A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction

by Patrick J. Kennedy

  But from a political standpoint, it was easier to admit to depression. People were less upset by it.

  I didn’t understand any of this at the time. I was not aware back then what I was doing—mental illnesses, of course, can affect perception, cognition, the things the brain does easily and efficiently when it is working properly.

  In public life, once you say something out loud, you can’t take it back. But you can use it to your political advantage—and as a way of deflecting what you didn’t say. So, for the next couple years, I never went beyond the handful of facts I revealed that day in Woonsocket to anyone. That was true even among my closest staff members, who were shocked by what I did that day, and probably further shocked when I didn’t say anything more about it to any of them.

  They knew that, from then on, in any conversation about mental illness, I would repeat only the two facts I had publicly shared: that I had been treated for depression with medication and therapy, and I had always parked far from my doctor’s office to avoid my car being noticed in the lot of a psychiatrist. But they also suspected there was a lot more going on that I wouldn’t talk about.

  —

  LESS THAN A MONTH AFTER I “came out,” I was in Los Angeles for eleven hours for a quick fund-raiser, after which I broke my own rule about drinking in public and really regretted it.

  It was the Sunday of the Oscars. I had begun the day early doing events in Delaware and Maryland and then boarded a plane in Philly with my staff to get to LA by one P.M., to do an event there, and then fly immediately back to Boston on the 11:59 red-eye. After the LA fund-raiser, my staff stayed in California and I went to Elton John’s Oscar party to raise money for AIDS treatment and research. I wasn’t planning to stay long, but I was seated next to one of my musical heroes from youth, Debbie Harry from Blondie. And, as I had a couple drinks, I just had to tell her and Elton John my dad’s “The Tide Is High” story, one of his very favorites from his repertoire about my formative years.

  When I was twelve or thirteen, my parents used to chaperone little parties for my friends in our basement, little dances—although we obviously didn’t encourage them to come down and check on us. My dad always told the story of opening the door to the basement, looking downstairs, and seeing that all the lights were turned off and he couldn’t seem to find any of the kids, but a record kept playing over and over and over on the turntable. And that record was “The Tide Is High” by Blondie.

  Because I just had to tell Debbie the album version of this story, and have another drink, I ended up leaving late for the airport and was in a rush when I got to LAX.

  I was also nervous because I had to give a big controversial speech the morning after I flew back, as Providence struggled with the aftermath of a racially explosive incident. An off-duty African-American police sergeant was shot to death while trying to break up a fight at a diner, by two white police officers who mistook him for one of the armed suspects (even though he had been in the same academy class with one of the officers).

  As if that wasn’t horrible and combustible enough, the victim, Sergeant Cornel Young Jr., was well-known in the department. He was the oldest child of Major Cornel Young Sr., who had been the first African-American elevated to detective in the Providence police department—over the objection of some in the Fraternal Order of Police who felt he was being promoted prematurely because of race—and was now the highest-ranking African-American on the force. The shooting had taken place over two months before, but it was still unclear what would happen to the police officers and who should handle the investigation. Just before heading to LA, I had met with Young’s mother and members of the local clergy, and told them I would report back to the community after speaking to national leaders interested in the situation, including the Congressional Black Caucus and the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.

  With all this on my mind, I found a cab outside the Oscar party, arrived at LAX jumpy and still pretty drunk. And when I tried to hurry with my bag through the X-ray, they insisted it was too big to go through the machine and I needed to check it. I tried to explain that if I did that I would miss my flight and I had to be back in Rhode Island for congressional business—and I’m sure, in retrospect, I was being pretty obnoxious about all this. But the guard, a fifty-eight-year-old woman, said, “I don’t care”—and why should she? She worked at LAX and I’m sure a lot of people tried to pull that “don’t you know who I am” thing with her. And I just lost it. I tried flashing my congressional ID; I tried to stuff my bag through the X-ray and keep walking through, hoping that if it went through I could just pick it up and not argue with her and proceed to the gate.

  This was before 9/11, so security wasn’t exactly what it is today. But when I tried to force my way through the screening, she went to body-block me, and we both bounced into each other and almost fell over. Then I tried to push her away. Even though I was drunk and not in my right mind, there is no excuse for any of this behavior.

  Suddenly I had a moment of clarity that this was going to be a disaster, that it would be on all the security cameras. This panicky feeling sobered me up for a second and I pulled out the bag, resigned myself to missing the flight, ran over to the check-in counter to check the bag, came back, and tried to apologize profusely to her.

  I even gave her my card, which was probably an intoxicated mistake. But, at the time, I was certain I had made the situation right. I ran to make the flight—which I did make with minutes to spare—and as I sat down on the plane, I was convinced that I had beaten it, that I had talked my way out of it.

  I got home, showered, and changed clothes and then immediately went to the Congdon Street Baptist Church in Providence, where the community was awaiting word about whether the Department of Justice would get involved in the shooting investigation and what Congressman John Lewis and others in the Black Caucus had advised. Politically, this was a situation where I had no choice but to either really anger the police union or really anger my African-American constituents. There was no middle ground. I followed my heart and focused on the needs of the Young family, and the concerns in the black community that there was racism involved in this shooting and there might need to be a special prosecutor.

  While I would make that same choice again today, I probably could have tempered my remarks at the church, where I did get a little carried away. What I said from that pulpit was extremely well received in the black community and by the press. But I deliberately called out the police and incensed them by referring to Sergeant Young as having been “gunned down,” and generally just saying things that played well in the church.

  That day, I lost the police union’s endorsement in about ten seconds—not just locally but nationally.

  —

  AS FOR THE LAX INCIDENT, I completely forgot about it until more than a week later, when I heard the National Enquirer was doing a story about it. The guard was reportedly paid by the Enquirer to tell her story, after which she filed a report with the LAPD.

  The whole incident did not slow me down—although perhaps it should have. And we returned to trying to win back the House—and doing everything we could to help with the efforts to win the Senate and elect another Democratic President.

  I wanted Al Gore to win for reasons beyond just holding the White House for the party. I was convinced that he and Tipper had a uniquely strong and deep commitment to mental healthcare reform and brain disease research. Perhaps more important, they saw mental health as a stand-alone mission and not just part of more global healthcare reform. In May of 2000, Al and Tipper Gore doubled down on mental health, announcing an even more ambitious plan to spend $2.5 billion over ten years to make sure Americans had complete mental health parity. Their proposal was especially focused on parity for children’s care and making sure that those disabled by mental illness had the same protections as everyone else with a disability.

  While I don’t want to o
versell what the Gores might have been able to accomplish, I still imagine what might have happened if a couple this committed to mental health, addiction, and neuroscience had made it to the Oval Office.

  In June, there was a one-year anniversary celebration of the White House Conference on Mental Health, which Tipper used to announce the launch of the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign. She sent me a very kind note that day, thanking me for my “deep commitment to mental health issues.” It reminded me that unlike the year before at the conference, when I was mostly seen as just another interested Congressman, I was now being invited into the small group of Washington insiders who were openly and passionately interested in the politics of mental health.

  I remember this as a time that seemed full of incredible promise for mental health. And, for me, this period was infused by the competing dramas of my two full-time jobs—as Congressman and DCCC chair—and my recent experience “coming out” with my depression, combined with my overwhelming obfuscation of what was really going on with me medically.

  Most people come out with their mental illness or addiction when they are in recovery, when they are relatively well. It would have been reasonable for people close to me to assume that I wouldn’t have come out if that weren’t true. But, of course, it wasn’t.

  In a way, you could say that I came out part of the way to get everyone off my back—enough that if, say, I got into a scuffle with an airport security guard, that might be blamed on my depression without anyone’s asking if I had been drunk. Gaming the system this way also could minimize the surprise the next time I got in trouble—which happened in July at Cape Cod.

  One of the tricks I used to keep myself from drinking during my time with the DCCC was to fantasize about the few times when I wouldn’t have to work, when it might be safe to let loose. The biggest of these opportunities was the week at the end of July when the Republicans had their national convention in Philadelphia—that’s when I could take time off. I rented a forty-two-foot sailboat and planned to go sailing around Cape Cod.

  I was really looking forward to getting away because I was, in the weeks prior to the break, under the microscope even more than usual. A political science professor at Brown, Darrell West, had given himself the thankless job of writing a completely unauthorized biography of me for an educational press. Patrick Kennedy: The Rise to Power featured a cover of me looking about twelve years old being interviewed in front of my first congressional campaign office. The experience of having a book written about me at such an absurdly young age—I was just about to turn thirty-three—was pretty strange. And, luckily, there was nothing about me in the book that was terribly controversial, although it did include a number of very funny quotes, some of the best from my mom. (When asked about the difference between campaigning for me and for my dad, she reportedly shot back, “Patrick says thank you.”)

  The day before I left, we held a big “Team 2000” clambake at our family house in Hyannis Port for about 450 big Democratic donors, featuring President Clinton. It was a nice send-off for my vacation.

  The sailing trip didn’t start well—the boat out of Mystic, Connecticut, was not ready when I arrived with my date, so we had to wait overnight before we could sail. That first day we got as far as Fisher’s Island, where we anchored in a cove and then rowed a little dinghy in to have dinner at the Pequot Inn. I had way too much to drink—it was the first night I was actually free to drink in public in over eighteen months—and I met up with some friends there, which led to a big argument with my date. We were still arguing when we left a little after eleven P.M. and she decided to take the dinghy out to the boat herself. I stayed at the inn and continued to drink, figuring someone else would give me a ride out to the boat or I could just swim.

  When I swam back to the boat several hours later, the dinghy was there and she wasn’t. It was two in the morning and I was scared to death, imagining she had fallen off the boat. I didn’t really know what to do; my head was spinning because every reason I could think of why she wasn’t there was beyond comprehension.

  After what seemed like an interminable amount of time, suddenly floodlights illuminated my boat and a big Coast Guard cutter was approaching, calling out to me on its PA system, “Congressman Kennedy, are you all right?”

  When the Coast Guard boarded the boat, they proceeded to tell this wild story about how my date hadn’t been able to turn on the lights when she got back to the boat, so she got worried and called an ex-boyfriend in Florida for help, and then he called the Coast Guard, suggesting she was in some kind of danger. They had actually sent the station’s forty-one-foot rescue boat from the New London Coast Guard station, a half hour away, to come pick her up, and found her waiting on the deck with her bag packed. Later, back at New London, while waiting for a ride back to Boston, she suggested to the Coast Guard that there was some concern for my safety—I might be swimming drunk back to the boat. So at two thirty in the morning, the rescue boat was sent back. When they saw I was fine, they turned around and went back to New London.

  And so ended the first day of my relaxing vacation.

  Some friends joined me on the boat the next day, and I continued my vacation. There were some problems with the boat: it leaked, the engine had some issues, and it needed to be towed twice. Plus, I’m sure my friends and I partying probably didn’t make the situation any better. At the end of the week we left the boat—which we had not bothered to tidy up—anchored near Martha’s Vineyard.

  The boat rental company was mad at me. I was mad at them. I’m sure they could have rented me a better boat, and I’m sure I could have taken better care of the boat if I had been taking better care of myself.

  I was just glad the whole incident was being kept quiet. My chief of staff, Tony Marcella, was taking care of it. Tony had developed into an extremely resourceful guy who was very adept at filling in the missing pieces of my life so that I could function. He often had to stand in for me, speak for me, and in this case he could do so with firsthand information about the situation—he had been one of the friends who joined me on that boat for a week after my date left.

  Tony had gotten me out of many jams worse than this one before. I assumed he would figure out how to make it go away.

  —

  I HAD BEEN GOING to the Democratic National Convention for as long as I could remember. But this was the first time I ever went as a Democratic leader myself and not just Ted Kennedy’s kid. The convention was being held in Los Angeles for the first time since my Uncle Jack was nominated there in 1960, so it was an especially good year to double down on the party connection with my family. We were all trying to do whatever it took to get Al Gore elected and hold the White House; I had been dragging President Clinton to so many events over the summer that he said, only half-jokingly, that he was campaigning harder that year than he ever had for his own presidency (of course, he was also campaigning for Hillary for Senate).

  This year, my cousin Caroline was going to introduce my dad, as her brother had previously, during his prime-time address. And, for the first time, I was invited to give a speech—on opening day before the live network coverage began, but still a great opportunity. I had it all prepared—everything has to be on the teleprompter at the convention—but I decided while driving there in the van to rewrite it, so I could try to get some kind of call-and-response going at the end.

  As we were pulling into the convention center, I still had the typescript balanced on my thigh, scribbling and crossing things out. The security team radioed ahead that I was in the building, referring to me by my party call sign, which was “Blue Jay”—because Leader Gephardt was “Cardinal,” since he was from St. Louis.

  I got onto the stage, and as I had hoped, the call-and-response got the attention of enough people that you could hear “With the Democrats, we can and we will” above the constant murmur of the crowd. When the day was over, security took the leadership back t
o the hotel, and you could hear them on the radio saying, “Taking Cardinal back to the nest but Blue Jay wants to go out and fly some more.” They were right about that.

  —

  ONLY WEEKS AFTER THE CONVENTION, my mom suffered a major relapse. She had up-and-down periods over the previous eight years. Like many of us struggling with addictions, just when things begin to look promising, we sometimes sabotage ourselves. (Although I do sometimes wonder about this blaming language we use for “relapses” and “sabotage.” If these are chronic illnesses, why not blame the illness for recurring and act less surprised when it does?) One of her upswings had been highlighted recently—perhaps a little too optimistically—in a big Boston Globe Magazine story about her. So it was particularly heartbreaking when, on a Sunday night in September, police got a call from a motorist following her blue Buick, which was reportedly swerving on the highway in Marstons Mills, not far from Hyannis. When police arrived, she would only give her first name, refused to show them her driver’s license, and admitted having had wine.

  While the reasons for any relapse are very complicated and very personal—I wouldn’t pretend to understand my mom’s any more than she would mine—I’m sure it didn’t help that NBC was making a four-part miniseries called Jackie, Ethel, Joan: The Women of Camelot, which was based on a particularly salacious book and was known to feature a dramatization of my parents’ marriage and divorce.

  We got her back into treatment immediately and tried to push her court date back as far as we could—so it actually got scheduled for the morning of Election Day.

  To add to the pressure, several days before the election, the charter boat company I was still arguing with about damages decided to “publicly threaten” to sue me.

  After two years of raising a record $100 million to try to win the House, this was not how I had envisioned spending November 7, 2000—walking with my mom to the polls as reporters asked her to comment on her drunk-driving sentence and me to comment on my boating skills.