I couldn’t believe that we were living this life again. It was so much work covering up this disaster with the kids and everyone around us. There’s no end date for a relapse, but I was fairly certain that I couldn’t live through another round.
Scott finally fired one particular employee whose presence not only enabled Scott to continue using, but made it easy. In exchange for firing this fool, Scott wanted me to come to Chicago, where Velvet Revolver was playing. Management only cared that he was able to stand up and hold the mic; what he actually did while he was standing there didn’t affect them—they got paid regardless.
When I arrived at the hotel, I couldn’t get the door open. Scott had barricaded the door with furniture. He didn’t even remember that I was coming. He finally let me in, and I couldn’t believe what I walked into. The drapes were all closed and the room was littered with little bottles from the minibar. He swore there weren’t any drugs, but I couldn’t believe this level of paranoia came from booze alone. He was convinced that someone was out to get him. I made my best effort at attempting to calm him down. I tried holding him and kissing him, which worked to a small degree. Whenever he left the room, I would empty as many bottles as I could from the minibar into the sink. I did this until they were all gone. We both finally fell asleep late in the afternoon, and when Scott woke up, he didn’t remember what happened. Or wouldn’t.
Like any good codependent, my time in Chicago was all about watching Scott like a hawk and trying to make sure he was happy. We went shopping and watched movies in our room. Everything looked fine and my presence was much appreciated by the band. I’m sometimes the only one who can get Scott to step on stage at showtime (not always, but my stats are above par). My drill sergeant routine is taxing and annoys the hell out of Scott, but everyone is happy when they see him walking on stage. Chicago ended up not being as bad as I’d anticipated. Okay, I said to myself, maybe I can do this. And then we got home.
I spent the month of October 2007 in a constant state of panic. Six months after Michael’s death, four months after my own breakdown, and I was working nonstop with the designer-jeans company Rock and Republic, creating what I thought would be Scott’s most memorable birthday. He was turning forty and I wanted it to be special—a roller rink transformed into Studio 54. The theme matched Rock and Republic’s new line, so it all had a kind of symmetry. I had a to-do list a mile long. Work works for me, I kept saying. Work works.
I turned my attention to Scott’s party, and he went back to his pre-Chicago self. I saw Dr. Pylko, and made appointments with Bernie for double sessions. Going back to her now, I no longer felt like the dependent “enmeshed” girl I’d been when we first met; it was a mature relationship. I needed her to help me with the obvious—sobriety under stress. It had been such a horrible year, with so much loss and fear for Scott and me, I wanted to end that chapter and begin a new one and reaffirm that beginning with him. But he wasn’t interested.
My frustration grew as the days passed, and I felt guilty not sharing my anxiety about Scott’s current situation with Rock and Republic. But I convinced myself that if I could get him onstage in Chicago, then I could damn sure get him to his own birthday party. I was beginning to release the denial that things would get better and felt a great deal of sadness knowing that our marriage was most likely at its real end. I would have to continue the cover-up until Scott’s party. October 27, 2007, would be my final day if things didn’t get better. We were too old to deal with this shit any longer.
The night of the party, everyone dressed the part, and the roller rink was transformed into a Studio 54 vibe. It was the first time the guys in Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver were all in the same room, and everybody seemed to actually be having fun. I put on a smile and made the rounds to make sure everyone was happy. Scott and I were followed by photographers, and we smiled for the cameras. Scott had been drinking and was making trips to the limo. I knew what he was doing.
When the party ended, we walked out to the limo together, and I braced myself for the tenderness that I knew was not coming. We sat in silence on the drive home. I finally worked up the nerve to speak and asked him if he liked his party. His reply was my final blow. “Why are you so fake?”
I cried the entire way home and then I cried some more. First because of the hurt and the weight of my own expectations, in spite of what I’d known during the whole time I’d worked on the party. Scott and I we were definitely, finally, lost to each other.
When we got home, my sadness turned to anger. So much so that I punched myself in the face for being so stupid. I hadn’t punched myself, or anyone else, in a long time. It wasn’t a habit I was interested in reacquiring.
Capping off the year from hell, in November 2007—the night before Thanksgiving, in fact—Scott was arrested for DUI. In a sick coincidence, we’d arranged to have our family picture taken for our Christmas card on Thanksgiving Day. I’d thought it would be funny if we did fake mug shots. Scott never made the cover of that card—his mug shot was the real deal. We did the best we could for the kids over the holidays, and with Michael’s kids as well, but we knew we were at the end.
We officially separated for the last time at the end of November; since then, we have been negotiating both a legal divorce (which in fact may be final by the time this book is published) and the new emotional, day-to-day terms of a relationship that has bound us together for so many years. Taking a family apart, then figuring out how everyone fits back together after a divorce, is like unwinding a ball of twine. There’s no way through it but to do it.
Sentencing for Scott’s Thanksgiving Eve DUI wouldn’t be held until spring of 2008; until then, he would be preparing to go on the international leg of the VR tour to support Libertad. But when the headlines broke again, the bookings began to fall apart. The government of Japan issued an official pronouncement, which in the simplest translation said, “You guys can’t come here anymore.” The dates for Australia were postponed by the band for “personal reasons.” Tensions rose backstage, among the various managements and the guys themselves.
In March, Scott actually said onstage—in Glasgow, Scotland—that fans were witnessing the last Velvet Revolver tour. However difficult the tour had been to that point, his announcement caught the other guys completely off guard.
On April 28, 2008, he was sentenced to 192 hours in county jail for the November DUI. He had to complete an eighteen-month alcohol program and pay a two-thousand-dollar fine. Once again, he was on probation for four years. He actually checked into jail on May 12, but was released later that same day.
Duff said something that echoed my own feelings, although for an entirely different set of reasons, and with a heavier price for us to pay. “He’s a really good guy and funny. I know that guy is in there somewhere—he just got lost again. We tried to pull Scott back, but we couldn’t. When he’s into that other side, it’s not cool, it’s not friendly. You try to help, but then after a while you realize you can’t.”
My suspicion—and, I admit it, my hope—that STP wasn’t quite finished actually came to be fact just as VR was dissolving. Christine and I were working with Rock and Republic, putting together a beach-party event in Santa Monica for their fifth anniversary. They wanted a band—thankfully, every band I went to was already booked. I’d like to say that it was impulse that led me to call Dean DeLeo, but that would be a fib—I’d been plotting. I called him and explained what we were looking for; he said he was interested, but wanted to talk to Scott first. Ultimately, the guys didn’t play the beach-party date, but they did start the reunion conversation. They played a few dates through the summer of 2008, made it official, and as I write, they’re on tour again and working on a new album.
Throughout much of that year, Scott worked on a solo album; in fall of 2008, Happy in Galoshes came out. It was inevitable that there would be songs about the end of our marriage and the loss of his brother. I prepared myself for the sadness that would come with those lyrics. But w
hat I wasn’t prepared for were the interviews he gave, in particular one on The Howard Stern Show, when he said I’d been unfaithful and that I’d left him for another man. My cell phone rang, the house phone rang—Howard Stern has a big audience. Evidently with the presidential election safely resolved, it was time for the Scott and Mary show to make noise again. Inexplicably, he said I’d left him for Joe the Plumber—“not the Joe the Plumber, just some guy”—while he was in rehab. “I don’t want to know anything about it…it’ll eventually come out,” he said. “It definitely drove me crazy—my biggest addiction was my wife…I’ll always love her…whenever she needed help, I was there at home to detox her. Whenever I needed help, it was all, ‘He can’t be around her.’” He went on to say that the breakup inspired a lot of the songs on Happy.
Scott had asked if I’d take the kids to a show here in Los Angeles. They love watching him perform, and I’ve always tried to take them whenever possible, both to STP and VR. On this occasion, we were late (as I often am). I grabbed their little headphones and we ran for the stage. We made it just as the show began.
Scott sometimes uses a teleprompter when he performs new songs, and I set the kids up right next to it. I didn’t know the lyrics of the new material (which was a first—I’d always known all his other songs by heart). As the words began to roll on the teleprompter, my heart sank. He had written, and he sang, about what a sham he believed the entire length of our marriage to have been. It was one of the saddest moments in my life. I stood in front of a crowd of thousands and tried to hold back my tears.
I won’t suggest that I was the perfect wife, or even, for a long time, a good one. No question, living with me was not a picnic. But Happy in Galoshes was just cruel. It was a school night and I used that excuse to drive the kids home. Once they were safely tucked in, I let the emotions come.
FOURTEEN
bye bipolar
The name of this chapter is courtesy of my son, Noah.
I use TV’s Law & Order series (all of them) as an escape in much the same way that others use a bag of Cheetos. (Okay, I’ll be honest, I use the Cheetos, too.) Recently, I was left feeling sad, angry, and very frustrated at the end of an L&O episode. How many story lines about bipolar killers are they going to come up with? There are headlines about grim new ways to off people every day, and this is the best they can do? L&O killers never take their meds, are delusional, and talk to themselves. Even during my greatest unmedicated lapse into insanity, the thought of murdering someone never crept into even the darkest part of my mind, unless you count my wanting to karate chop Dick Wolf, Law & Order’s producer.
Statistically, mental illness rarely equals mayhem and murder, especially when it’s diagnosed and treated. Most times, the person whose mind is wracked by the illness is far more frightened (and helpless and vulnerable to someone else’s abuse) than anyone on the outside looking in. The words mental illness carry a terrible weight. Lurid headlines notwithstanding, all schizophrenics do not push people off train platforms into the path of oncoming trains, all manic-depressives do not burn their husbands’ clothing, all addicts do not sleep under bridges or rob little old ladies. It’s a human truth that some people, no matter if their personality types are in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or not, behave badly toward others. But not all of them.
We are capable of social change—we’ve done it before. Three generations ago, a dignified pregnant woman rarely even came out of her house after the fourth or fifth month; in our grandparents’ generation, few people with cancer spoke of their illness, sometimes not even to a family physician. And nobody ever acknowledged, let alone embraced, the family drunk. These days, moms-to-be walk on the beach in bikinis, showing off the baby bumps that celebrate new life. Many cancer survivors who’ve lost hair due to chemo walk baldly and proudly on the street, demonstrating a fierce, defiant courage that humbles the rest of us. Politicians, astronauts, actors, doctors, teachers, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters—these are the people who stand up in twelve-step meetings, struggling to heal and take responsibility for their behaviors and their futures. We’ve worked hard to change our attitudes (with different degrees of success) toward Down syndrome and autistic kids, high-functioning Asperger’s professionals, and people of many different ethnicities and religious beliefs. It might take some longer than others, but people can change their minds about people who have mental illness.
I’m not equating pregnancy or cancer with addiction or bipolar disorder. I’m simply saying that knowledge and empathy can change the way we treat one another. And I’m certainly not asking that everything on television or in the movies be a very special episode in which we are “instructed” in political correctness and the happy ending is wrapped up in a big yellow bow. That would be beyond boring. But in my humble, medicated, therapized opinion, repeatedly flogging (and perpetuating) a stereotype isn’t creative, it’s just lazy. And if you’re on the receiving end of it, it eventually hurts.
As I write, it’s been more than two years since the Great Bonfire of 2007. As time passed and my meds began kicking in, denial of my diagnosis slowly slipped away—like friends from school, I’d see it less and less. But like old friends who pop up out of nowhere and Facebook me, denial occasionally rears its ugly head. This is when people I love and trust step up and do that “ahem” thing: Mary, pay attention.
I’ve grown surprisingly comfortable with BIPOLAR stamped on my forehead and am committed to staying with my docs and my meds. That said, I really wish I didn’t have to down two handfuls of pills every day. Right now I’m on Lamictal (a mood stabilizer especially for the depression cycle), Abilify (a mood stabilizer specific to the mania), Concerta (a slow-release version of Ritalin for my ADHD), and Provigil (what Dr. Pylko describes as “wakefulness-promoting agent”—it helps with the ADHD and with keeping me out of my comfy bed in the daytime). The occasional visit from denial reminds me that I was far more creative and productive without them. The darkest parts of me are gone, but so is some of the light. My mom thinks I’m not as funny as I used to be, and many days I feel like I should file for creative bankruptcy. The deciding factor is that the kids don’t give a shit whether Mommy can write poetry. They just want to know that crazy ain’t coming back.
I wish I’d understood early on how my dad’s struggle with addiction might have predicted my own. Maybe that knowledge would’ve made no difference at all—given my stubbornness and will, my life may well have proceeded exactly as it did. But as Dr. Pylko says, “Genes are not destiny—they’re information.” For someone who believes there’s no such thing as a stupid question, information is like oxygen.
There’s another crucial piece of information I’ve recently discovered: My grandma Rosa, hospitalized now with advanced Alzheimer’s disease, is bipolar, too. I was visiting her one day after my bonfire breakdown, and snuck a look at her chart (medical charts have become like road maps to me). Listed on that chart were all the medications she was taking; I recognized one of them immediately—Lamictal, a mood stabilizer that was in my own medicine cabinet. “Why is she taking this?” I asked her doctor.
“Because she’s bipolar,” he answered.
I found out that she’d been diagnosed well before I was. This, too, would have been helpful to know. I’m not sure what I would’ve done with the knowledge, but I’m fairly certain I would’ve liked to have it, especially the first time a doctor said those words to me. Maybe it’s not as pretty a picture as “Oh, you have your grandmother’s eyes,” but it’s part of who I am.
Not long ago, I asked Scott, “If you’d never gone to that barbecue in high school and seen your friends in the band—and decided you wanted to do that, too—would you still have struggled with addiction?”
“I’m pretty sure that drugs would have been over for me after high school,” he said. That’s not to say he would never have touched a drug again, and he knows drinking likely would have still posed a problem. But heroin, needles, and everyt
hing that goes with that? No way. When I heard him confirm my suspicion, for a minute I wanted to go back in time and cut him off with my bike before he could walk into that backyard barbecue. How different our life together might’ve been.
Sporadically through the years I’ve continued to take an occasional college course, first at Santa Monica College, then at San Diego City College. Just as I did with the baby books, I’ve read everything I could find about addiction and co-occurring disorders, and especially bipolar disorder.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain that releases when we’re happy. It’s a major part of feeling pleasure—in babies, in sunshine, in sex, and love. With addiction, the brain becomes confused about which is the “high” reaction and which is a legitimate reaction to nice stimulus—so it stops producing dopamine on its own. Reduced dopamine can create or accelerate ADHD; at the extreme end, it may also contribute to Parkinson’s disease. This is the kind of hangover that aspirin won’t touch.
An inability to produce dopamine is also one reason why becoming sober doesn’t ensure instant happiness—the little factory inside your head that produces happy has been shut down. It takes a lot of time to rebuild those pathways and turn on production again. For many addicts, sadness lingers for a long time after recovery begins, and that’s where the traps lie in wait. Steve Jones once said he believed Kurt Cobain could have made it into recovery and be alive today if only he’d had the help to get through the first year after he tried to quit heroin. The brain, which is so elastic in childhood, loses that ability in adulthood. We have to help it heal. We put casts on broken legs. We can do the equivalent for brains.
Some of the books that have landed on my bookshelf in the past couple of years include An Unquiet Mind, Manic, Electroboy, Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking, Brooke Shields’s book about postpartum disorder, Down Came the Rain, and Augusten Burroughs’s Dry. In each of these, I’ve found parts of my story, but I haven’t found myself. So many of the popular books on bipolar disorder primarily feature mania, or manic episodes. I struggled mostly with depression, and I couldn’t find that book. The more I learn about my brain, the more I want to know. I realize I’ll never live long enough to fully understand what happened to me. But I know what I need to do to take care of myself and my children. I hope, as does almost anyone who writes a memoir detailing her struggles, that a reader may see him- or herself in these pages, and not feel as isolated or as lost as I did for so long.
Fall to Pieces: A Memoir of Drugs, Rock 'N' Roll, and Mental Illness Page 24