At six o’clock on a May morning in 2006, Patrick Kennedy woke up, leapt from his bed, and went into the bathroom to shower. Glancing in the mirror, he suddenly realized he was wearing a suit—pants, shirt, tie, jacket … even his shoes. What in the world? Feeling groggy and disoriented, he peeled off the clothing and showered. He then dressed again, left his apartment, and went down to the garage. Once there, he saw that his automobile, a green Mustang, was missing. His mind racing, he couldn’t figure out what was going on, but he knew it wasn’t good. As he started walking to the Capitol, it all started coming back to him. He recalled that the night before, he’d taken a couple of Ambien and a few other drugs—he’d figure out which ones later—and then woke up within hours thinking he was late for a vote on the floor. He quickly got dressed, got into his car, and sped to work with his headlights off. He then smashed into a barricade in front of the Capitol building. How was he not hurt? A sympathetic police officer helped him stash his car in the Congressional parking lot and drove him home. Hours later, he woke up in his suit, all of which brought him to this horrible moment of wondering just how long it might be before his misadventure was made public. Worse, what if he didn’t remember all of what had occurred? What if he’d injured someone, or worse? At this point, it felt as if anything was possible.
Once he got to his office at the Capitol, Patrick sat at his desk and braced himself. Looking down at him from their oil portraits were his heroic uncles Jack and Bobby. There were also framed photographs of his father, Ted, all over the office. He stared at a picture of him and Joan at a campaign rally. He could feel himself buckle under the imposing weight of history.
Pulling himself together, Patrick then went into a meeting with Congressional leaders, one having to do with, of all things, mental health. His colleagues could tell that something was off with him, but then again, something was usually a little off with him. The meeting ended when Kennedy was called to the floor to vote on a port safety amendment. It was just one more day of an incredibly busy, stressful week during which he had tackled a dizzying amount of legislation on the House floor, from increased accountability of lobbyists to the cost of gasoline and other fuels to maritime and port security to complicated IRS tax codes and pension plan regulations, all of it demanding a great deal of study and preparation before he was able to vote. It seemed to never end.
After a couple of hours, Patrick’s assistant came rushing over to him. “You need to get back to your office, immediately,” he told him, seeming frantic. “Something big is happening.”
Back at his office, Patrick came to understand that someone from the media had recognized his dented Mustang in the parking lot where it had been stashed. Photographs of the vehicle were already making the rounds in the press. Reporters were asking questions.
Patrick poured himself a Jack Daniel’s and Coke, sat at his desk, and waited for the onslaught. It didn’t take long before his secretary began fielding calls from the media, friends, family, and colleagues. Finally, she buzzed Patrick and told him that the one person he truly didn’t want to hear from in that moment was on the line: the Senator.
“I saw the car in the press,” Ted began, “and I don’t know what the big deal is. It’s just a fender bender.” He didn’t seem to grasp the gravity of the situation.
On one hand, Patrick was more than happy to downplay the accident for his father’s benefit. He also wanted him to know how sick he was, and how dangerously close he’d come to not only hurting himself, but others. However, Ted had always insisted that there was nothing really wrong with Patrick that he couldn’t just get over if he’d put his mind to it. He was tired of hearing about addictions in his family—his ex-wife, his children, his relatives—more Kennedys than he could count seemed to be hooked on one thing or another. “The problem with this family isn’t disease,” Ted always insisted, “it’s lack of willpower. I’ll tell you what you need,” he would tell Patrick. “A swift kick in the ass, that’s what you need. You want to be a better man?” he’d ask. “Fine. Then be one.”
It was ironic, given all his work in mental health care reform, that Ted still didn’t really understand addiction. In some ways, his myopic view was reflected in a mental health equity act he championed and that had been signed into law back in 1998. It was designed to end prejudice against mental illness by making it illegal to treat brain diseases any differently than other diseases. However, the bill only covered mental illnesses considered the most serious, such as paranoid schizophrenia. It ignored more common conditions, such as alcohol addiction and bipolar disorder, both of which plagued his son. In fact, Patrick was in the middle of crafting a new bill that would cover all diseases and make it illegal to discriminate against any mental illness, no matter its root.
On this difficult morning, Patrick was in no mood to engage with his father. Instead, he told him he was tired and would talk to him later. Then, without much deliberation about it, he knew what he had to do: he made plans to check into the Mayo Clinic again—just five months after his last stint—to, once again, deal with his addictions.
For Patrick, this latest misfortune would mark another major defining moment in his troubled life. The time had come to admit the truth—all of it—after many years of either concealing it or letting bits of it slip through his perfected practice of obfuscating.
“I was an alcoholic; I was a drug addict; I had bipolar disorder and anxiety disorder, and I hadn’t been properly admitting or treating them,” he recalled. “And for the first time in my life, at the age of thirty-eight, I just wanted to stop lying about all of this.” Patrick would express all of it in a press conference the next day; he would fess up to his decades-long battle with addiction and his recent stay at the Mayo Clinic and explain that he was going back in for more treatment. He would detail his problems with bipolar disorder, anxiety, and depression, courageously addressing it all and ridding himself of the shame, humiliation, and the deadly need for secrecy. He said he now wanted to not only be a better congressman but, as his father had suggested, a better man. He asked his constituency for the chance to do just that. “I hope that my openness today and in the past, and my acknowledgment that I need help, will give others the courage to get help if they need it. I am blessed to have a loving family who is in my corner every step of the way. And I’d like to call, once again, for passage of mental health parity.”
Ted tried to act supportive; he released a public statement of encouragement, lauding the courage of his youngest child: “I have the rare and special honor of being able to serve with my son in the Congress, and I have enormous respect for the work Patrick has done. The people of the First District of Rhode Island have a tireless champion for the issues they care about, and today I hope they join me in feeling pride and respect for a courageous man who has admitted to a problem and taken bold action to correct it.”
The next couple of months would be a blur. Patrick did his stint at Mayo as planned. He seemed better when he was released in August and joined his family on the Cape, as he had every summer for most of his life.
At the compound, it was as tense as ever between father and son. Now Ted was upset because a reporter from The New York Times had been pestering him to ask about his drinking habits. Apparently, the paper was preparing a piece on Patrick. Ted told the reporter he’d been “well” for the last fifteen years and that he only had an occasional glass of wine with dinner, which, at least according to most family accounts, wasn’t exactly true. He’d definitely cut back thanks to Vicki, but he was still drinking a lot more than just the occasional glass of wine. Some friends had recently been alarmed when, before a meeting, he poured himself a healthy glass of vodka … and then dropped two Alka-Seltzers into it! As they fizzed, he smiled and said something about it being the latest cure for a hangover. “I can’t stop this kind of transparency if that’s what you want for yourself,” Ted bellowed at Patrick. “But do not drag me into it. I am not compelled to discuss my private life with a reporter just so you can build yourself up in the court of public opinion. None of your relatives are.”
That hurt.
“Well, Dad, you could’ve just said ‘no comment,’” Patrick offered. While he didn’t want to poke the so-called Lion of the Senate, what else could he say? In response, Ted glared at him. “People keep secrets for a reason,” he said, “even from those they love. It’s not your place to reveal them.”
Now that Patrick was on the road to recovery, he decided he wanted to share his own story openly, thus his cooperation with that New York Times piece. “I wanted to aggressively tie my personal story to my ongoing legislative fight for mental health parity—an effort to outlaw the rampant discrimination in medical insurance coverage for mental illness and addiction treatment,” he would explain. “Winning the parity fight would be the first step to overcoming all discrimination against people with these diseases, their families, and those who treated them. So I decided to go public exclusively to The New York Times.”
The article on Patrick’s battle for sobriety and good mental health appeared on the Times’s front page on September 19, 2006. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Two days earlier, Pat Kennedy Lawford died after a battle with throat cancer; she was eighty-two. Still reeling from the loss of his sister, Ted now also had Patrick’s story with which to contend. “My God,” he exclaimed to him during a dinner in his late sister’s honor after the wake. “What have you done? What a disaster. When will you ever learn?”
Patrick tried to explain that he was just trying to be honest. “Okay,” Ted said, angrily and loud enough for anyone to hear. “You want to take that dog for a walk? Fine. But if it bites me or one of your other loved ones on the ass … that’s on you. That’s on you.” Patrick then said, “‘Wait! Dad, I want to talk to you,’ to which Ted very loudly said, ‘No!’ as he walked away.”
Vicki went over to Ted and tried to calm him down. He didn’t want to hear it, though. “This is none of your damn business,” he snapped at her. His comment set her off. “Really?” she asked, irate. “None of my damn business? Really, Ted? Really?” While this brief exchange made a few people wonder about the state of Vicki’s marriage to Ted, most recognized it for exactly what it was: spouses shooting off their mouths at each other in the heat of emotion. “Wow,” quipped one of Ethel’s sons, cocktail in hand. “Dinner and a show!”
For the most part, Patrick spent the rest of the evening staying out of the line of Ted’s fire. Finally, though, he’d had enough of hearing him criticize him to anyone who would listen. He walked up to the Senator and, in front of witnesses, let him have it. “Better get used to it, Dad, because this is just the beginning. I want all the Kennedy secrets out, once and for all.” This was unusual; Patrick was usually too cowed by Ted to go after him like that.
“That’s your problem right there,” Ted said, glaring at him.
“I don’t think so, Dad,” Patrick said, meeting his father with his own angry gaze. “I think it might be yours.” He looked at Ted for a beat as if waiting for a reaction. Ted just stared at him. Patrick then patted him on the shoulder and walked away.
For Ted, this was a tough moment, even if Patrick did try to take the edge off it. He stood in place, stunned. Instantly, tears came to his eyes. Patrick had never spoken to him like that before, ever. Sure, maybe he deserved it. But still, from Ted’s pained expression, it must have felt like a dagger in the heart. The next day, Patrick was filled with regret about it. He felt he’d let his emotions get the better of him. “You don’t talk to your father like that,” he told one person who had witnessed it. “Not in my family, anyway. It’s just not right.”