Once again, I did not get it. I went back to Exodus with Scott, then I was sent to rehab in San Diego. My family knows all about this shit now. I wish they never knew. It’s just one more thing for me to worry about. Scott got kicked out of his sober living house and now he has a babysitter. He signed a contract saying that he wouldn’t see me until September 10. I think that he is probably going to jail. I hate him so much right now. I still love him, but I wish I didn’t because he is killing me. Nothing in my life is working, not even this pen. I don’t feel like making it through this. The noise in my head will never end. I will always be lonely even with the one I love. I am held prisoner at my own house in my own head. I really don’t know what to do with myself. There is always the sadness of killing yourself. I couldn’t handle the hurt I would cause my family. I almost can’t be bothered to relapse. I’m not the best chemist and I have no more places to run to. Besides, I’d have to take my head with me. If only there was a way to cut my head off and rip my heart out. Anything to keep that senseless organ from beating. Scott and I had one minute of chaperoned time together and a kiss. Time is playing a joke on me, creeping the way it does. Someone upstairs forgot to make me complete. Lately, I have been crying so much that I vomit. I don’t recommend spending a summer this way. During the past summers, I have felt my best. Now this is my best. I FUCKING WANT TO DIE.
HOME, 8-16-99, 2:20 A.M.
Scott was taken into custody Friday. Friday the 13th. He has a hearing on September 3 and will be sentenced then. I think he may have to go away for a year. It’s hard to stay strong and positive for him when I feel so sad and scared. I feel horrible for him. He is so sad and calls me every day crying. I wish I could help him. We have gone through so much. I wonder if we’ll ever be a normal couple. My doctor has me taking lithium now. I feel kind of like a zombie, and I’ve gained weight. This drama is killing me. My baby is in jail and I’m an overweight zombie. I’m going to New York this week for a job. I’m scared to leave the house because I don’t want to miss Scott’s call. I’m torn between work and being there for him.
HOME, 9-3-99, 5:30 P.M.
I’m waiting for the dealer. He’s coming to ruin my twenty-one days clean. I’m so angry and sad now. God—please don’t let me die. I just want to get over this pain. Scott was sentenced to one year in jail. I can’t take it. I don’t want to feel this pain. Eight years I have been waiting to be with him and now it will be nine. I don’t understand.
PROMISES TREATMENT CENTER, MAR VISTA, 10-;5-99, 9:46 P.M.
I’ve landed myself back in another fucking treatment center. I put myself in such a miserable place. Shooting speedballs by myself. Knowing damn well that I could kill myself. I was lying to Scott. I hate that so much. I had to put myself here. As I read through this journal, I wonder how I could put myself through so many of these places. Then I realized that I hadn’t even written about them all. This is number seven. Lucky number seven, I hope. I have stayed here longer than any other place, so that’s a good sign. I’m trying to pull myself together, but I miss Scott so much. God, please help me get it this time.
PROMISES, 10–18-99, 5:34 P.M.
I hate this shit. Three more days. I don’t think I can take another group or share one more damn feeling. I wish Scott could come home. Why is our life this way? It’s miserable. I don’t even have anything to write about because I’ve been stuck in here. I’m starting to get scared that I might relapse when I go home. I hope I’m able to surrender and treat myself good this time.
My least favorite room in a hospital was the bathroom, almost always shared with the very ill roommate renting the space on the other side of the curtain or the other side of the room. Sometimes there was a bench in the shower; I usually planted myself on it, threw myself a weepy pity party, and kept the warm water running until somebody noticed I was threatening the local water supply. I liked the feeling of isolation (frankly, you don’t get much alone time in rehab). An institutional shower stall would be a very good place to conduct therapy sessions. Even now, it’s not unusual for me to break down about something in the shower. I sit down directly beneath the shower head and adjust the water pressure so that it comes down hard. I’ve never been able to decide whether that’s about getting clean or being punished.
Often, especially after the Chaos Tour finally came to an end, I sat on the bench in the shower examining the damage I’d done to my body. I’d avoided looking at my arms all day long and now, here they were. There’s no way this is me, I didn’t do this to myself. Mary, you have no visible veins, and the arms you’ve dreamed about using someday to hold babies are both covered in scabs. You did do it to yourself.
The first visiting-hours session in rehab should be put off as long as possible. If you’re on detox meds, you’re too high and dizzy to make sense. If you’re not, you’re sick, shamed, and awkward in a social situation without the customary glass of whatever, a little shot of something before company comes. It’s all you can do to keep your eyes at half mast. When your family and friends are announced, you shuffle (and I mean shuffle) down the hall. It’s pitiful. Your slippers keep falling off (hence the term slippers), and you hope the wall holds you up until you get to where you’re trying to go.
Once you sit down, you occasionally look sideways to see if your visitors have abandoned you yet. Direct eye contact is a bad idea—every time you begin to prop up your head, all your loving people force-grin back at you, a facial expression whose sole purpose seems to be to reassure you that you’re not a junkie. (Right. And the momentous occasion which brings us all here together is, oh, something like walking up onstage to pick up your college degree.) Even after the first visit, the conversation is always the same. To fill the silence and sadness, it goes something like this: “We are so proud of you.” “You’re looking much better.” “I can see the color is coming back in your face.” “What are the other patients like?” “Have you made any friends?” “I’ve been to a lot of hospitals, and this is the nicest one.”
Please. You do not look good—you look like crap for weeks (if you stay that long), and you know it. Your lips are dried and cracked; it’s almost certain that at some point, you will drool. The hospital gown exposes track marks, bruises, and scabs on your arms. If you’re a picker like I was, God only knows what your face looks like. You are too weak to shampoo your hair, let alone blow it dry, and brushing and flossing your teeth requires more coordination than you’re capable of. I’m certain that neither Miss Manners nor Emily Post ever considered giving advice on the proper etiquette for visiting a crackhead, but in my opinion, a simple “You look like shit” would be fine. At least it wouldn’t be a lie. And the goal here is to stop lying. Right?
Your visitors are almost always well-dressed. It’s a little disconcerting, this Sunday-best thing, since only days before, you were most likely walking around with only one shoe yourself. If you’re lucky, they’ll bring food. Chewing in slow motion is one way to hold up your end of the conversation. Actually, everything you do is in slow motion, because most rehabs have a no-caffeine policy. No caffeine in the soft drinks, no caffeine in the coffee. Decaf coffee is like smoking something that tastes and smells like crack, but doesn’t get you high. Pointless. But that’s usually the only thing they restrict, so bring on the calories and the carbs and the processed sugar! I’m the only person I know who actually likes hospital food. Sometimes there’s a small lunchroom with decaf coffee and snacks; at Exodus, my favorite item was hard-boiled eggs. Scott would cut them up and add them to a Styrofoam bowl of mustard, mayo, salt, and pepper. Then he’d smash the mix between two pieces of cheap white bread and hand it over. I could never get enough of that.
After you’ve finished eating like a tranquilized horse, you stabilize yourself for the well-wishes and hugs that accompany the good-byes, after which your sad family and friends watch and wave as you shuffle your way back down the hall. Generally, your posse can only handle this until you’re halfway to your room, at which point they tu
rn and run, stopping only for the hand sanitizer near the exit, in hopes of wiping away the last hour. I know my family and friends did this with me, and I did it with Scott. Once safely outside, everybody sits weeping in their cars. Or maybe they hold it together until they get home, and fall apart there.
I’ve gone back and asked everyone who came to see me what was running through their minds during all those visits, and every answer is the same: There was no way this happened to Mary. She’s not an addict. The only explanation is that she’s so attached to Scott that she would even follow him to rehab. I did my best to keep my bad behavior a secret and it worked. I thought I was pretty crafty at the time, but in retrospect, I’m baffled. How is it that I spent nearly a year on a never-ending heroin-and-whatever-else-you’ve-got run without setting off a single red flag? How could they deny the damage I’d done to my arms? One day, I was model pretty; the next, I resembled the undead. Didn’t anybody notice?
As the medicated fog of detox lifts, it’s replaced by guilt. Parents have dreams for their children—this is not one of them. You’ve killed that dream, and they’re sent home (or brought back in for family group sessions) to grieve it. Both my parents kept saying they’d failed me; my dad in particular, with his own history of addiction and hard recovery, always felt like this was something he’d done to me, something that he could’ve seen and somehow prevented. The saddest words I ever heard him say were, “I should’ve saved you.” But I knew I’d done this to myself, and I’d done it to my family as well—how could I carry that shame? Many times, this guilt leads to relapse.
Photographic Insert
Me and my dad in 1978. The decor looks like we’re on the set of Roseanne.
My parents’ remarriage, the one that was supposed to lock it in. It didn’t.
“I Love Rock ’n’ Roll.”
With Candy Westbrook at the “Model of the Year” competition in Washington, D.C.
First kiss with Scott and then some, London, 1993.
Ivana (left), Kristen (right), and me “throwin’ it” for the camera at Kristen’s twenty-third birthday at the Whisky in L.A.
With Steve Jones at my birthday party at the Little Door in L.A. This picture captures a rare moment—I’m in Steve’s presence but not bent over with laughter.
Never too fucked up to shop: Scott and me during the Chaos Tour, hemorrhaging money on Rodeo Drive.
Scott always loved this rubber dress (I had to powder my body to get it on). We are at a Japanese restaurant in Hollywood before the start of our hotel run with his brother Michael. Little did I know that within days I’d be reviving the dead.
After Scott did a solo show in L.A., we hit the Chateau Marmont and, later, downtown. This photo was taken in the back of a limo moments after we confessed to each other that we’d both relapsed—and before we went looking for heroin.
Pajama party at the Playboy Mansion. I had no clue till much later that Scott’s time in the bathroom was spent with a crack pipe in his mouth.
The framed picture of Keith Richards that we used to prep speedballs. When you’re not seeing clearly, everything’s an icon.
My intake picture at Hazelden Springbrook in Oregon, the third of the seven stints it would take for me to finally quit drugs. I was so out of it that I was surprised when I looked out the window and discovered that I was no longer in L.A.
Scott sent me this letter from jail in December 1999. I keep it with the others in a box labeled JAIL MAIL.
The final page of Scott’s handwritten wedding vows. Whether they’re set to music or written on paper—and even when they break my heart—his words always move me.
With my dad on my wedding day, the only time I can remember seeing him cry.
I waited nine years for this moment—but I always knew it would come.
Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith won the guess-Mary’s-belly-size contest at my baby shower for Noah. That’s Robert DeLeo just over my right shoulder.
My STP tour laminate with Noah.
Stone Temple Pilots (left to right: Robert, Scott, Eric, and Dean) onstage at a KROQ show in L.A. The stage revolved them into the spotlight, prompting a tremendous response from the crowd.
With Scott at my Pretty in Pink prom˛ themed thirtieth birthday party.
After renewing our vows in Bali, 2007. This moment was meant to stick. I will always cherish that time but lament that promises are so easily broken.
Lucy’s seventh birthday, July 2009. No matter what the future holds for Scott and me, I will always love him, and we will always be a family.
And let’s be honest here: The other thing that leads to relapse is missing the high and wanting it back. You’re drug-sick, you’re lower than gum on a sidewalk, and you think if you can’t get back out and score in five more damn minutes, you’re going to rip out all the hair on your head and punch yourself in the face. Yes, I did punch myself in the face.
A lot of rehab experience, especially in the early days and weeks, is spent trying to outwit the very people who are trying to get you well. You make this so-called effort to pull it together, you do it for show, because it’s harder for someone to be angry with you if it looks like you’re trying. You get more sympathy when you appear to be struggling. Seasoned addicts even game the detox process—they clean up under medical supervision, then walk out the door knowing that the next high is going to be way better than the last one.
And then there’s all this complicated, overwhelming science—biology, chemistry, psychology—that allegedly explains how you got into this mess and how, possibly, you might get out of it. Professionals in all these fields study the science of addiction for their entire careers and still don’t have all the answers; an addict spends a month learning about it and—no surprise—flunks the take-home exam. Limbic system? Opiate receptors? Serotonin? The dopamine effect? Genetic predisposition? Turns out that all those years I was worrying about my hips, I should’ve been worrying about my hippocampus, that tiny place in my brain that neurologists call the seat of memory and reason. I’d been pouring junk on it since I was thirteen. I couldn’t remember what day it was—how could I possibly absorb all of that? For a long time, I didn’t.
It’s as though you’ve been raised in the woods by wolves; now you must become a functioning human being. It’s not enough to be clean and sober—you need to rewire your brain. There are people who go through their daily lives getting to their jobs on time, raising their families, coping with kids or loneliness or creativity or the world situation, and they don’t get high. They don’t put a needle into their veins, they don’t consort with scary people hovering near the edge of city parks or dark parking lots. How do they do that? For an addict, this is a much bigger question than What is the meaning of life? Twelve-step meetings can help you learn; therapy can help you learn; maybe faith, or grace, can help you stick with it. But for three out of every four addicts, it takes multiple trips to rehab, and stays longer than a couple of weeks, or a couple of months, or longer. It depends on the drug of choice, it depends on the support system, it depends on how good the counselors are, it depends on how much damage you’ve done, and ultimately it depends on whether or not you’re really through with running. It depends on factors that no one can see or fix.
Staying in recovery was difficult for a very long time. I missed the ritual of using as much as I missed the drug itself. During one of my early attempts at sobriety, I missed it so much that I loaded a syringe with water and shot it into my arm. I knew I wouldn’t get high, but I wanted that specific feeling—the adrenaline of expectation just before you open birthday presents, just before you bungee-jump off the bridge.
I don’t recommend kicking heroin cold turkey. The first time I did it was before Scott went to jail. The day began as a disaster, and I had to have two friends come over and help me get him into the UCLA psych ward. Dr. Langford made intake arrangements and was meeting us there. Scott and I were dropped off, and we made our way into the building. I don’t remember mu
ch about that meeting; Scott, the doctor, and I sat at a round gray table that was made of either cement or metal. The discussion was about Scott’s need for a seventy-two-hour hold.
Hours had passed since I last shot up. I’d gone from feeling like a little girl swimming through cotton candy to a death-row inmate whose stay of execution was just about up. I wanted to go home, I wanted to sleep. Dr. Langford called me a cab, and I hugged Scott good-bye. From the look in his eyes, I knew that his run through the fluffy pink cotton had come to an end, too.
I fell asleep in the cab and woke up in front of our house. I don’t remember paying the driver, I just remember trying to steady my hand so that I could open the door. Getting upstairs to our bedroom was painful. I had to sit and rest every few steps. I was sweaty, hot, and cold all at the same time. I was wearing a black puffy North Face jacket, and by the time I reached the top of the stairs it was drenched. I lacked the energy to take it off. My skin was cold, my eyes wouldn’t stay open, and I just wanted to sleep. I crawled into bed all alone and slept facedown for at least a day.
When I woke up, I knew something horrible was happening. Panicky, I called Ivana, controlling my voice (she still didn’t know what was truly going on with me), and asked her please to bring me something to eat and some Gatorade. I knew it was going to be difficult getting back down the stairs and I started right after I hung up the phone. I sat at the top of the staircase still wearing my sweaty clothes and the puffy jacket, then went down the stairs on my butt, one step at a time. In between, I closed my eyes to stop the spinning. When I got to the front door, I unlocked it, then fell onto the green velvet couch. This time, it didn’t enfold me in comfort. It felt more like a bed of nails.
Fall to Pieces: A Memoir of Drugs, Rock 'N' Roll, and Mental Illness Page 16