Questions Shadow Dukakis Anew

Massachusetts First Lady Kitty Dukakis is expected to return home to Brookline today amid ongoing speculation as to the real cause of her three-day emergency hospitalization this week.

Was the “very small amount” of rubbing alcohol that the 53-year-old wife of Gov. Michael S. Dukakis ingested at home sometime Monday a relapse of the alcoholism that sent her to a Rhode Island treatment center for 31 days last spring?

Was it “a desperate cry for help,” as the director of a local alcohol detoxification center suggested?

Was Dukakis suffering from suicidal depression? Or were her symptoms more consistent with seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a recurring depression that worsens as the light fades with autumn?

Or was the fact that Dukakis swallowed the potentially poisonous substance on the eve of the anniversary of her husband’s presidential defeat evidence that the Dukakis family has never fully recovered from Gov. Dukakis’ blistering loss a year ago to George Bush?

“I don’t think anybody knows,” said Anne Harney, a close friend of the Dukakis family who has served as Kitty Dukakis’ personal assistant since last January.

Harney was with Kitty Dukakis on what was described as a “confidence-building” Outward Bound expedition in Utah in the last week of September. In an interview with the Boston Globe soon after she returned from the rafting excursion, Dukakis enthusiastically described the trip to Utah as an opportunity “to shun . . . some of the negative urban weight that’s a part of so many of us during our everyday work day.”

Harney also traveled with Dukakis on her 10 speaking engagements in October. Since her release from the Edgehill Newport treatment center in Rhode Island last March, Dukakis has established an active career as a public speaker, often discussing her own longtime problems with substance abuse.

Early in her husband’s presidential campaign, it was disclosed that Kitty Dukakis had been treated in 1982 at the Hazelden Foundation in Minnesota for a 26-year addiction to diet pills. In announcing that his wife had entered Edgehill Newport for treatment for alcoholism last February, Gov. Dukakis blamed his wife’s latest troubles on the crashing disappointment of his defeat in his 1988 Democratic bid for the presidency.

But in an interview with The Times soon after she left Edgehill Newport, Dukakis discounted her husband’s explanation. Conceding that the loss of the presidential campaign was a “crisis,” Kitty Dukakis added that “one event does not make one an alcoholic,” and declared that “I was an alcoholic before Michael lost.”

While her disclosure stunned many of those who were closest to her, Dukakis appeared to have turned the issue to her own advantage when she signed with a New York speakers’ bureau, the Harry Walker Agency, and embarked on a heavily scheduled speaking tour. She also received a $175,000 advance from Simon & Schuster for a book that would include a section on her substance addictions.

The October series of speeches was grueling, Harney said. It included Dukakis’ keynote address in Athens to the World Congress of Psychiatrists, where Dukakis was introduced by the actress and Greek social leader Melina Mercouri.

“It was certainly very strenuous,” Harney said.

“But I was with her, and I was just as tired as she was, and I didn’t take rubbing alcohol.”

A carefully worded statement released Wednesday evening by Dr. Gerald R. Plotkin, Dukakis’ physician for the last 17 years, said that she was “completely out of danger” after experiencing a “severe reaction” from imbibing the rubbing alcohol.

The statement, said by one hospital source to have been supervised “very personally” by Gov. Dukakis himself, said it was “clear from tests that no drugs, medication or alcoholic beverages were involved” in the latest incident.

Plotkin refused to take questions directly, referring further inquiries to the governor’s office. A spokesman there, however, would comment only that “the statement speaks for itself.”

But the printed remarks from Plotkin that were distributed to the press posed new questions about what had happened to Dukakis and revealed new information about what has been happening to her.

The statement was the first indication, for example, that Dukakis had been treated with “an occasional prescription” of anti-depressant drugs by her psychiatrist. The type of medication she was taking was not disclosed, nor was her psychiatrist identified by name, but it was said that she was taking the drugs “immediately prior” to her hospitalization on Monday.

Plotkin’s statement also made a connection between Dukakis’ long struggle with depression and her battle with chemical dependency. Noting that “these two problems often are related,” Plotkin’s statement said that “autumn has been a particularly bad season for her.”

That remark raised the possibility that Dukakis might be suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a recurring condition that is linked to diminished daylight in autumn and winter.

But it also gave rise to discussion not only about the unhappy anniversary of Gov. Dukakis’ presidential defeat, but about the dramatic decline in popularity the governor has experienced in recent months. Gov. Dukakis has announced that he will not seek another term as governor, but dismissed rumors that he would resign in the wake of the latest incident involving his wife.

Much of the drop in his public approval has been attributed to the mounting state deficit, reported this week to have reached $730 million.

Former Dukakis presidential campaign manager John Sasso said he saw “no connection” between Kitty Dukakis’ hospitalization and continuing protests over severe cuts in funds for housing, health insurance, mental health, education and social welfare programs. Even as the governor sat by his wife’s side at the hospital on Wednesday, a group of low-income mothers carrying babies in their arms demonstrated in the rain outside the Statehouse against further budget cuts that they said would leave them homeless.

But a former state representative who has worked with both the governor and Mrs. Dukakis had another opinion.

“How could they not be related?” he asked. “They are a family.”

Speaking on grounds that he not be identified, the former politician elaborated: “You’ve got the year starting off with the loss of the biggest prize in American politics in a way that was not happy, in that it was not expected to be so bad. And you’ve got her going to Edgehill. And then you’ve got him getting the crap kicked out of him for a year.”

In angry sessions of the state legislature that have lasted until well into the night, Gov. Dukakis often has been held solely responsible for the state’s fiscal troubles. The former state legislator called this “the most brutal kind of scapegoating that one can imagine.”

But he also pointed out that while the warning signs for the state’s budget crunch had been apparent for many months, they also had been largely overlooked, most notably by the governor himself.

“You had a period of time in which the pressure of the (presidential) campaign plus the attention demanded by it forced denial,” he said. “Then there was the denial following the election.

“But the other piece of it is a history on his part not to face up to problems until they are right before his eyes.” Gov. Dukakis, he said, “doesn’t have much long vision or peripheral vision.”

In much the same way, this former state legislator said, Dukakis was able to avoid dealing first with his wife’s 26-year amphetamine addiction, and later, her growing dependence on alcohol.

“He doesn’t see what he doesn’t want to see. That’s one of his great strengths, but also one of his great failings.”

Many of those closest to the Dukakis family chose to respect the family’s request for privacy and declined to discuss whether Kitty Dukakis was attempting suicide when she ingested the rubbing alcohol Monday night. “I really can’t comment,” was all one friend from Brookline would say before terminating the conversation.

But the ex-legislator observed that “if there are two theories about why she did it--one that she was dying for a drink, and the other that she was trying to kill herself--I really don’t see that there is much of a distinction.

“Clearly,” he added, “there is an underlying issue.”

That issue, he continued, might be Gov. Dukakis’ “relationship to this episode and the idea that it is not his problem. His tendency will be to compartmentalize this as ‘her’ problem, as opposed to looking in the mirror and saying ‘what have I contributed to this?’ ”

Gov. Dukakis was back in his office in the Statehouse on Thursday.

Friends close to Kitty Dukakis said they were sending her “love and support” and were hoping for her speedy recovery.

“How do you know when someone goes through something like this,” Anne Harney said, “what the outcome will be?”