Jeb Bush Drops Guard to Share Family Account of AddictionHOOKSETT, N.H. — Jeb Bush’s elder son, George P. Bush, is the land commissioner of Texas and is nicknamed “47” — a look ahead to when, many joke, he will become the 47th president.
His younger son, John Ellis Bush Jr., briefly saw his name floated as a contender for a Florida congressional seat.
But Mr. Bush’s daughter, Noelle Bush, has stayed far from the world of politics, in part because of her long struggle with addiction. She faced felony charges that she tried to fill a fraudulent prescription for Xanax when she was 24, and later ended up in jail after she was found with pills and then crack cocaine in her shoe.
On Tuesday, Mr. Bush spoke of how his family dealt with his daughter’s difficulties, which became uncomfortably public when he was governor of Florida.
“What I learned was that the pain that you feel when you have a loved one who has addiction challenges and kind of spirals out of control is something that is shared with a whole lot of people,” he said.
Mr. Bush has said he first checked with his daughter, now 38 and in recovery, before sharing her story, which he did at a forum on heroin addiction.
To knowing murmurs, Mr. Bush spoke about how he will never forget the day his daughter successfully completed the Florida drug court program. “It was an extraordinary event,” he said, addressing more than 100 people — most of them involved in the treatment of substance abuse, and some in recovery themselves — in a ballroom at Southern New Hampshire University.
And he recalled realizing just how many families were dealing with similar challenges — how he would be speaking about education policy or economic development and look out to see “people were looking at me, knowing that I was going through the same thing as a loved one.”
For Mr. Bush, who often resists the soul-baring, emotive demands of modern politics, talking about his daughter’s struggles does not seem to come naturally. He spoke with restraint, though on Monday, he wrote more emotionally about his daughter in a blog post on Medium.
“As a father, I have felt the heartbreak of drug abuse,” Mr. Bush wrote. “I never expected to see my precious daughter in jail. It wasn’t easy, and it became very public when I was governor of Florida, making things even more difficult for Noelle. She went through hell, so did her mom, and so did I.”
Drug addiction and its personal costs have produced many of this campaign season’s most memorable and poignant moments. Not long ago, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey told the story of a close friend who fell victim to prescription drug abuse and lost his family, his job and, ultimately, his life. The Huffington Post put a video of the talk online, where it has been watched more than eight million times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/us/politics/jeb-bush-drops-guard-to-share-family-account-of-addiction.html?ref=politics&_r=0
