Fall to Pieces: A Memoir of Drugs, Rock 'N' Roll, and Mental Illness

by Mary Forsberg Weiland;Larkin Warren

  At which point Scott prepared to leave the room as well, in a hurry to get the scrip filled. “I’m not going to let you fucking do this!” I yelled. “It’s Noah’s birthday! You’ve wrecked most of the whole damn year, you have to stop this now!” And I planted myself between him and the door. He tried to blow past me, and I frantically tried to hold his arms, swinging and shouting, determined to stop him from putting another damn pill in his mouth. He shoved, I shoved back. When I wouldn’t quit, he grabbed both my arms, lifted me with a bit of force out of his way, and went out the door. Following right behind him, I grabbed his ankles and slid on my stomach as he marched toward the pharmacy. I finally let go and lay defeated on the Hard Rock floor in tears.

  I want to make something as clear as I possibly can on this page: although there is no excuse for the events that took place that night, at no time did Scott ever hit me, or even threaten to, not that day or on any other. In fact, I’m not sure at that point he even realized I was there. I was simply a physical obstacle between him and what his brain was screaming for. I knew the hell he was in (after all, not that long ago I’d been the woman crawling on the bedroom floor looking for a used needle), and within seconds of his leaving that room, I decided that there was only one thing I could do to save him from himself: I called hotel security and told them he’d hurt me.

  The bruises were already showing up on my arms and wrist. Security called the police, who tracked Scott down and arrested him on a charge of battering. I never would’ve testified against him, I didn’t ask him to plead guilty, and I was stunned when he did. I didn’t want my husband in jail—I wanted him in treatment, as soon as somebody could stick him there. But the wire-service photos of his booking pictures hit the Internet, and he was repeatedly characterized as the wild, drug-crazed rocker who punched his wife and spent his son’s first birthday in jail. A thirty-day rehab would follow.

  The following day, I was driving back to Coronado with Noah and my mom. The tabloids were screaming, Scott’s pictures were on television, and my phone had been ringing nonstop with calls from friends and family. Many were calling because they were concerned, but some of them were just plain nosey. I felt like total crap. I’d had my husband locked up for something I knew he didn’t do.

  I was merging onto the Coronado Bridge when my phone rang yet again. It was Robert Downey Jr. “You did the right thing to have him arrested,” he said. “And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  This was profound kindness—he’d walked through that same hell, he knew the demons Scott was fighting, and he understood my desperation. Robert’s words were the first ones that helped restore my confidence in myself and in my decision.

  A week later I was driving home after a girlfriend’s wedding at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I’d gone with my friend Julie Kramer, and I was surprised to find myself having a good time. The groom was manager to some high-profile comics, and every toast had the room roaring. The highlight of the evening was Brad Pitt, dressed to kill and cutting it up on the dance floor with a little kid. That was fun, I thought to myself as I drove through the darkness. Scott’s going to get well again, Noah’s sleeping through the night, I’d dropped the baby weight, the house was coming along nicely…then it occurred to me that every month a certain biological event comes along, and so far this particular month it was a no-show. I was pregnant again.

  I guess our timing could’ve been better—but is there any perfect time to have a child? Scott and I had siblings we loved, who loved us in return. I liked knowing that my brother and sisters were in the world, that I could talk to them, that in spite of the difference in our ages, we had shared histories and memories. Now Noah would have that. I was excited for Noah. He would have a brother or sister. At the same time, I was yelling in the car: “Motherfucker! I’m going to be a cow again!”

  And once again, Scott promised me that this time it would be different.

  ELEVEN

  i do…again

  I realized early that the Lucy pregnancy wasn’t going to be like the princess experience I had with Noah. Scott was in rehab, and although Noah and I visited with him, it was a long drive between Coronado and L.A. for visits that never lasted long enough. I never much liked the idea of little kids visiting rehabs. I was uncomfortable with it as a patient and nervous about it as a parent. Scott felt the same. Nevertheless, we tried our best to make each visit fun for Noah, and we spent most of our times together at a nearby park. I’m not sure how genuine our laughter was at that point, but Noah’s laughter was as pure as a child’s can be.

  When Scott got out of rehab, we kept a place in L.A. (on Blackburn Street, soon to be known as “Crackburn”), ostensibly so he could be close to his twelve-step group and his probation officer. I figured out pretty fast that he wasn’t staying clean. I immediately went into rescue mode, putting a sleeping Noah in his car seat and driving around downtown L.A. in the middle of the night, muttering obscenities to myself while trying to spot Scott making a buy. Sometimes I left Noah with a girlfriend and searched by myself, finding him in all of our old ugly locations, begging him to get clean. During the day, I was chasing a toddler; into the night, I was chasing my husband.

  Near the end of my pregnancy, Scott was again readmitted into rehab—into Brotman Medical Center, in Culver City. And then, a few days into detox, he slipped out again. I tracked him down—he’d made the break with a couple of drug-addled women who were, I say with no hesitation whatsoever, the two ugliest women I’d ever seen. I literally had to drag his dead-weight body out the door. He had just enough daylight in his head to resist my efforts, so I punched him in the jaw as hard as I could. He fell over into a bed of ivy and smashed his face on a metal sprinkler head. I then dragged him to the car and drove him back to the hospital. The whole time he was being flushed with naltrexone to cleanse him of the drugs, I sat next to him with ice on my hand. When I thought it was safe to leave, I went home to my baby. An hour or two later, he left, too, and resumed the run where he’d left off—and ended up back at Brotman within days.

  Not long ago, I had a long conversation with Dave Navarro from Jane’s Addiction. Back in the day, when Scott was on a drug run, he’d make the occasional stop at Dave’s house, and that was one of the first places I’d check, sucking up my tears and trying to sound like a wife retrieving her husband from a long football afternoon with a buddy, not a crack run through the seamier sides of town. “Hi, Dave, it’s Mary. I was wondering if Scott was there or if you know where he could be?”

  Everyone has a one-day-Scott-showed-up-at-my-house story, and Dave’s is my favorite. Scott arrived at Dave’s house totally out of his tree—in fact, from the way Dave explains his appearance, standing in the doorway with twigs and leaves in his hair and missing a tooth, he may well have fallen out of an actual tree. That man has an issue with teeth. Up until recently, he was missing one again. How or why this happens, I’ve never truly understood.

  At the time, Dave reminds me, he himself was not in top form, either. At one point, he’d pulled a shotgun on a guy from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. I’m sure DWP prepares its employees for all kinds of contingencies, but a paranoid, gun-wielding customer is probably not in the job manual. As if nearly killing your utility guy isn’t bad enough, Dave would also periodically call the fire department on himself for reasons he could not adequately explain. Faced with Scott minus a tooth and wearing a head full of vegetation, Dave told Scott he was out of control. You know you’re out of control when a man who threatens civil employees with a shotgun and keeps a coffin as a coffee table tells you you’re out of control.

  Scott was shooting speedballs that day. When the inevitable paranoia set in, he tried to convince Dave that there were ghosts in his house. I’m aware this story doesn’t fall under “funny, ha-ha,” but it does have its own particular kind of comedy—Scott and Dave like an old married couple, bickering about the existence of ghosts. When Scott went to that place, he wouldn’t back off until you
swore you believed whatever it was he was trying to sell you. After hours of arguing, he finally wore Dave down: yes, okay, okay, there are ghosts in the house. The difference was, Dave’s ghosts were always friendly, Scott’s not so much.

  I told Dave that I could only imagine what his home was like during that time, and his response was, “Come on, Mary, you were there. You came over with Scott.” I was? I did? Not only could I not remember going to Dave’s house, I still can’t. Evidently, Scott and I went to Dave’s together to play him some of Scott’s new music. The music was great; even now, I think they would have been an amazing match. Dave agrees that yes, he thought the music was great and he would have loved to collaborate with Scott, but the idea of having to actually work with him was, in Dave’s words, “scary.” How scary do you have to be to scare Dave Navarro?

  My other favorite Dave-and-Scott story was the time Scott, in an effort to convince Dave that he was totally in control of his faculties, announced that he was going out on the balcony to clear his head and write him a letter about their drug problems. Already beginning to nod off in a post-high buzz, Scott headed outside. Dave reports that hours went by; at some point, he wondered just what kind of long-ass letter Scott was writing. When he went out to check, he found Scott fast asleep. The letter said:

  Dave—

  My only real concern for you and I is that

  That was it. Not even a period. It’s fucking genius. Apparently Dave thinks it’s genius as well, because he framed it and hung it on the wall.

  As Scott and I got closer to my due date for Lucy, we began to panic at the idea of Scott’s not being there. I negotiated a deal with Scott’s team at Brotman that they would slowly lower Scott’s detox meds but keep him there until I was induced, and then release him in a cogent state (ideally) for long enough to join me for our daughter’s birth at Cedars. Daddy on call in a detox unit: this sounds like an odd scenario for a joyous birthing scene. But I never felt sad when Scott was in treatment—first, because it meant I knew where he was; and second, because it meant there were qualified professionals on the team again, dedicated to bringing him back from the dark side, and I could take myself off watchdog duty.

  On Friday, July 19, I checked into the same birthing suite at Cedars where we’d had Noah. My mother was there to be my significant-other birthing coach, my girlfriends were there for moral support (we’d even had our hair and nails done beforehand and brought a supply of gossip and fashion magazines). I tried my best to focus only on Lucy’s arrival—to bring her safe and strong into the world, surrounded by people who loved her and welcomed her with open arms. Nevertheless, after my doctor induced labor, the whole production began to look like something halfway between network news and a comedy show, as I called Scott’s nurse at Brotman with the up-to-the-minute report. For eight hours, every hour, until right up to the end, where it was every fifteen minutes, “Hello, it’s Mary Weiland. I’m dilated five centimeters. Call you again soon!”

  Lucy’s birth was far easier and much faster than Noah’s had been. I knew that Scott was on his way and did my best not to push. But there are some aspects of being a control freak that simply don’t work in nature. Lucy arrived one minute before her father did. She looked, even in those first few seconds, exactly like him. He was allowed to stay with us for an hour—it was quiet and tender among us, and he looked at his little girl with so much love. But there was such an underlying sadness. And I was angry that it had to be like this. When he was taken back to Brotman, the baby endorphins kicked in and helped me get through watching his back as he walked through the door. I was so determined that Lucy’s first day on the planet not begin with me shouting at her father, who was already in pain.

  Lucy, Noah, and I stayed in Los Angeles for a few weeks to stay close to our doctors, and this time I had a nanny from the beginning. The migraines started again. I had two babies who needed me, and all I wanted to do was take a fistful of painkillers and sleep. Scott was released from Brotman, stayed in a hotel nearby, and came to visit me and the kids accompanied by a sober companion.

  Two months after Lucy’s birth—exhausted, lonely, and angry—I filed for divorce. I didn’t think I could hold it together anymore, and it wasn’t clear that Scott cared if I kept trying. Besides, it’s not as though a threatened divorce worked any miracles. He was in the grip of something else that was taking all his energy and focus.

  Not long after that, on what remained of the tattered Shangri-La Dee Da tour, after years of friendship and tolerance, Dean DeLeo finally hit the I-want-a-divorce wall as well—he and Scott got into a near-fistfight, and that was the end of Stone Temple Pilots.

  I didn’t pursue the paperwork for the divorce—that time around. After my initial show of defiance, I ran out of emotional steam. Sad and lost, Scott stayed primarily in L.A. while the kids and I stayed in Coronado. I’d had a fantasy since the day we bought that house that I could find a normal life there, maybe even reconnect with my old girlfriends from high school, walk the kids in the sunshine, and stay out of the circus for a while. That didn’t happen. I was spending too much time alone on my couch, especially after the kids went to bed and it was wine-thirty. I’d have a glass or two or three, eat crap snacks by the pound, and watch TV until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. Scott would come and visit sometimes, but that’s what he was—a visitor. This was not the way it was supposed to go.

  One night, Scott and I went to an event for the designers Dolce & Gabbana, and ran into an old friend, Susan Holmes. Susan was married to Duff McKagan, who’d been a guitarist with Guns N’ Roses. Duff and two of his former GNR bandmates (Slash and Matt Sorum), plus guitarist Dave Kushner, had been working together on a new project. We exchanged phone numbers and promised to get back in touch.

  A few days later, Susan called and asked us to meet her and Duff at the Little Door restaurant—our wedding restaurant—for dinner. Duff wanted Scott to hear some of the new music. “Do you think Scott would be interested in working with them?” she asked.

  I didn’t know if he’d be interested—I didn’t know what, if anything, could hold his interest these days. But what I was interested in was a crucial piece of information that Susan (and later, Dave’s wife, Christine) passed along to me: All these guys were recovering addicts. Clean, healthy, sober, years-long recovery. I figured that if Scott was around them, he would see that guys “just like him” had families and health and creativity and rock ’n’ roll. It could be done.

  When we all met, I made my best sales pitch. “Just listen to the music,” I said.

  “It’s a little hard for me, I think,” Scott said.

  I dug in. “Please. Just listen.”

  It took him forever to listen to the CD that Duff gave us, so long that we lost it, and Slash brought a new one by. Scott was reluctant. It wasn’t a band that he could picture himself fronting. It wasn’t STP, and it wasn’t his experimental solo work.

  I got so many calls from the guys wanting to set up dates, but Scott could never give me a solid answer. I finally suggested that they find a one-off just to get Scott in the studio, because I knew that once he went back to work, he wouldn’t leave the studio. The one-off turned out to be “Set Me Free,” on producer Danny Elfman’s soundtrack for Hulk (the 2003 Ang Lee version).

  In May 2003 Scott was again arrested for felony drug possession—he had heroin in his car. In August, Duff went with him to court, where he was fined and put on probation again, on the condition he stay sober. Early in October 2003 we finally got rid of the damn Crackburn apartment, and Scott moved into another, smaller place nearby. The kids and I stayed in the house in Coronado.

  The drive between L.A. and San Diego, which in my teens had been about an hour and a half long, now stretched to three and sometimes four hours, depending on the traffic, which was usually bumper-to-bumper in all lanes. My traveling companions were two tiny people; we had to stop along the way for changing or feeding, and then at the end of the road, there was Daddy, still
fragile, but gaining five minutes at a time. It wasn’t fast enough for me. I was buckling under the care of the kids, the constant worry about Scott’s health (which never seemed to get any better), and the feeling that even though he was really beginning to do some good work with VR, the two of us were stuck in an old familiar tunnel with no light at the end. It was as though every morning, I woke up in the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day.

  One afternoon in early October 2003, the kids and I were visiting Scott at the rental in L.A. The living room was as plain a room as you can imagine. We never really stayed in that place as a family—it wasn’t a home—so there was no reason to decorate beyond a basic motel motif: big white couch, matching chair, a dark wooden coffee table, and a TV. Before we put Noah and Lucy down for their naps that day, Lucy entertained us by running around with a Pull-Ups training diaper on her head. Ivana taught her to do it and she did it often, knowing that it was a predictable way to make us all laugh.

  Once the kids were sleeping, the room grew very quiet. It was hard to believe that laughter had been in it only minutes before. Scott and I sat on the couch, trying to make conversation. Then I said, “I cannot do this anymore.” The defeated look on his face told me that he knew what I meant. There was too much in us that seemed to be broken.

  “We’ve failed,” I said. This time, we agreed—we would go through with the divorce. Within days of that tearful conversation, the headlines hit the newswires.