Globe

NANCY REAGAN WAS A HOPELESS ADDICT!

First lady couldn’t say no to pills!

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HYPOCRITIC­AL First Lady Nancy Reagan secretly popped pills nonstop while famously telling America to “Just Say No” to drugs!

A new book claims President Ronald Reagan’s wife took so many “uppers and downers” White House doctors had to tell the commander-in-chief that Nancy had a “problem.”

Nancy launched the antidrug campaign in 1982 and the blockbuste­r biography, The Triumph of Nancy Reagan, rips the lid off her addiction to prescripti­on meds.

Her own brother, Dr. Richard Davis, “did not dismiss the possibilit­y that Nancy had grown addicted to medication,” according to the book.

“She took a pill to fall asleep, and then woke up in the middle of the night to take another,” Reagan’s deputy chief of staff Michael Deaver said in 1999, the book dishes.

Presidenti­al physician

Dr. John Hutton tried to wean Nancy off the sleeping pill Dalmane, according to the book, but she’d “been taking so much and for so long that she had a violent reaction to withdrawal.”

According to a White House aide, Dr. Hutton had “no choice but to put her back on the drug.”

Another White House doctor, Daniel Ruge, became so “nervous and concerned about Nancy’s heavy use of medication he warned the president his wife had “‘a problem,’” author Karen Tumulty writes.

Nancy — who died at age 94 in 2016 — even shared her Dalmane with the president, but the drug nearly knocked him off his feet.

Reagan would take two pills “because he was a pretty goodsized guy,” said the former aide, but the next morning “he was really kind of hungover, kind of groggy and his balance was off.”

After downing the pills before the 1988 Moscow Summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan was “woozy” and stumbled on some steps — a blunder the press didn’t catch.

May 10, 2021 / GLOBE

 ??  ?? Nancy’s own brother, Richard, thought she may have been hooked, a new book claims
Nancy led a “Just Say No” antidrug rally at the White House
in 1985
Ronald Reagan got woozy after downing the pills, a source says
Nancy’s own brother, Richard, thought she may have been hooked, a new book claims Nancy led a “Just Say No” antidrug rally at the White House in 1985 Ronald Reagan got woozy after downing the pills, a source says

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