(2 of 2)
Friends and observers agree that her husband's presidential defeat was an emotionally crushing blow to Kitty. An energetic and ambitious woman, she had thrived on the demanding schedule, tumult and attention of the campaign. Sandy Bakalar, a close friend, says, "Kitty was going 1,000 miles a minute. Then on Nov. 8 it was suddenly over. It was a terrible loss." Her husband, meanwhile, handled the loss in his usual stoic fashion. "Kitty had to do the mourning for both of them," says Richard Gaines, editor of the Boston Phoenix, who has long reported on the Dukakis family.
Kitty tried to put together a new life, signing a $175,000 book contract and registering with a speakers' bureau. She also traveled, taking a trip to an Arizona spa. And apparently she drank. Enough to alarm her family and, most important, herself. Doctors do not believe she has had the time to become heavily dependent on alcohol, but they say her earlier experience with amphetamines evidently set off warning bells. "She recognized that her recovery was a day-to-day thing, and she is an addictive person," says Paul Costello, her press secretary during the campaign. She has struggled mightily but unsuccessfully to stop smoking cigarettes, a habit she picked up as a teenager. On the hustings Kitty frequently talked about the dangers of drug abuse, using herself as an example.
That keen self-awareness should stand her in good stead at Edgehill Newport, the 12 1/2-acre residential facility where she is expected to stay for about a month. Patients there are assigned to one of six 24-bed rehabilitation units. | Treatment, which combines medical and psychological therapy with elements from Alcoholics Anonymous, includes intense group and peer counseling designed to break down addicts' denial of their problems. Sessions with family members are also offered.
Cross-dependent people as a rule are more difficult to treat than single- substance abusers. Often they admit to having trouble with one chemical -- cocaine, for example -- but hide the fact that they are misusing sleeping pills or alcohol. Says Dr. Roger Meyer of the Alcohol Research Center at the University of Connecticut in Farmington: "It's hard to get them focused and to realize that they need to be talking about total abstinence from all mood- altering drugs." Kitty Dukakis has understood the message but must translate it into practice. Said her husband: "As she has now discovered, whether it comes in a bottle or is solid, if you're chemically dependent, you're chemically dependent."