A Mild Dose of Candor

By WALTER SHAPIRO

The 1988 presidential race has come to resemble a marathon encounter session: long periods of tedium punctuated by embarrassing personal disclosures. The latest revelation came last week when Kitty Dukakis, 50, the seemingly self- assured wife of Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, publicly enrolled in the Betty Ford school of political candor. Her secret: 26 years of mild amphetamine dependency that ended in 1982 after she secretly entered a drug- rehabilitation clinic in Minnesota.

Were it not for Dukakis' place at the front rank of Democratic presidential contenders, the story Mrs. Dukakis told at the dedication of a drug-treatment center in Norfolk, Mass., would be sadly ordinary. Her problem began when, as a 19-year-old in 1956, she obtained a prescription for diet pills to control her weight. (At 5 ft. 6 in., she then weighed about 130 lbs.; she now weighs 120 lbs.) Years of deceit followed as she began each morning with a small 5-mg dose of amphetamines. In hindsight, she concedes that the drug "contributed to my being hyper" and provided a "false energy level."

Discovery did not come until late 1974, fully eleven years after she married Dukakis. Her husband, just elected Governor, stumbled on her cache of pills. "I told him the truth: I was dependent," she recalls. Her family doctor tried to wean her from the diet pills, but three months later she was again covertly obtaining them from another physician. She continued the charade for eight more years until her husband noticed a stray bill from the doctor who was writing her prescription. Only then did Mrs. Dukakis reluctantly confront her dependency. "I had been taking diet pills for 26 years," she says. "I was very frightened. I didn't know much about recovery programs."

In the summer of 1982, with Dukakis locked in a tight race for Governor, his wife invented a mythical case of hepatitis to mask her monthlong stay at the Hazelden Rehabilitation Center in Center City, Minn. Defending this cover- up at a press conference last week, Dukakis said, "It was very important to her that this not be public, and I respected that."

Why then did Kitty Dukakis suddenly feel compelled to set the record straight five years later? "I've had a long enough period of recovery," she explained. "I feel strongly about my recovery, and one of the tenets of recovery is to help other people." There were no rumors about Kitty Dukakis and no apparent political need to go public. But a carefully timed announcement was probably inevitable after she revealed her diet-pill problem to Campaign Manager John Sasso in March.

Her bravery should not be minimized, nor should the extent of her former drug problem be exaggerated. Medical experts say the amount of amphetamines she was taking probably caused only psychological dependency. Dr. Jack Blaine, the chief of treatment research at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, says, "Giving this up is more than giving up one's morning coffee and less than giving up cigarettes." Kitty Dukakis might agree. She still smokes a pack a day.