Moments of Clarity

by Christopher Kennedy Lawford

  It was that moment when I just kind of lifted up out of the room. I was done there. Sad and done. And as much as I wanted to stop, I realized that I couldn’t do it myself. I’d had the illusion of control because I’d had a couple of months clean, but six months later there I was, right back where I had been. I was scared. It was a moment of humility, realizing that I had no control. I don’t even know how to describe that, except that it was terrifying to realize, “I can’t control this. I can’t listen to myself when I say, ‘No. You are not going to do that anymore.’ ” I’ve always been a very strong-willedperson, and I accomplished a lot through it. I’m really disciplined, very driven. I’m the oldest of five kids, my parents died very young, and I sort of raised myself, and I was always able to do whatever I set out to do. But there in my living room, I had the sense that this thing is so much bigger than me, and it’s just going to swallow me up.

  That was my moment, realizing how big addiction is, how overwhelmingly powerless I am over it, and how as smart a girl as I am, all the things I can do—I can’t do this. I was thirty-one years old, and I’d been using, in some way, since I was fifteen. I wasn’t totally out of control until those last six years. Then, having been clean for those two months, and seeing how quickly it returns the minute you open that door again . . . that really scared me. That got my attention. So I think my moment of clarity was just realizing that I’m not so fucking smart.

  What I had to do was nothing short of changing everything. The deflation of the ego is really what is required, and that moment was the beginning of the smashing of my ego. This time, I had a different attitude when I walked into the meeting. I wasn’t looking for my boyfriend anymore. I was still pretty heartbroken, I think, but that broken heart saved my life. With me, with the women I work with in recovery, so much of our thing is all intertwined: the guys and the drinks and the drugs, it’s all one big mess. So I just got out of that drama. I went down there and I quietly sat in the back of the rooms. And I just listened. I didn’t cry. The first time I cried every day, all the time. This time I was really happy to be there. I read the book right away. I did everything everybody told me to do.

  My drug and alcohol use gave me a lot of bravado, so until I got sober I didn’t even realize that I was afraid of everything. And every single thing I was afraid of has shown up, including success, including failure, includ

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  ing having a family, including a divorce. Including death. All of it. And I’ve walked through every single one of those things. Not always gracefully, but without a drink. And that’s a miracle. I think that’s the divine part of it. I still look at it in awe, with childlike eyes. I’ve had so many moments of clarity. I mean, they are constantly happening. When you’re awake, you start to put the pieces together and you’re like “Oh, that’s why I did this. That’s where that came from. And that’s why . . .” You know, that’s the fabulous part of being in recovery and being drug-free and drink-free. I mean it’s scary too. It’s brave. I don’t think a lot of people really want to have much awareness. If you choose to live that way, you are going to get it. It’s going to come on.

  In recovery, I learned to take a look at my relationships, instead of always looking to see what you could do for me. Which was a little bit of my M.O. “Okay, I’ll be nice to you, but what are you going to do for me?” That was hard to realize, that I didn’t have a lot of friends in my life, that I was really manipulative. That’s changed. Not totally. I mean, I am in show business. But I think my behavior has changed. I know how to be a friend, and I have friends. At the same time, I’m not as willing to tolerate some stuff as I used to be. I can’t believe the bullshit I put up with just to get high, what I had to listen to. I don’t have the time for it, for all that sad conversation. Not that I’m deep, all philosophical all the time. But if we can’t talk about something real, I’m just not interested.

  When you take a lot of amphetamines and drink a lot of alcohol, which I did, you spend a lot of time in your own head. My feeling self is much deeper now, much richer. I experience all that emotion I was so afraid of. I was this really emotional little kid, and I scared myself. It was too much, so I just shut it down. Now I feel more access to all that, to my heart, and my emotions, and who I am.

  Jim Ramstad

  Jim was first elected to Congress in 1990. Over the years, he’s been named Legislator of the Year by the National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Counselors, by the National Mental Health Association, and (twice) by the National Association of Police Organizations. He’s also been a mainstay of the DC recovery community since the first day he arrived. He stepped up and offered to work with my cousin Patrick on his recovery, and I know the relationship means a lot to Patrick. Jim really is one of the good-guy Republicans, and I was sorry to hear that he’d decided not to run for reelection in 2008. What ever he ends up doing, I’m sure he’ll follow the path of his own mentor, Harold Hughes, and continue giving back.

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  n July 31, 1981, when I awoke from my last alcoholic blackout, I was in a jail cell in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, under arrest for a variety of offenses stemming from that last alcoholic episode. I

  recall the fright—I feel it right now—being overwhelmed by fright. I was so frightened because I always anticipated that I would end my drinking days by killing someone else or myself in a car accident. That was my greatest fear, but that did not stop me from drinking.

  I asked the jailer two questions. I said, “Was I driving a car last night?” and he said, “No.” I asked him a second question: “Did I hurt anybody or kill anybody?” and he said, “No.” After learning that I didn’t kill anybody, I didn’t hurt anybody, I wasn’t driving a car, I went to the corner of the jail cell—and it was hot. It was a hot day in South Dakota, and it was even hotter in that jail cell. I remember just dripping in perspiration. I kneeled down in the corner of that jail cell and I repeated over and over again the twenty-third Psalm, and intermittently I would say the Lord’s Prayer.

  For the first time in my life I really heard the words from the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done.” I heard myself say them for the very first time. The whole time I had been a practicing Christian and an active alcoholic, it was always “my will be done.” It was always me. I was the center of the universe, not a higher power and certainly not Jesus Christ. I also remember saying over and over again, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” I was in that valley, and I could see the shadow of death, and I wanted to be dead. But I prayed the Twentythird Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer for what seemed like hours that day, and the more I prayed, the calmer I felt. And then the anxiety I felt lifted—I felt a calmness that I’d never felt before. After twelve long painful years of abusing alcohol, the good Lord answered the question I had asked countless times: “Am I an alcoholic?” I was in such denial. I did not want to be an alcoholic, because I’d lost an uncle on my mother’s side of the family and an uncle on my dad’s side due to this disease. Two wonderful men, one a doctor and another a very successful contractor, both of whom died from this fatal disease, and I did not want to be like them. I did not want to be an alcoholic, and I did not want to die.

  But the fact is I am an alcoholic. On July 31, 1981, the good Lord did a number of things. First of all, He answered the question. I remember saying to myself in that jail cell, “I really am an alcoholic.” That is the first time I ever said that. I had denied it every time a girlfriend or my parents or my sister or a close friend suggested that I look at my drinking or that I might have a drinking problem. I just argued, “No way.”

  I also thought that spiritual awakenings were what made televangelists rich, stories they used to raise money from unsuspecting seniors watching on Sunday morning. Little did I realize that spiritual awakenings are real and that I would have one, though I didn’t really understand it as a spiritual awakening that day. All I knew was this calmness, feeling more at ease
than I could remember, there on my knees in that jail cell.

  Harold Hughes* writes about his spiritual awakening after he had lost everything. He was a truck driver abusing drugs and alcohol, and eventually he lost his job, he lost the love of his wife and his family, and his house was being foreclosed on. He decided that the only honorable thing left to do was to commit suicide. We used to have a Wednesday meeting together. He became my first DC sponsor, and he told me, “Jim, I couldn’t do anything right, so I decided the only thing I could do was kill myself.”

  He loaded his shotgun and he got into the bathtub at his house and he put the barrel in his mouth, cocked the gun, and pulled the trigger—and it jammed. And when he wrote about it later, he said that in that quiet bathroom, “a warm peace settled deep within me and my emptiness and self-hatred seemed to evaporate like moisture spots under a hot bright sun.” These were his words. “God was reaching out and touching me. A God who cared, a God who loved me, a God who was concerned for me despite my drunkenness. Like a stricken child lost in a storm, I have suddenly come into the warm arms of God.”

  And that is exactly what I felt. That God was reaching down and touching me, a God who cared about me, a God who loved me despite my drunkenness. That I could be totally honest with Him and with everybody else—including myself—about my alcoholism. It was a great relief and a great release. It was a great feeling of freedom and of love.

  I went back to Minneapolis the next day, and I went into treatment at Saint Mary’s. There was a counselor there who was just wonderful. He walked into my group room the first day and he said, “You think you’re a big shot, don’t you?” There was a chalkboard there, and he drew concentric circles on the board, with a little circle in the middle with an X for me. He said, “This is you, at the center of the universe. But you’re not that important. Nobody is. You know, the most important political person in this country died in 1963, and everybody missed him and we all grieved for the loss, but life goes on. Even the greatest political leader of the free world at the time, he was assassinated, and we recovered from that. So you’re just not that important.”

  * Hughes served as the governor of Iowa from 1962 to 1968. During his second term, he became friends with Robert Kennedy, who persuaded him to run for the U.S. Senate in the 1968 election. He made substance abuse issues a centerpiece of his legislative program, organizing and chairing the first subcommittee on alcoholism and drug abuse and pushing for legislation to recognize and treat these as illnesses. He retired after one term and continued helping people through private foundations and religious organizations. He died in 1996 at the age of seventy-four. His 1979 autobiography, The Man from Ida Grove: A Senator’s Personal Story, is an honest and inspiring book.

  This put it all in perspective. I was always thinking constantly, thinking about how to control things, how to get what I wanted. But what he was saying was, turn it over to a higher power, and I’ve been doing that—not perfectly, not every day and every minute—but I’ve been trying to do it ever since.

  I’ve set my goals on public service ever since meeting President Kennedy in the Rose Garden. Bill Clinton was there that day too. We’ve both got those pictures of us with the president, and after that day I geared everything I did toward that goal. My major, my extracurricular activities, being captain of the team and president of student council—it was all about building a record and a résumé. I never wanted to admit weakness, and I saw alcoholism not so much as a disease but as a real weakness. And it took a long time to overcome that, even in my own recovery.

  Of course, while I was in that jail cell, I still did not want this to be made public. I still was hoping that as I went back to Minnesota, that it would not be made public. Well, we hit the ground and the press was awaiting me at the airport because some reporters had heard that the young state senator from Minnesota had been arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest and who knows what else.

  Seeing it in print, seeing it as a lead story on television news, I knew there was no place to run or place to hide. And again, that became part of my relief, that I didn’t have to hide it. I could just say, “Yes, I am an alcoholic,” and deal with it. Treatment really helped me to do that, to deal with my alcoholism, but it was all about honesty. It all started with honesty.

  I was sick and tired of lying, living a life of lies. I was sick and tired of that lifestyle. And I was afraid of dying like my uncles had, because I knew what happens if you don’t arrest this disease. If you don’t recover, you die. I didn’t need any more fearful data than seeing two uncles die of this horrible disease. When I was a young boy, I watched my uncle dying in the state mental institution. He had the tremors and the DTs and it was a horrible death. I will never forget that.

  So I think it was a combination of being sick and tired and afraid. I wanted to live a more fulfilling, real life. Not too long ago, Patrick Kennedy shared this about his own life and I could certainly relate. He said his public persona and his private persona felt one and the same in a way that they never had before. I felt the same. I remember during my drinking, I would stand in front of the mirror and say, “Why can’t I be Jim Ramstad? I do not want to be the drunk I see in the mirror.” I never wanted to be that person. I wanted to go out and have a few drinks with friends and be normal, but I never was.

  But that first month in treatment, I started to feel like Jim Ramstad. My head was a little clearer each and every day. I felt more real and more comfortable each and every day. I just soaked up everything—every lecture, every group, every eve ning with my friends who were in treatment. I loved treatment. I really enjoyed it. It was a very comforting, therapeutic experience, and I particularly liked the spiritual component. We had a really good chaplain. Some people look at treatment as a tedious regimen, something to just get through. I looked at it as an enjoyable, soothing, therapeutic experience.

  In that jail cell and for a time in treatment, I assumed my political career was over. I had embarrassed myself and humiliated myself, and who is going to vote for a drunkard in a jail cell? But I remember thinking, “I need to get well or I’m not going to be around and in public office anyway. I can go back to practicing law or find something else to do, but that’s not my concern right now. My concern is recovering from this disease and staying sober, because otherwise I’m going to die like my uncles.” So I really took treatment very, very seriously.

  There was a state senator from the other side of the aisle who hated my guts. I beat his best friend to get to the Senate and he had no time for me. He wouldn’t even speak to me, let alone give me a hearing on any of my bills, and he was the first call I got at Saint Mary’s. The counselor gave me the message with his name on it, and I crumpled it up and I threw it in the wastebasket and went to the next lecture. I don’t remember what it was exactly, but I heard something that made me think, “At least return the guy’s phone call.” I assumed he was going to take me to the ethics committee, but something told me to just do the right thing and call him back. So I called and he said, “You and I have had our differences politically, but I just want you to know something you probably don’t know about me. I’m a recovering alcoholic, and I’ll come down there tonight, tomorrow, whatever time you want, if you want to talk.” This guy was not at all warm or fuzzy—but he was there for me.

  There was one guy in my district who was a big American Legion member, and he always used to try to stop me from serving a pancake breakfast or being active in Legion even though I was a member of the American Legion. I am still. I will never forget, there was a luncheon at his Legion Post after I got out of treatment, and of course he was there. I saw him get up all the way at the other end of this long, big hall, and he walked down to me and stood there with his arms crossed. I figured he’s going to slug me. He said, “You know, Ramstad, I never liked you. You got three strikes against you. First of all, you’re a goddamn politician and I hate politicians. Secondly, and even worse, you’re a goddamn Republican politician and I ha
te Republicans. And thirdly and worst, you’re a lawyer and I really hate lawyers.”

  He uncrossed his arms, which were about the size of two-hundredyear-old tree trunks, and I figured he’s about to slug me. He brought his arms up and reached around and hugged me. And he said, “But now that you’re one of us, welcome to the club, brother.” He had this big smile on his face, and I had tears coming down my face. I’ve almost got them right now, remembering it.

  I could tell stories like that all night. Little did I know that’s what would happen after I got real. Rather than being rejected, I was more accepted than ever before by people from all walks of life.

  Kale Browne

  Kale has been a friend of mine since we did a scene together on the soap opera All My Children in 1992. I was a private detective and he was a murderer coming back from the grave—what do you want, it was a soap! From that day to this we have traveled the road of recovery together, and I would say there is nobody on the planet who has helped me more. His honesty, compassion, and patience have sustained and inspired me. As an actor, Kale played the roles of Michael Hudson on Another World and Sam Rappaport on One Life to Live.

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  escribing the specific ways my behavior has changed would take a whole book in itself, but if I was going to boil it down, I’d say two things are different. One, I know now that by helping others

  I get the help I need. Two, since I’m not the center of the universe anymore, I treat people with respect most of the time, and I’m not afraid to own my own problems. The result of that is that most people are happy to see me coming and sorry to see me go, and I know it, and it’s real. That is the polar opposite of my life when I drank.