Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, revealed to The New Yorker that he first experimented with heroin during his teenage years. He frequently used drugs with Lem Billings, who was a close family associate, at Billings’ residence on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
In the book The Kennedys: An American Drama, a former girlfriend of one of Kennedy’s cousins described the typical scene at Billings’ apartment.
“There was always the period of sitting around making small talk. It was really a period of waiting for somebody to decide when and how we were going to score. Then there would be the fighting over who got to do it first,” an excerpt read. “B—– needles. Doors slamming. Lem in his bathrobe and shorts, yelling, ‘Bobby, get in here quick,’ and then going in to get his shot. The women were supposed to sit there waiting for the drug leftovers. It was always a macho scene, a shoot-out: which of them could do the most drugs, which of them could do the most women.”
At the age of 16, Kennedy Jr. appeared in juvenile court with his cousin Robert Sargent Shriver III, facing charges of marijuana possession. Both were placed on probation after a private hearing.
Years later, in September 1983, Kennedy Jr. was arrested on an airport tarmac after overdosing on heroin in the airplane’s bathroom while en route to South Dakota, where he was to receive treatment for drug addiction.
Discussing his teenage addiction, Kennedy Jr. told Lex Fridman, “I was addicted for 14 years. During that time, when you’re an addict, you’re living against conscience … and you kind of push God to the peripheries of your life.”
