Excerpt: 'Symptoms of Withdrawal'

Christopher Kennedy Lawford, son of the late Rat Pack actor Peter Lawford and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, was born into a life of wealth, power and privilege. But as his new memoir details, such assets did not prevent him from becoming an alcoholic.

"Symptoms of Withdrawal: A Memoir of Snapshots and Redemption" examines Lawford's legendary parents and his life as a Kennedy, as well as his road to recovery. Below is an excerpt from his memoir.

Chapter 1

You can always do it wrong.

That's the beauty of life. -- Anonymous

What happens when you are born with the American dream ful- filled? The dreams that drew my ancestors here had been realized for me at my birth. I was born just off the beach in Malibu, California. My father, Peter Lawford, was a movie star and a member of the Rat Pack. My mother's brother Jack would be president of the United States. I was given wealth, power, and fame when I drew my first breath. Now what?

My mother gave birth to me in Saint John's hospital in Santa Monica, California, on March 29, 1955, on the same day that Judy Garland gave birth to her son, Joe, in the same hospital. I was named Christopher because my mom liked the name and had a thing for Saint Christopher -- the giant Catholic saint who carried the baby Jesus and the sins of the world on his shoulders. I received a Saint Christopher medal on every birthday until he was decanonized when I was fourteen because the church determined that the evidence of his existence was entirely legendary. My name lost a bit of its luster on that day, and I remember wondering if the Church might be able to negate my existence also.

The circumstances of my birth were further extolled because Judy was up for an Academy Award that year for A Star Is Born and the press was keeping a vigil. Western Union delivered a boatload of telegrams to my parents from those known and unknown.

We're so happy for you both. He'll be quite a boy.

Love -- Jeanne and Dean Martin

Dear friends -- I'm so happy for you both and may I say you picked my favorite hospital for this epic event -- and I'm a man who knows about hospitals. Hello to Sister Mary David -- Bing Crosby

"Quite a boy."

"Epic event."

I was just out of the womb and there were already lofty expectations from some pretty accomplished folk. Uh-oh! I better get my s*** together.

So thrilled for you both. Love Gary & Rocky Cooper

My aunt Ethel sent a telegram that read: What a difference a day makes. Whew. Little Ethel

She should know. She was pregnant at the time with her fourth child, David Kennedy, who would be born two and half months later and become my "best friend to the bitter end."

So Judy's son, Joe, and I were born on the same day to movie star parents in Hollywood, California, and the media were paying attention. From the moment I came into this world, I have had a bizarre and constant relationship with the media. They were rarely there to take a picture of me or get a quote from me, but I was always in the mix -- in the glow. I have known many people who have been touched by fame. For most of them -- whether movie stars, politicians, artists, or criminals -- it only lasts a short time. They go from ordinary to extraordinary and back again in the blink of an eye, but the damage done can last a lifetime. Once you have had a taste of the glare, it's hard to step back into shadows.

My family has maintained its currency with the press for most of my life. Very little we did went unnoticed. A flashbulb or television camera highlighted the ordinary events of life. Years later when I got sober, I realized for the first time that I thought everybody on the planet woke up every day and wondered what Chris Lawford and the rest of the Kennedy family were up to that day. In fact, it was something of a rude awakening when a friend of mine pointed out to me that "there are a billion people in China who don't know who your family is or more importantly, Chris, who you are!"

At the moment of my birth, my father was having lunch down the street at one of his hangouts, an ornate and hip Chinese bistro on Wilshire Boulevard named for its proprietor, the mysterious and everpresent Madame Wu. He was throwing down some of Madame's famous Chinese chicken salad with his sidekick and manager, Milt Ebbins, and talking to Cary Grant about the current state of affairs in Hollywood, as he awaited the call announcing the birth of his first child. Cary was reassuring him. Not about becoming a father but about his career.

"Don't worry, old man. As soon as you get a little gray in your hair, you'll work all the time. I didn't work for two years, my temples got gray, and it was a whole new ball game."

My dad began feeling a bit more optimistic, and then the call came. He thanked Cary for the encouragement by paying the tab and beat it to Saint John's, with the everpresent Milt in tow, just in time to see my mom being wheeled, semiconscious, out of the OR. A half hour later, he opened the door to her room to find her sitting up in bed with a bottle of J&B Scotch, ready to celebrate. "Come on in, boys, we've got a big beautiful boy. Let's have a drink." A few minutes later, the big beautiful boy was delivered to his celebrating mom and dad. My father looked down at me, saw my rather pronounced oriental features, and declared, "That's not my kid. He looks Chinese. Hey, wait a minute, Pat, wasn't the gardener Asian?" They laughed. And had another scotch.

My dad was right. I did look Asian. I was born with a Mongolian fold, which means that my eyelids droop slightly over my eyes. This condition is also referred to as "bedroom eyes" and I have milked it happily all my life. Thanks, Dad.

I was the first boy born to a mother who was the product of a family with a long and lusty tradition of glorifying and supporting the male. You can't get more fawned over than a Kennedy male. My mother had struggled against the yoke of being a talented and willful female in a family and society that didn't really care what the women were up to as long as they were having lots of babies. Her marriage to my father and her subsequent life in California were early attempts to find her own identity and be noticed outside of The Family. It's a miracle that I was born at all, given the fact that neither of my parents was the marrying kind. They were both thirty. Although my mom was feeling the pressure of being unmarried, her personality was like my father's. My parents were two willful human beings, from different worlds, used to getting what they wanted and having their own space. They must have really loved one another to give up that freedom.

When I was a kid my mom often recalled how she tried to escape that love. "I fell in love with your father the moment I laid eyes on him. He was so handsome. Grandpa sent me on a trip around the world to get him out of my system. It didn't work. I got to Japan and turned right around."

Like most women of her generation, all roads led to children and the creation of family. Procreation was the necessary evil in the grand purpose of bringing forth God's little angels. I've been told that my mom made the sign of the cross before engaging my father in the necessary evil. I don't know what she was praying for, but she was pregnant with me four months after saying "I do."

My grandmother Rose wrote a letter to my mom not long after I was born, advising her to write to the Lahey Clinic for high-potency vitamins so she could "get built up" and "not to wear falsies that are too prominent as they are not only cheap but tempt you know whom"! I assume Gramma was talking about my father. Well, it didn't work: after me, they had three more children.

Three girls: Sydney, Victoria, and Robin. A blond, a brunette, and a redhead. All the bases were covered. I was the only boy, the oldest, the king. The way it should be. Pure Kennedy.

When my mother married my father she made a monumental statement of independence from her own father, whom she adored. Joseph P. Kennedy, my grandfather, was the man from whom everything flowed. He was the power, the money, and the brains. My mother was the sixth child in a brood of nine. Her lightheartedness and vibrancy made her my grandfather's favorite. My mom called him Daddy, and his actions and words were glorified and sanctified. His story was legend: bank president at thirty, friend and confidant to FDR, ambassador to the Court of Saint James, Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, Hollywood mogul, and go-to guy in all things political. More than any male in my life, my grandfather represented everything a male should be. As I saw it, he was the architect of our world. There was a sense that everything the Kennedy family was came about as a direct result of my grandfather's will. On September 7, 1957, my grandfather predicted in an interview in the Saturday Evening Post that someday one of his sons would be president, one would be attorney general, and another would be a United States senator -- all this simultaneously.

It was not just about money and power with my grandfather. He was first and foremost about family. His will to power and wealth was about protecting his family. His kids loved him more than they feared or respected him. My mom told me when I was young, "Grandpa gave each of us a million dollars when we turned twenty-five. All of his friends told him not to do it, saying his kids wouldn't give him the time of day if they got all that money. It wasn't true. We all still can't wait to come home." You couldn't keep my mom and her siblings away from "Daddy and Mother." Later I figured out that although Grandpa gave his children the money to realize their independence, he never taught them what to do with it. I always assumed this was because he felt they were meant for higher pursuits. But it might have been about control.

There was no more dominant force in our world than "Daddy," and my mom was his little girl. My dad said to me that "your mother's love for her father took precedence over her love for me."

There is a thin line between love and hate. On the other side of this adoration for her father was a deep anger and resentment at not being allowed fully to live up to her potential. My mom also inherited my grandfather's interest in dramatics. And she was good at it.

"You know," she would say to me and my sisters, "before all of you were born and ruined my life I was a television producer for Father Peyton's Family Rosary Crusade, the program that made 'the family that prays together stays together' a household phrase and was seen all over the country." She was only half kidding. My mom had the talent to get her share of accolades in the professional world, and though she wore "putting her children first" as a badge of honor, I think she resented the limitation. Her proprietary outlook toward all things Kennedy was her way of participating in the bigger picture of the family's accomplishments.

My mother was more like my grandfather than were any of her siblings. She had a mind for money, a strong independent streak, and she could cut you off at the knees with "the look" just like the Old Man. There was no mistaking it when Joe Kennedy was unhappy with you. His displeasure burned in his eyes and straight into whoever was unlucky enough to cross him. I don't recall ever getting "the look" from my grandfather, but my mom more than made up for it so I have some idea just how unpleasant it might have been. My mother also had her father's instinct and luck when it came to making money. My grandfather often said that, "The one with the best business head is Pat. If she put her mind to it, she could easily take over the business."

I was seven when my grandfather became incapacitated with a stroke. My mom found out about it in December 1961 while she was driving my sisters and me to lunch. A stranger stopped her and said he had just heard on the radio that her "father just had a stroke." The only vivid recollection I have of him before his stroke was in a park in Washington on a cold day in January before going to President Kennedy's inauguration. He was wearing a topcoat and a hat. It was exciting to be with this man, who made my mother beam as he pushed me on a swing, saying, "You are going higher and higher, Christopher. You are going to fly like an eagle." Then he was gone. The next time I saw him he was in a wheelchair, but for the rest of my life, the voice in my head that only allows perfection and questions my choices would belong to my grandpa, Joseph P. Kennedy.

Shortly after the inauguration my mom shipped me back to California while she stayed on in Washington to make sure all was going well at the White House. A month later she sent me a note on White House stationery: