Lips Unsealed

by Belinda Carlisle

  “This is all drugs and alcohol,” he said. “It’s not the real you. You have a problem. You need treatment. And if you don’t deal with it, I’m going to tell you this right now, our marriage isn’t going to survive.”

  I understood the next move was up to me. And I understood I had to get help or Morgan was going to let go of me for the sake of his sanity. But once again I refused to admit the truth to myself, even when I saw it clearly. Instead of saying yes, I have a drug problem and need help, I told myself that my problems stemmed from my depression and that if I checked into a hospital for a while, I would come out better. It was a perfect example of the way addicts will lie—even, or especially, to themselves.

  I went to London and met with a doctor from the Priory, the city’s leading private mental-health hospital. I told him everything—from my drug and alcohol addiction to the lies I had told Morgan for years to my struggle with depression.

  At the conclusion, I expected him to check me into the fifty-six-bed facility for a much-needed cooling-off period. Instead, he said, “You’re not depressed. You’re a drug addict and an alcoholic, and you need to check into rehab for at least thirty-six days.”

  What?

  That’s not what I had wanted to hear, and I was furious. I wanted my depression treated, not my drug addiction. I tried to change his mind, but he refused to budge and I found the truth too much to handle. I returned to my hotel thinking, The hell with him, and that night I bought coke and partied myself into oblivion at Stringfellows, a high-end lap-dancing club.

  It was the start of a two-day binge, as well as more lies and more problems.

  twenty-six

  FADING FAST

  A FEW WEEKS later, aware that I needed to do something to convince Morgan I was making an effort, I made an appointment with a therapist in France whose name I had gotten from a friend. The therapist was a Dutch-Indonesian woman. She spoke perfect English with an accent that made each sentence seem like a song. If she hadn’t been my shrink, I would have wanted her to be my friend. I was telling her a story one day and she put her hand up.

  “Stop,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Are you serious? Is what you’re telling me real?”

  It was some story about craziness on the road with the Go-Go’s.

  I nodded, and she burst out laughing.

  “Are you supposed to laugh?” I asked.

  “Why not?” she said. “The story you just told me is funny—almost unbelievable.”

  When I told her more of my antics with the Go-Go’s, she reacted as any sane person would, by asking, “Are you nuts?” I laughingly said, “Isn’t that why I’m here?” After hearing about my frustration with the doctor in London who wouldn’t admit me to the psychiatric hospital, she stared at me until I felt uncomfortable.

  “What?” I said.

  “You tell me,” she replied.

  “He wanted me to check in for being a drug addict,” I said. “I wanted to go in for depression.”

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I think that I’m not going to rehab for thirty-six days,” I said.

  “Ah, that’s a different issue.” She paused. “Why don’t you check out AA? You might see something you like there.”

  “Do you think I’m an addict?” I asked.

  “It’s not about what I think,” she said. “What do you think?”

  I knew the answer. At home, I went online and found the schedule for an AA meeting in Cannes. Morgan and Duke drove me. We pulled up in front of a small church. Only a couple cars were in the parking lot. Nervous and wary, I saw an open door on the side of the building. I turned to Morgan and Duke, both of whom were looking at me with eyes full of hope. If they could have given me their strength and courage, they would have done it. But I had to go myself.

  I got out of the car, walked slowly up to the church, and poked my head in the small room. Inside there was a table with a dozen or so folding chairs around it. Even though no one was there yet, I already felt exposed and claustrophobic. I turned around and went back to the car.

  “No way,” I told Morgan. “No f-ing way am I going into that room.”

  “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  “It’s not like AA meetings in L.A. where the room is big and you can disappear in the back.”

  “Can I go with you, Mom?” Duke asked.

  “No, honey,” I said. “I wish you could. It’s something I have to do myself. And I just can’t.”

  “Then what next?” Morgan asked.

  “I’ll just deal with the shrink,” I said.

  For a while, it worked. In December, though, I slipped while on a two-week solo tour. Then in February, during a short stint through the South with the Go-Go’s, I lost it, setting off a downward spiral that I knew would be bad. It started with the show at the Capri Casino in Bossier City. I followed that two days later with an all-nighter in New Orleans. I was in such bad shape when I called home from the airport that I couldn’t hide it. Morgan busted me immediately.

  “Oh my God, I can’t believe you,” he said.

  “What?” I said defensively.

  “What?! You’re high!” he said.

  “No, I’m not,” I said.

  At that, he freaked out. It was like years of frustration erupted. “Don’t lie,” he said. “I’m so sick of this. I can’t take it anymore.”

  I hurried to a quiet area in the airport and tried to hide myself against the wall.

  “I promise I’ll check into rehab when I get back,” I said.

  “I don’t care what you do,” he said. “I’m just sick of this. I don’t believe you anymore.”

  I didn’t blame Morgan. I had made countless promises over the years and, as I cried into the phone at the airport, I knew I had meant every one. I just couldn’t keep them. I swore this time would be different. Sobbing, I called my manager and asked her to find me a rehab facility to check into after the tour. She was as relieved as anyone. Gina then gave me a couple tranquilizers to get me through the flight. But after recovering in Atlanta, I went out and partied through the last two stops in St. Petersburg and Orlando. I was pathetic—and powerless.

  At home, Morgan barely looked at me. Neither of us mentioned rehab. As a way of avoiding that discussion, I traveled back and forth to London as often as possible for meetings about a new album of French songs and a tour. I also taped Hit Me Baby One More Time, a reality TV singing competition for charity. I used it as an excuse for another binge. I rolled into my hotel around two A.M., all coked up, and spotted the hotel manager, a young girl, with a drunken businessman. Wanting company, I invited both of them up to my room to hang out.

  By six A.M., we had emptied the minibar and I was kicking them out so I could call home and tell Morgan that I was fine. A few hours later, I checked out of the hotel, still buzzed and disgusted with myself yet again.

  The late-morning flight back to Nice was a rough one. The sky was a thick gray blanket full of nasty bumps and gullies. About three-quarters of the way to our destination, lightning struck the airplane. At the moment of impact, there was a loud boom, then a sickening lurch, followed by the sensation of the pilot accelerating as he struggled to regain control of the plane. While others screamed and panicked, I sat serene, unaffected, and relieved.

  Yes, relieved.

  I thought, Thank God, I’m finally going to die. I won’t have to face my husband and son being this high when I get off the plane.

  They weren’t the problem. Two weeks later, I was back in London for more meetings with the producer for my French album, plus rehearsals for a brief tour starting on the fifteenth of March. After checking into a suite at the Metropolitan Hotel, I went out to dinner with friends. Before the night ended, I scored two or three grams of coke, and needless to say I didn’t show up to my rehearsals the next morning. Instead I got more stuff, and then more after that, and by five in the afternoon I was standing in my pajamas on Park Lane, waiting for my
drug dealer.

  The ATM around the corner was broken and I was too high to go anywhere else, so I went back into the lobby. I had gotten cash from the concierge all night. The manager came out instead and confronted me. In front of everybody in the lobby, he gave me a knowing, stern look and said, “Mrs. Mason, we gave you cash all night. We cannot give you any more.”

  His attempt to embarrass me worked. I walked hurriedly away before I panicked or broke down, and managed to find a working ATM. My dealer came with more stuff, a lot more this time. I didn’t want to go through that humiliation downstairs again. I sat in my room and did it all evening. Between lines, I smoked cigarettes, played games on my laptop, and paced the room. I must have smoked ten packs of cigarettes those two days.

  Later that evening, I was still in full binge mode when I had a vision of myself being found dead in that hotel room of a cocaine overdose. It came to me accompanied by a loud, clear voice that said, “You are going to die here if you carry on like this.” I saw the scene unfold: the coke, the messy hotel room, and me slumped over, eyes shut and chest no longer moving, dead. The Who’s bassist John Entwistle had gone the same route a few years earlier in a Las Vegas hotel room, suffering a heart attack in his sleep brought on by cocaine. He was in my thoughts because only a week before I checked into the Metropolitan, I had read that his longtime girlfriend, Lisa Pritchett-Johnson, had been found dead while visiting a family member in Memphis. About a gram and a half of coke had been found nearby. At forty-three, she had been around my age. As I did another line, I heard a voice again. This time it said, “You’re next.”

  How embarrassing to be found dead in a hotel room at my age of a cocaine overdose. I shuddered at the thought, knowing it was true. Such an end would humiliate my husband and especially my bright, loving, and concerned son.

  “Okay, I quit,” I said out loud.

  I looked at the coke left on the table. Then I glanced upward.

  “Please let me finish what I have,” I said. “Then I’ll quit.”

  And that’s what happened. I finished the last of my coke and then I was done. I knew if I did even one more line after that I was going to die. I knew the choice was mine, as with everything in life, and I chose to live.

  The date was March 14, 2005.

  I had a show the next day. I couldn’t believe I had to get onstage for nearly two hours. I looked like I felt, like someone who’d nearly died. My skin was gray and my eyes were almost black, as if the light inside me had gone out. It was a shocking reality, a sad sight that finally registered with me. After thirty years of using drugs of one kind or another to boost my mood or spirit me away from hard times, I vowed never to use again—only this time, having made the choice to live, I meant it.

  I was horrified and embarrassed at the shape in which I returned home. I could barely breathe from having smoked so many packs of cigarettes the week before. I didn’t want to look at myself in the mirror. I told Morgan and Duke that I was sick with the flu and stayed in bed for about a week as my body went through a sort of detox. I could literally smell the chemicals coming out of my skin.

  For the first few days I was too out of it to worry about whether Morgan believed that I had picked up the flu on the road. Then I figured he had to know that I had lied. I had no idea what he knew or didn’t know about my using, what I had told him, and what I was keeping a secret. All I knew was I had too many secrets. As they say in AA, you’re only as sick as your secrets, and they’re right. I was one very sick girl.

  Toward the end of March, we went on a family holiday to Austria. I wanted to talk to Morgan and relax with my family, but I didn’t know how to do either. Here was Morgan, the person I loved most in the world, who was my soul mate, and here was my son, a human being whose life I had created, and I couldn’t talk to either. It was pathetic. I asked myself, “If this is the case, why did I choose to live? What was the point if this is my life?”

  I thought if I could tell Morgan everything, he would understand. When I woke up the next morning, he was on the golf course. I called his cell and started to apologize. He said that he had heard this too many times before. He wanted to play golf.

  “I’m finished,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I’m mean I’m finished,” he said. “It’s up to you.”

  I replayed his words in my head. He had said he was finished, not it’s finished or we’re finished. If he’d said either of the latter, I would have thought he was through with our marriage. If he was simply finished, I took that to mean the door was still open. But it was now up to me. I got it.

  If this was one more chance, I knew it was my last one.

  twenty-seven

  (WE WANT) THE SAME THING

  IT WAS the end of March, and I knew that I was at a crossroads. This was the moment of truth. I could either fold or fight. I decided to beat this addiction. I wanted my life with my family, with Morgan and Duke. I called a woman whose name had been given to me as someone from AA who could help. Sobbing, I told her that my life was terrible and I couldn’t take any more.

  “Meet me in Cannes at four o’clock and we’ll talk before the meeting,” she said.

  We met at a café and I told her everything that was going on. She was a cross between Pamela Mason and my mom, a perfect combination for me: both earthy and outrageous. She digested all the information I dumped on her, stories about my last coke binge, Morgan, and the Belgian guy. I noticed her eyebrow go up when I mentioned that I still drank.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “My problems were with drugs, not alcohol.”

  “I’m not going to debate you,” she said. “I want you to just concentrate more on the similarities than the differences in your stories. Listen to yourself. See how you’re feeling about things.”

  “I know what you’re getting at,” I said. “But I think I can still drink. As I said, I had a drug problem. I’m fine with a glass of wine or two.”

  She smiled. A wise Auntie Mame.

  “Just pay attention,” she said. “Listen to yourself. Then come to your own conclusion.”

  I followed her into the AA meeting, my first one. She became my sponsor. From then on, I attended at least one meeting a day and spent the rest of the day working out and chanting. Morgan still wasn’t speaking to me. He wasn’t the only one. Most people close to me at the time were either pissed off or disgusted with my irresponsible behavior. I understood. I had to prove myself.

  I kept to a routine. In the morning, I chanted and worked out for several hours with my friend Lorenza. I did the same thing later in the day. I believe the chanting I did, often up to four hours a day, gave me the strength and optimism to get through this difficult period of my life. I felt my energy return and my thoughts focus on rebuilding my life. I was like, Okay, what needs to be done?

  But I was still fooling myself. I got in the habit of buying a bottle of wine before my AA meetings, tucking it in my car, and then cracking it open afterward at Lorenza’s house when we got together to chant and work out. I fixated on alcohol. As I chanted, I thought about what I was going to drink later that night. I also made notes on my calendar about what I was going to drink when I traveled.

  I remember on a flight to Los Angeles making a note to drink a nice Pomerol. Once in L.A., though, I didn’t have anything since I knew that if I drank and worked, I would want to do coke. But then I obsessively marked off dates when I could resume drinking. Eventually I realized this kind of obsession wasn’t healthy or normal.

  I called my sponsor and told her what I had been doing. She responded with an almost gleeful “Aha!”

  “You heard yourself,” she said.

  “It’s another addiction,” I said.

  She was quiet for a moment. I’m sure it was by design.

  “We don’t drink,” she finally said. “We don’t say one thing is okay, but another is not. None of it is okay.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “If you’re g
oing to stop, you stop everything,” she said. “Why don’t you just try it? Do what we tell you works. And see how it feels.”

  “I don’t want to,” I said. “But all right. I will.”

  By now, Morgan and Duke knew what was going on and I had their support and encouragement. However, before giving up alcohol, I let it be known I wanted to have one last bottle. My sponsor, people I had met in AA, and Morgan and Duke were telling me not to do it. I reassured everyone it was okay. I was going to stop after that bottle. I had no doubt. It was over for me.

  “Just let me have this last one,” I said to my sponsor. “I’ll see you at Monday’s meeting.”

  It was the weekend. On Sunday, I went out and bought a bottle of my favorite Corbières, as well as groceries for the week. At home, Duke was helping me unload the bags when I dropped something and went into freak-out mode. The accident triggered a flood of regret and remorse for the way I had neglected my son over the years. I don’t know why, but I pulled a carton of eggs out of a shopping bag and began throwing them one after the other on the ground.

  “Mommy!” Duke said. “Stop! Please stop it!”

  It was like a scene from a Lifetime movie where the mother’s addiction comes to a head through an act that’s absolutely insane. It was a detox, in a way—the emotions I had refused to deal with for years came out of me whether I was ready or not. I hoped and prayed this was the last of my episodes Duke had to witness.

  He had seen way too much as it was. About a year earlier, I had returned home from London, grateful to walk into an empty house because I was still too high to face Morgan and Duke. Morgan was not yet back from picking Duke up from his after-school activity. After taking a few pills to bring me down, I began to prepare dinner. When they came in, Morgan took one look at me and said, “What did you take?”