Lucie Arnaz Says Her 'Greatest Memory' of Dad Desi Was When He Admitted He Was an Alcoholic in AA Meeting

Lucie Arnaz recently sewage candid astir her father's struggles pinch sobriety, saying nan astir proud she ever was of Desi Arnaz was erstwhile he admitted publically he was an alcoholic.

Lucie, 73, is nan girl of Arnaz and Lucille Ball. In an question and reply with CBS Sunday Morning, which aired Sunday, June 15, she said astir really her begetter came to sobriety later successful life.

Saying her dada was not a personification who was very "changeable," Lucie added, "but later on, measurement later on, almost erstwhile it was excessively late, he really made immoderate astonishing advancement connected himself."

"He committed to AA meetings, curen programs," she said, noting, "It was fantastic. My top representation of him to this time was him opinionated up [in a curen center] successful La Jolla. The feline who said, 'I don't aerial my soiled laundry successful beforehand of different people.' .... he sewage up and said, 'My sanction is Desi and I'm an alcoholic.' And that's my proudest moment, that he stood up adjacent to maine and I watched him do that."

She continued: "To return work and effort to lick it. It's a illness and he yet wrapped his caput astir that and I was truthful very proud of him. Unfortunately, it happened astir 3 years excessively late. Because by that time, he figured retired astir a later, that he had lung crab ... and he only lasted a year."

Still, she added, "It doesn't matter erstwhile you get there, arsenic agelong arsenic you get there."

Her begetter sewage location later, she told CBS, because pridefulness sewage successful nan way.

"He didn't moreover show up erstwhile Desi [Jr.] went done recovery," she said of her brother's ain struggles pinch alcoholism. But it was nan 1985 decease of his 2nd wife, Edie Hirsch, that put things successful position for him.

That was when, Lucie said, "he yet he said, 'I can't do this anymore.' And he asked my relative to thief him."

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Desi's struggles are besides written astir successful nan caller book Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television, by biographer Todd S. Purdum.

In nan book, Desi Jr. recounts really he helped his begetter activity treatment, 4 years aft he sought treatment himself, successful 1981 astatine nan Scripps Clinic adjacent San Diego.

In 1985, Desi himself entered an intoxicant rehabilitation programme astatine nan Scripps McDonald Center successful La Jolla, wherever he registered nether nan sanction “Bill Sanchez” to protect his privacy.

“It was really nice,” Desi Jr. said successful nan book, “because immoderate I was going through, it was paying off. I said, ‘I can’t do thing for you, but there’s a spot that can.’ He understood that."

As Desi Jr. explained to nan author, it was successful fame wherever his begetter felt nan astir lonely: “That’s erstwhile he realized nan emptiness — astatine nan crest of his success. He didn’t extremity drinking. He didn’t cognize what nan existent poison was. This is simply a impermanent life."

If you aliases personification you cognize is struggling pinch constituent abuse, please interaction nan SAMHSA helpline astatine 1-800-662-HELP.