Kitty Dukakis Tells Rubbing Alcohol Error

BOSTON —  Kitty Dukakis says in her upcoming autobiography that the night she drank rubbing alcohol, she didn’t realize it was poisonous and wasn’t attempting suicide, a newspaper reported.

Dukakis, the wife of former Democratic presidential nominee and Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, chronicles her bouts with alcohol and diet pill addiction in “Now You Know,” to be released in August.

According to the Boston Sunday Herald, Dukakis reveals in the book that she had been drinking and unable to sleep on the night of Nov. 7, 1989, and mistakenly drank rubbing alcohol--an incident that made headlines. But she said she wasn’t attempting suicide, the newspaper reported.

It said it had gathered details about the closely guarded book, published by Simon & Schuster, from relatives and friends of the Dukakis family.

The rubbing alcohol episode was another in a string of disappointments for Dukakis that started long before her husband’s defeat in the 1988 presidential election.

In the book, she recalls starting to take diet pills at age 19, a year after she was shocked to discover that her mother, Jane Goldberg Dickson, had been adopted and was illegitimate, the newspaper said.