Donald Trump has long boasted that he has 'never had a drink' and has never smoked, telling audiences from the White House to campaign rallies that his late brother's alcoholism scared him straight. Yet psychologists say Trump may instead embody a different kind of dependency: a behavioural addiction to power, wealth and sexual conquest that has shaped both his politics and his public life.
Trump once again invoked the story of his brother, Frederick Crist Trump Jr., during his presidency. Fred Trump Jr., born in Queens in 1938, rejected the family real estate business that would later define Trump and became an airline pilot instead. He struggled with alcohol dependence for much of his adult life and died from a heart attack at 43, a death his younger brother has repeatedly linked to 'the disease of addiction'. It is the cautionary tale Trump calls on whenever he is pressed about his famously teetotal ways.
