Betty Ford helped pave road to recovery for stars

LOS ANGELES—Long before it became reality show fodder, Betty Ford helped create the original celebrity rehab.

The center that bears her name has a legacy of rehabbing Hollywood’s elite. In the process it became a household name, a punchline, but — above all — a highly respected addiction treatment center.

Since its opening in Rancho Mirage, Calif., in 1982, stars such as Elizabeth Taylor, Johnny Cash and, most recently, Lindsay Lohan have been among the more than 90,000 people who have received treatment at the center.

Taylor met one of her husbands, Larry Fortensky, while in treatment. Kelsey Grammer credited his stay there with saving his life. So, too, did Oscar-winner Marlee Matlin, who paid tribute to the former first lady on social networking site Twitter on Friday evening.

“She & Betty Ford Center helped me beat my addiction & she was an angel to many,” Matlin wrote.

“One Day at a Time” actress Mackenzie Phillips, another Betty Ford alumna, wrote on the site, “RIP Betty Ford. A pioneer in treatment of addicts. We owe Mrs. Ford our gratitude and prayers. And love. She was one classy woman.”

Taylor’s first stay at the center came in 1983 and provided another high-profile face to those struggling with addiction.

Cash soon became a patient after he broke five ribs and relapsed into abuse of painkillers. “I ended up in the Betty Ford Center for 43 days,” Cash told The Associated Press in 1986. “I’ve had no drugs since then. It has been the best three years of my life, the most productive and the happiest.”

One of Ford’s defining characteristics was her candor, and that included confronting her own addiction head-on. She revealed a longtime addiction to painkillers and alcohol 15 months after leaving the White House, and regularly welcomed new groups of patients to rehab with a speech that started, “Hello, my name’s Betty Ford, and I’m an alcoholic and drug addict.”

“People who get well often say, ‘You saved my life,’ and ‘You’ve turned my life around,'” Ford once said. “They don’t realize we merely provided the means for them to do it themselves, and that’s all.”