Throw the Rope, Don't Get In the Water!

An interview with Christopher Kennedy Lawford

by Barbara Nicholson-Brown

Recovery month has finally arrived and the Art of Recovery Expo is near! As a preview to the event we bring you our exclusive interview with this year’s keynote speaker, Christopher Kennedy Lawford. Don’t miss this dynamic speaker and advocate for recovery. (www.artofrecoveryexpo.com)

Lawford, the first-born child of President John F. Kennedy’s sister, Patricia, and famous Rat Pack actor, Peter Lawford grew up on both coasts and experienced the high life of Hollywood and the powerful world of politics....from a front row seat. He spent his early teen years experimenting with drugs and getting into all kinds of trouble, culminating in an addiction to heroin. Sober for more than 22 years, Lawford shared his personal story in his memoir Symptoms of Withdrawal with others in hopes of making a difference. He is also the author of Moments of Clarity and Healing Hepatitis C with Diane Slyvestre.

Do you have a specific message to our younger generation who are faced with the challenges and curiosity of "trying" alcohol or drugs?

CKL: Young people have to understand what they perceive in a moment of adolescent bliss or experimentation may have serious consequences for them down the road. If you said to them at 30, when you were 13, do you wish you would have done that? They may say no to using drugs and alcohol. They need to realize one in ten will end up with a serious addiction problem. If they have it in their family their odds of really having problems with this go up dramatically. We know this from the science. The other thing kids need to understand is that their brains are not fully developed. Even if they binge drink or use drugs on occasion, but don’t become an alcoholic or addict, there will still be an impact on their brain chemistry and there will be some damage from that kind behavior. It’s not that they aren’t smart kids or productive, creative people, but there are consequences to drug and alcohol behavior, like the kind I engaged in. The consequences can sometimes be immediate and they can be long.

With most of the kids I know, if you give them good information they usually make good decisions. My kids have the genetics and have experimented to a degree. I don’t think any of them thus far have manifested any serious problems. That is because of the information they have gotten from me and their mother firsthand, and the openness of our dialogue with them. Those are significant things.

Kids are capable of understanding and I believe they should be told the truth.

Since the high profile tragedy of Michael Jackson and the media frenzy surrounding it, do you think this has changed the public perception of addiction and its consequences?

CKL: Not at all! These things happen. Millions of people die of this disease just like Michael Jackson did. It gets played in media, people pay attention and then it goes away. This issue has been around for a long time. Elvis and John Belushi died from this. The media doesn’t change anything.

This is a fundamental issue that is determined person to person—within families, within friendships and with society at a grassroots level. People are going to get in trouble with drugs and alcohol, they always have, and they will continue to get in trouble. Ten percent of the population has the genetic predisposition to become an alcoholic or a drug addict. This is going to continue.

The answer to this is not notoriety, it’s not exposure. The answer is people talking honestly with one another about what really is going on. That is what is going to change the landscape, and it’s already happening. We have come a long way since I began my journey in 1969. We need to dialogue around these issues regardless of the high profile person who dies of this disease.

Let’s talk about the 800-pound gorilla in the living room. What advice can you give families who are facing this situation with their loved ones?

CKL: The biggest thing about drug and alcohol is—it’s a family disease. If one person has an addiction, then the whole family is sick. That is one of the most difficult things for people to get. The "last person" to get somebody sober or to help somebody is a family member. What I often say to families and people I care about is, "throw the rope, don’t get in the water."

Go to treatment yourself; go to Alanon or programs that will take care of you. Some of the great things happening today in treatment is we don’t just treat the alcoholic—we treat the whole family. Oftentimes an addict or alcoholic will go off to treatment and come back to the same family dynamic and systems that they were in place before, and they will start using again. So the message always has to be... the addict is not the only problem. It has been my experience, if you’re the one helping you’re the last one to get sober.

What do you think is necessary for the conversation to begin?

CKL: These are really difficult things for people to approach when someone is this sick. We pretend it’s not there, we go into denial and we do things to protect ourselves. These are fundamental issues and one of the reasons this is so difficult. It is not because of the addict or alcoholic, it’s the underlying causes and conditions, perceptions and attitudes that go on in families where addictions run rampant. Everyone has stuff to work on and that’s why it is difficult to confront it. I think it’s always a good idea to get someone involved in your family dynamic that is non partisan, objective and a professional. It helps to do some kind of intervention to get the ball going. It’s awfully difficult for families to take this on themselves. Get someone smart who knows the business to come in and walk you through you it.

Have you noticed any changes in the last five years in regards to the stigma of addiction?

CKL: Yes to some degree. My cousin Patrick Kennedy (D.R.I.) and Jim Ramstad (D.MN.) helped pass the Parity bill. He said we are going to get this—complete parity on all levels of mental health and addiction. That’s what we need. As a society, as soon as we start doing these kinds of things on this level we take this out of the moral equation—which is there’s something wrong with the alcoholic or the addict—into a place of disease—which is what this is. This is a mental illness. People who suffer from addiction and alcoholism are not at fault, they are not wrong, they are not bad people. They are sick people who need treatment. Just like a diabetic or someone with chronic hypertension who needs a treatment plan, so do alcoholics and addicts. Patrick recently went back to treatment for his mental health. Stigma is all about blame and a misunderstanding of what this is, the fear of not being able to get a handle on it. As a society we’re getting there. I see steady progress, just as cancer had a stigma 20 years ago and really none today, we will see this for addiction in my lifetime.

What inspired you to write these books on recovery? Symptoms of Withdrawal, Moments of Clarity and Healing Hepatitis C?

CKL: It wasn’t what I really wanted to do. At that time I was involved in a novel, but the overwhelming need for a book of this kind was there. I had no idea how many people in this country were looking for a message of hope. I had no idea there were 26 million people with a substance abuse disorder and less than 10 percent were getting treatment, even though I had been an addict for 15 years and sober for 17. The reason I wrote these books is because I became aware of how prevalent this illness is and how little attention it was getting.

The Hepatitis C book was clearly a book written because Hep C affects a huge proportion of the people I care about. People who have had histories of drug and alcohol abuse. This is a disease that gets very little attention in the public policy world. The Center for Disease Control gets very little money for hepatitis C. It’s a silent epidemic and another issue people would rather not discuss. Many of the people that suffer from it have no political capital. They are usually indigent, under served folks who just die of liver failure. They don’t get liver transplants. These are the reasons I did these books. I hope they are helpful. There are a couple other recovery books I want to do, one involving the family and kids, and something on the humorous side of recovery. I’m always looking for new and exciting opportunities. I am moving on to other things but will always have a hand in recovery because there is such a need for it. For more information visit www.christopherkennedylawford.com