Laura Bush Reveals How George W. Stopped Drinking

May 4, 2010— -- Laura Bush's reportedly famous ultimatum to her husband, "It's either Jim Beam or me," is often cited as the turning point where George W. Bush went from the spoiled and heavy-drinking scion of a prominent political family to the self-made man who would ascend to the presidency.

But, the former first lady said, it never happened.

"I never said the line: It's either Jim Beam or me," Bush revealed in a new memoir, "Spoken From the Heart."

Instead, Bush, 63, came to the decision to quit drinking after a "wild drunken weekend" to celebrate his 40th birthday, the former first lady told Oprah Winfrey today.

"We had the wild drunken weekend and it was no different from any other weekend," Laura Bush said of the trip the couple took with friends to Colorado Springs in 1986.

"George just woke up and he knew he wanted to quit," she said. "And he stopped and he was able to stop. A lot of people can't. A lot of people need help to stop. He just stopped cold turkey."

In the book, she wrote: "I was not going to leave George and I wasn't going to let him leave me with twins. Our marriage was enduring, we loved each other and we were two people who did not have divorce in our DNA. But I was disappointed and I let him know that I thought he could be better man."

The former president, she said, drank frequently as a young man, often consuming beer, bourbon and B&B liquor in one sitting.

"We talked about [his drinking problem] a lot," she told Winfrey. "Drinking was a very acceptable part of our social life in Midland [Texas]. ? He liked to drink beer, bourbon and B&B afterwards."

She said Bush would go for hours-long runs to shake off a hangover.

President Bush never denied his use of alcohol and credited a religious awakening for his quitting. He denied being an alcoholic but admitted to a biographer that he was "drinking too much."

It was revealed the week before the 2000 presidential election that he had been arrested for drunk driving in 1976 near his family home in Kennebunkport, Maine. He paid a fine and his license was suspended. Ten years earlier, at age 20, he was arrested for disorderly conduct but the charges were later dropped.