing.

  Dr. Pursch was “ruthless,” Pat remembered. “I was sitting next to her . . . her little eyes were filling, her little nose was running, and I put my arm around her and just held her.”

  “Betty,” Dr. Pursch glared, “you’re just as alcoholic as anyone can be, and you’re using your husband to hide behind.”

  “Pursch was very tough,” Jerry recalled. “I think he felt Betty wasn’t responding, she was in denial . . . and he thought he had to shock her.”

  “He knew that if she put it out there, that if she committed to it to the American public, then she’d damn well better live up to it,” Caroline said. “You have to have something to live up to. Some pressure on your back to stay sober.”

  Betty was heaving with sobs. Crying inside and out.

  “I had cried so hard my nose and ears were closed up, my head felt like a balloon, all swollen,” Betty remembered. She was mad and hurt that Jerry hadn’t spoken up to defend her. “He hadn’t allowed me the out I was looking for.”

  Ultimately, Betty agreed to release a statement—a carefully worded statement written with the input of Dr. Pursch, President Ford, and Bob Barrett—and on Friday, April 21, Barrett read it at a press conference held outside the hospital.

  Barrett stood at the microphone and said, “Here is the statement from Mrs. Ford: ‘I have found I am not only addicted to the medication I have been taking for my arthritis but also to alcohol. This program is well known throughout the country, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to attend it. I expect this treatment and fellowship to be a solution for my problems, and I embrace it not only for me but all the many others who are here to participate.’ ”

  The impact was enormous. America loved and respected Betty Ford, and her announcement brought home, in a powerful way, that this disease could touch virtually any family in the country. On top of that, Pat noted, “she opened the door for women to seek treatment.”

  “To the laymen, it was just a statement,” Caroline said. “To us, it was Betty Ford getting well.”

  After reading the statement, Barrett and Dr. Pursch answered questions. When asked whether Mrs. Ford would be speaking publicly, Barrett replied flippantly, “We’ve never had too much success in keeping Mrs. Ford’s mouth shut. Somewhere along the line, she’ll be saying what she wants to when she wants to.”

  Dr. Pursch added, “Mrs. Ford is a gutsy lady, and I expect her to do very well. We’re taking it one day at a time.”

  When asked about details of the drugs she was taking, Pursch declined to give specifics but said they were “medications any of us would get from a family practitioner if we went to him with the pain she had.”

  Barrett emphatically denied the problem involved any negligence by doctors treating Mrs. Ford.

  Sometime in the second week of treatment, Betty had a revelation. During one group session, a young woman got up and said she didn’t know why her family was making such a big deal about her drinking.

  “My drinking hasn’t caused my folks any trouble,” the girl insisted. Betty had been in sessions with some of the woman’s family members, and they had talked about how her drinking had indeed caused trouble for each of them. Betty remembered all the things her own family had told her during the intervention, and in that moment, she realized that by not admitting she had a problem with alcohol, she was in denial every bit as much as that young woman.

  It was Betty’s turn to stand up next.

  “I’m Betty, and I am an alcoholic,” she said. “And I know my drinking has hurt my family.” As she said it out loud, a wave of relief spread through her.

  She realized suddenly that while she couldn’t identify with the habits or backgrounds of the other patients, she could identify with the disease. “We were all suffering from the same thing, and it didn’t matter where we came from or how we got here. If we could have done something about our sickness on our own, we’d have done it.”

  Day in and day out, Betty was immersed in therapy and education about alcoholism and drug addiction. There were speakers who shared their own stories of recovery; role-playing sessions that showed how the disease affected loved ones; and films and lectures about the disease and its detrimental effects on the body. Betty learned that although she had detoxed and hadn’t taken drugs or so much as a sip of alcohol since that last handful of pills immediately after the intervention, it would take more than two years before she was completely clean
sed of the chemicals that had built up inside her body due to the long half-life of the medications she’d been taking.

  “We learned that alcoholism kind of comes in two ways,” Caroline said. “It either is a chemical dependency that is genetic or you build that up. You start drinking in college, and it builds up, and over forty years it catches up with you. You don’t always have the chemical dependency gene.”

  The more Betty learned, the more it became clear that her genetics predisposed her to the disease. Both her father and one of her brothers were alcoholics. And she learned that the spouse and children of an alcoholic typically assume various codependent roles in order to cope: enabler, hero, scapegoat, lost child, mascot.

  The enabler steps in to protect the alcoholic/addict from the consequences of her behavior, making excuses to prevent embarrassment and thus minimizing the consequences of addiction. The hero attempts to be the model child, excelling in everything he does, and taking over family responsibilities. The scapegoat acts out, is very independent, and is often seen as the “problem child,” as he diverts attention from the alcoholic’s behavior. The lost child demands little and receives little attention, which often results in his inability to develop close relationships. The mascot is the attention seeker, often clowning around to defuse the stressful situations caused by the alcoholic.

  As Betty listened and learned, it was as if the counselors were describing her husband and each of her children. Their personalities had formed around her addiction.

  Meanwhile, outside the walls of the hospital, people all over the world were reacting to Betty’s admission that she was an alcoholic and was embracing treatment.

  “I was astonished at the amount of newspaper coverage, the editorials commending my heroism, my candor, my courage,” she said. “I hadn’t rescued anybody from a burning building, I’d simply put my bottles down. It was my family, not I, who had been ‘candid’ and ‘courageous,’ ” Betty wrote, years later.