I'll never forget the day that I was told I would have to have a mastectomy. My reaction to the words was total denial.

Any woman should have the right to a safe and legal abortion.

And I have always told the patients when I talk to them. When they come around and say, "What will you have to drink? Oh that's right you don't drink." Just speak up and say, 'Of course I drink. But I just don't drink alcohol.'

My makeup wasn't smeared, I wasn't disheveled, I behaved politely, and I never finished off a bottle, so how could I be alcoholic?

But my activities have been pretty much focused in the last almost 30 years on the recovery, of my own recovery, the understanding for my family of my recovery.

When other women have this same operation, it doesn't make any headlines. But the fact that I was the wife of the President put it in headlines and brought before the public this particular experience I was going through. It made a lot of women realize that it could happen to them. I'm sure I've saved at least one person maybe more.

Alcohol may pick you up a little bit, but it lets you down in a hurry.