Life
On June 4, 1968, eleven days before his 13th birthday, Kennedy nearly drowned while he and his siblings were swimming in the Pacific Ocean near the Malibu, California beach house of a Kennedy family friend, Hollywood film director John Frankenheimer. Kennedy had been knocked over by a wave and was trapped on the bottom by the undertow. His father dove under the water and rescued him, scraping and bruising his own forehead in the process. Frankenheimer gave Senator Kennedy theatrical makeup to hide the bruise while appearing on television hours later. At just after Midnight on June 5, David watched on TV as his father claimed victory in the California presidential primary election; the 12-year-old then watched as the same broadcast reported his father's assassination moments later.^[4]The event left an emotional scar on David and he began recreational drug use shortly thereafter.
A 1973 Jeep accident left Kennedy's then girlfriend, Pamela Kelley, paralyzed. His oldest brother, Joseph Kennedy II, had been driving the Jeep and was charged with reckless driving. Kennedy sustained a fractured vertebrae and became addicted to the painkillers he was given in the hospital. He began using heroinintravenously that autumn in his final year at Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts.Kennedy spent two years as a student at Harvard University, pursuing a major in American history before dropping out in 1976. He had ambitions of becoming a journalist and spent several months as an intern for a Tennessee newspaper in 1974. Some staff there were impressed with his aptitude.^[5] In 1974 Kennedy and his siblings were the target of kidnap threats, and were given Secret Service protection.^[6]
After dropping out of Harvard, Kennedy alternated his time between the Kennedy family home "Hickory Hill" in McLean, Virginia, and New York until February 1979, when he moved to New York City full time. He was frequently seen in the Manhattan discos with a succession of attractive women. His most notable involvement was with British actress Rachel Ward, whom he met in one such establishment in 1979. In his memoir Symptoms of withdrawal: a memoir of snapshots and redemption, cousin Christopher Kennedy Lawford describes Kennedy as his best friend, and devotes much of chapter 10 to their relationship with one another and the extended Kennedy family.^[7]

Health problems and death
Kennedy was diagnosed twice with bacterial endocarditis, an inflammation of the heart often associated with the use ofintravenous drugs. As well as experiencing drug overdoses in 1976 and 1978, he also had some skirmishes with the law, including speeding offenses and a DUI. Kennedy spent 6 weeks in Sussex, England, under the care of Dr. Margaret Patterson, an addiction specialist, during the autumn of 1978.Kennedy later moved to Sacramento, California, while under the guidance of a drug counselor.^] In the early 1980s, Kennedy became clean and sober and found occasional work through family contacts. Considering a return to Harvard, he moved back east in the autumn of 1982, followed by a 6-month stint with the Boston based Atlantic Monthly magazine. Kennedy spent time in Spofford Hall, a rehab facility in New Hampshire in September 1983 in order to curb his drinking before starting school again. While he completed one semester, a return to drug use again forced him to leave. Kennedy remained in Boston with his girlfriend, fashion photographer Paula Sculley.
In the spring of 1984, Kennedy completed a month-long stay at St. Mary's Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Minneapolis. He flew down to Palm Beach, Florida, on April 19 for Easter, where several members of the Kennedy family had gathered. Kennedy checked into room 107 of the Brazilian Court hotel and spent the next few days partying. On April 25th, at the insistence of concerned family members, staff went to check on his welfare and found him dead on the floor of his suite from an overdose ofcocaine, Demerol, and Mellaril.^[1][8] Kennedy was interred in the family plot at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts, and was the first of four Kennedy grandchildren reaching adulthood to die prematurely. He was later followed in deaths by his younger brother Michael and cousins John, Jr. and Kara.