Cuz.(The Talk of the Town)(cousins in politics)

Cousins: for politicians, like the rest of us, they have a way of turning up. Last week, Domenico Panetta, a former mayor of the Italian town of Siderno, historically a Mafia stronghold, surfaced to comment on the appointment of his cousin Leon to head the C.I.A. "Maybe in his new job he'll be able to come to Europe and to Italy and even visit us in Calabria," he told the Times of London. Meanwhile, in New York City, Christopher Kennedy Lawford, a Los Angeles writer and actor, made an appearance on his cousin Caroline Kennedy's home turf.

In 2003, Lawford--divorcing, diagnosed with hepatitis C--was living in what he called "a teardown on the West Side of L.A. that my cousin owned and was letting me squat in until I put my life back together." One morning, he received a call from a journalist, who was hoping to secure Lawford's participation in a book about the Kennedy men. Afterward, Lawford had an epiphany--maybe he had a story to tell--the result of which was a memoir, "Symptoms of Withdrawal." Last month, he came out with "Moments of Clarity," a book of first-person recollections about turning points in the lives of addicts. Its contributors include Ed Begley, Jr. ("My cousin Bobby Kennedy introduced us"), and Alec Baldwin ("He'd show up at the Robert F. Kennedy Tennis Tournament at Forest Hills and drive all my sisters and female cousins crazy"). The book is dedicated to Lawford's cousin David Kennedy, who died of a drug overdose at the age of twenty-eight. The introduction is by Patrick Kennedy, another cousin. The effect is something like sitting in on Thanksgiving dinner at Hyannis Port, at the kids' table.

Lawford's "moment of clarity"--he has been sober since--occurred on February 17, 1986, when he woke up, decided things could not get any worse, and called a cousin. "He was the one person who I had sort of competed with my entire life," Lawford recalled at a party held in his honor by Caron Treatment Centers, an organization for which he serves as a spokesman and consultant. Over the tinkle of a piano, Lawford--tanned, yoga-bodied, wearing a lavender dress shirt, speaking in gravelly affirmations--continued, "That's a testament to my level of surrender, that I was willing to call the one guy I didn't want to call, because he had found a way out of it himself."

Part of Lawford's work with Caron is to raise awareness of the fact that addiction is a family disease. He said, "If somebody had ...