01:08 AM EDT on Saturday, May 6, 2006

BY JOHN E. MULLIGAN
Journal Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy has been a pain-pill abuser and a binge drinker for much of his adult life, he said yesterday as he sought treatment for addiction on the heels of a predawn car crash Thursday that he cannot recollect.

"I've got to do total abstinence, period," Kennedy, 38, said in an interview, referring to drugs and alcohol. "From now on, obviously, I'm a very public face with addiction and alcoholism written on my head."

AP photo

Rep. Patrick Kennedy speaks during a news conference May 5 in Washington. Kennedy said he was entering treatment for addiction to prescription pain medication.

The six-term Rhode Island Democrat spoke at length about his addiction and his manic-depressive illness after telling a news conference yesterday that -- for the second time in five months -- he was flying to Minnesota for a stay at the Mayo Clinic's rehabilitation center.

Kennedy made the dramatic announcement at the House Radio and Television Gallery just after 3 p.m. -- roughly 36 hours after he crashed his speeding Mustang convertible into a security barrier, leading police at the scene to report that he may have been drinking.

Kennedy has denied drinking any alcohol Wednesday but acknowledged being on several medications, including the sleep-inducing drug Ambien.

The congressman said he has felt a responsibility during his public career "to speak honestly and openly about my challenges with addiction and depression." But he took no questions yesterday from the congressional press corps, leaving the Capitol quickly after he read his statement in a loud voice.

During his drive from the Capitol to Washington Reagan National Airport, Kennedy granted an interview to The Journal that was marked by the same struggle with denial and candor.

The U.S. Capitol Police cited Kennedy Thursday for "unreasonable speed" and other infractions but did not test him for alcohol impairment before driving him from the accident scene near the Capitol to his home a few blocks away.

Kennedy said he sought no preferential treatment, but the episode has generated an internal investigation of police procedure, amid lurid headlines and TV news bulletins nationwide.

Kennedy said he took two doses of Phenergan for a bad stomach ache Wednesday evening as he participated in House votes that ended just after 9 p.m. (He has produced a letter, dated May 5, in which the attending physician of the Congress, Dr. John F. Eisold, says the drug, prescribed May 2 for gastroenteritis, can cause "drowsiness and sedation.")

Kennedy said he then drove the few blocks from the Capitol area to his townhouse, where he and a female friend kept company until they went to bed. Kennedy said he believes he took Ambien but does not remember doing so.

Nor, said Kennedy, does he remember rising at about 2:45 a.m. to tell his friend that he had to go to the Capitol to cast a vote -- nearly six hours after Wednesday's last call of the roll. Kennedy said he does not remember getting dressed, driving his car into the barrier, speaking with police, or being driven home.

He said his friend -- whom he would not name -- has since told him that "she tried to dissuade me" from leaving the house "and she wishes she had done a better job dissuading me." Kennedy said his friend also "validated" that he did not drink alcohol Wednesday.

The congressman refused to say, however, when he last had a drink -- even as he admitted that he can often be seen at Capitol Hill saloons and publicly acknowledged for the first time that his tendency to alcoholic binges has landed him in trouble over the years.

For example, Kennedy owned up to something friend and foe alike have long surmised: many of his public pratfalls over the years have been related to drinking, drugs or manic depression.

During a Democratic fundraising trip in March 2000, Kennedy pushed a security guard at Los Angeles International Airport after she tried to get him to check his luggage through a security x-ray machine.

Kennedy flew back to Los Angeles two months later to apologize during a closed courthouse hearing.

These incidents and other misadventures have "definitely been a result of my mental illness" or of drinking or of drug abuse, Kennedy acknowledged yesterday after years of denial.

Kennedy also revealed for the first time that he checked into the Mayo Clinic's addiction facility for about three weeks over last Christmas vacation. He said he had known for months that he was unable to stop using "a narcotic painkiller" that he declined to name.

It is well known that Kennedy entered drug rehabilitation years ago as a prep-school student. But yesterday, he reported that he had "never gotten over" the chronic back pain and chronic abuse of pain medication that stemmed from an operation to remove a growth near his spine when he was a junior at Providence College.

Kennedy said he started with Tylenol 3, a codeine-fortified version of the pain medicine, and later moved to harder stuff. But he declined to name the other drugs he has come to depend on sporadically over the years.

Kennedy said he realized a year or more ago that he had to get off the pain pills. But he made no progress on his own because "when I tried to cut down, I would get sick" from withdrawal.

The final nudge came during the Christmas holiday when he was visiting a cousin. As Kennedy explained it, somewhat haltingly, the cousin saw something ominous in his appearance and demeanor that told him "I was in trouble."

The cousin also took suspicious note of the fact that Kennedy wouldn't stay at his house, checking instead into a hotel.

Kennedy said the cousin persuaded him to seek help, whereupon Kennedy called on a longtime member of the family braintrust, Larry Horowitz, a former chief of staff to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and a physician. Kennedy accepted his recommendation of the Mayo Clinic and spent three weeks there over the holidays.

Since then, Kennedy declared, "I've been clean, thoroughly," meaning he has been free of the narcotic painkiller that landed him in treatment. But after further prodding, Kennedy conceded that his dalliance with Ambien dates back about two years.

He started taking it, he said, "because I had trouble winding down at the end of the day." But Kennedy avoided being pinned down on whether he took any of the drug between his last return from rehab and April 25, when he got a prescription for Ambien from the attending physician's office.

Kennedy spoke with some emotion about his drinking -- and its echoes in the travails of his mother, Joan B. Kennedy, a long-recovering alcoholic who has relapsed seriously in recent times.

Kennedy also said he has abandoned his longtime romance with the notion that it's OK for him to have a drink now and then.

Speaking of his mother and himself, Kennedy said he has "a lot of denial because the manifestation of our illness is different but just because it's different doesn't mean mine isn't as bad as hers.

"The fact that I was binging and she was maintenance" -- drinking daily to maintain a level of alcohol in her body -- "is irrelevant," said Kennedy.

"When you've grown up around it, you get a distorted view" of alcoholism, Kennedy said. "Denial creeps in and you think, 'Well, so long as I'm not doing that, I must be alright," he said, apparently referring to some of his mother's well-publicized drinking misadventures.

Patrick Kennedy's springtime drive to the airport for a second go at rehab was punctuated by a farewell stop at the large, columned house where his father lives, not far from the vice presidential residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory.

It was a reminder of the strangeness of life on the public stage as Senator Kennedy emerged from the house with his son and felt obliged to clear his throat and tell the reporter standing there how proud he is of his son and how his son puts service to Rhode Islanders above personal concerns.

Then the white-haired Massachusetts Democrat hugged his son and saw him off with the words, "Love you."

Somewhere along the way, the elder Kennedy slipped the younger a worn, pale-blue volume for reading on the next leg of his journey.

It was Honey Fitz, a biography of the long-ago Boston mayor, maternal great-grandfather and namesake to Patrick Kennedy.

With reports from Providence Journal staff writers Amanda Milkovits and Steve Peoples, and Michelle Mittelstadt and Alan Pusey of The Dallas Morning News.

jmulligan@belo-dc.com / (202) 661-8423

EXTRA: Watch video of U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy's news conference, read his statement, see the police report of Thursday's accident, and more, at:

http://projo.com