As Charles Kennedy's political career ebbs away, the 45-year-old might take some comfort from the unlikely example of George Bush. The US president was a heavy drinker until the age of 40, when after one final birthday binge he gave up liquor completely.
Bush has told the Washington Post that he didn't think he was, clinically, an alcoholic, though his behaviour fitted the pattern of a man addicted to drink: he was fined for drink driving in 1976, when he was 30. (That revelation emerged just a week before he was first elected in 2000, but appeared to do him little harm.)
He has also revealed that, unlike Kennedy, he never received any formal treatment and did not join Alcoholics Anonymous.
His decision was, he said, guided by God and owed a great deal to a course of study with the evangelical preacher Billy Graham. His wife Laura is also credited with supporting him.
There are some - Fidel Castro among them - who have analysed some of Bush's idiosyncrasies and particular behaviour and attributed them to his former alcoholism.
Some suggest he is a "dry drunk", who has not yet addressed the problems that led him to drink. (For more on this line of thinking, see a 2001 article from Salon.)
The fact that Bush was dry by the time he entered politics largely explains why his drink problem did not much matter to voters.
More often - as in Michael Heseltine's case - a weakness of this kind proves fatal to political careers.
