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

[COUNTrecount]

Does this mean that he practiced medicine while drunk?

[demolition angel]

Something tells me that being a legislator in Vermont isn't exactly a full time job requiring someone to abandon their profession.

If what I have heard is correct, Dean became Governor when the then current Governor died in office (Dean was Lt. Governor). It is said that Dean got the news while he was in the midst of giving someone a physical; that he finished the physical and then got on the road to the capital. I'm fairly sure this was in 1991.



Feel free to correct me, but I think your premise is mired in a misunderstanding.

[miss marmelstein]

Acqua Net or Paul Mitchell?

[jla]

Well, good for Dean.
And now that one of their leading candidates for a run at the Oval Office has admitted this, maybe the Left will stop with the mean-spirited attacks on Dubya's past problem with alcohol. (Though I won't hold my breath)

[Lockbar]

Maybe Martin Sheen will sarcastically call Dean a "white knuckle drunk" like he did Bush. Naw, I'm sure a super liberal would never be so mean to one of their own.

[johnb838]

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.

I will say this as a recovering alcoholic. If you have to give it up entirely, you're an alcoholic. I suspect there's some AA in this mans past. Probably W's too. Nothing wrong with that.

[sirchtruth]

I can't believe at my age that skit still cracks me up.

Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a form of government, I mean you can't expect to weild extreme executive power just because some moisten bint lobs a simitar at you!
If I went around saying I was emperor just because some watery tart threw a sword at me they'd put me away!

[sirchtruth]

Tell me again, Sir Bedevere, how you make ship's sails out of lamb's bladders...

All I know is that's how we tell the earth to be bannana-shaped...But I'm not dead: Oh, don't be such a baby!

[sirchtruth]

Dennis, There's some lovely filth down here!

I told you, we're an Archosynonules Commune...

[Chancellor Palpatine]

LOL

[RasterMaster]

When a scumbag liberal gives up the bottle, it is a miraculous event. /sarcasm off/

Who's gonna dig up a DUI on this clown a week before the election?

[Chu Gary]

I can't remember the name of the guy in Airplane, the controller, who kept saying "Oh man, I picked the wrong week to quit drinking," "Oh man, I picked the wrong week to quit smoking pot," "Oh man, I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue" .... and on, and on, and on.

Well, I guess we're going to have to suffer thru this for another 16 months until GWB's re-election, then these cretins might actually shut their pie holes!

[Ready4Freddy]

"Bush WAS forthright with his drinking problem. Where were you? He answered questions about it in several interviews!"

I do remember a good bit of equivocation before W became forthright about it. I think people have learned from that, and are more willing to face these types of issues up front now. Nothing wrong with that.

[Miss Marple]

When was he equivocating? It is IN HIS BOOK A CHARGE TO KEEP!

He said in that book what he said all along...that he drank too much and decided on his 40th birthday to quit.

He was interviewed on this during the campaign from the earliest days, including a joint interview with Laura. The only thing he didn't bring up was the DUI, which had been supposedly expunged.

I am sorry if your memory is faulty, but I really feel compelled to not let this slip by unrefuted.

[onyx]

W refused to answer inane and UNFOUNDED, UNSUBSTANCIATED rumors, regarding cocaine use! And rightly so!

W never shied-away from speaking about his drinking days and the reasons and the date he quit.