The Kennedy family saga of tragedy and scandal took another turn on Friday when Patrick Kennedy, a Democratic congressman, said he was checking himself into a drug rehab programme after crashing his car into a police barricade.
Kennedy, a Democrat from Rhode Island and the son of Massachusetts’ Senator Ted Kennedy and nephew of John F Kennedy, told a press conference he had decided to seek treatment for addiction to prescription painkillers because he had no recollection of the accident.
The Congressman nearly drove his green Mustang head-on into a patrol car before crashing into a barrier outside the Capitol in Washington in the early hours of Thursday morning.
He is reported to have told police at the scene that he was on his way to cast a vote.
Kennedy’s admission of an addiction to painkillers came only hours after police released an incident report saying the he had appeared drunk, and had staggered from his car smelling of alcohol.
Kennedy was not given a sobriety test, and was driven home by police, raising charges of preferential treatment for a member of America’s most famous political dynasty. In his news conference on Friday, Kennedy made no mention of alcohol, but repeated that he had been taking a combination of medicine prescribed by doctors for stomach flu and sleeping problems.
The Congressman , who has been open about his lifelong history of addiction and depression, said he had been treated at the Mayo clinic in Minnesota over the Christmas recess, but said he was still struggling with the disease.
There was no indication that Kennedy, a member of Congress since 1988, intended to stand down at November’s mid-term elections. However, the episode drew inescapable parallels to the fatal car crash in 1969 that irretrievably damaged his father’s career. – Guardian Unlimited Â