Drug and legal issues

In 1969, the year after his uncle Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, when Lawford was 14, he was introduced to LSD by his peers at school.^{[2]: p. 110 [6]} He was addicted to alcohol, cocaine, uppers, downers, and "any other drugs he could buy"^[9] for the next 17 years. During that time, he was "in and out of hospitals and arrested three times",^[7] including in 1980, for impersonating a doctor in Aspen, Colorado in order to purchase prescription medication. The charges were later dropped when Lawford completed his probation.^[10] In 2000, Lawford was diagnosed with hepatitis C, which he contracted due to his years of drug use.^[11][7]

Lawford briefly attended Fordham Law School, but dropped out after a few months due to his dependency on heroin. In April 1984, the same year his father Peter Lawford died at the age of 61, after years of alcohol and drug abuse, Lawford's cousin and best friend David Kennedy, and third oldest son of Robert Kennedy, who also battled substance abuse issues, died of a drug overdose at the age of 28. David's death prompted Lawford to seek professional help for his issues.^[6][7][8] In 1986, at the age of 30, Lawford entered rehab and got treatment for his drug addiction.^[10] Lawford remained clean and sober until his death in 2018.

Acting

Lawford chose to become, like his father, an actor in the mid-1980s, after realizing that a law career would not suit him. He performed in commercials in Boston for two years, and then he and his wife moved to Southern California in 1988 so that he could pursue an acting career.^[6] He worked in film and television for over 20 years. His acting credits included the sitcom Frasier and the drama The O.C. .^[12][1] In 2003, he had a brief stint on the soap opera General Hospital, but was best known for playing Philip “Charlie” Brent, Jr. on All My Children from 1992 to 1995.^[13]

Lawford had small roles in films such as The Russia House, a 1990 spy thriller co-starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Sean Connery, and the 1991 rock-music film The Doors, which was directed by Oliver Stone. Lawford played a Navy officer in the 2000 film Thirteen Days, a drama about the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.^[8][9] In 1997, Lawford had a role in the independent comedy Kiss Me Guido as the gay lover of the main character.^[14] He also had a small role in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, co-starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, who directed Lawford in a 1990 episode of the HBO anthology series Tales from the Crypt ("The Switch") and was married to Lawford's cousin Maria Shriver at the time.^[6] In 2005, Lawford appeared in the motorcycle racing film The World's Fastest Indian, co-starring Anthony Hopkins.^[15]

Writing

Cover of Lawford's first book, Symptoms of Withdrawal (2005), with a picture of Lawford at the age of 5, with his uncle, President John F. Kennedy

Lawford wrote several books "that described his efforts to recover from drug addiction".^[1] In 2005, he published his memoir, Symptoms of Withdrawal, in which he recounted decades of "better living through chemistry".^[16] In 2009, he wrote Moments of Clarity, a compilation of first-person recollections by famous addicts, including Ed Begley, Jr., Alec Baldwin, Buzz Aldrin, Richard Dreyfuss, Martin Sheen, Judy Collins, and musician and federal prisoner Dejuan Verrett. The book was dedicated to Lawford's cousin David Kennedy, and another cousin, Patrick J. Kennedy, wrote the introduction.^[17][18] Lawford told interviewer Connie Martinson that although writing Moments of Clarity was "difficult" and he did not want to do it, the book was "meant to happen".^[19]

In 2013, Lawford published Recover to Live: Kick Any Habit, Manage Any Addiction, in which he interviewed 100 addiction specialists and described treatments for alcohol and drug dependence, gambling, sex and porn, eating disorders, smoking, and hoarding.^[20] In 2014, he published What Addicts Know: 10 Lessons From Recovery To Benefit Everyone; Dr. Drew Pinsky wrote the foreword.^[21] Lawford's final book about addiction and recovery was 2016's When Your Partner Has an Addiction, "a how-to manual for people who want to stay with their addicted partners", which he co-authored with psychotherapist Beverly Engel.^[22]

Lawford also wrote a book about dealing with hepatitis C, called Healing Hepatitis C, which he co-wrote with Diana Sylvestre in 2009.^[11][7][23]

Activism

Lawford traveled around the U.S. speaking about his experiences with addiction for 20 years. He was a public health campaigner, and worked with the World Health Organization (WHO), the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, and was a public advocacy consultant to Caron Treatment Centers, an organization that ran treatment programs.^[1] In 2001, Lawford founded and was CEO of the Global Recovery Initiative, a not-for-profit organization that "seeks to remove barriers and provide opportunities for people in recovery".^[12]

Lawford also worked with the United Nations (UN). In March 2010, he traveled to Ukraine on behalf of the UN, to participate in a discussion with health officials and advocates about "issues related to hepatitis C (Hep C) prevention in Ukraine",^[23] and to raise awareness. In 2011, was named a Goodwill Ambassador on Drug Dependence Treatment and Care, in 2012, was involved in a campaign against opiate use in Afghanistan, and served on the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime.^[1][7][12] His cousin, former Rhode Island congressman Patrick J. Kennedy, said about Lawford: "Chris was one of those people who had a way of telling stories that lifted people’s perceptions and judgments of those who suffer from the disease of addiction".^[1]

Marriages and children

Lawford was married and divorced three times.^[1] He had three children, David Christopher Kennedy Lawford (named after his cousin David Kennedy),^{[2]: pp. 319–320} Savannah Rose Lawford, and Matthew Peter Valentine Lawford with his first wife Jeannie Olsson, an ad-sales assistant for New York Magazine. They divorced in 2000. In 2005, he married Russian actress Lana Antonova; they divorced in 2009. In 2014, Lawford married yoga instructor Mercedes Miller in Hawaii. At the time of his death in 2018, he had been in a relationship with his girlfriend Kyla Resch since August 2017.^[6][24]

Death

On September 4, 2018, after experiencing a medical emergency while at a yoga studio, Lawford died of a heart attack in Vancouver, British Columbia. At the time, he had been living with his girlfriend in Vancouver where he was working toward opening a recovery center.^[10][25] Patrick Kennedy told the Associated Press that Lawford had been doing "hot yoga, which he did often, but the strain of it 'must have been too much for him at that point'".^[26] Lawford's cousins Maria Shriver, Patrick Kennedy, and Kerry Kennedy took to Twitter after his death, honoring Lawford's work in addiction recovery.^[27]

Film

Television

Bibliography

• Symptoms of Withdrawal: A Memoir of Snapshots and Redemption, 2005
• Healing Hepatitis C, 2009
• Moments of Clarity: Voices from the Front Lines of Addiction and Recovery, 2009
• Recover to Live: Kick Any Habit, Manage Any Addiction, 2013
• What Addicts Know: 10 Lessons from Recovery to Benefit Everyone, 2014