Is America prepared to elect a recovering addict as president? How about someone who wants to hold 12-step recovery meetings at the White House?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hopes to be that president, the former heroin user who says he long ago gave up his dependence on “drugs, sex, alcohol or extreme behavior” to heal a wounded psyche. Thanks in large part to more than 40 years of 12-step meetings, Kennedy says, “I don't have a big void that I'm trying to fill with things outside of myself.”
The independent presidential candidate has said in recent days that he wants to use his own 14-year heroin addiction and more than four decades of recovery to help bring a new level of attention to the country's addiction crisis.
Kennedy recently released a documentary, “Recovering America,” in which he scours the country for programs that show the most promise in helping the nearly one in seven people who report having a substance use disorder.
“Today, twice as many Americans die from addiction each year as during the entire Vietnam War,” Kennedy has said. Nearly 110,000 died in the United States last year from overdoses, not double the 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam. “And while there have been incredible innovations in recovery programs, as a nation we have failed to address the staggering magnitude of the crisis.”
Since almost its founding, the United States has had presidents who drank excessively and at least a handful who allegedly used drugs, mostly before they reached the White House. But none of the country's CEOs acknowledged abusing drugs or recovering from addiction.
The former environmental lawyer is not yet eligible for election in many states. And he is fighting a battle, so far lost, to win a spot on stage for the nationally televised debates featuring former President Trump and President Biden.
Kennedy, 70, has spoken about his addictive personality many times over the years. According to him, his recovery taught him humility and opened his heart towards God. But the redemption stories were preceded by years of darker media accounts of his reckless behavior: his serial adultery during his second marriage and claims that he helped drive his younger brother David into what became a fatal addiction. to the heroine.
The candidate says his struggles have made him more empathetic and launched him into a life of service.
“My job as president of the United States will be to remind Americans that we are all part of one community,” he said during a panel discussion after the documentary's premiere in Albuquerque on June 15. “We have to go back and figure out how we include everyone and how we amplify and multiply opportunities for mutual service.”
Kennedy said his heroin addiction began at age 15, shortly after his father was murdered the night he claimed victory in the California primary while campaigning for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination.
Expelled from two boarding schools, the young Kennedy made it through Harvard and the University of Virginia Law School, despite multiple relapses. The cycle finally ended, Kennedy tells it, after he overdosed on a flight to South Dakota and was arrested for heroin possession. He was 29 years old.
“I feel like I'm a one-dimensional human being. It was like a collection of appetites that needed to be fed all the time and that becomes a full-time job,” Kennedy told YouTube host Sage Steele.
After a rehab stay in New Jersey, Kennedy said 12-step meetings became key to his recovery. In one of the first sessions he asked a veteran how long he would have to attend.
“He said, 'Keep coming until you like it,'” Kennedy recalled in an interview. “And I've been going for 40 years and I still don't like it. But I go because the rest of my life works when I go.”
“I am wary of using any substance or behavior that attempts to fix the discomfort, emptiness, and restlessness inside me with something outside,” he said. “And that's really what the addictive mind is constantly seeking.”
He said he tries to attend nine meetings a week when he's home: seven morning sessions in Pacific Palisades and meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Mandeville Canyon home he shares with his wife, actress Cheryl Hines.
While campaigning, Kennedy said, he made it clear to his security team that they needed to make time each day for an AA meeting and working out at the gym. Just hours before the premiere of his recovery documentary, he participated in an AA meeting at Monte Vista Christian Church in Albuquerque.
“As long as they don't tell me at the places, I can go almost anywhere,” Kennedy said. “The problem is, when you get advertised, you have to vet people and do all that.”
He said he would “absolutely” hold AA meetings at the White House if elected. And he might even try to sneak out from time to time to attend sessions in the community.
But he said his attendance at AA is not intended to score political points. “The moment you do it out of material interest, everything will turn against you,” she said.
This regular attendance at AA is not unusual for people who have recently entered recovery. A maxim of 12-step programs is “90 meetings in 90 days.” Experts said it's unusual for someone in recovery to religiously attend sessions, but it likely indicates Kennedy considers himself a mentor to younger addicts.
Kennedy described his recovery as part of a “spiritual awakening,” in which he forced himself to believe in God, a faith that was later fulfilled by finding “synchronicity,” a confluence of significant events in the universe. He learned about the concept after reading Carl Jung, one of the fathers of psychotherapy.
“With a spiritual awakening, you have to renew it every day by helping someone else,” Kennedy said. “And meetings are an organized setting that gives everyone present the opportunity to help someone else. … That's why people keep going long after their compulsion to drink or use drugs has passed.”
He said he would take several steps to improve drug and alcohol treatment in the United States. One of them would be to try to increase Medicaid funding for rehabilitation programs. He said that would be cheaper than funding aftercare for chronic illnesses or in emergency rooms.
“Recovering America” featured several successful nonprofits, including Simple Mission Farms, a Texas rehabilitation program where former addicts participate in “therapeutic farming and animal-assisted therapy,” according to the nonprofit’s website. .
As the centerpiece of his anti-addiction program, Kennedy said he would open hundreds of “healing farms”: places “where American children can reconnect with the American soil, where they can learn the discipline of hard work and rebuild their self-esteem. “
He said these centers would be built with government support but would have substantial freedom to find their own best practices. “I don't want to engage in micromanagement,” she said, “because the government never does anything right.”
He said he would fund the farms by imposing a federal sales tax on legal marijuana, which he estimated would generate $8 billion a year.
“There is hope for our nation to heal the scourge of addiction,” he concludes in the documentary. “We just have to make it a real priority and when I'm in the White House, we'll do it.”
