Healing and Hope - Hardcover

During her time as First Lady, Betty Ford was renowned for her honesty and openness. Mrs. Ford's candor didn't stop once she left the White House. In 1978, she revealed to the world her courageous struggle to recover from an addiction to alcohol and prescription pills. Resolving to help others deal with the disease of addiction, Mrs. Ford, along with former Ambassador Leonard Firestone, co-founded the nonprofit Betty Ford Center in 1982, in Rancho Mirage, California. She serves as Chairman of the Center's Board of Directors.

To take readers inside the famous addiction-recovery clinic that bears her name, Ford stitches together the stories of six who have been through its program and relevant recollections of her own struggle with alcoholism. She chooses six women to point up the peculiarities of women's addiction. Compared to male addicts, addicted women are more secretive, more easily inebriated, sustain liver damage sooner, present more complex psychological problems, and are more enabled by physicians and pharmacists. The overarching difference is that expectations of virtue are higher for women; consequently, they are more likely to see themselves as failures at love, motherhood, their professions--indeed, at living. Their addictions are attempts to "medicate" their perceived failures. It is remarkable, though Ford doesn't point it out, that one or both parents of five of the women were addicted and abusive, and the family of the sixth was emotionally repressed. Whatever leads a woman to addiction, she, not society, Ford says, must get herself out of it, although the 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous regimen and the fellowship of other reforming addicts, which the Ford Center provides intensively, are crucial to making an addict realize personal responsibility for recovery. With its six powerful personal stories and Ford's warm, authoritative overview, this is a solid popular introduction to the experience of recovery from addiction. Ray Olson
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