Patrick J. Kennedy - A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction

I m never going to remember what actually happened that night in early May of 2006 when I slammed my green Mustang into the police barrier in front of the US Capitol. I retain a faint memory of flashing lights and people in uniforms knocking at my car window. Thats about it. No idea how I got there. No idea how I got home.

But I will never forget what happened the next day. I got up late, walked from my apartment building to Capitol Hill (because I had no idea where my car was), and then sat in my congressional office waiting in terror for the phone to ring.

I was waiting for someone to call and say: You finally did it, you killed somebody. This is it.

When the call didnt come, I drank a couple Red Bulls to try to clear my head and took a meeting with the leaders of the Campaign for Mental Health Reform, which was lobbying on behalf of patient, provider, and clinician groups. They immediately noticed I didnt appear mentally healthy myself: I was having trouble following the conversation and my hands were shaking. We were all saved from further embarrassment when I was called away to the House floor to vote on a lot of amendments for a port safety bill.

As the voting ended, the phone call finally came. I was summoned off the House floor into the cloakroom, where there were booths that allowed private conversations. It was my chief of staff.

Patrick, he said, we have a problem.

Apparently I had half woken up at around two thirty in the morning, several hours after mixing medications to get to sleepAmbien and Phenergan, both recently prescribed, along with all the other asthma and mental health meds I was taking. Convinced I was late for a vote, I threw on a suit and tie, stumbled to my car, and drove, headlights off, several blocks down Third Street until I barely managed the left onto C Street. Then I barreled straight toward the security station for the House of Representatives. I swerved into oncoming traffic, nearly hitting a US Capitol Police vehicle, which somehow dodged me and then made a quick U-turn to chase me. I slowed down but didnt stop until my car slammed into the security barrier.

Luckily, my chief of staff explained, only my car was damaged, because nobody was on the streets or the sidewalks where I was driving in the middle of the night.

After making sure I wasnt hurt, the Capitol Police quietly took me home and moved my car into the congressional parking lot. But word spread and someone from the media had noticed the banged-up car in the lot.

Youve got to get back here, right now, my chief of staff said.

I made a beeline back to my office and barricaded myself in. The next hours were a blur of phone calls of support and tough questions for which there were no easy answers. But the call I remember best came from my dad.

The first thing he said was, I saw a picture of the car, and I dont know why theyre making such a big deal of this. It looked to me like it was only a little fendah bendah.

Very old-school. No How are you doing? Just a little fendah bendah (or, for those not raised in New England, fender bender).

In fact, thats pretty much how he suggested I play it with the press and the public.

I wanted him to understand that I was sick, and that untreated mental illness and addiction was not about little fendah bendahs. It was about multicar pileups where people were injured and killed.

His insistence that this was a fendah bendah was a key to our issues as father and son. I worshipped my dad. He was the North Star by which I navigated my life. My dad loved and supported me as best he could, but he didnt always respect me, and he didnt understand the chronic medical condition I struggled with. He often said that all I needed was a good swift kick in the ass.

Did I say any of this to him? Of course not. I grew up among people who were geniuses at not talking about things. When I was a teenager going for therapy during my parents divorce, I wouldnt tell my psychiatrist the truth because I wasnt sure I could trust him to keep things private. Then one day I walked into a bookstore and browsed the Kennedy section and saw that many of the books included the family secrets I had refused to discuss. But I still wouldnt talk about them.

So my father was stunned when, several hours later, I admitted everything that happened to the press and then very publicly left for an extended rehab at the Mayo Clinic. He was also pretty concerned when I tried to demand jail time in my plea agreement so it wouldnt look like I was getting preferential treatment.

And my dad was really not thrilled when, after returning from rehab, I started being much more public about my private struggles with bipolar disorder and addiction. I promised myself I would have the most transparent recovery and treatment ever, all but donating my brain and its diseases to science while I was still living. I wanted to aggressively tie my personal story to my ongoing legislative fight for mental health parityan effort to outlaw the rampant discrimination in medical insurance coverage for mental illness and addiction treatment. And 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. I did this with my Republican House colleague Jim Ramstad from Minnesota. Before my crash I had known him, although not well, as one of the only members of Congress who was openly in recovery. But after my arrest and hospitalization he was the first one to come visit me at the Mayo Clinic. I asked if he would be my sponsor in recoveryI had never had a real sponsor beforeand he invited me into his network of friends in recovery on Capitol Hill.