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    Kitty Dukakis, Wife of 1988 Presidential Nominee, Dies at 88

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    Married to Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, she became a proponent of electroshock therapy after unsuccessful treatments for alcoholism and depression.Kitty Dukakis, an activist first lady of Massachusetts and humanitarian who overcame alcoholism and depression with the help of electroconvulsive therapy, then became a proponent of the treatment with her husband, Michael S. Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor and the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, died on Friday night at her home in Brookline, Mass. She was 88. Her son, John, said the cause was complications of dementia. Mrs. Dukakis “lived a full life fighting to make the world a better place and sharing her vulnerabilities to help others face theirs,” her family said in a statement.Mrs. Dukakis was a longtime activist on behalf of underdogs and people who struggled. Among the subjects most important to her was continuing education on the Holocaust. She was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 to the first President’s Commission on the Holocaust, which sought to create a national memorial and museum; when that panel was replaced a decade later by the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, she was appointed to the council by President George H.W. Bush.“Perhaps in the entire history of civilization, the Holocaust was the most important object lesson in man’s inhumanity to man,” she told the National Governors Association in 1983.Few political wives have been as forthright as Mrs. Dukakis in sharing the intimate details of their struggles with addiction and depression. She wrote two books that revealed in painful detail her early dependence on diet pills, how alcoholism later took over her life and how she turned, at age 64, to electroshock therapy to treat the crippling depression that she said had long been masked by her drinking.Her successful electroshock treatment led her and her husband to publicly advocate for the effectiveness of the procedure, and even to hold support groups at their home.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      When a Couple’s Drinking Habits Diverge

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      When one partner wants to cut back, or stops drinking altogether, the changes can reverberate throughout a relationship.Casey and Mike Davidson always enjoyed drinking together.The couple, both 49, met after college while working as consultants at the same firm. Romance blossomed over work happy hours, then time spent lingering over a bottle of wine on long dates.In their mid-20s, the pair moved to Seattle and made a group of friends who were always up for a drink. Afternoons were for hiking, kayaking and sipping beers on Lake Union; evenings were for rollicking, boozy dinner parties.But by their 30s, their drinking habits diverged. Ms. Davidson drank a bottle of wine by herself most nights, and felt increasingly uneasy about it, while Mr. Davidson settled into life as a self-described “single-beer-a-night drinker.”“I was really defensive about my drinking,” Ms. Davidson said, adding, “I didn’t want him watching me every time I poured a third glass of wine.”Like the Davidsons, many couples have had to grapple with the role alcohol plays in their partnership — even if neither party drinks to the point where it causes clear, consistent problems at home, or takes an obvious toll on their health. Their relationship may still receive a shock when one partner decides to cut back or quit altogether.“It can drive a wedge between people in terms of how they socialize, how they relax and unwind, their bedroom activities,” said Ruby Warrington, the author of “Sober Curious.” “It can be really uncomfortable.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fraternity Member Charged With Manslaughter in Hazing Death of University Student

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      Investigators say that Caleb Wilson, 20, a student at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., collapsed after being hit with boxing gloves as part of a pledging ritual for Omega Psi Phi.The police in Baton Rouge, La., on Friday announced the first of a series of expected arrests in the fraternity hazing death of Caleb Wilson, a 20-year-old Southern University student who they said was repeatedly punched with boxing gloves at a warehouse last week and was unresponsive when he was dropped off at an emergency room.Caleb McCray, 23, a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, was charged with manslaughter and felony criminal hazing, according to court records. The authorities said at a news conference on Friday that two other suspects could soon be arrested.Mr. McCray was identified by witnesses as the person who punched Mr. Wilson, the arrest warrant affidavit said. He turned himself in to the authorities on Thursday and was booked into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison, the police said.The people who brought Mr. Wilson to Baton Rouge General Medical Center told employees on the night of his death that he had collapsed after being struck in the chest while playing basketball before they fled the hospital, the authorities said.But investigators said that they had learned that was not true.As part of a hazing ritual for the Beta Sigma chapter of Omega Psi Phi, Mr. Wilson and several other pledges were lined up and hit four times each with boxing gloves in their chests, the authorities said.The repeated blows caused him to collapse to the floor and suffer what had appeared to be a seizure, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Guy I Know Had a Liver Transplant. Now He’s Boozing Again.

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      The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on how to support someone with an addiction problem.My significant other has a friend who is a longtime alcoholic, while also being intelligent, entertaining and conniving. For example, he used to tell his wife he was going to the gym and then head to the bar; before returning home, he’d dampen his clothes in the bathroom to make it seem as if he’d gotten a good sweat on. He was off the radar for a bit, and then we learned he had a liver transplant. After that, he had an episode of hepatic encephalopathy, a brain disorder caused by liver dysfunction. It seems the doctors knew he was still drinking but gave him the new liver anyway and counseled abstinence. A few parties later, he was sneaking vodka, gin and whatever else was around. He lies to everyone and has made his guy friends vow not to tell his wife about his drinking. They’ve made a meager attempt to confront him, only to be assured that he just fell off the wagon and would be good. Just don’t tell the wife!I’m appalled that they’re going along with this. There are a couple of ethical issues here. First, who should decide whether someone is entitled to a transplant? Some hospital systems deny a liver transplant to patients who continue to drink alcohol, and other hospitals don’t. Second, do the friends have an obligation to tell this man’s wife that he’s still drinking? She could insist he leave the house and go to rehab, in which case he might have a chance of living long enough to see his children get married. Some additional context: A friend of mine died waiting for a liver transplant. I am also the child of a lifelong alcoholic. — Name WithheldFrom the Ethicist:There’s more than one morally defensible way of allocating donor organs. In the United States, as in Western Europe, the system emphasizes equity and basically gives priority to patients with the greatest need. An approach that focused instead on efficiency — on getting the maximum use out of donated livers, as measured by ‘‘quality-adjusted life years’’ — might give an edge to people who were younger and otherwise healthier and might work against low-income and minority populations.Organ allocation in the United States is governed by the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (O.P.T.N.), whose policies determine the order in which deceased-donor organs are offered; they do not, however, dictate medical practice. So it’s up to a medical center to decide whether or not transplant candidates with alcohol-related liver disease are to abstain from alcohol for some period — six months having long been a typical sobriety window. Some studies indicate that carefully selected patients who aren’t subject to a sobriety window can do just as well as those who are (though the data is hard to interpret because of the ‘‘carefully selected’’ part). And if your drinking has caused a severe case of acute hepatitis that doesn’t respond to medical treatment, you probably won’t survive a six-month waiting period. So the trend seems to be away from requiring an extended interval of abstinence.The point is that the current system for allocating this scarce resource is morally legitimate, whatever trade-offs it may entail; its architects are perfectly aware that many liver recipients will not succeed in refraining from heavy drinking afterward. The fact that this longtime alcoholic has returned to his old habits is distressing. It doesn’t mean that the system isn’t functioning the way it’s meant to.One thing that transplant centers may try to determine is whether patients with an alcohol problem have social networks that could help them stay sober. This brings us to your second question. This fellow’s friends weren’t looking after him when they agreed to uphold this boozy bro code and keep mum. He doesn’t want to die, but he’s drinking himself to death, which means that, at least in this key area, he lacks the capacity for rational decision-making. In a situation like that, it’s more important to attend to his interests than to respect his autonomy. If there’s a chance that his life can be extended by successful management of his alcoholism, and if discussing the problem with his wife will help, thoughtful friends would do just that.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Is Considered ‘Moderate Drinking’?

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      That depends on whom you ask, and what country you live in. Here’s what the research suggests and how to think about it.Over the past several years, there has been a rise in alcohol-related deaths and a steady wave of news about the health risks of drinking. Calls for people to drink only in moderation have become more urgent. But what, exactly, does that mean?“Tongue in cheek, people have defined it as not drinking more than your doctor,” said Tim Stockwell, a scientist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research.More officially, in the United States, moderate drinking is defined as one drink or less per day for women and two drinks or less per day for men. But other countries define moderate drinking, also called low-risk drinking, differently, and recent research around alcohol’s health harms has raised questions about current guidelines.How are the guidelines set?Experts used to think that low or moderate amounts of alcohol were good for you. That assumption was based on research showing that people who drank in moderation lived longer than those who abstained or drank excessively. The longevity benefit disappeared around two drinks a day for women and three drinks a day for men, Dr. Stockwell said.But many researchers now think that those conclusions were based on data analyses that had “all kinds of methodological problems,” said Elizabeth Mayer-Davis, a professor of nutrition and medicine at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.For example, one issue was that many people who abstained from alcohol did so because they had existing health problems, while people who drank moderately were more likely to have healthy lifestyle habits. It created “really what was an illusion of health benefits with low to moderate amounts of drinking,” Dr. Mayer-Davis said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ex-Frat Leaders Sentenced in Hazing Death of Penn State Student

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      Brendan Young, 28, and Daniel Casey, 27, will spend two to four months in prison for their roles in the 2017 death of Timothy Piazza, a 19-year-old from New Jersey.Two men charged in the 2017 hazing death of a Penn State sophomore that prompted new legislation imposing tougher charges in similar cases were sentenced to two to four months in prison on Tuesday, prosecutors announced.Brendan Young, 28, and Daniel Casey, 27, were the leaders of the now-defunct Beta Theta Pi chapter at Penn State when a 19-year-old student pledge, Timothy Piazza, died after consuming large amounts of alcohol and suffering several falls in a hazing ritual. It involved 13 other pledges.The pair pleaded guilty in July to 14 counts of hazing and one count of reckless endangerment. On Tuesday, they were each sentenced to two to four months in prison, followed by three years of probation plus community service, the Pennsylvania attorney general said in a news release.Mr. Young and Mr. Casey had each faced charges of involuntary manslaughter and aggravated assault, a felony, but those charges were dismissed.Following the sentencing, prosecutors were keen to point out that the men would have faced felony charges and stiffer punishment had the Pennsylvania anti-hazing law adopted in Mr. Piazza’s name in October 2018 been on the books when he died.“Nothing can undo the harm Tim suffered seven years ago — nothing can bring Tim back to his family and friends,” Michelle Henry, the attorney general, said in the news release. “With the sentences ordered today, the criminal process reached a conclusion.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Quitting Drinking Was Easy. Learning How to Be Myself Around Friends Was Hard.

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      Quitting drinking was the easy part. Figuring out how to be myself was harder.About six months after I quit drinking, I sat at a corner table in a candlelit restaurant with one of my closest friends. It was the kind of place where we used to refill each other’s wine glasses all night, sharing appetizers and intimate details of our lives.That night, though, it felt more like we were catching up: surface-level conversation you might have with a work acquaintance or when seated next to a distant cousin at a wedding. By the time the entrees came, we’d reached the end of these “so what else is new” updates. I recognized that we were at a threshold — one I had been unable to cross so far without booze.There are studies that confirm what I — and anyone else who has ever made friends with another drunk woman in a bar bathroom — have always known: Drinking can help build social bonds. It lowers inhibitions and fosters feelings of connection. But what happens when you’ve come to rely on alcohol to establish and reinforce those connections?I started drinking when I was 13, skipping class to chug cheap vodka and 40s with friends. We’d sprawl out on park benches or huddle on stoops, laughing about everything and nothing. I liked the sloshy, blurry feeling; the warmth in my cheeks and heaviness in my body. But what I liked most about being drunk was that it made it OK to say how sad I was — or to just start crying, without saying anything at all.By my late teens, a drink in the evening (and then a second and third) to soften the edges of my life seemed normal — even more so once I became a bartender, tucked away in a nocturnal world that revolved around alcohol. I prided myself on being able to do shots with customers all night and still settle the register correctly at 5 a.m.On my nights off, my friends and I went out, often to the same bar where I worked. And though I didn’t loiter on stoops drinking vodka out of the bottle anymore, the end of a night out was ultimately the same: Once I’d had enough to drink, it felt safe to admit to being sad or lonely or unsure.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Do You Have Healthy Brain Habits? Take This Quiz to Find Out.

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      What can I do to take good care of my brain and lower my risk for a neurological disease? That’s the No. 1 question neurologist Dr. Jonathan Rosand hears from his patients (and their family members) at the Massachusetts General Hospital McCance Center for Brain Health. To help answer it, he and his colleagues, with […] More

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      Grayson Murray, Two-Time PGA Tour Titles Winner, Dies at 30

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      Mr. Murray, who was outspoken about his depression and alcohol abuse, had begun a comeback after several volatile years, winning this year’s Sony Open in Hawaii.Grayson Murray, the professional golfer who won two PGA Tour titles and was outspoken about his battles with depression and alcohol, died on Saturday. He was 30.His death was confirmed in a statement by the PGA Tour, which did not give a cause.“The PGA Tour is a family, and when you lose a member of your family, you are never the same,” the tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, said in the statement.After a successful 40-foot putt to win the Sony Open in Hawaii in January, Mr. Murray rose to 46th in the Official World Golf Ranking, a career high. The event marked the height of a comeback run after several volatile years as Mr. Murray struggled with his mental health.In a news conference after winning the Sony Open, Mr. Murray said that for a time he would drink during tournament weeks.“Best thing and worst thing that ever happened to me was winning my rookie year, but also feeling like I was invincible,” he said. “I’m a different man now, and I would not be in this position right now, today, if I didn’t put that drink down eight months ago.”He added that he had attended rehabilitation for a month, and said, “I hope I can inspire a lot of people going forward that have their own issues.”Mr. Murray had failed to gain P.G.A. status for several months last year after a series of off-course events mirrored a decline in his play.A 2021 alcohol-related incident at a hotel bar in Hawaii led to his suspension from the P.G.A. Afterward, he posted to social media.“Why was I drunk?” he wrote, adding that he was as an “alcoholic that hates everything to do with the PGA Tour life and that’s my scapegoat.”The golfer Phil Mickelson, who has struggled with a gambling addiction, responded at the time on social media, saying “If I can help in any way I’d be happy to.”This year, Mr. Murray played well enough to qualify for the Masters Tournament and PGA Championship. On Friday, he withdrew from the second round of the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas, citing an illness.Grayson Murray was born on Oct. 1, 1993, in Raleigh, N.C., according to an ESPN biography. A list of survivors was not immediately available.He attended Wake Forest, East Carolina and Arizona State Universities, and at 16 became the second-youngest player to enter the Korn Ferry Tour, according to the P.G.A.He continued to gain prominence, playing in the U.S. Open at the age of 19 and clinching a win at the 2017 Barbasol Championship, sinking a 5-foot putt for a one-stroke victory.After losing his PGA Tour card for the 2023 season, and following an angry outburst directed at Mr. Monahan, he seemed to have found his swing again. He won two Korn Ferry Tour tournaments last year, regaining his P.G.A. eligibility, and finished in the top 10 at two events. More