Howard Dean: I Beat Booze

NewsMax.com ^ | 7/02/03 | Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

[kattracks]

Howard Dean and George Bush share one thing in common: both had serious alcohol addictions that they beat.

Both prove anyone with an alcohol problem can still recover and rise to the highest levels of American society.

Months before former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean became a top tier candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, the left-wing Democrat revealed that he had to quit drinking at age 33 because, "I didn’t think I handled liquor well."

Bush has previously said he kicked the habit at age 40.

In an interview with New York Magazine in February, Dean's Yale University buddy Ralph Dawson was asked about the Democrat rising star's student hobbies.

""Well, he drank," Dawson blurted out.

Dean later explained, "I quit drinking when I got married in 1981. I didn’t think I handled liquor well."

Then the candidate revealed that sometimes his drinking caused trouble. "Actually, I drank beer. I tended to misbehave. I had a hangover the next day,” Dean told New York magazine.

The up and coming candidate won't say what kind of misbehavior he indulged in, adding only, "What’s funny when you’re 18 isn’t funny when you’re 30, so I just quit.” He insists that he was never arrested for drunk driving, and there is no alcoholism in his family.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

2004 Elections

[isthisnickcool]

Soldier #1: You're using coconuts!
Howard Dean: What?
Soldier #1: You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're bangin' 'em together.
Howard Dean: So? We have ridden since the snows of winter covered this land, through the kingdom of Mercia, through--
Soldier #1: Where'd you get the coconuts?
Howard Dean: We found them.
Soldier #1: Found them? In Mercia? The coconut's tropical!
Howard Dean: What do you mean?
Soldier #1: Well, this is a temperate zone.
Howard Dean: The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land?
Soldier #1: Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
Howard Dean: Not at all. They could be carried.
Soldier #1: What? A swallow carrying a coconut?
Howard Dean: It could grip it by the husk!
Soldier #1: It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a one pound coconut.
Howard Dean: Well, it doesn't matter. Will you go and tell your master that Howard Dean from the Court of Camelot is here?
Soldier #1: Listen. In order to maintain air-speed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second, right?
Howard Dean: Please!
Soldier #1: Am I right?
Howard Dean: I'm not interested!
Soldier #2: It could be carried by an African swallow!
Soldier #1: Oh, yeah, an African swallow maybe, but not a European swallow. That's my point......

[onyx]

As an M.D., mean-dean ought to know that one never "beats booze." The only so-called cure, is abstinence.

[BrooklynGOP]

the left-wing Democrat revealed that he had to quit drinking at age 33 because, "I didn’t think I handled liquor well."

Pff! Quiter!

[BrooklynGOP]

I can top that. I killed a quart of Jim Beam.

I think I'll go get me a bottle of Booker's.

[StriperSniper]

He insists that he was never arrested for drunk driving,

No, not for drunk driving, how about for anything else related to drinking?
He seems to have left enough room to drive an enviromentaly friendy bus through.

[Ready4Freddy]

"As an M.D., mean-dean ought to know that one never "beats booze.""

The 'beat booze' was NewsMax' phrase, not Dean's.

[Sabertooth]

I can top that. I killed a quart of Jim Beam.

"No poo,r dumb bastard ever beat booze by quitting..."

[TC Rider]

Dean strikes me as one angry dude. Then again, W doesn't.

One of these men has found Jesus.

[aristeides]

What will the callers to C-SPAN who call Bush a "dry drunk" say now?

[Howlin]

letitbehim letitbehim letitbehim letitbehim
letitbehim letitbehim letitbehim letitbehim
letitbehim letitbehim letitbehim letitbehim
letitbehim letitbehim letitbehim letitbehim

[cake_crumb]

The left will spin it like this: Bush quitting is bad, Dean quitting is 'good' somehow. After all, Dean says he never got a DUI, so he must be a better person, right?

They will of course have no problem making the verbal transition from how President Bush is an "alchy" to how courageous Dean is for beating the habit.

[huck von finn]

So was "serious alcohol addictions." Plus probably most of the rest of the article.

Why doesn't NewsMax just go ahead and merge with The National Enquirer and call it a day? They have really degenerated of late.

[theDentist]

So he's contending for the "frat boy" vote?

[Feiny]

He didn't say he never drove drunk....just didn't get caught. I cringe when I think of all the times I drove drunk in my youth. Thankfully, I always got home safe. I take cabs now if I plan on having a few...luckily, I live walking distance from most of my favorite places.

[mabelkitty]

I bet Tim Russert would disagree.

[hunter112]

Good analysis, but the effort to compare Dean to Bush in this piece is designed to show he is "electable". This Dean guy is starting to scare me, if the liberal news media picks him as their poster boy, like they did Billary (problems and all), they will propel him towards a first ballot nomination. We'll be missing the fight we've all waited so patiently for.

Other than signing the gay unions law (which the Vermont Supreme Court practically forced the legislative process to craft), what particular things do we have to bring up against Dean, other than the usual liberal whacko stuff that all nine have? Anything particularly odious on Howie?

[tnlibertarian]

My relatives are dinstinctly non-alcoholic

Is your last name O'Doul?

[cake_crumb]

"He didn't say he never drove drunk....just didn't get caught. I cringe when I think of all the times I drove drunk in my youth. Thankfully, I always got home safe. I take cabs now if I plan on having a few...luckily, I live walking distance from most of my favorite places."

Good thinking on your part about not driving under the influence...though I know a few small towns where if you know you've had too much to drink, decide to leave your car there and walk two blocks home, the town cops will pick you up for public intoxication even if you're tooling up the sidwalk silently and not bothering anyone.

Dean's campaign will try to make his drunkeness out to be somehow better or more of a moral struggle than the presiden't bout with alchohol.

Actually, I don't think the president is an alchoholic (you never beat it, it's a daily stuggle to maintain an alchohol free state) because he doesn't have the symptoms. Recovered alchoholics should never allow themselves to become too tired, too stressed or too hungry. The chemical reaction in the brain causes that black, angry, out-of-control behavior known as "dry drunk syndrome". Dean appears to suffer from that problem, and may really be an alchoholic.

[Junior]

Howard Dean: I Beat Booze

Dummy. You're supposed to drink it, not beat it...

[alwaysconservative]

LOLOLOLOL!!!