Cindy McCain's Battle Back From Drug Addiction And Charity Theft

Most voters only know that John McCain's second wife is a successful business woman who is known for her love of charity work as much as her love for racing cars. McCain is the chair for one of the largest Anheuser-Busch beer distributors in the nation and the McCains own at least eight homes.

Fewer Americans know that following some back surgery in 1989, Cindy McCain became involved in a cycle of addiction to pain killer prescription drugs such as Percocet and Vicodin. According to Wikipedia's biography of McCain she was taking up to 20 pills a day. And according another websource, Snopes.com, McCain, "used other people's names for prescriptions and stole drugs from the Voluntary Medical Team, a mobile surgical unit she begun in 1988 to provide emergency medical services around the world".

By 1993, the DEA became involved in the Cindy McCain theft of prescription drugs from the charity she founded. McCain was able to work out a plea bargain deal in which she avoided prosecution by paying a fine, submitting to drug testing, doing community service work in a soup kitchen. McCain also joined a Narcotics Anonymous group. But the bad publicity forced McCain to shut down the charity she operated, but abused as a source of drugs for her prescription drug addiction habit.

John McCain's first wife, Carol had been a long-suffering wife who had to wait five long years for the return of her husband from the Hanoi Hilton as a prisoner of war. But John McCain's history of infidelity with Cindy Lou Hensley as well as a serious automobile accident by Carol all helped to end the marriage by 1980 in divorce.


Unfortunately the McCain family portrait is hardly any true Ozzy and Harriet image. It is spotted by incidents of adultery, drug addiction and theft. It's not exactly any wholesome family values image, although Cindy McCain has not had any new known drug problems since her 1993 legal troubles and continues to do charity work in the present. She even managed a decent recovery from a 2004 stroke she suffered. However compared to the Obama family with few problems, the McCain household has certainly been the more rocky of the two by far.