Please understand something here . . . I'm not trying to diminish the hardship that you and your family faced when dealing with this problem. In fact, one of the most destructive aspects of alcoholism is that it is just that -- DESTRUCTIVE, and friends and family members have to watch as a person engages in ongoing behavior that has such terrible consequences.
Goerge W. Bush stopped drinking years ago when his wife threatened to take their two daughters and leave him if he didn't stop. No medical treatment was needed at the time, and from what I can see there is no ongoing medical treatment at all. He just made a personal decision that some things in his life were far more important than getting drunk.
Do you have a source for that? He just made a personal decision that some things in his life were far more important than getting drunk.
This part of it I have heard, but I don't believe the part about Laura threatening to leave. I think that she likely wanted him to quit, but nothing I have read leads me to believe that his drinking was ever to the stage that she was leaving if he didn't quit.
My personal experience If You Suspect You Might Have A Drinking Problem (An Open Letter) is that you must quit for yourself, and that you cannot do it for others. Of course a fear of loss of something important could be a trigger to make one want to quit, but that realization can be arrived at without actual spoken threats.
He represents the minority of the cases.