Betty Ford Shared Her Story and Changed Addiction Treatment Forever
Susan Ford Bales recalls how her mother paved the way for destigmatizing substance use disorder.
On a spring day in 1978, former First Lady Betty Ford shared a story.
She told the world she had been struggling with alcohol and opioid medications, and was seeking help for substance use disorder. For any average person at the time, that admission might have turned them into a societal outcast.
But for Betty Ford, it saved her life. It restored her family. And it blasted a fissure into what is considered the biggest barrier to drug and alcohol addiction treatment: stigma.
It is estimated some 23 million Americans a year meet the criteria for substance use disorder while only about 10% access treatment, according to John F. Kelly, Ph.D., the Elizabeth R. Spallin Professor of Psychiatry in the Field of Addiction Medicine at Harvard Medical School, in The American Journal of Medicine, attributing the lack of treatment to stigma.
Betty Ford’s first step toward sobriety on April 1, 1978, was in response to desperate pleas from her family that she seek help. It w…
