WASHINGTON -- Five months ago yesterday, in the predawn darkness on Capitol Hill, a drug-impaired Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy drove his Mustang convertible into a crackup that just may have been his salvation.

Less than two days after the accident, which injured nobody but sparked damaging news bulletins coast to coast, Kennedy checked himself into a Minnesota hospital for treatment of the drug addiction and alcoholism that have plagued him for most of his life.

It was not Kennedy's first scrape with trouble nor his first attempt at rehab. But today the congressman says -- and some of his associates in addiction recovery agree -- that the gravity of the incident last spring may finally have set him on a path to lasting sobriety.

"If it hadn't been so dramatic," Kennedy said of the accident and the publicity that attended it, "I may never have gotten to the point where I had to surrender" to the reality of his addiction -- and take serious measures to free himself from it.

Along with a criminal misdemeanor conviction, Kennedy said last week that his driving-under-the-influence episode carried an unexpected benefit: a strict, court-ordered regimen of probationary requirements that has launched him on "a really good, strong program" of recovery.

The irony is not lost on the 39-year-old Rhode Island Democrat, who is running for his seventh term in Congress. His painful public fall brought him a promising start at recovery, as well as other rewards he had hardly expected.

"They say that the people that succeed" in staying free of drugs and alcohol "are the ones who are most closely monitored" in the early stages of recovery, Kennedy said during an interview in his office -- four stories above the street corner where U.S. Capitol Police witnessed the May 4 accident.

Kennedy referred to the terms of his one-year probation from the Superior Court of the District of Columbia as "the training wheels" of his early recovery. The June 13 order includes weekly attendance at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, regular urine screenings, and group therapy sessions with his court-appointed monitor, who is the former chief psychiatrist at Bethesda Naval Hospital's addiction unit.

Kennedy described his belief that the program has given him the tools to stay off alcohol and drugs, but also to be a better messenger for the cause of mental health, a better public servant and a better man.

Kennedy also said that he has gone well beyond the court's requirements, settling into a daily routine of AA meetings. The habit is in keeping with his embrace of the "one-day-at-a-time" approach to recovery that was pioneered in the 1930s by the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous.

"What's so powerful about meetings," said Kennedy, is that they afford "a chance to connect with other people on those things that are happening that given day that are, you know, stressing you out." The discussion at a meeting "helps you get through that given day so that things don't pile up," he said.

To the non-addict, the need to deal with life's daily frustrations may seem simple, even self-evident. But Kennedy said he is finding it crucial to keeping clear of the "triggers" that can put an alcoholic or addict "at greater risk for having to want to, you know, drink or drug."

Any of life's ordinary dilemmas can trigger an addictive response. Kennedy said that, for him, the whole arena of "interpersonal relations" can awaken the sense of shame and poor self-esteem that he associates with drinking and taking drugs.

Kennedy described his complicated relationship with another of AA's founding principles, anonymity.

He stressed that he tries to avoid direct public mention of "Alcoholic Anonymous," preferring to speak of "the program" or "my recovery group." Kennedy said his reticence is his way of trying to honor the program's anonymity -- despite the fact that an alcoholic of his prominence will never be anonymous.

The anonymity precept, as Kennedy described it, is a check against the creation of AA "poster children" -- an especially useful precaution for alcoholics who happen to be public figures. Anonymity is a bedrock tradition of the program "so that people don't associate the program with individuals, so that they don't see the program's success or failure personified in a given person," Kennedy said.

The May 4 episode was "a great wake-up call," for Kennedy, according to Rep. Jim Ramstad, the Minnesota Republican who is Kennedy's AA sponsor -- a member with 25 years of sobriety who is guiding the newcomer through the program's "Twelve Steps" to recovery.

Ramstad is an enthusiastic adherent of the silver-lining view of alcoholism, fond of expressing gratitude for the police officers who put him in jail for public drunkeness, an event that paradoxically drove him into AA --and, he has said, a richer, fuller life than otherwise could have been possible.

During one of the last days before the House adjourned until after the elections, Ramstad was among several well-known alcoholics and addicts who joined Kennedy at an outdoor news conference to recognize "National Recovery Month."

More specifically, the speakers -- including Kennedy's cousin, author-actor Christopher Kennedy Lawford, and musician John Hiatt -- called upon congressional leaders to consider legislation that would require insurers to treat alcoholism and addiction on a par with other illnesses.

The continuing push for "parity," as it is known in the health-care industry, has long been a signature issue for Kennedy. Another of the happy surprises of recovery, he said last week, has been that his public struggle with addiction has "enhanced my advocacy on this issue in an ironical way."

So many members of Congress have opened up to him about their personal experiences with addicted or alcoholic friends, Kennedy said, that he and Ramstad have begun a preelection petition drive to push parity legislation to the floor of the House during next month's lame-duck session of Congress.

As he celebrates five months "clean and sober" this week, Kennedy suggested that he is coming around to the view that the disabling and often fatal disease of addiction may actually be a blessing in disguise for him.

"When I hear people say that they're a gratefully recovering alcoholic I -- people always wonder: 'How could they be grateful that they're an alcoholic?' " Kennedy said.

Answering his own question, he said it "means that they have found a way of living that they never could have known before, and that way of living is a spiritual way of living." It's a way of living, he said, that provides practical tools not only for avoiding drugs and alcohol, but also for coping with life's difficulties and finding a measure of contentment.

"Yeah," said Kennedy, "I'm enjoying life."

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