See: Patrick Kennedy reveals family’s struggles with alcohol in new book
I flipped to the middle:
"Patrick Kennedy defends book about family’s problems" by Patricia Wen Globe Staff October 04, 2015
Patrick Kennedy’s older brother, Ted Kennedy Jr., 54, said in a statement the book paints an “inaccurate and unfair portrayal of our family,’’ and their father’s drinking problem.
In a Sunday night interview on “60 Minutes,” Patrick Kennedy explained that writing the book had left him “outside the family line.”
Attempts to reach Ted Kennedy Jr., Joan Kennedy, and Vicki Kennedy were unsuccessful.
Related: Joan Kennedy denies working with son on his new book
***********************
In the book, he wrote about his decision not to attend his father’s 60th birthday party if he didn’t stop drinking. He also described an emotional day when he and his siblings staged an “intervention” with their father, hoping to shake him into seeing the depth of his alcohol addiction. He said it was a tearful occasion, but it ended up backfiring when his father became defensive and abruptly left the room.
Patrick Kennedy acknowledged that his father endured profound losses, including the deaths of his brothers, President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy, and he said he thinks that his father had an undiagnosed case of post-traumatic stress disorder from those assassinations.
“I saw my father live in silent desperation,” Patrick Kennedy told “60 Minutes.’’
When he was growing up, he said, no one spoke about mental illness or addiction. He broke the conspiracy of silence that existed within the Kennedy family by revealing his own addiction, as well as the struggles of his mother and father.
“I was hostage to the family code,” Kennedy said on “60 Minutes.” “Anything you say, it’s disloyal. It’s against the family code.”
Patrick Kennedy is proud about being sober for more than four and a half years, more than doubling his previous longest stretch of sobriety. That began in 2006 after he was on probation and went through treatment following his infamous 2006 car accident at the US Capitol when he drove into a barricade and was observed deeply intoxicated by authorities.
He soon admitted to being addicted to prescription pills....
And now he is addicted to heroin, right?
--more--"
Also see:
Patrick Kennedy breaks the silence
Kennedy’s book is Step 4 on path to recovery, redemption
