Personal Struggles with Alcoholism

But it was booze. That is what got me. My wife was pregnant with our fourth child. I was fairly functional. I mean, I did a daily TV show and was fairly well known, kind of famous actually at that point, kind of

killing it. And I'm busy. I've got a lot of children. I've got stuff to do. I would just, like, not hesitate to have a cocktail or three in the morning. I'm just like a no-dicking-around kind of guy, I guess.

And that's a very bad pattern to get into. At this point, I, I, I-- we had gotten an ice maker in our refrigerator, which we'd never had. If you're struggling with drinking, don't get an ice maker, because it's

just too easy. And I had a couple of moments where I lost control, one actually at the White House Christmas party in, uh, two thousand and one. But I woke up this one morning at the

last day of August two thousand and two, and my wife was ten days away from giving birth to our fourth child, and I was sitting at my desk, like, smoking a cigarette, and I just heard this voice.

I don't know if it was a voice. It was from God. It was the clearest possible instruction: "If you keep doing this, you will lose your wife and children."